Saint John covers his ears, and shakes his head at this noise. The sound, to him, is grief-stricken, haunting, and somehow complementary to Mary’s sobbing. It is a part of the dirty heat that weighs down the little town.

Once he has finished, de Flunkl strokes his chin thoughtfully. ‘There is some purity in your voice, Ambrosio,’ he observes. ‘It was a constant and true note. You are larkish.’

Harold Tuite throws back his head and laughs.

‘Why do you laugh?’ de Flunkl says.

‘You are a ridiculous, outlandish man,’ Harold says, ‘too full of performative elements to be godly or useful. Only one so young could accumulate so many affectations. Do not engage this man in business, de Flunkl. You are a child playing amongst men.’

De Flunkl steps forward, addressing himself to Ambrosio. ‘My offer still stands regarding this heavily bearded dog, and I have cause enough from the slander he has directed at my manliness to disembowel him, but I await your wish. I am your guest, and you stand in lieu of the mayor here. Decide, good man.’

Ambrosio merely smiles at de Flunkl. ‘Of course I would thank him not to refer to my wife again, but I would not wish any remonstrations against the fellow.’

He looks to the end of the street; and William follows his eyes. A little person is coming round the corner, small in the distance against the moss-infested stony mess that is all that remains of the disused monastery. William believes the person will get bigger as she approaches, but she does not; it is a woman so small that she must walk around the dead chestnut mare.

This little woman walks straight by William, barely approaching his chest, and stands before Ambrosio. ‘You summoned me,’ she says.

Her voice is strange, and, to William, she is perfectly proportioned, almost as thick in girth as she is in height. A swirling cosmos of light freckles adorns her face, and her mouth is chockful of teeth. Her hair is so plentiful and confused it reminds William of the thicket they trawled through earlier in the day. She wears a gown that has been made for a woman of normal height so it appears like a royal train, but though the gown is long the tiny woman is so thickly proportioned that it seems as though it has been tapered at the bosom. There is light down on the backs of her arms, like a shorn deer, and her breasts droop, heavy like bluebells.

If he were a superstitious man he would wonder if perhaps Ambrosio were a demon to have conjured up such a tiny and beautiful woman, but he is not superstitious, and Ambrosio appears to him to be nothing more than a freakish aberration of a man.

‘Alannah, my friend,’ Ambrosio says. ‘How is Colca?’

‘The same as he last was: dead to the world.’

Though her voice is strange, her snarling accent is familiar to William.