Amice!” I shouted when I reached the top of the cliff.

No response.

I ran as fast as I could to the tuft of bushes where she had hidden and pulled the branches aside. She was gone.

A high, wavering whine came from the direction of the church. Dread surged through me.

Lightning shimmered over my arms and legs as I ran to the tower.

The monstrous tower door, taller by half than Hugh and thicker than both my fists, groaned as I pulled it open. The tower was lit only by narrow shafts of light that filtered through damp air and fell in stripes on a stone floor slick with moss.

A slap. A growl. “Silence, Sister. You’ll be silent.”

Huddled on that floor over a small body was not the tall, slender priestess I had expected to see, but an old woman in a dusty black dress. Her wide, thick back hid the girl’s head and chest, but I recognized the thrashing legs and the small bare feet that protruded from beneath the woman’s bulk.

“Lie still, Sister,” she snarled. “You thought you could flee? Thought I wouldn’t find you?”

“Amice!” I dropped my books. The sound of them striking the stone floor echoed through the tower as I hurled myself into the woman’s side. That boulder of flesh did not budge. Her hand pressed to Amice’s mouth, she turned her head slowly, and her silvery eyes met mine.

“Megge of Bury Down,” she sneered.

“Get off her!” I thrust my shoulder into Agnes Gough’s chest and pushed her hand off Amice’s face. A wad of bloody cloth dropped to the ground as a scream emerged from Amice, carried on a gush of blood.

Her tongue! She’s cut it out.

I looked into Amice’s gaping mouth. Her front teeth were missing and blood was streaming from where they had been, but her tongue was intact. Staunching the flow of blood with the wad of bloody cloth Agnes had dropped, I looked through the doorway on the other side of the tower and into the church, hoping to see someone there. Anyone. But it was empty.

Agnes spat at me as she struggled to her feet. Then she stopped. “The books.”

She scooped them into her arms and made haste from me, her footsteps echoing as she hobbled into the church and down the center aisle toward the door.

“Whore!” she screamed.

Though she was limping, she had made it halfway to the door. I couldn’t let her leave. Surely she would hide herself away somewhere on these cliffs, and we would never find her or the books. I looked back down at Amice’s pallid face. She had stopped wailing but was still sobbing.

I leaned over her. “Hush now, hush. Be still, Amice. All is well.”

I patted her hand to calm her and noticed beneath it a crimson puddle that grew as I watched. I turned it over. Blood pumped from her wrist. I took the cloth Agnes had used to gag her and pressed it hard to her wrist as I began to call on the Mentors for help. “Scientia nupta sapientia potestas est. Scientia nupta sapientia potestas est.”

Agnes stopped and turned. Her eyes glittered in a shaft of sunlight.

“That’s it,” she rasped. “Those words.” She held the books out in front of her and spoke over them, but her voice trailed off into silence after “See entya . . .”

She hadn’t gleaned the words.

Amice’s face was ghostly white, so much blood had she lost. A virgin’s blood. No doubt Agnes had a vial of it. I looked up. She was nearly at the door. She would be gone before I could move.

I had just picked up Amice’s wrist to examine it when the door Agnes was stumbling toward was wrenched open. A man stood in shadow, the sun at his back. I knew that form as well as I knew Hugh’s.

“Martyn,” I shouted, “She’s got the books!”

Another shadow appeared in the doorway, slipped past Martyn, and trotted down the aisle.

Without slowing, Alf shot out an arm and grabbed the tottering Agnes Gough around her thick middle, lifted her off her feet, and carried her toward me as if she were but a ewe trying to evade the shearer.

He spoke as if nothing were amiss as he neared with the struggling, spitting Agnes Gough. “You ran so swiftly up the bluff, we lost sight of you. Then we heard the screams coming from the tower.”

“He’ll die,” Agnes shrieked when Alf set her on her feet, still holding her tightly about the waist. Martyn took the books from her and laid them on a pew.

“That whore aunt of yours, that fornicator. She cursed my son. Cursed him. He’ll die. Take me to him. He has what I need to prepare the cure.” She flailed, then swung an arm as if to strike Alf.

“Quiet, Agnes.” Martyn took off his belt, brought Agnes’s hands together, and bound her wrists.

I reached inside my pocket for the vial Michael had given me and held it out. “It’s too late. Michael’s on his way to the earl’s gaol.” I pointed with my chin to the pew. “Martyn, will you bring me my books, please?”

He picked them up with care and laid them on the floor beside me.

“Witches of Bury Down,” Agnes spat. “Whores. Sorceresses. Fornicators. You cursed my son.”

Amice began to cry.

“Take her away, please, Martyn.” I pulled Amice closer.

As Martyn led Agnes away, Alf knelt beside us and whispered to Amice, “In the springtime, we’ll have a dozen lambs for you to guard with me. Little lambs. They’ll be mine and yours and Megge’s. What do you think you’ll name them?”

I leaned forward and looked at her mouth. There was little bleeding, and it would soon stop. I held tight to the dressing on her wrist.

“Amice,” I began, pointing to Agnes. “Do you know who she is?”

Eyes gone wide, she cringed. Then nodded.

“You’ve seen her before?”

She nodded.

“Did she keep you in this place? This tower?”

Another nod, her eyes never leaving mine.

I brushed my finger over the goddess mark on her cheek. “And she gave you this mark.”

She shook her head.

“No?” I pulled away and studied her face. “She didn’t give you this mark?”

