‘Of course we did not!’ Isolde burst out, looking round at the pinched angry faces. ‘You must be mad to think such a thing!’

‘Mad?’ someone shouted. ‘It is you that are mad to bring such a thing down on us!’

‘Calling up a storm in the green lake, leading our children out to drown. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”’

‘Yes!’ a man shouted from the back of the crowd. ‘The Bible itself says: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”’

The mass of people pressed closer to the two young women and the little girl between them. Ree dived beneath Isolde’s cloak and clung around her waist, crying for fear. Isolde was as white as the kerchief over her hair. Ishraq stepped in front of her, spread her hands, balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to fight.

Luca spread his arms, raised his voice. ‘These are my friends,’ he declared. ‘And we have lost our own friend to the sea, just as you have lost your dear ones. You cannot think that these young women would call up a wave that would drown our friend.’

‘I do think it,’ Mrs Ricci hurled the words at him. ‘We all think it. It is you who are misled. How will you hold an inquiry if you will not ask the most important questions? What were they doing in the lake?’

Baffled, Luca turned to Isolde. ‘What were you doing in the lake?’

She flushed red with anger that he should interrogate her before this crowd. ‘How dare you ask me?’

His temper flared with his fear of the crowd. ‘Of course I ask you! Don’t be such a fool! Answer me at once! What were you doing?’

‘We were washing,’ she said, disdainful of him, of the crowd. ‘We went for a wash.’

‘Washing!’ the women scoffed. ‘In the green lake? As night fell? They are storm-bringers, you can see it in their faces.’

There was a dangerous roar of agreement from the crowd and it encouraged the wise women on the attack.

‘You will name the storm-bringers?’ the woman pressed Luca. ‘These women who came with you, and the child who came later, their little accomplice? You will try all three of them?’

‘It was the children and the two women who called up the wave. That child would know. You must question her,’ a man commanded from the back of the crowd, his jacket dirty with sludge from baling out his house. ‘And we will burn all three of them together.’

‘Yes!’ a new woman agreed with him. ‘If they are guilty we will drown all three of them in our own harbour.’

Ree’s little hand clenched onto Isolde’s steady grip. ‘What are they saying?’ she whispered. ‘What do they think we have done?’

‘I assure you these women are innocent,’ Luca began. ‘And the child also.’

‘Then try them!’ someone shouted.

‘You say that you are an inquirer – hold an inquiry!’