Ambrosio, his robes trailing after him, dirty with dust, goes through the narrow low entrance of his abode, and says, ‘You have not asked a question, so I need not frame an answer.’

‘De Flunkl,’ Harold says. ‘I warn you that one does not step into a ravelling web if one can perceive it from a distance. You will become stuck. Leave this place. We will move on to Kells instead, or, if you would take mature counsel, to a church to purge our collective sin.’

De Flunkl gives him a look that is full of hate, and then goes inside. Harold grins tiredly, and William, looking at his companion’s face, feels it is an insane smile, betraying a deep fatigue above frenzied jaws.

‘Mark me that we are in some hell,’ Harold says softly, gripping William’s arms, ‘and, for my part, curiosity at least powers my own descent into the furnace. There is a devil amongst us, but I do not know who it is yet, though I would lay my ill-gotten wages on it that this silver-tongued Ambrosio plays his part.’

‘Will you leave?’ William asks, trying to empty his mind of its ridiculous lust for the Gaelic woman.

‘Are you scared?’ Harold asks. ‘There is no shame in it. It shows you value life. You said as much yourself earlier when I had become careless in my thoughts and my words.’

‘I am not scared,’ William says. ‘I am shaken but not for the reason you suppose. I wish to ask you did you see that midget Gael glowing like some small sun?’

Harold, concern gleaming in his eyes, pats him on the shoulder. ‘Has Saint John’s sickness infected you? It must be a carrying sickness. You are seeing imaginary effects and are full of a quick-breathed panic. It is strange in one who is usually so calm. Is it the thing of crows we saw? It haunts me, too, still.’

William pulls away from Harold. ‘I am fine. Pay me no heed. If madness wants me it can have me.’

‘Do not worry, friend,’ Harold says. ‘I will not abandon you.’

‘Yet I may you,’ William says.

‘Believe what you will, but I do not believe you are such a man as that. Let us go in now.’

William nods and they go down three wide steps into a squat room. Before closing the door after himself Harold looks outside once more. Saint John is still there, playing with dust, passing his fingers through it, on his knees; still blinded to the world.

Knocking interrupts reveries. …