I know I tried to remember the doors, and couldn’t. I was desperate to avoid the doctor. I went past the first door, knowing it was my own, and at a guess, I went past the second and crashed open the third. In the gloom I could see Argyle’s long, thin body on the right and my father’s in the other bed on the left, his wild hair spilling over the sack he had used for a pillow.

Crowding thoughts distracted me. My father would be no use. I shook the master awake: he took a moment to focus. ‘The convict lad!’ I cried. ‘He is hanging, outside, in the privy!’ Argyle looked at me aghast.

‘Are you having visions, miss? You went to bed a little the worse…’

‘No! I am awake! Please…perhaps we can save him.’

Argyle swept back the covers and stood. He took a lantern from a small table between the two beds and lit it carefully: even in such circumstances he was solemn, methodical. He bent over my father, holding the lantern above him. I could smell what he saw.

‘Drink’s got him,’ he said. There was no judgment in it, only observation. ‘Come, show me where.’

I led Argyle down the corridor, back past the other door. There was no sign of activity there. Argyle, dressed only in a nightgown similar to my own, must have been as cold as me.

Out through the door and down the short path. A break in the cloud allowed a little starlight now. The grasses swayed in the breeze and I hated that shed with everything inside me.

Argyle pushed the door open and entered and saw Connolly. A small sound escaped him. He righted the chair and stood on it, bear-hugging the body with one arm while his free hand struggled with the noose. I shifted the boy’s feet back onto the seat of the chair to take some of the weight, and his head came free from the loop. Argyle slumped to the ground, one foot straying into the putrid hole. He was still embracing Connolly, but the eyes stared dry. It was clear he had been dead for some time.

Other feet came running; the door to the back of the house slammed shut. The tyereelore had heard the ruckus, and so had their men. A party took Connolly by his limbs and hauled him into the house. He was laid on a bench in the scullery. They crowded in there around the corpse and a strange sigh escaped it as the bearers laid it down.

‘Fetch the doctor,’ said Argyle, quietly.