Saint John wonders if he is confusing the woman’s trembling, which has fed and nourished a trembling of his own, with the trembling that comes off de Flunkl, whose shivering is like a block of black energy that courses through him, infecting Saint John with its own fear. De Flunkl is just a blur in the boy’s vision, but still he shines with a negative shine, like a deeper darkness that sucks at his own flesh, and then, a fox is darting behind a stone, somewhere, just beyond the street, and he knows that it is curling up for a nap, and Saint John knows the fox can smell him, though he cannot smell the fox.

De Flunkl waves his hands, affecting a casual stance, and says to Ambrosio, ‘I have no fear of the sickness in this town. I do not get sick. I am too strong of limb.’

‘Ah,’ Ambrosio smiles, ‘to be young and strong.’

‘And you, you ragged bunch,’ de Flunkl says, looking at his men, ‘courage, if ye ever had any.’

‘Come in and let us discuss business, since it is business you crave,’ Ambrosio says. ‘I can offer you some healing rosewater if you lot are more in fear of sickness than your master.’

Harold Tuite and William of Roscrea tie the horses to the post near the dwelling and water the trough with the deep pots slung off the post.

‘You will leave a woman out in this heat, like a dog?’ Harold shouts, as de Flunkl and Ambrosio begin to move into the house.

Ambrosio, still smiling, raises his hands, but says nothing.

‘I will do no conversing or business while a young lady suffers,’ Harold says. ‘My morals do not allow it.’

De Flunkl pinches his eyes, and lowers his head, groaning. ‘You do no business, and what matter are morals if the man is not a man of business? Does a goose need morals if it is a goose? Idiot serving man, please hold true on your pledge to converse no more,’ he says. ‘My dear Ambrosio of Kilkenny, kindly host, if this man has offended you by his unseemly prescriptions and his passing remarks on your own law-locked wife, I will rid myself of him with much promptitude. It would be a great joy to me to do such, if you deem it in any way even slightly pleasing.’

‘Please, no,’ Ambrosio replies. ‘I find gallantry endearing, and besides it is too hot for any such playacting. Of course I do not want my darling burnt by this sun. Hark as I put my wife at her ease by calling a woman who shall shelter her while we discuss manly things. She is wont to disturb deliberations and chat, so it is, mayhaps, for the best.’

He raises his mouth to the sky, clears his throat once, and begins calling as though he were a cockerel. ‘Alannah,’ he shouts several times.