‘Two nights earlier, the child had seen him standing at the far end of her family’s land where the willows weep over a low wall. There could be no doubting who it was by her description. The mother held her child close and asked if that was the only time the man had visited her. The girl shook her nest of strawberry blonde hair. She had seen him again the night after, closer than before. She had waved at him but the man did not wave back. He didn’t move at all.

‘Brendan was probably as curious as everyone else. But that’s hardly an excuse for letting a child speak so freely and to so many without first considering the repercussions. As you have no doubt guessed, any hopes the priest may have had of dealing with the man discreetly were quashed in that instant.

‘The child’s father demanded that the assembly – with their prayers spoken and their sins forgiven – confront the stranger at once. Brendan had vilified a man he knew nothing of; not the most Christian of behaviour, I’m sure you can agree. His pleas for peace and order were lost amidst the bustle, and soon everyone was storming towards the man’s cottage. Though perhaps cottage is a poor choice of word.

‘It was a windowless hovel on a hill with all the hallmarks of dereliction. As Brendan had hoped and learned to expect, nobody was home. But this did little to appease the mob. Their priest’s voice – that which gave them solace in that darkest of times – was ignored, and they took God’s wrath into their own hands, rending the door from its hinges.

‘The men recoiled back from the stench that escaped from within; a putrid miasma that envenomed the senses, causing a few bystanders to retch. The stranger’s home shocked a silence from the crowd. By the scant daylight that crossed the threshold, blood stained its floor, in gruesome puddles and crude finger paintings on its walls; symbols unknown to the Christians who eyed them. Scraps of parchment blackened with etchings lay strewn throughout. But of the man himself, there was no trace. No clothes. No food. No water. Not even the basest necessity.

‘Every man, woman, and child clung together as one on their return to the village, as though a single consciousness mulling over a terrifying mystery. These people, familiar with their faith and its grace alone, could never have understood the evil that they had affronted.

‘Brendan prayed that the man had abandoned Tír Mallacht for good; guided perhaps by the sudden exposure of his wickedness. If he was, as the priest suspected, in some way responsible for the tragedies of those weeks, then God would forgive his people their moment of weakness.