He runs out of words, which suits me perfectly. We walk on together, and the only sound is the sad voice of the monster. Didn’t have my ears stopped before, but I get the plugs out now and stuff them in; Flannan does the same. Damps the sound quite a bit. Helps, too, if I try to think about something good, block out the bad stuff. So, no thinking about what happened at St. Erc’s. Nor in Mathuin’s lockup. Nor early on, before St. Erc’s. No thinking of the red coming down and making me do bad things. No remembering the names folk have called me. Names don’t matter. Instead, I think about Blackthorn strapping up a farmer’s leg; I think of her by the fire, her hair as red as the crackling flames, her hands stretched out for warmth. She’s telling a story; it turns her face soft. I think about the night I was in the woods, all wet and shivering and hating myself, and how she yelled at me to stop being stupid and come up to dry off. How she let me come with her all the way to Winterfalls. How she stopped me from making an end of things, that night at Dreamer’s Pool when I thought she’d lied about being my friend. I think about her standing in a mess of broken crockery, beside herself with fury, and me talking quiet to her, calming her down. And the time she tried to run away south on her own, back to Laois to have it out with Mathuin, and how she listened when I told her she was wrong. How she came home. Think about the name that does matter: friend.

And before I know it, we’re at St. Olcan’s, where the bells are ringing for Prime.

“I’ll leave you now,” Flannan says once we’re in the gate. Ripple’s off across the garden already, and for once he doesn’t call her back. “I will observe the Hour with the others before I start the day’s work.”

“Fine with me,” I say, though he’s telling me, not asking. I’d like him to come and let me know if he finds out anything. Don’t ask, though. Chances are I’ll be up on the roof, and he’s hardly going to shout the news out so I can hear. “Good luck.”

“It might be more a matter of skill,” Flannan says, more or less to himself, then heads off toward the chapel. Don’t expect to see any more of him, at least until my working day’s over and I head back to Geiléis’s place. And from what he said, he won’t have anything to tell until tomorrow or the next day, and only then if he can work out first the code, then the translation from a language he doesn’t even know. Way I see it, luck’s going to play a big part.

Weather stays fair. Me and the lad they’ve given me to help, Tadhg, his name is, get on with the job, which today is mostly stripping off the last of the moldy old thatch and cleaning things up, ready for the new. We get sweaty and filthy, and we sneeze a lot, but he’s strong and willing and I’m glad to have work for my hands. Manage not to think too hard. Manage not to look at one thing and see another.