Can a poet be expected to recognise madness? Indeed if you speak to my lady wife she might insist that one cannot be a poet without being touched by madness. Still I would suggest that not everybody fingered by madness is a poet, although, at times, their actions seem driven by poetry whose form and metre I cannot quite grasp.

Madam Farlin was never one of my patrons. I performed in her mansion but only at the behest of others. It was one of the larger, older houses on the Northern edge of Dilbrook. Not far enough north of the city to be rustic, but far enough out for our ancestors to bury their dead there, before the city spread even further north. As Port Naain has grown, it has been built on the bodies of its dead, until now most of us make our last journey out to sea…