The Reverend Palsey was in the middle of chastising his wife when the boy came to the door. He could not really tell if it was she who had been feeding the stray dogs. Knowing she had done in the past he was not above teaching her the appropriate lesson. Besides she was little more than a rough savage and needed to be taught who was boss. Deep within the bowels of his mind stirred a bitter resentment against these provincial peasants he had the misfortune to find himself among. Lowering his hand at the sound of three loud raps on the wooden panel he threw the paddle onto the bed.

He already knew who it was, because the boy for some reason always refused to use the brass knocker. Standing a couple of paces into the front yard to avoid a burst of temper from the cleric should the message turn out to be bad news. But when the Reverend fished into his pocket and brought out not a farthing but a whole halfpenny he produced a broad smile. He ran off to tell his parents that a public execution must be imminent.

"Wife, where are my clothes for going out?"

"They are set on the bed, Reverend."

"Good. I shall be gone all day."

"It's that young lad again, isn't it." She came out adjusting her clothes as if nothing had happened. "He's given you so much trouble."

"Aye, and he won't be giving us much more."

"Has he been saying anything?"

"Mercifully no. Lord be thanked. Though I don't for the life of me know what it is he might say. But there's danger in him. You can tell by the way he looks."

The Reverend dressed himself for outside and left her to get on with chores. He strode across the Close toward the low hills above the harbour and across to the Parish of Mill Brook. Half an hour later he faced Mister Perthwick in a shadowy upstairs room of the church.

"Where is he?"

"They're holding him in the crypt."

"Has he said anything?"

"Not really. Only protestations that he didn't mean to break his vows. Goodness knows what he's been up to in that unholy place."

"What about the missing monk?"

"No sign. You think the boy did away with him?"

"Of course he did. Impersonated him in front of the Abbot and all the monks. Taught them witchcraft songs too by sound of it."

"Tell them to take him to Bridewell. We'll bring him back here and execute him in the village this afternoon."

"Don't you want me to question him further?"

"We'll have as little as possible to do with him. He's a tricky little bastard."

"But ..."

"Have respect for your enemy, Mister Perthwick. You can hone your torture techniques on those who do not have the wit to fight back. Take a lesson from the cat, who will play all day with a mouse but kills the rat in a single bite. Master Simon will go to the stake today and we'll find his victim in due course. The abbey will pay the penalty too."

They fetched the unwilling prisoner, dressed once more in his own clothes. Tied by thick ropes so he could not move his hands and only shuffle his feet. Two thugs who had been in the throng cheering him only a couple of days earlier pushed him through the streets to taunts from passers by. The Reverend Palsey and Mister Perthwick walked some distance behind.

"And how is your good lady wife, Mister Perthwick?"

"Very well, thank you, Reverend. Which is a great blessing to me. How is Mrs Palsey?"

"Well too. Though I fear she has been feeding the dogs again. I have to finish disciplining her when I return home."

"That is something I have never been able to do . How I envy men who can tame their wives."

"Oh, it's not too difficult. A good thrashing every now and then puts them in their place."

"My wife won't let me do it. She hates it."

"That's the whole idea. If she doesn't like the consequences of her action she won't do it again. Of course you can always get yourself another wife."

"How on earth could I do that? Even if I were to want it."

"Easy. Just ask me and we'll have her tried and executed in no time at all. One of the perquisites of the job, wist? No point having all this power if you can't do yourself a personal favour from time to time is there?"

"Hrrm. In any case there is little enough time left for me I fear."

"Plenty of time, Mister Perthwick. We could have her on the stake this very afternoon, along with our witch boy. Now, what charge should we allege? How about fornication with a cat? That would be hard to prove against."

Mister Perthwick fished around for an opportunity to change the subject. "Reverend, see those birds nesting on the tops of the houses. You know quite a bit about birds I believe. Can you tell me what type they are?"

