He pulled too hard and I stumbled and slipped along the slick cobblestones, but I silently begged him not to look back, not to show concern. Already people gathered on the street to watch their lord drag me toward the town center.
Night fell with alarming speed and obscured the tops of buildings in gloomy dark. The clang of the blacksmith’s hammer still rung out interrupted by the burst of his bellows. Children clipped closer on their small-heeled boots until mothers grabbed their skinny arms to pull them back. A couple farmers, tossing empty grain sacks into the back of a wagon, stopped in their work to stare as we passed.
After a moment, the tavern door burst open and Emméline came out with a group of men and women. Papa stumbled out behind them. I peered at them all through my lashes until Sebastian pulled me away. I didn’t want Papa to see this. He’d think I’d done something wrong, been too weak or not smart enough to stay safe.
“My lord.” Père Danil swept forward with his black robes billowing and his big wooden crucifix bumping against his chest. “What is this?”
Sebastian hesitated and I willed him to say the words. He took a breath and did. “I’ve caught the witch who’s killing children.”
The priest pinched his lips into a grimace. “How do you know it’s her?”
“I saw it, the most evil thing I’ve ever experienced. She . . . controls the animal.”
I couldn’t fault Sebastian for his acting. It was quite convincing—even I felt the passion in his words. In fact, it was unnerving.
The priest’s cheeks lit with a self-righteous glow I wanted to slap away. He blinked slowly and nodded gravely, like every movement he made was so vastly important it needed to be savored. He thought he’d won and he wanted to make the moment last.
I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t spit on his boots.
“We’ll take her and clean her,” the priest said.
Sebastian pulled the rope and I stumbled a little closer to him.
“Lock her in the cell in the church,” he said.
“No.” Emméline stepped free from the crowd. Her simple dress rustled against her legs as she rushed toward us. Her eyes shone with greed. She ran them over me and I flinched away.
“We should burn her now,” she said. “Lay bare her evil so she can be saved.”
The girl smiled at me, pleased, and all the confidence I’d felt in this plan drained away. Even Sebastian couldn’t control the tide of anger. These people, thirsty for something, anything to call justice for their dead children—they’d satisfy themselves on my humiliation.
Emméline’s eyes bore into mine with a flash of triumph that made me catch my breath. This is what she wanted—to pin the blame on someone else. If she was the killer, she’d likely strike again tonight to prove that the witch was angry and controlled the beast and that together they brought evil unto this town. Frenzy would fizz through my neighbors. They’d take me out, make me stand among them while they threw their accusations and fears at me like rotten cabbages. I’d become their effigy—the one to burn because they couldn’t burn the beast.
Panic flared in my chest as the stares of the townspeople bore down on me. I ached for Papa to step forward, tell the people they couldn’t do this, and take me home. Even though I knew he wouldn’t. Even though it wasn’t part of the plan.
He didn’t step forward. He didn’t say a word.
It shouldn’t have hurt, not after years of him showing me he couldn’t love me properly. But it did.
I swallowed and forced my face to settle into hard lines against Emméline’s unsettling stare. Fury rose like mist in the crowd, twisting, feeding, growing. They changed from watchers to crusaders in two beats of my heart.
Suddenly, it was clear how simple our plan had been. Too simple. We hadn’t accounted for how wild fear could be. We’d thought they’d let Sebastian lead me out, wrists bound, by the authority of his position. I’d hoped they’d stew in their anger and whispers and encourage the killer to kill again—if only to prove the townspeople did indeed have something to be angry about.
But now their anger and fear swirled around me like an unstoppable current, and Emméline stood in their midst, arms raised like a Greek goddess, calling up a storm.
“Your curse leaks like poison through the streets, witch.” She spat, but the little glob of spittle landed wide of my boot.
Cries of agreement rang out from the crowd. Men bobbed their heads up and down, risking their hats. Women pursed their lips and pushed their children behind their wide skirts. If only that were enough to keep them safe.
