She touched the lichen-crusted stoned with a finger, drew it gently over the rugous surface and felt the tingle of time. The first converts built this doorway, now an empty arch, the first Christians in a land where the pagan deities walked the fields. The air must have fair crackled with anger. What did a mournful Levantine who died hung from a tree in a desert know of the brilliance and gaiety of the horse folk, the rain-drenched forests and the long silver strands beneath a sky of scudding cloud?

The chapel had skulked on the cliff top for a while, the passionless words of its androgynous chanting and sexless singers caught by the wind and tossed into the waves. The green meadows would have none of it; the deer bolted at the sound, and on the hill, the hares twitched velvet noses and cowered.

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