"Certainly," beamed the Reverend. "These doves are relatives of the common wood pigeon who have made their living in the town. They are regarded as vermin by some as they drop paste from the sky but are sometime meat to the townsfolk. When I was a boy I used to torment them by throwing burning sticks into their nests. I can't remember quite, I had some contraption that aided me." The befuddled Reverend searched his mind. He could not actually remember anything of his childhood, nor indeed of his adult life prior to his exile to Bristow, though when asked he claimed to have been been educated by monks in St Albans. He looked over the hill to the harbour, distracted. I see a good omen. The tide will be in shortly. We can have an audience if we work quickly."

Reaching the castle they stood at the entrance to Bridewell, where a crowd gathered round and pelted Simon with vegetables as he waited to enter the gates. He recognised this as the way he had been brought in the first time. The route of his escape through the back alleys was around the other side of the grim building. Hector opened the door to them. It clanged shut behind and once again Simon breathed the stuffy air laden with human misery. They tramped up the stairs and along a corridor. A man rattled the door of his cell.

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"Yo witch. I tell you come back. All they go out that way and this way they come back when they get catch. Now I watch you burn. I see many witch burn. They burn you right there." He pointed to the window of his cell, which looked out on to a patch of green at the top of the hill in front of the castle. The jailer banged his fist on the door and its occupant jumped away. Simon was hustled into a cell several doors down and secured with heavy chains.

The two clerics said nothing to each other as they made their way down the gloomy corridor to the outside world. It was a relief to exit the prison and hear once again the hubbub of the city. It reminded them of the value of freedom. After instructing a guard to make the necessary preparations they went for a quick lunch returning at their leisure to escort the prisoner to his doom.

Simon was pale and his eyes took a while to adjust to the light as he emerged from the building. His chains replaced once again by ropes. He was made to stand on a cart which men loaded with wood freshly cut from live trees all the pieces wet with sap. His bicycle was fetched from somewhere and placed on its side on top. He was given a piece of paper and a huge stake about ten feet in length and four inches thick to carry on his shoulders as they travelled along. Finally he was presented with a bill for one shilling and sixpence farthing for his accommodation, ropes and chains, the wood and the hire of the cart. The farthing was for the two pieces of paper on which his death sentence and the bill itself had been written. He felt in his jeans and found the coins Richard's father had given him, which he had not had the chance to try spending. He offered them to the guard, who inspected them suspiciously then slipped them into his pouch.

The cart trundled through the streets and crowds gathered to watch. He did not know how to carry the wooden stake so it stuck out over the side of the cart causing spectators to scatter this way and that. Simon looked up to see the thin locks of the mad prisoner staring through the bars. He must be disappointed, he thought, that the witch was being taken all the way to Mill Brook so he would not be able to observe then remembered what the spectacle was going to be and concentrated his mind on trying to think of a way out. Finally coming to the conclusion that this savage finale would put an end to his strange experiences and he would simply wake up in his own bed at home and everything would be normal again.

They passed a boy in a trap set behind a horse, a sight Simon had not seen in this primitive part of the town, and reached Mill Brook where all the population had turned out. The crowd hissed and spat. Reaching a low hillock the Witchfinder stood looking severe. Undoing the back of the cart he removed the wood. He took the stake from Simon and planted it into the ground.

"Now, Witch, we will see whether your master can protect you. When you meet with him this evening you will realise the mistake you make in following ungodly ways."

Simon's clothes were pulled off and thrown as an offering to the crowd. His bicycle was tied to the stake above his head. When they got to his boxers the executioner looked at them and decided to chuck them onto the top of the stake above the bike where they caught the bars and fluttered like a flag in the breeze. He was made to stand on top of the pile of wood and fastened to the stake by a rope around his chest, leaving his hands and feet free. The sharp twigs spiked painfully into the sensitive soles of his feet. Bill Williams came up to him.

"Son of the bishop are you? Tell us what you did to him and maybe we'll give you a timely death." Like most of the villagers he was carrying ammunition, in this case two large carrots.

A man produced a flint and some steel and spent more than twenty minutes sparking it against the damp wood with little effect.

"Oh you load of ignorant cretins," cried Simon in despair. Haven't you ever heard of a lighter?"

The man looked up and resumed his sparking. One of the crowd, however, who happened to have caught Simon's trousers, had found his lighter and started experimenting with it. He jumped in alarm when flames came out but soon mastered it and brought it to the front of the crowd.

