But she - Immacolata, the not quite woman he had shared his every waking moment with these past many years she, he knew, would defy his talents as a salesman.

For one, she was paradoxical, and the buying public had little taste for that. They wanted their merchandise shorn of ambiguity: made simple and safe. She was not safe; oh, certainly nor not with her terrible rage and her still more terrible alleluias; nor was she simple. Beneath the incandescent beauty of her fare, behind eyes that concealed centuries yet could be so immediate they drew blood, beneath the deep olive skin, the Jewess' skin, there lay feelings that would blister the air if given vent.

She was too much herself to be sold, he decided - not for the first time - and told himself to forget the exercise. It was one he could never hope to master; why should he torment himself with it? Immacolata turned away from the window.

‘Arc you rested now?' she asked him.

‘It was you wanted to get out of the sun; he reminded. her. ‘I'm ready to start whenever you are. Though I haven't a clue where we begin...'

‘That's not so difficult; Immacolata said. ‘Remember what my sister prophesied? Events are close to crisis-point.'

As she spoke, the shadows in the comer of the room stirred afresh, and Immacolata's two dead sisters showed their ethereal skirts. Shadwell had never been easy in their presence, and they in their turn had always despised him. But the old one, the Hag, the Beldam, had skills as an oracle, no doubt of that. What she saw in the filth of her sister, the Magdalene's after-birth, was usually proved correct.