The doors swung open, knocked dust from stone.

The crowd surged, pushing Anne aside, washing me with pain.

‘Evey!’

‘I’m all right!’ I gritted my teeth. ‘Do you… see Dill?’

‘Somebody is coming.’ She heaved against those bodies. ‘I see—’

‘I see him!’ A shout behind us. ‘I see the Witchfinder!’

And through the weaving heads, I saw what they saw.

A man stepped into the light and raised his arm to the cheer of the crowd, in command of his world. He moved with a smile through the shouts and calls, and how I ached for him, my Tall One.

In his wake scuttled a man of the church, black hat and black book, who looked not to the crowd, but set his gaze to the gallows for there were souls to save this day.

‘My father is coming.’

I turned to see old Lord Whitaker, unsteady of gait and grey of hair, bound in a fur. At his side, frowning through beetled brow, strode his friend, his trusted liar, Sir Robert. My friend breathed fast. I knew she saw her sister dead in his arms and, like her, I heard his lies through the noise of the crowd.

Climbing the stage, Tall One passed so close to me. How comely he was, with eyes brown as a buck hare, long hair yellow as straw in the sun, and skin shorn and pale as morning mist.

People pushed to see, their jeering weight upon me. I cried out with it.

‘Evey, we must turn back—’

‘No! I am lost.’ I reached to her through the swarming madness. ‘I broke my promise to Mother! Because of me, Dill is here! I must put it right, don’t you see?’

Worry etched her painted face, but Anne saw it good. My sweet sprite of the wood, who had envied a younger sister. Who saw Jane’s fate too late. Those sad green eyes saw it good, and ever would.

In fury, she looked to Tall One upon his stage. ‘Evey, you are never lost! I am with you!’

As this hero pulled to each the nooses, and with each pull, the crowd cheered.

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘This will not be. I will not let you, you hear me.’

But Tall One did not hear me, as he bowed to Lord Whitaker, his skin all sallow and bloodless. Winter would take him, I smelled it.

He drew a roll of parchment and looked to the mob, and it calmed like a child hushed for a story.

The old lord coughed to clear his throat, and then he began.

‘On this day of our Lord Almighty, as your appointed justice of the peace, I hereby decree that this trial will properly show…’

He swallowed and shook, his voice was weak as his body.

‘Show the wicked abandon of the accused, and will show how these people became enchanted and so enchanted others in the pursuit of their own…’

He coughed, then coughed again and again, each echoing louder about that still square. Sir Robert came quickly.

The crowd murmured, as all watched Sir Robert bring him to his chair, watched as Tall One took the scroll and sent his words soaring above our heads.

‘In the pursuit of their own pleasure, their own gain, their own nefarious desires.’

Then, as a thought came to him, he curled away that parchment. He knew his lines, like a liar knows his own heart.

‘For we all know they are witches, good people! We know what they are about, do we not? They have bedeviled your lives. Cursed you, harmed you, made you suffer. And for that, they must pay for their wickedness, their treachery, their wilful crimes!’

Fingers pointed, eyes glared, mouths shouted in a chorus of hate. My fingers ached for my hidden blade. To scythe them, like wheat for the harvest. But not yet. Not yet.

‘And this trial shall call witnesses, true to this fact.’ Tall One raised a hand, as he played on. ‘To bear statement against the accused, it will show their wicked vices…’

The crowd cheered.

‘Their intent at destruction.’

The crowd cheered long.

‘And their bedevilment of you!’

The crowd cheered over and over and over.

He played them all. This pale wolf. This smiling dog.

‘And what, what, my good fellows, my brethren…’

His voice was so quiet, holding us all.

‘My brothers, my sisters, my children – tell me, what do we do with witches?’

‘Hang them!’

‘Hang them!’

‘Hang them!’

‘Good people, your patience is rewarded!’ Tall One cried. ‘For the witches are coming!’

Slow they entered the square. Swaying and shifting, pushed and pulled along, a stumble of women. Some old, some young who aided the old. And herding them, guardsmen with muskets, like shepherds prodding their flock to market.

The crowd gasped and pointed.

Then I saw what I had been waiting for. And my breath stopped.

Two children walked along the path through that baying crowd. They were holding hands. One was a boy who nodded over, smiling and waving like this day was his. The other was a girl who looked ahead, spite the cries and the laughs and the cursing, as that happy boy swung her hand. She reached out gentle to an old woman, lost in the noise. She raised her eyes to the gallows, and stepped towards them, a boy in one hand, mad as a hare, an old maid in the other, blind as a worm. There she was, brought to this trial, this terrible day in this terrible town. Because of me.

My sister.