"'Ere you be. 'Tis the Divvil's own work though. Gert right for a witch I trow."

"Too bad for thee, young 'un," said the Witchfinder. "'Twere near on time we would have had to set you free, if the Lord had allowed thee 'alf an hour without wood catching. Law of Constitutinidas wist." They applied the lighter to the wood and though it had to crackle and sputter into life a column of smoke soon issued.

Simon wet himself at the sight of the emerging flames and the flow managed to extinguish the fire into a hissing mass of smoke and steam. A voice from the crowd called out, "Time up. The shadow's past the marker."

"Doesn't matter," shouted Mister Perthwick angrily. "The wood's been lit in time and that's enough. Who cares if the young fool's managed to find a way of putting it out?"

There was a heated debate among the crowd over whether Simon should be freed under constitutinidas or not. Some villagers started fighting and pelting each othe with vegetables that had been intended for the victime. Simon watched on, struggling vainly against the tight bonds. Eventually they sided with Mister Perthwick and the lighter was reapplied.

As the smoke rose to his knees he wriggled as much as he could. The crowd roared with delight. A woman threw a potato which hit him painfully in the tummy. He shouted an obscenity which in return encouraged the mob. He spent time searching the faces for someone he knew. Bill Williams was keeping to the back of the crowd. Near him Kylie and Osbert. Further to the left Mr Perthwick, who seemed peculiarly to have acquired some kind of cabbage growing out of the side of his head. He was talking to the young boy on the horse they had passed earlier. And in the very far distance the castle. Simon fancied he could see a little face peering through the bars of the tall building at the front.

Flames tickled his feet as the light breeze blew them this way and that and he tried to lift his legs up out of the way. He discovered he was tied so securely to the stake that he could raise them to knee level. He managed to get them high enough so he could hold the ankles awkwardly with his the free part of his hands. The crowd screamed for the fire to rise higher. Simon looked at the flames and thought he could hold out despite the rising heat. But the rope slipping a little edged him nearer to his destruction.

Mister Perthwick, the boy on the horse and the Reverend Palsey seemed to be having an argument. The boy kept pointing towards Simon. He rode through the crowd, who made way for him and many of them turned away from the bonfire to bow as he passed. He called to some of the men standing near the fire.

"Hey, you men. I want that instrument. Extinguish the fire immediately."

They looked towards Mister Perthwick who seemed to be suffering a fit of apoplexy. Brown liquid oozed from the swellings on his head. They looked back again at the boy, not knowing whom to obey. The boy took a pouch from his belt and gave it to one of the men who looked inside and quickly closed it. Picking up up a bucket of water the man threw it onto the flames. A cloud of steam made Simon disappear into a closed universe. His skin turned bright pink. Eventually the mist subsided and he was left shivering on top of a pile of damp half-burnt wood.

"Thanks, whoever you are," he said to the boy. "You saved my life."

"What? Oh, you." He looked up at the bike perched above Simon's head. "I just didn't want to get it damaged. It looks like a good toy."

He instructed the men to take the bike down and load it on a cart. Meanwhile there was a commotion in the crowd as it had been discovered that Mister Perthwick had finally expired. The surgeon hurriedly pronounced his death as due to natural decay. Some villagers covered the body and dragged it away to one of the houses.

"Well what shall we do with him now?" asked one of the villagers. "Now the old parson's dead it don't seem we got no quarrel with him. But he can't stay here." They looked around but there was no sign of the Witchfinder or the Reverend to settle the argument.

The boy looked at Simon, naked and sooty. "I suppose you could come with me. I presume you're not married. Forgive me, I am His Royal Excellency the most noble and benevolent Prince Rupert. We could use a young man like you to provide a husband for Princess Rose the Beautiful."

The crowd gasped as the news travelled round. "It were better to burn 'im all over again," muttered a voice. Simon thought he'd prefer being married to a princess, whether he had choice or not. So leaving his clothes behind with the villagers he got into the cart his bike almost thrown on top of him and the strange prince on the seat at the front behind the horse and his shorts still fluttering from the handlebars and started the long jolting journey to London.