6_5

In Welles, in the Cracked Bell public house, the fishermen argued about the recent deaths, and tempers flared. Jack Kirby, as usual was in the midst of the arguing men.
“It’s them bloody witches!” he shouted, half drunk and already angry.
“What? Old Meg?” a heavy built fisherman with a fat heavy belly scoffed. “Why would she kill her own grand daughter!?”
“How should I know?” Kirby snarled, his face scarlet.
Most of those who had been debating the recent events shrugged and moved away. They all knew what Kirby was like, and long experience had taught them how to avoid it. Kirby blinked and stared about him. His anger was all consuming and he had no control over himself.
“We ought to have a burning, just like in the old days!” he shouted.
No one answered him, but the land lord, a large muscular man, well used to Kirby’s ways reached for his cudgel.
Kirby saw him and sneering, waved his hand in disgust.
“Ah... you’re all cowards any way” he spat.
He stumbled to the door and yanked it open. The night rushed in around him, and the darkness outside swallowed him up. For a moment or two he could be heard swearing violently and then he was gone. The men glanced at each other and shook their heads, but very quickly the pub returned to its usual low murmur of conversation.Ten minutes later, Bartholomew Thatcher entered the inn and approached the bar. The land lord nodded a greeting and the two men retired to a quiet corner to talk.

That he could recall, Isaac Melchior had never been so cold in all his life. He sat amongst some dead ferns in a sodden ditch, hugging his knees and staring out onto the empty field where nothing moved. A few paces to his left was de Hogue, silent and unmoving and behind him was a low dry stone wall. Every so often he would glance back over this wall to make sure no one was moving behind them on the long road which was only a few hundred yards away.
Cursing under his breath he rubbed his hands together and tried to move his legs slightly to stop them from going completely numb.
It was so horribly cold that as he sat there shivering, a tear of misery rolled down his cheek. He sniffed and wiped it away, refusing to give in to the self pity which was threatening to overwhelm him. He turned slowly and peered back over the wall, but as usual the landscape was empty. The fields and walls stretching away into the dark.
He peered at the shadows here and there, trying to remember whether or not if everything looked as it had twenty minutes previously when his eye was distracted by an orange glow off in the west. He watched it for a minute before he realised what he was staring at.
“De Hogue!” he hissed.
“What?” de Hogue whispered as he crept closer.
“What do you make of that?” Melchior asked pointing at the faint glow between the trees.
“I don’t know, and I don’t like the look of it either” de Hogue said. “Wait here…”
He turned and disappeared, and Melchior found him self alone. He pulled back the hammer on his musket and waited nervously in the dark.

By the time they had reached it, Old Meg Tyler’s cottage had been burned to pile of timbers and the small group of villagers were gathered around the shouting woman trying to restrain her.
Bailey waded amongst them, but until he fired his pistol into the air, he got no response.
The crack of the gun brought them to their senses though, and in the dull light of the fire, Bailey shouted at them to go back to the village. Old Meg stared down at him with dull angry eyes.
“I want my revenge!” she hissed. “My granddaughter, my home…. What’s next?”
Bailey had no answer for her. He was cold, cramped and tired, and he left her in the care of her friends, walking wearily back to the village in an air of defeat.
Stokes watched them leave, then turned back and returned to the fields.