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said the Reeve.
    I’d seen them close-like, all right, but what should I say? If I’d had a proper witchy education, I’d know the rules. Does one betray a fellow witch?
    The Reeve took my silence for fear. “Us knows them witches be right scareful to think on, Miss Briony. But them memories you got, they be the very things to get ’em hanged.”
    “Briony scared?” said Eldric. “I’ve never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron.”
    It’s true: I don’t get scared; I keep my head in emergencies. People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.
    “You got memories too, Mister Eldric,” said the constable. “Didn’t there be nothing peculiar about them witches?”
    Peculiar? No, nothing peculiar, just the normal run of witchy backsides and witchy girl-parts.
    “Him an’ me,” said the Reeve, “us be sniffing round for evidence, see? The Chime Child, she do her job proper. She don’t take to hanging when there don’t be no evidence.”
    “A child?” said Mr. Clayborne.
    “It’s only a title,” said Father. “She’s rather old, really.”
    “One of the witches had red hair,” said Eldric, now lying on his stomach and crinkling the pages of the
London Loudmouth
. That’s what Father calls the London newspaper.
    Oh, well. There went my attempt to save my fellow witches, although I can’t say why I tried. None showed any sisterly affection.
    Was Eldric thinking of those witchy girl-parts too? Had he ever seen those bits of a girl before? Most girls would blush to think such thoughts, but when you’ve been as wicked as I, you don’t have any blushes to spare.
    What do twenty-two-year-old shaving boy-men get to see?
    “That be evidence o’ the most excellent sort.” The Reeve’s Adam’s apple strained against his neck skin, which is a thing that should be illegal. “Thank you kindly, Mister Eldric.”
    Pearl pushed through the door with a tray. We’ve had lovely teas since Pearl came to us. There’s always soft white bread, like clouds, and butter, and two kinds of jam. The sweet today was lemon cream and butter biscuits.
    I adore lemon cream!
    Pearl glanced upstairs, where Rose continued to cough and drill through the floor on the pitch of B flat.
    “Sorry, Mr. Reverend, sir,” said Pearl, “but I doesn’t got no tricks to quiet Miss Rose.”
    I did, though. I had a few Rose-calming tricks, which often as not succeeded one time out of ten. So why was I sitting here, dreaming about lemon cream? My job was to care for Rose, for nothing and no one but Rose.
    I stood, made for the door.
    “You mustn’t fret about it, Pearl,” said Father. “Rose is difficult to calm.”
    Is she, Father? Is she! How would you know? You’ve hardly seen us these three years past.
    “And Briony,” said Father, “where are you going?”
    What do you think, Father! Who do you think has been caring for a screaming Rose while you’ve been chatting to God?
    But there was no point saying anything. There never is.
    “Nowhere.”
    “I’ve always wanted to go
Nowhere,
” said Eldric.
    “You mustn’t leave,” said Father. “These gentlemen will have questions to put to you still.”
    Stepmother always said we didn’t have to mind Father. “He’s a good man,” she’d say, “but he doesn’t know much about girls, does he?” We let him think we were minding him, though. It was easier that way.
    She was terrifically skilled, Stepmother was: She was skilled in the art of not-minding-but-pretending. But I, witchy, tricky Briony Larkin, didn’t know what to do.
    Eldric squiggled out from beneath the table. “What if I went
Nowhere
and gave this to Rose?” Of a sudden, he was kneeling before me, a paper rose blooming in his hands. He’d fidgeted the rose right out of the
London Loudmouth
. The paper was coarse, but the rose was a miracle of ingenuity and engineering. You could look into its whorled petals forever,