Sebastian raised his hands, pulling my wrists up with his, but the townspeople didn’t fall silent. His command lacked the authority of his title. The odd nature of this, the capture of a witch, seemed to afford the people certain liberties.
“We can’t let this evil live in our town,” Père Danil said.
“A trial first,” Sebastian cut in, “in case the king’s magistrates come calling. We don’t want them to find we did anything wrong.”
“Yes, yes of course. A trial in the morning. Tonight we shall keep her locked up so she can’t spread her evil any further,” Père Danil said.
Emméline stepped forward and grabbed for the rope binding my hands together.
“She can control the beast from anywhere, locked up or no. Witches have the magic to bend the rules.”
I almost shook my head, ready to deny any magic, but this was exactly what we wanted. We needed the killer to come out tonight so Sebastian could see who it was.
Père Danil pinned me with a glassy black stare. A purple blush swept under his deep-set eyes.
“I see you, Marie Michaud,” he hissed. “I see the chaos in your soul.”
An unsettling heat licked my stomach. Could he really see the questions in my heart? I’d guarded them so well. But maybe you could only wonder for so long whether evil lived in the one you loved most without it showing around your eyes.
The heat fled my body and left a dreadful ache of exhaustion in its wake. I’d been holding myself just so for too long. It was taxing to pretend—to try and fade into them without them noticing. To put on the appearance of a life I didn’t have in hopes one day I would. To smile and hand bottles of scent into silk-gloved hands and act like I wouldn’t have to choose who my sister would kill that night.
My knees buckled under me and Sebastian put a steadying hand under my elbow. The others jeered, glad for my weakness. This was a spectacle to them, a show they’d write to their cousins about.
Well, fine. I’m used to pretending anyway.
“The devil walks these streets.” I let the s slide off my tongue smooth as silk. “He calls to me and I answer. I unleash his servant into the night and someone else will die when the moon rises!”
It was a challenge for the real killer. If it was someone like Père Danil or Emméline behind all this, they would want to make sure to kill tonight so it looked like I’d fulfilled my threat. But if the killer did take the bait, they’d have Sebastian with his hunting knife and musket to contend with.
Sebastian dropped the rope and stared at me with his mouth open. I hadn’t told him I’d start proclaiming myself a witch in the streets. His reaction lent a certain authenticity to the moment. I ran with it.
“I’ve tricked you. All of you. And it was easy.”
Père Danil fumbled forward to pick up the fallen rope. “Sorceress, wife of darkness, why have you done this to our town?”
He stared up at me, reverent. What looked like a spark of pride lit up his eyes. The death of innocents, the unveiling of a witch made him special. In a moment, he’d been elevated to circles of God’s most precious servants. He’d become a chosen one—a deliverer from evil. A savior. A saint.
He had all the benefits that came with prestige as reasons to want to draw attention to the killings of a ferocious beast and a sinister witch in his lonely little town. Without the horrible deaths, the king likely would never have even heard the name of it. Certainly, he’d never have heard of Père Danil.
I hoped Sebastian saw the gleam in the withering man’s pink-rimmed eyes and realized what it might mean.
Shouts erupted from the crowd with the force of bullets from a musket.
“Kill her now!”
“Burn her! The beast will die without its master!”
“Enough debate, take her to the oubliette!”
The oubliette.
My whole body sank, folded in on itself, cowering, as my blood froze in my veins. The oubliette was a hole dug deep into the ground at the town’s edge. A tunnel of damp earth with nothing but worms for company. Sometimes we forgot about the poor drifters thrown in, and we’d discover their bones, draped in rotting linen shirts, a year or so later.
The oubliette was one of the deepest punishments. Rumors rose like dust from peddlers’ packs—the king had forbidden oubliettes. The queen was so afraid of the dark holes, she’d asked her husband to board them all up.
