Tilda has taken off her beanie, so that now her unusual hair is more noticeable. She is pleased to see that if her host registers anything unsettling about her appearance, he does not show it at all.

‘It is a wonderful map,’ she agrees. ‘I can’t see that the place has changed much, though the lake does look as if it was bigger then than it is now.’

‘You are right about that.’ He takes his spectacles from their resting place on the arm of a chair and leans over the desk. ‘The church itself was nearer the shore, and so was the vicarage … there,’ he explains, pointing as he does so. ‘It’s a retreat house now, and there’s a good stretch of land between it and the lake. There are parish records recording the water sometimes flooding considerably farther out. And there, on the far side, you can see the crannog marked. The man-made island. They are quite common in Ireland, but this is the only one in Wales. Not that much of it was visible when this map was drawn up, but people knew it was there.’ He gives a small chuckle, a soft, merry sound. ‘Well, they should have known about it—it’d been there long enough.’

‘I read about it, when we came here to look at the cottage.’ She pauses, realizing she has given the impression there is still a ‘we.’

Have to get used to being just ‘I.’ Have to start.

‘My husband and I, we bought the cottage just before he died,’ she explains.

‘Oh, I am terribly sorry to hear that.’

‘It was sudden. A car accident. We were going to start a new life here…’ She does not want to be talking about this, not now, not here.

The professor smiles gently. ‘I think you’ll find being here helps. Eventually. The lake, this valley, it is a very healing place. At least,’ he goes on, ‘I found it so when my wife, Greta, passed away.’

Tilda returns his smile, grateful for his sympathy and his tact. ‘So,’ she says as brightly as she can, ‘you were going to tell me about the crannog. Everyone says it’s important, historically, but to be honest, it looks pretty small to me. I can’t imagine much of a settlement on it.’

‘Ah, well, people in the ninth century had a different idea of scale, you see. The population was so much smaller then, and construction so much more of a challenge. It must have taken a great deal of time and effort to build. Layer upon layer of stone to begin with and then timbers laid on top, bound together. Imagine making a base sufficiently stable to withstand buildings and people and their livestock.’

‘They kept animals on there too?’