Out now; down the steps and into the snow; ploughing towards the hedgerow, never looking back. He plunged through the thicket and out onto the road with his lungs burning, his heart drumming, and such a sense of happiness he was almost glad he was alone to enjoy it. Later, when he recounted this, he would talk quietly and mournfully of how he'd lost his friend. For now, he shouted, and laughed, and felt (oh, the perversity of this) all the more glorious because he'd not only outwitted the whore but had Del's death as proof of how terrible his jeopardy had been.

Whooping, then, and stumbling, he returned to his car, which was parked some fifty yards away, and undaunted by the icy road (nothing could harm him now; he was inviolate) he drove at foolhardy speed back into the village to sound the alarm.

ii

Back in the Courthouse, Rosa was not a happy woman. She'd been content enough until Alexander and his overweight comrade had arrived, sitting dreaming of finer places and balmier days. But now her dreams had been interrupted, and she had to make some quick decisions.

There'd be a mob at the gates soon enough, she knew: Alexander would make certain of that. They'd be feeling righteous and wrathful, and they'd surely attempt some mischief upon her person if she didn't make herself scarce. It would not be the first time she'd been harried and harassed this way. There'd been an unsavoury incident in Morocco only the year before, in which the wife of one of her occasional consorts had led a minor jihad against her, much to Jacob's amusement. The husband, like the fat fellow lying at her feet now, had died in flagrante delicto, but - unlike Donnelly - had expired with a broad smile on his face. It was the smile that had truly inflamed his wife: that she'd never seen its like in her life had put her in murderous mood. And then in Milan - oh, how she'd loved Milan! - there'd been a worse scene still. She had lingered there for several weeks while Jacob went south, and had fallen into the company of the transvestites who plied their hazardous trade about the Parco Sempione. She'd always loved things artificial, and these beauties, who were self-created females to a man (the viados, the locals called them; meaning fawns) had enchanted her. In their company she'd felt a strange sisterhood, and might have elected to stay in that city had

one of the pimps, a casual sadist by the name of Henry Campanella, not earned her ire. Hearing that he'd made a particularly savage assault on one of his herd, Rosa had lost her temper. This happened infrequently, but when it did, blood invariably flowed, and copiously. She'd choked the bastard on what had passed for his manhood, and left the corpse in the Viale Certosa, on public display. His brother, who was also a pimp, had raised a small army from the criminal fraternity, and would have slaughtered her if she hadn't fled to Sicily and the comfort of Steep. Still, she often thought of her sisters in Milan, sitting around chatting about surgeries and silicone, while they plucked and teased and squeezed themselves into a semblance of femininity. And when she thought of them, she sighed.

Enough of memories, she told herself. It was time to vacate the premises, before the dogs came after her, two-legged and four. She carried a candle into her little dressing room, and packed up her belongings, keeping her senses sharp every moment. Remotely, she thought she heard raised voices, and assumed that Alexander was at the village, telling tales, the way men liked to do.

Finishing her packing hurriedly, she said farewell to the body of Delbert Donnelly, and calling her rosaries to her, made her departure. She had intended to head off northeast along the valley, putting the village and its idiots as far as she could behind her. But once out in the snow, her thoughts turned to Jacob. She was of half a mind to leave him in ignorance of what her deeds had unleashed. But in her heart she knew she owed him the warning, for sentiment's sake. They had spent so many decades together, arguing, suffering and in their curious way devoting themselves to one another. Though his recent frailties disenchanted her, she could not leave him until she'd performed this last duty.

Turning her face to the hills, which had emerged from the retiring blizzard, she rapidly sought him out. She had no need of senses in this: there was in them both a compass for which the other was north; all she had to do was let the needle swing and settle, and there he would be. Lugging her bags, she started up the slope in his direction, leaving a trail in the snow she was well aware her pursuers would follow. So be it, she thought. If they come, they come. And if blood has to be spilled, I'm in a fine frame of mind to spill it.

It was a sudden spring. The breath out of the earth came and went, and when it passed took winter with it. The trees were miraculously clothed in leaf and blossom, the frosted earth gave way to blades of summer grass, to bluebells and wood anemone and melancholy thistle; sunlight danced everywhere. In the branches birds courted and nested, and from the quickened thicket a red fox appeared, regarding Will with a fearless gaze before trotting off about his business, his whiskers and coat gleaming.

'Jacob?' said a reedy voice off to Will's left. 'I thought not to see you again so soon.'

Will turned to the speaker, and found a man standing a few yards off, leaning against a graceful ash. The tree was better dressed than he, his stained shirt, coarse trousers and ill-made sandals far less flattering than the flickering leaves. Otherwise, man and tree had much in common. Both slender in body and limb, yet finely made. The man, however, boasted something the tree could not: eyes of such a flawless blue it seemed the sky had found its way into his head.

'I must tell you, my friend,' he said, staring not at Jacob but at Will, 'if you still hope to persuade me to go with you, you're wasting your breath.'

Will looked around at Jacob in the hope of some explanation, but Jacob had gone.

'I told you the truth yesterday. I have nothing left to give Rukenau. And I will not be seduced with tales of the Domus Mundi

Stepping away from the tree, he walked towards Will, and to add to the sum of the mysteries here, Will realized that, though the stranger was several years his senior, and lankily tall, they were looking at one another eye to eye, which meant that he had somehow sprung up a foot and a half in height.

'I don't want to know the world that way, Jacob,' the man was saying. 'I want to see it through my own eyes.'

Jacob? Will thought. He's looking straight at me and he's calling me Jacob. That means I'm in Steep's body. I'm looking out through his eyes! The idea didn't frighten him; quite the reverse. He stretched a little, and it seemed to him he could feel the muscle of the man enveloping him,

heavy and strong. He inhaled and smelt his own sweat. He raised his hand and fingered the silken curls of his beard. It was the most extraordinary feeling. Though he was the possessor here, he felt possessed, as though being in Steep had put Steep in his being.

There were appetites in his hips and head he'd never felt before. He wanted to be off, away from this melancholic youth; out under the sky testing this borrowed flesh; running until his lungs were furnaces, stretching until his joints cracked. To go naked in this glorious anatomy; yes! Wouldn't that be fine? To eat in it, piss from it, stroke its long limbs.

But he was not the master here; memory was. He had sufficient freedom to scratch his beard or his groin, but he couldn't leave the business that had brought Steep back to this place. All he could do was sit behind Jacob's gilded eyes and listen to what had been said this sunlit day. He had conjured this encounter against Steep's will, it had seemed - I don't want this, Jacob had said, over and over again - yet now that it was here, it had a momentum all of its own, and he wasn't about to contest its authority, for fear he lose the simple joy of standing in the man, flesh in flesh.