‘Though your farmhand near set the parson to forgetting his thoughts,’ Mr Matthews said.

A rustling of leaves, surely. Daniel willed himself not to glance around. The Haworth boy’s demons could change form at will, it was said, and might be creeping between gravestones, stalking Daniel even as he stood. He forced himself to focus on the conversation.

‘He is not under my bidding at church.’ A reprimand, for Mr Matthews rarely showed the deference Father was used to receiving from village men.

Nathaniel looked past Daniel’s shoulder, and frowned. ‘See those two huddled together?’ He indicated Sam Finch and a man named Turner. ‘Doesn’t sit right.’

They all glanced over. ‘That money changing hands too?’ Daniel asked.

‘Don’t look too close, son, or speak too loud,’ Father said. ‘Wherever you turn there’ll be someone buying another’s silence. You keep your innocence and look away.’

‘Just as the magistrate does, though ’tis not innocence that blinds him,’ Nathaniel said.

‘And let’s be thankful for that,’ Mr Matthews said, shading his face against the sun. ‘Sharp eyes can bring profit. I shan’t say who supplies my fish, but all I pay for it is a half what others do and a promise not to tell whose wife it is that he beds. Besides his own.’

Father frowned and Daniel knew that Mr Matthews had once again misjudged. His parents’ marriage had been brief but happy, and Father did not look kindly on such betrayals.

‘Put your sharp eyes to better use, and keep them looking out for my lamb,’ Father said. ‘One’s been lost, and I cannot track it down.’

‘You thinking it’s been stolen?’ Nathaniel asked.

Daniel breathed deep to calm the quickened beat of his blood, dipped his head to hide the guilt that was surely written there. ‘It’s perhaps just escaped through the hedge,’ he said.

‘More likely stolen,’ Father said. ‘Keep an ear to the ground, lads?’

Daniel remained still, waiting for someone to say they had seen the Devil-boy carrying the lamb, but no one spoke. He sensed a shifting behind him, a breath at his neck, that set him lunging a little to the side and almost into Nathaniel. The demon was upon him. When he glanced back there was nothing to be seen.

He barely felt the humiliation of Father’s frown and Mr Matthews’s smirk. All were aware of the role he played on the farm. He was no man, and all knew it. This day it was a dread of worse than ridicule that drove him away. Daniel pretended a need to speak to Gabriel and left Father to seek out the family grave, as always. As he trudged towards the gate, glancing side to side in fear of some malevolent presence, a pair of polished brown shoes stood in his path and he almost walked into the owner of them.