The beat of his heart ran faster, the rhythm jarring and irregular. He tried to breathe deeply, steadily, but no matter how he gasped no air would come. Falling to his knees he felt a dread that his father would discover him in this most humiliating position, as he pitched face forward and the redness before his eyes became darkness.

Daniel grew aware, slowly, of the scent and chafe of grass. It pressed into his eyelids, bristled between his lips. He licked and spat, rolled on to his back, opened his eyes. Staring into the clear wash of sky, he could not at first remember how he came to be lying there.

The bleat of lambs brought it back to him, the slice of knife and rush of blood. Black smile of the Haworth boy.

He lurched upwards, staggering to his feet and lifting the bucket, focusing on the sting as the skin on his knuckles cracked and bled, and listening to Father’s sharp calls to the oxen. Milk threatened to slop over the side as Daniel walked, pail pulling on his arm. He wanted to hold it with both hands out in front of him, but he had been caught doing that once by Gabriel, the farmhand.

‘Shall I call my little sister for you, Danny?’ Gabriel had said. ‘She could carry that pail with her fingers, she’s used to women’s work. But there, so’s you.’

He had walked away, laughing and shaking his head, and Daniel had sworn he would never again endure such ridicule. His arm might rip from his shoulder, but he would carry the bucket with one hand.

Daniel strove to keep his mind empty, but could think only of the boy’s twisted lips as he spoke. There were stories of the Haworth hag and her warped brood; that the youngest brat was found stealing teeth from the graveyard, that Tobias Barton’s three children died one after another when he chased the eldest girl off his land for begging, that the boy had demons in his power.

He had never seen one of them up close before, and the experience had been every bit as foul and wretched as he had feared. They knew of him now, he had tried to thwart the boy, and sure as night would fall there would be a price to pay. Daniel could not imagine what witchcraft would be done with the flesh and blood and bones of a month-old lamb.

The words still whispered in his ear.

‘Hell on you.’ And Daniel shivered.

Wet Boots and Fresh Fish

Mam clasps a poppet in her hands, sewn from a piece of cloth that was once part of my father’s tunic. Made in his image, some strands of his hair attached.