Chapter 126

The witches’ court sat at the bottom of Tanners’ Lane, where the river bent under the town wall, in a round stone house that I had walked past a hundred times in my first summer and taken for an old dovecote.

It had no sign, only a black oak door with no handle on the outside and a step worn into a dish by feet. When Rhys knocked, the door was opened by a girl of about Finn’s age in a grey apron, who looked at the badge on his collar and said, “Not you.”

“The Crown’s escort,” said Rhys.

“The Crown may escort her to the step,” said the girl, and looked past him at me. “The Lady, and her clerk, and the woman with the box. Nobody else.”

Rhys looked at me. I nodded. He stepped back into the lane with his hands behind him, and I knew he would not move until I came out.

***

Inside there was one room, and it was round.

A bench of stone ran all the way round the wall, and seven old women sat on it with a space between each of them, in grey and undye