When he reached his lodgings he would discard these ill-fitting and foreign-smelling garments. As fine as they were compared to his rough farm clothes, they were not his. And then what? He could continue to walk on, put the ruined town behind him. Over the hills and home, with his tail between his legs. He’d have a tale to tell, all right, but he’d be the whipping boy again in no time at all.

‘Goin’ for a look at it?’ A man appeared alongside Silas. He was heavily whiskered, wearing a farmer’s smock, and reminded Silas of his father. ‘Or are you searchin’ for your people?’

‘I don’t have any people,’ said Silas. ‘Not round ’ere.’

‘Well, that’s p’robly a good thing.’

‘Well, I mean to say, I’m not from ’ere but I know people. My landlady who gave me a roof, and Betty, her baby. A girl called Louisa.’ He thought of Louisa’s dimpled smile. ‘A man who were in the flood wi’ me – he were goin’ to gi’ me a job, I think – and a young lass who saved me. I might not be ’ere were it not for her.’ His unnamed saviour with the pale skin and shocked, swollen eyes.

‘So tha does know folk, then. I’m sorry if tha’s lost them.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve lost them.’

The man raised his arm to gesture to the hillside, his shovel-like hand streaked with dirt. ‘I farm up topside and woke up to this. They say the dam’s gone, that it’s an earthquake brought it down and all those millions o’ gallons o’ water after it. Like when Moses parted the Red Sea then it crashed back down on the pursuing horde.’

Silas was astonished. ‘You din’t hear it?’

‘No, lad. Nowt at all. Stone deaf in one ear an’ this don’t help in me good lug’ole.’ He dug around in his ear and came out with a crumb of brown and crusty wax that he flicked onto the ground. ‘Nowt wrong wi’ me eyes though and they were on stalks when I went out to feed the pigs this mornin’. I come straight down, helpin’ where I can. Dug some bits o’ a body out from under a wagon. That were grim. There’s bodies scattered all o’er the place. Some bein’ laid out at Webster’s inn. He won’t like that, havin’ his pub used for a mortuary. Place’ll be haunted for evermore.’

‘Aye.’ Silas shivered.

‘What’s tha story, then?’

‘I were in a forge in town when it hit. Got swept out.’ Fred plastered to the monstrous boiler, mouth agape. Silas, lungs bursting, trapped in the torrent, his bare chest flayed by a brick wall. Panic clenched his throat and he coughed to disguise it and spat on the ground.

‘At least you’re ’ere to tell of it,’ said the man, and clapped Silas on the shoulder. ‘See that hostelry up the hill there? There’s a fire and hot grub on offer for them that’s in need. I’ll take thee, if tha likes. Tha looks done in.’