“A pastoral scene,” I greet them, resolving relief into swagger. “Two Irishmen poaching rabbits in another man’s field.” I dismount. “Not my field though, so please don’t fret. I am just another traveller. Weary. Now my friends, might I share some of your rabbit, seeing that you stole it and are eating for free?”

ф

They are drinking men. I don’t usually partake in alcohol, but as I lie there, listening to their talk and laughter, I accept the bottle and take a swig, and later another, then another. It heats the stomach, and gives an odd sharpness to the night. At length I slip a sweet under my tongue and taste the liquor through its herbal tang.

As for the Paddies, they are quite at ease with me now. I am prey to them: a rich fool waiting to be robbed. I for my part am too preoccupied to disabuse them of the notion. When one of them sidles over to the pile I made of saddle and bags, it is Nótt that jumps up and pushes her maw into the soft of his tummy. I trained her to do it and hence know the feeling, of her hot wet breath soaking through one’s shirt. It feels as though one’s skin grows paper-thin. The man starts smoking, very faintly, and my bitch, she wags her tail.

“Sure meant nothing by it,” he says almost sulkily though he holds his body very still. “Just admiring the rifle. An unusual piece. Foreign design, is it?”

“And what do you know about guns?”

“Father was a gunsmith. Never learned the trade myself, mind.”

An artisan’s son, fallen on hard times. And for a moment it rises in me, the urge to tell him about this rifle and its telescopic sight, accurate at four hundred yards. A German design. Illegal. Cursed.

I am aware that it is not the desire to show off that tempts me but the lure of confession, boyish and weak; am aware, too, that within this weakness, buried like a thorn, sits some other longing yet, darker in temperament and stronger by far, which has long sketched its own outcome to the night.

“Best leave it alone, my friend.”

But the man has sensed my hesitation. As has Nótt, who has stepped back and eyes me in confusion while the vagrant, slowly but brazenly enough, kneels down next to my saddlebag and studies its bulge. Again the urge takes hold of me to self-betray.

“Go on,” I say, suck weakly at my sweet. “Pull it out if you must.”