She ignores the irritable comments as she forces her way forward, arms scooped around her belly. She hears something above the noise of the crowd, a sort of dragging, scuffling sound, a sob.

At last she is close enough to see what has drawn the onlookers. A rough semicircle of space is gouged out of the centre, like an eye, and at the heart of the eye is the dust, thrown up in huffing clouds that fall heavily in the windless air.

For a moment, she is eight again, and watching dust in her father’s parched fields take shape, grow hands and feet and teeth as it gallops towards her. She is twelve, and the blood from her mother’s feet stains her hands. She is fifteen, and at a dance, her hands in Henne’s and her heart loud in her chest. Lisbet recovers herself. This is no dust spirit, no dancing lovers, but a woman.

Lisbet could perhaps call her a dancer but she looks as though she is being hauled between two devilish ropes caught about her limbs. Her arms wave and swat aside the stolid air, whirling about her head. Her hair flies across her face and Lisbet can see nothing of her features except her mouth, gaping in an o of sorrow, or terror. Her legs hop and her feet lift, beating the ground into its dusty flurries, but there is no rhythm to her movements.

As she spins, flecks of spit land on the ground, marking it with brown streaks. It speckles the faces of those opposite. Something dark lands on Lisbet’s skirts: a red spot. It is blood, she sees now: the woman is bleeding from her soles. Her shoes are soaked through with it, and as she stamps and jumps and sways she weeps and moans, gleaming streaks of tears and snot stringing in her filthy hair, the slack circle of her mouth shockingly red.

‘Please,’ says a man beside Lisbet. ‘Please, Magret. Stop.’

Lisbet sees him reach out to the woman, but this is no ordinary disobedience. The woman looks possessed.

Lisbet crosses herself, lowering her voice to a whisper so as not to break the silence of the watchers, and leans in to the woman beside her.

‘What is happening?’

The woman’s hair is full of rat tails and her breath is hot against Lisbet’s cheek.

‘Three days, she’s been dancing.’

‘Three days? Why does no one stop her?’

The woman jerks her head at the man who now kneels in the dirt, beseeching. ‘Her husband’s tried. Lots of us have. He gets her home, she sleeps an hour, comes back.’

‘Have the priests been called?’

‘Of course. They think she’s a drunk.’

‘Isn’t she?’ says Lisbet.

The woman narrows her eyes. ‘I’ve never seen a drunk dance till they bleed. Three days, I said. Three. And not a drop of water or beer or otherwise passed her lips. They’re calling her a saint.’

‘Who are?’ says Lisbet. ‘She looks a devil.’