“People grew frightened, angry. They marched on my village with torches, looking for a villain. So I gave them one.” Hill lifts both hands, palm up: What would you have of me? “I told them a story about an old witch woman who lived in a hut in the roots of an old oak. I told them she spoke with devils and brewed pestilence and death in her cauldron. They believed me.” His voice is perfectly dispassionate, neither guilty nor grieving. “They burned her books and then her. When they left my village I left with them, riding at their head.”
