As he closed the gate to the restricted archives I kissed my cross and gave thanks to the Holy Mother.

‘Will you have further need of the archives?’ Ignatius said.

‘I may. Though I leave for Drekenford tonight.’

‘I see.’

‘Should I request a tome, would it be sent?’

The custodian looked quite suddenly uncomfortable. ‘We all serve under the King and the Archbishop, Inspector. But… so far?’ He glanced back at his precious, restricted texts. ‘Villages such as Drekenford are a long way from godfearing civilisation. They’re full of heathens, idolaters, and book-burners!’

‘Anything requested—’

‘Low-minded peasants, unable to read the word of—’

‘—would be looked after,’ I said, putting my hand on Ignatius’ shoulder. ‘You have my word on that.’

‘I see. Of course, forgive me. And God’s speed in your hunt for the witch, Christophor.’

*

I left the cathedral well after midnight. Though it was slow going, neither the mare nor I were in any hurry to be away from the city. Who knew what lay beyond? But that was where we were bound.

The imposing South Gate was busy, or so it appeared to me. The duty guards were only checking the carts and travellers entering the city; the lines looking to leave were moving swiftly under the double portcullis. Despite telling myself not to, I watched those dagger-tipped lattices with every step the mare took, feeling as if they hung over me the whole way.

But my relief at passing through the gate was fleeting, and replaced by an awful foreboding. The stone bridge in front of me stretched across the Esterly river which, in a moment of unnatural stillness, took on the character of an oil painting of a castle moat. Those crossing into the city were frozen in their suffering; dead-eyed and weighed low by their total worldly goods. Behind them blazed great fires of a country burning, their fields and homes set to flame, the smoke destroying the stars.

The whole world burned in front of me.

I had the sense the displaced fleeing the flames were just delaying the inevitable. There was no escaping such an apocalyptic vision.

I might have stayed there, paralysed by the terrible tableau, were it not for the press behind me and the mare’s stolid, less fanciful sensibilities. She drove us towards those flames, as if they were nothing more than campfires. To my relief she was, of course, correct.

A burning world with half-dead refugees streaming into the city – this was not the first vision I had experienced in my duties, but certainly the most vivid. I wondered just what those apparitions were fleeing, exactly? The most obvious answer being war, except there was more to the vision than that – a greater sense of darkness, of a hellish nature not entirely under the command of men at arms. Perhaps that was why the King was taking a personal interest in my bringing the Drekenford witch to justice; perhaps the vision was a warning against my failure.