After declaring no one was out in the passageway, Jem unlocked the door. He went first, hand cupped around a candle flame, wearing my wool jacket. I followed in the disguise of his cloak.
‘Witch marks,’ Jem said, pointing out fresh scratches on the beams in the wall. They looked like letters, a jumble of ‘v’s and ‘m’s overlapping each other. ‘They’re all through the town hall, to protect people from—’
‘Me,’ I realised grimly.
Jem winced. ‘Sorry, sister. You need to know what you’re facing, and be ready.’
But as we headed down the passage, I wasn’t ready at all. I was trembling. And it grew worse as we climbed the steps to the ground floor, and heard the roar of the crowd outside.
‘H-how m-many people are out there, exactly?’ I stuttered.
We came out into an empty hallway. There were tapestries on one wall, a coat of arms on the other, and a black and white chequered floor that stretched all the way to where Jem was pointing. ‘That’s the back door. Your way out. Keep your head down, and when it’s safe to run, run.’
I was struggling to think straight. Just as long as we got to Withy Cove, that was what mattered.
‘What about you? What will you do?’ I asked.
‘I’ll slip out after you. I’ll find Miss Spicer and tell her what’s happening. Wait for me out on the Bridgwater road. Make sure your face is covered.’
I checked my hood. My hands were shaking.
Something caught Jem’s attention. As he put a finger to his lips, I heard the approaching footsteps. He waved me away, pointing at the door again and mouthing ‘Go!’ Then, lifting the corner of the tapestry, he slid behind it: it covered all but the tips of his toes.
I was alone – or as good as – only for a moment before two men swaggered into view. They had the well-fed, well-clad appearance of landowners, our unfriendly neighbours perhaps: I didn’t look too closely. I was more concerned that they’d spotted me. And they had, though only in the same way you see a chair or cupboard so as not to walk into it. They swept past and were gone.
I breathed again, checked my hood one final time, and made for the door. The noise outside seemed to press against the walls, the windows.
Don’t listen, I told myself. Keep your head down and walk.
The back door flew open so fast I wasn’t ready. The noise of the crowd hit me like a punch.
‘Get rid of the little witch!’
‘We don’t want her sort round here!’
‘I never trusted the look of her – one day a girl, next day a boy.’
‘I heard she cursed her poor father, that’s why he drowned.’
Go! Jem’s voice said inside my head.
I took a couple of steps. Stopped. Between the building and the edge of the crowd salt had been sprinkled in a line on the ground. It was an age-old custom to ward off evil: everyone knew no true witch would dare cross salt.
‘Walk over it, then, lad, and be on your way,’ said a rosy-cheeked woman who’d stopped yelling long enough to see me hesitate.
The fact she’d thought me a guard spurred me on. Don’t jinx it, I told myself. You’re not free yet.
The crowd was ten, maybe fifteen bodies deep. I skirted the outer edge, keeping to the gutter. It was hard to believe that these were normal Somerset people, not monsters: women in plain frocks and bonnets with babies on their hips, men flushed with cider, children eating hot chestnuts or picking their noses or both.
In amongst the crush, I spotted a tall, serious woman with yellow plaited hair. And with her, a girl in a bonnet, two similar plaits poking out underneath. Both were on tiptoe, anxiously craning their necks to see what was happening. Standing beside Abigail, small and frightened-looking, was another girl in breeches, trying to shush a crying baby.
How I wanted to call their names and rush over and wrap my arms round them and tell them that they should leave Somerset with me and come to Withy Cove. It was agony to keep walking, leaving all that to Jem.
Away from the very front, the noise quickly dropped to that of normal market-day chatter. It wasn’t so hard, then, to believe I’d stepped back into my old life, and these were just people gossiping on the roadside as they’d always done. The crowd thinned. Under my feet, the cobbles turned to dirt. And I was out the other side. The road that would take me to Withy Cove lay before me. I’d almost made it.
‘’Tis only another lad coming out,’ I heard someone mutter.
A quick glance behind confirmed Jem was now following. I could see the grey of my jacket weaving through the crowd towards where Mother and Susannah were standing.
‘Then who in heaven’s name is inside still?’ another woman replied.
A fresh wave of angry noise spread through the crowd. People began moving towards the town hall, looking for all the world as if they were going to storm the building. I turned to run. Turned back again to check Jem was still coming, and there he was, fighting through the mass like a swimmer.
‘Keep walking!’ he mouthed to me. ‘Go!’
As I tried to, someone grabbed me by the shoulder.
‘Not so fast, Fortune Sharpe.’ I glimpsed a pair of salt-white cuffs.
It was Mr Hopkins, two new thuggish guards flanking him.
I was caught.
Twisting my arms behind my back, the guards pushed me towards a waiting carriage.
‘We’re going on a little journey, you and I,’ Mr Hopkins said. ‘To somewhere I know you’ll be more comfortable.’
And oh how nicely he put it, as if he was taking me to the king’s own palace.