Her lips went tight.

“Then who did?” Remembering my promise never to force her to talk, I softened my tone. “You needn’t speak, Amice, but can you show me what she looked like? I promise no one will ever hurt you again.”

She looked from me to Alf. When he nodded, she raised her free hand to the top of her head. Fingers fluttering, she lowered it to her shoulders.

“Someone with long, curling hair?”

Lips tightly puckered, she nodded.

“That’s not Agnes,” Alf said.

And it certainly wasn’t Michael.

Though Agnes had craved the goddess’s power and had held Amice and the other girls—how many girls?—captive in this tower, someone else had played the priestess in those rites.

But why would she have allowed another woman to play her part? And then I recalled her hobbling gait and that steep bluff. Never could Agnes have descended that path to the cave. And the woman who had led that rite had not drunk the blood. She had carried it away.

To the tower, I thought.

I called upon my vision of the priestess in the cave. That tall, slender form. That long, pale-gold curl.

And then I saw Amice run screaming from Brighida the night we had found her.

“Amice, was it someone who looked like Brighida?”

She sucked in her breath and nodded.

I scoured my memory for someone whose face and hair resembled Brighida’s. And then such a face finally emerged.

“Alf,” I said. “Have you ever seen Tinker’s hair? I’ve only ever seen him wearing a hat.”

“Tinker’s hair?” He looked surprised. “Oh, aye, I’ve seen it. Once.”

“What does it look like?”

He leaned back, his mouth agape in that crooked smile. “It’s beautiful.” He laughed. “It is! Or, rather, it was when I saw it. Long. Almost as pretty as Brighida’s. But he plaits it.” Alf mimed winding a braid around his head. “Hides it under that hat.”

“What color, Alf? What color is it?”

“Nearly the same as hers. But even lighter.”

“Amice, did the man who cut your tongue and hurt Britlen’s eyes do this?” I touched her cheek.

A nod.

“And did he do this,” I touched her wrist, “to the other girls?”

Another solemn nod.

I thought of Agnes Gough and Tinker Penneck, and then of Brighida’s long, sharp knife.

A quick death . . .

Agnes had held Amice and the other girls captive in that cold stone tower while Tinker had led them to the cave and played the priestess. He had bled those girls and then taken that pitcher of virgin’s blood mixed with sacred water to Agnes.

Had she used it in an effort to resurrect the goddess? I wondered. Or to concoct a remedy that never would have cured her son?

It mattered not what she had done with it, I thought as I looked down at the little girl she had tortured, a child with the canniness to escape and somehow find me, and the courage to bring me back to the very cave where those rites had played out.

“Amice,” I asked, nearly overwhelmed with awe, “how did you ever hear of Bury Down?”

Shouts rose from outside the church. “Seers and healers of Bury Down!” Agnes shrieked, cursing us just as she always had. “Thieves and whores of Bury Down,” she spat. “Be damned!”

Amice lifted her good hand and pointed toward the window.

“You heard Agnes speak of us. Of Bury Down.”

She nodded, and I felt something hum inside me. “But how did you find us?”

She lifted her hand and rubbed circles between her eyebrows.

I thought of the other times she had done that. Once, when I had asked her how she had found me; and again, the night she had awakened both Ffion and me from our dreams of this place. A rush of understanding came over me. A dream. Amice had been guided on the long journey to Bury Down through dreams.

Morwen had told Ffion in a dream to bring me to this place. I now knew in my marrow that she had also sent the dreams that had guided Amice to me.

I needed air.

I moved Alf’s hand to the cloth on Amice’s wrist and pressed it hard to her skin. I went to the window and took a deep breath of cool air just as Agnes cast one last, frantic glance at the church as she took her first step down the path to the beach. Her face was twisted not in rage but in what I recognized as the desperation of a mother with a sick child, the very torment that had drawn the unstill spirit to her. Raw, strident emotions it had harnessed for its own ends. I shuddered as I imagined Agnes Gough holding my books and speaking the summoning incantation over them. Who knew what that might have wrought?

“Michael won’t be the only one to hang,” Alf snarled. “That mother of his. And Tinker.”

I nodded. Those monsters had tortured Amice. Had forced her to flee into the unknown, searching for safety, guided only by a dream.

How many other girls had they tortured? How many had they sent to their deaths in that cave? How many other lives had Tinker ruined—or ended?

He had not wanted the books. He had helped Michael torture my family simply for the pleasure of inflicting pain and fear. Nor had he sought to return the goddess to the living world. He had played the priestess just for the pleasure of silencing and then taking the lives of all those girls. Their terror and pain had been his reward. One for which he would pay.

But would Agnes Gough, conjurer and harridan though she was, have asked Tinker to perform those rites had her son not been stricken with lepra and had the voice of the unstill spirit not been always at her ear?

Soon enough, I knew, whether through old age or the hangman’s noose, death would come for Agnes. And when it did, it would unleash the unstill spirit. Untethered, the spirit would find another kindred: someone in the living world who craved the power of the goddess. And I would not know who that was until the killing resumed.

I walked back to Amice and lifted the edge of her bandage. Her wrist was no longer bleeding. I tied the cloth tightly around it and nodded to Alf. Gently picking her up, he started for the door.

“I’ve one more thing to do,” I said.

“I’ll take her down to the boat, Meg. We’ll wait there for you. But make haste, the tide’ll soon be in.”

I picked up my books. It was time to finish this.