The Witch
We join Maximilian of Tyne as he rides into Barrow village. His first stop is the vicarage. Barrow, he has heard, is home to a witch, and if he can beat the famed witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins to a trial and execution, he may gain the favour he so craves with the church. That, and the chance, perhaps, for an audience with King James. But what a day for a headache. And what a headache! Maximilian’s cranium is subject to an enormous, throbbing pressure, as if the moment of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil were drawn out into several hours. Putting on his best face for the vicar, he assembles the pieces of the rumour in his hurting brain: Gordon, cousin of the illustrious Spencers, has been losing his sheep to a pox. One of his shepherds stopped working then died. It is being whispered that this is the doing of a woman by the name of May, by means of black magic and assisted by her spirit familiar, a brindle dog. Max resolved to find the woman right away. But first he had to do somet