Unable to remain still, Patrick stood and took the letter over to the window, as if to make use of the light, but really so he could allow the inner joy he felt to burst through in a wide smile. Resting a shoulder against the window frame, he pulled the curtain aside slightly. The sun had begun to set, tossing threads of translucent clouds about the sky, while its amber warmth remained long enough that people lingered in the street. Swill-bellies gathered outside the tavern, soldiers among them, he noted, choosing not to allow their bad influence on his parishioners to dampen his pleasure on this occasion. Women with children on their hips stopped beside the costermonger and outside the apothecary’s; a couple of fishwives wandered past, their creels hooked over their foreheads and shoulders, selling what remained of the day’s catch. Fewer than before and not only because of those interned, but because others had chosen to leave the Weem and chase the summer drave and the work it provided. Still, the fishwives he could see gadding about didn’t look half as intimidated as they should. After all, it was the one occupation that produced the greatest number of practitioners of malfeasance. They should be worried, not flaunting their independence, the coin thrust into their palms, throwing their heads back with mirth, winking at all and sundry and calling out greetings. Look at the newly minted widow, Jen Hazell, whose husband fell overboard only three weeks ago. Instead of locking herself away to grieve, there she was, pausing to exchange gossip with the jocks on their stoops while she cleaned some whitefish for a customer. Didn’t matter she had a living to earn, a child to feed, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t godly. Those fishwives had too much to say for themselves, too much to say to others. Surely they understood their time had come? Anyone associating with them should tremble in fear lest they too be tainted by witchery, not encourage them. This was something he would raise in his next sermon — warn good folk away, remind the fishwives and those sympathetic to their libertine ways of what could happen.

His eyes danced over the street and he noted with no small measure of delight that woven among the locals were still plenty of incomers, and many were stopping outside the Tolbooth in the hope of catching a glimpse of the now infamous witches.