The whispering slid from her mouth, entwined itself around him and slithered through his blood. She was but a child, an innocent surely that was caught in terror. Still, he had the sense that some incantation fell from her lips. He wished and feared to hear the words. Could no longer tell what was real, the life he had built with Sarah or the stories of the family. The image of Sarah, so unlike the girl he knew, so filled with power, cursing Molly, stuck in his mind.

Gabriel’s question was one he could not answer – who else, but the devil-brother, would kill a man of God? And now even the child whispered words that were surely laden with sinister magic.

‘Have you stolen a waif?’

The voice, unexpected, stunned him. Molly flopped down next to him and peered at Annie with undisguised disgust. A thin red mark, almost healed, scored her forehead. The little girl whispered and added to the pile of hair that gathered at her bare feet.

‘She looks infested,’ Molly said.

He was thrown back for a moment to the day he helped Sarah wash Annie’s hair. Were you stealing her? she’d asked. Assailed by grief, he could only look silently at Molly. Her face was drawn and red around the eyes.

‘Where on earth did you find her?’ she asked.

‘Have you not heard?’ he said.

‘I’ve heard no village tattle, for I was here searching for stones to weight me down and sink me to the bottom of the water.’

Clouds gathered heavy and low, rolling in a mist from the water. ‘There’s been a terrible – wait, what? You were looking for what?’

She glanced at him and then away, tears welling in the green pools of her eyes. ‘I was too faint-hearted. Filled my hands with stones and stood at the edge of the river until I gave up and threw them all in the water instead. I will find an easier way.’

She gave an odd, hiccupping laugh and wiped her eyes but the tears kept coming.

‘But – why?’ he asked.

‘I’m too shamed to say.’

Quiet then, just the wash of the river, the first splashes of rain on the ground and the incessant slip of Annie’s whispered words. He heard them now, though they made no sense. ‘He’s been. He’s been. I have the mark.’ Repeated over and over.

‘Whatever it is, it cannot be so bad,’ he said.

‘You’re kind. It should have been you, if it had been you then all would be well, but you chose another. And I was angry and he said he loved me, though I knew he spoke false, but I wanted it to be, just wanted someone to and – it was only once. But now he will not—’