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minutes . . . Mind you, these humans ain't got no stamina. Now I, I could tell you a thing or two about that . . ." and he rumbled away for a moment or two about servicing the sows they kept for him but I wasn't listening.
    "He's dead?" I remembered the lad, bonny and brawny in the fields at haying, from my lonely spyings. Was that what my Mistress had meant, with all her talk of witch-babe? Had She taken man-seed into her body and now hoped—but she couldn't: she was too old. But then, her spells were strong. And was this what had happened on those other times, when she had returned angry and frustrated? Was this because her spells had not worked on those others, whoever they had been? My mind was in a whirl; why had she to kill that handsome young man, especially when he had obviously pleasured her so well? "Dead, you say?" I repeated.
    "As firewood. Seems they're all cut up about it; say she's gone too far this time." His fanged mouth nudged me, none too gently. "Got any more?"
    "Of course." To retreat safely from these razor-backed horrors, a precarious domestication a few generations back having done little for their manners, always required a diplomatic withdrawal. I threw down the rest of the mast and nuts and scuttled back over the fence.
    "Where have they put him?"
    "Huh? Oh, the dead 'un. Square. There's a meeting. All there. Come again . . ."
    Stoppering and pocketing the phial, I crept cautiously round the back of the houses till I could see, between the washerwoman's and the whore's, that rectangle of trampled earth they called the Square. Sure enough the place was crowded, and there was talk I could not hear so, not daring to approach directly, I made a leap for the thatch of the washerwoman's house, luckily only a few feet from the ground at this point, and crept up among the straw till I could both hear and see without fear of discovery. Glancing sideways at the next roof I was glad I had chosen the one I was on, for the whore's roof was all rotten grey straw and loose with it; I could see an old nest or two and the roots of sear vervain: it would not have held me for two breaths.
    Below me was a lake of people, heads bobbing like floats, and an angry hum of voices, a hive disturbed. In a space in the centre was a bier, roughly fashioned from larch poles and skins and the body of Cerdic lay disarranged upon it. His clothing was rough, homespun of course, but the young face held an unworldly look of disillusion and, strangely enough, an air of peaceful exultation too, at odds with the rough, uncomprehending features of the villagers surrounding him. The talk confused me, for I was not used to such a babble, but the gist was of witchcraft and revenge. They led forward a young woman, pretty enough, and she cast herself down weeping by the bier, clasping the careless dead hand of the young man and carrying it to her mouth, kissing it feverishly, and sobbing the while in an uncontrolled burst of emotion that made me hot all over.
    I moved away, sliding back down the thatch till my feet found the ground, and crept back home, thoroughly bewildered and with a horrible feeling that something nasty was about to fall on my head or leap out and bite my ankles. The air was very still, as if everything was holding its breath, waiting, and I found myself glancing over my shoulder every few yards; I couldn't get back quick enough.
    Back there, there where we all belonged, I tried to tell the others what I had seen and heard but it was only Corby and perhaps Puddy who understood. "Always like that when they turn the corner," said the former. "Turn a corner and see Death staring 'em in the face. Gets 'em all, one way and another. Know it's long past childbearing time but reckon a touch of magic might make the difference. Think they'll renew themselves. Seldom works, but I've heard tell of a deformed mippet born of an old witch. Nigh unkillable, too. Pity She couldn't keep it off'n her own doorstep, though; sounds as