But it hardly mattered here. We were so far away from court, we could choose to interpret the king’s laws as our priest and magistrate saw fit. Which meant they could throw me in the oubliette if they wanted and leave me there until my bones were clean.
“You can’t take her to the oubliette,” Sebastian shouted over the crowd.
“Why not?” the baker asked. A shiny burn on his cheek glinted in the light of the torch in his hand.
“She should be kept in the church; it would be safer. The devil hates sanctified ground.”
I bit the end of my tongue and tried to focus on that pain instead of the possibility of what might really happen to me. This is part of the plan. I repeated those words inside my head over and over again, but I didn’t really believe them. Nothing about this felt within my control anymore. These people—the ones I’d spent years wanting to be part of—were more than ready to sacrifice me for their own salvation.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was and I hated myself for it. Hadn’t I learned this yet? With a father who preferred his ale to his children and a sister who swept in front of me whenever we entered a room, shouldn’t I have realized this was normal? People’s own lives were always more important to them than anyone else’s.
There was no position to cling to, no sympathy to tug at. But I wouldn’t let them stamp me out like the wavering flame of a cheap candle.
“The oubliette won’t hold me,” I said, trying to plant a seed of doubt. If they thought a witch could escape the oubliette, they might lock me in the church and I could handle that. Anything but a hole in the ground.
The crowd grumbled. Emméline’s white teeth nipped at her lip. She quirked her mouth into the ghost of a smile and I couldn’t stop a shiver from running down my spine. Papa watched me with the slack look I’d learned to associate with one too many pints.
“We will put her in the oubliette for the night and hold the trial after matins,” the priest said to Sebastian. “The magistrate will question her.”
I whipped my head around to Sebastian, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“I want to be there,” Sebastian said to Père Danil.
“Whatever you wish, my lord.”
“Good.”
Sebastian looked as though he didn’t know whether to stay or turn away. The priest tugged on my rope and I stumbled on the cobbles beneath my boots.
“One more thing, my lord.” Père Danil’s voice simpered, rich but prim. “When you write a letter to the king about our vanquishing, I hope you will mention my key part in this discovery of the devil’s servant. The eye of the king would be a great benefit to our little church.”
Sour bile coated the back of my throat. I swallowed to rid myself of the taste as the image of pilgrims leaving their hard-earned coins at the foot of this priest’s church pulsed in my mind. I would not be a part of this man’s immortalization.
“I might remember,” Sebastian said, and I wanted to kiss his cheek for the way his words wiped the smug look from the priest’s face.
The night air fell even cooler. I was tired of standing there in the street with my wrists bound. It was time to get on with it.
“The beast calls to me,” I whispered low so Père Danil had to lean in. When he was close enough, I slipped my tongue between my lips and touched the soft, curved flesh of his ear. He jumped back as if scalded and I grinned at him, eyes wide and full of false desire.
“Mistress Poitres,” the priest said. “Take her.”
“Stand up.” Emméline lifted my arm and I let her. She took the knife from her belt, wrapped herself around me so the whole side of her blade kissed the delicate skin of my neck.
“Walk.”
I did because I had to. This was the plan. And because there was nowhere else to go. Papa wouldn’t help me—if I somehow escaped, he’d probably hand me back over to Père Danil just to earn some goodwill. Sebastian wasn’t going to fight harder to keep me out of the oubliette—it would seem too strange and foil our plan. I understood and yet . . . I couldn’t help feeling like he was abandoning me too.
The woods on the side of the village never looked more welcoming. The trees and shadows tugged at my heart. Ama was in there somewhere. All I wanted to do now was go to her. She was the only comfort I’d ever known and I ached for her now.
“Keep moving.” Emméline’s voice shot into my ear.
We stumbled back through town, an awkward four-legged animal. When we approached the church, I paused but Emméline pushed me forward, the blade biting into my skin.
It was only then that panic truly licked at me like a flame.