He should have recognised her distress earlier. But instead he had forced her to continue.

And now the score lay there, a constant reminder of his wanton selfishness.

A sharp rat-tat at the front door made them both start.

‘Suppose it’s the police?’ whispered Cramoisy. ‘The permits.’

‘You said you would go to the Mayor.’

Cramoisy waved his damp handkerchief. ‘All this business with Orial has quite put it out of my mind.’

They stared at each other as footsteps could be heard coming up the stair.

‘Out of your mind!’ began Khassian.

Mistress Permay appeared.

‘There’s a Dame Jolaine Tradescar downstairs wanting to speak to you.’

‘I’m not at home to visitors.’

‘She’s most insistent. Says it’s urgent.’

‘Tradescar?’ The name was familiar to Khassian but he could not remember where he had heard it before.

‘You won’t know me,’ announced a voice from the hallway, ‘but I come on behalf of a mutual acquaintance. My soul-child, Orial Magelonne.’

Orial. Khassian closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw a crook-backed old woman in the doorway, eccentrically attired and periwigged in the fashion of some thirty years ago.

‘May I come in?’

Khassian shrugged; Dame Tradescar was in already. He dreaded what she might have come to say to him – and yet there was something in the sprightly bearing of the old woman that belied the bearing of bad news.

‘Please… sit down.’

Jolaine Tradescar spread the panniers of her ancient gown and sat.

‘I’ll come straight to the point, Illustre. Orial’s affliction is very grave – but I believe there may be a way to restore her sanity.’

‘I understood the condition was incurable.’

‘Did you know that she has been calling your name?’

‘My name?’ Khassian felt his face flood with fire. Sweet Mhir, this woman obviously believed he had made some kind of advance to her soul-child. Who would begin to understand the true nature of their relationship? Should he blurt out that he had never so much as laid a finger on her?

‘I hoped you would want to help,’ Jolaine Tradescar said bluntly. There was something of the directness of Acir Korentan’s stare in the old woman’s blue eyes, light as a summer’s sky.

‘I wouldn’t be of much use,’ Khassian said, revealing his hands.

Jolaine Tradescar seemed barely to notice them. ‘Maybe you can reach her in ways the rest of us cannot. Through music.’

‘My music has wrought the damage! I don’t want to make matters worse.’

‘Tell me, Illustre,’ Jolaine Tradescar said, leaning forward, ‘exactly what happened before her collapse?’

Khassian swallowed hard; even to recall that afternoon gave him a feeling of nausea, the griping headache that precedes a storm.