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him and carried it about the island.
    ‘That picture was so doted-on that the scribes had to make copies to sell, and then poorer folk took to copying it themselves onto bits of bodge. They said even the copies healed folk. If you were lucky your copy would burst into a holy blaze all untouched.
    ‘He couldn’t walk alone anymore; there was always somebody following and watching. And then the Father himself started up with relic-mongering, selling the Venerable’s little bits and pieces, and charging real coin to hear him at a bit of a prayer. When somebody snuck up on him at Vespers and pulled the hairs from his head without so much as a
’Scuse me
, that was the end for him.
    ‘He took his bowl and his shawl and he left in the middle of the night. Nobody saw him again.’ Scully stopped and scratched the back of his head with his bow. ‘Veneration takes some folk that way.’
    The foolishness about the lice sounded just like my brother. But that Venerable showed more sense than Boson ever did. My brother didn’t have the sense to run away. When he waxed fit he’d say he was going to stay away from the towns, and avoid the nesting-rocks, and just be quiet with us. But then his sense would wane under the affliction and he’d be off down among the guillemots again, or into Strangers’ Croft, or even right down into Merton.
    ‘He’s probably made himself at home already,’ said Scully Slevin.
    ‘The lousy Venerable?’ I asked.
    ‘Boson,’ he said. ‘He’s probably out there right now on his Dead-isle kicking up his heels and filling his belly.’
    ‘Ooh, it’s lovely out there,’ said Ma as she wheezed up behind us. ‘It’s always warm and you can sleep anywhere, the shrubs are so soft and quilty. There’s the foamiest brew trickling from the rocks, and the lake is all broth. The Dead ‘uns take to it in boats with dippers as big as your head. All a body has to do is lie about and be cosy. He’s a lucky boy.’
    I didn’t trust myself to say a word at all about this.
    Back at home my brother’s body, herbed and oiled, lay in the shadows beyond the hearth. By then he’d started up with bubbling like the bog and the burial would have to be soon, though none of us said so; he still seemed one of us in spite of being dead and the notion of putting him in the ground made us shamed somehow. He was set all about with lit rushes, and our place quickened to beauty by them. The beauty and the horribleness were of the same measure.
    Kneeling hearth-side and stirring and stabbing at the brew, Pa looked to have started up his drinking without us. Moo still sat right where she was sitting when I’d left, in the farthest corner from Boson with poor Gilpin snotty and whining at her knee. I went to wipe his face, and he wrapped his legs and arms around me like a vine.
    ‘Here they are,’ said Pa. ‘At last.’ He took a brew to my mother. She took it and drank it down in one.
    ‘That’s the spirit.’ He patted her arm, and sculled his own. Then he poured for everybody. We all stood about and waited for somebody else to do or say something.
    In the end Mrs Slevin started it off. She went to my brother where he lay and she looked right into his face like he might still have something to say about it all. My mother rose and came like a shade to her side and they looked together. All was quiet but for the soft hissing of the turf and gorse fire.
    Then Gilpin said clearly, ‘Is bruvver wakin’up now, Moo?’ and that was that.
    The noise out of my mother was like some bird rising from inside her belly. I had to look away. By the time it busted out, high and lonely, Gilpin was wailing and I’d covered my ears. Mrs Slevin joined in, in a neighbourly sort of way. I felt myself becoming part of that Dead-noise. Like it was in me too and it might come out. I looked to Pa but he stayed by the brew.
    He was watching Moo like she was tricky weather.
    I took the snotting and blithering Gilpin outside to show him the