Two well-known men. One of them a mayor, the other a witchfinder, and with a hooded woman between them.

Where were they going?

The river to drown her. The hanging tree. No, you fools, they went to the old constable’s office.

But, what use in locking up a witch?

A witch, not the witch.

What use indeed.

*

Christophor put her in the larger of the two cells. There was bedding, not fresh but clean enough. The whole large space smelled of stale air and long-settled dust. Mrs Eder stood motionless in the middle of the cell as he lifted off her coat and loosened her gag.

‘You know you have the wrong person,’ she said.

‘I disagree. As does the evidence.’

‘But not your day-brother. He knows too.’

This, Christophor ignored. As he had been doing for a long time now.

He lit candles from the lantern he’d picked up at the office’s entrance. He made sure none of them were placed inside the cell – she was a woman who could do things with candles.

‘You keep talking of evidence,’ Mayor Eder said. ‘I demand to see it!’

‘Very well, sir.’ Christophor entered the cell. Mrs Eder made no move to stop him. I could not understand why she did not rage against her accuser, against this false accusation, against these two men who spoke as if she was not even there. I could not understand because I had never experienced the like, and most likely never would. ‘You have seen,’ he said, ‘your wife’s bloodless, unfeeling hand. That is what we refer to as “The hand that shakes the Devil’s”.’

It sounded ludicrous. Madness. The kind of nonsense that a man uttered if he himself hoped to be thrown into a cell for the night. But no one laughed at him. Mrs Eder looked plainly on as my night-brother lifted her hand again, as if to remind the mayor.

‘When an individual makes a pact with the Devil, it is sealed with the shaking of his hand. But his is no normal hand. This is the mark it leaves.’

‘You’re mistaken, Inspector,’ she said. ‘It was a boy that marked me so.’

The mayor gasped.

Christophor searched her face for signs of falsehood. ‘There are reports,’ he said eventually, ‘of the Devil appearing in many forms, even that of a boy.’

‘You do not deny it, Margarete?’ Mayor Eder sounded pained, wounded, whereas I was angry with her. Perhaps he was thinking of his own role in her deception, and how over the years he had been gulled.

‘Deny I have met the Devil?’ she said. ‘Hasn’t each and every one of us? But to actually shake the Devil’s hand… If you are fool enough to believe that, there’s nothing I can say.’

‘More, Inspector. Show me more.’

‘He has marked your wife more than once,’ my night-brother said. He turned Mrs Eder so her back faced her husband. Deliberately and dispassionately, he began to unlace the back of her dress. We both knew what he would find there, beneath the midnight-green folds of silk. Truth was, everyone in that room knew. And still they insisted on the deplorable pantomime. Keeping the other side of the dress modestly in place, he lifted the panel to reveal her left lower back.