No, she thinks, that is not true. Even before the curfew I did not visit the woods; even then I was afraid, and kept to myself, and if I saw a tree now I wouldn’t even see it, I would only see my fear. This is the fear I have brought to bear on my own life; this is my own sickness, not the communal one. I have hidden from death so much and for so long that I have never lived.

‘Alannah?’ she calls.

The fly buzzes upwards in a spiral until its ascent is interrupted by the ocean of spider webs hanging from the ceiling, and Raghnailt remembers the man called for Alannah again, a second time. She is on her own with her son.

Her heart had almost stopped when Alannah had brought him back; she had thought him dead, thought that Mary had killed him.

‘Wake up, Colca.’

He is sprawled on the floor beside her, his hair all covered in wisps of hay, his breathing in havoc. Alannah left him in chains.

‘Wake up, Colca. I must speak with you.’

He does not stir. Above her head she watches the fly’s small movements, its veined wings twitching against the web. Hundreds of flies, in different stages of decay, are blackly studded against the silvery ceiling. The more ancient carcasses have so decayed that they are a dull yellow, many having crumbled into dust. Four or five heavy spiders, like musicians plucking stringed instruments, gently move between the different levels of their own creation, with the perfect confidence of those who fully own what they have created.

And then a soft weeping begins beside Raghnailt, and, though it makes her sad, she will not comfort him.

‘My son,’ she says. ‘You have broken the town. You have abused your neighbours in their hour of need with that devilish fellow, harvesting their bodies, and keeping them locked in their houses as though they were not the kin they are. You sin; and I want you gone from this house because I cannot take the sight of you walking into your own death as you are doing.’

She is shocked at herself for speaking in this forthright manner. Perhaps this, too, she thinks, is fear that speaks.

‘I am so sad, Mother,’ Colca says, turning his red eyes to her.

She turns away; cannot look at him. When she sees his face she can only imagine the child whose back she rubbed when he awoke, screaming, from his nightmares.

‘You must stop it all now,’ Raghnailt says. ‘You must flee this place before the curfew ends.’

‘The man will find me,’ Colca says. ‘I cannot stop it now. It is too late for that, and he is like a demon. He has ways about him that he could find anyone. He can read, you see, and I must continue what I have begun. There is no choice.’