The movie was of Grandfather doing his flying thing — flapping his arms with a slow grace as he shut his eyes and turned his long, beak-ish nose to the sky. Most of the movie was only that: a thin, middle-aged man, flapping his arms, shutting his eyes, craning his neck. Grandfather’s apparent foolishness was compounded by the face of young Michael flashing in front of the lens; blocking the scene, and waving like an idiot himself. Then the camera moved, and Michael was gone –

Jonah had been the first villager of Corfe to speak to the captain of the Looking Men, the one called Sir Ethan the Red Greaves, after the Looking Men and their tall war-horses arrived by the main road to examine the first deaths from the Black Hand. The wandering friar of Corfe, a red-faced, balding man who had summoned the Looking Men, rode behind them on a bony mare. The friar had briefly addressed the free peasants who’d gathered at the mill and promised he would explain all in the morning after the Looking Men had rested. Hiram knew what everyone else knew about The Looking Men: they served the Church and bore scars from the Crusades to the Holy Land. But they were also knights loyal to their King Henry of England, so they could be trusted. And the friar promised they had come for the good of Corfe.

I’m no good at sitting.

“Hold it together,” my dad tells me. Not physically here, of course, but why would that stop him? Hold it together—that’s easy for him to say. He’s made of steel bars and rivets and bolts. Me, I’m held together with Elmer’s glue and pushpins and chewing gum.

For half an hour, we’d been hanging around the launderette, hoping to spy at least one of the Jones twins, in their short skirts and ankle boots. Rain came down fine and bright in the orange warmth of the street lamps, and I felt colder than natural for an August evening. Jimmy sat on the bus stop bench, drinking. The canopy sheltered him from all but the strongest gusts. Somehow he’d got hold of a bottle of Woodpecker. Niall tried to light a cigarette in the open doorway of the launderette. He mumbled, “Shit, shit…” as he battled with the wind. Then he turned suddenly and gazed up the street.

“What’s your problem?” I said.

He cupped his hand around the lighter. “The wind….”

“No…you seem edgy. Are you expecting someone?”