Will moistened his lips. “Yes, sir.—She and a black man were together—yes, please Your Honour, standing locked together—”
“The black man was the leech?”
“We didn’t know it, then, sir—How could we,” said Will, “when he was three miles the other side of Hawthorn with a guard? But I know it now. It was the leech.—And mother and I went on and knocked at the door, and she opened it—and there was nobody there but Joan—Joan and the grey and white cat.”
“You stayed no time in that cottage?”
“No, sir, please Your Honour. There was that that frightened us.”
Will the smith’s son was motioned down. They set Mother Spuraway again in the eye of the court—Mother Spuraway, wrecked until she was nigh of the fellowship of Elspeth No-Wit. “You have told us that on this Sunday evening you were running in the shape of a hare through field and copse by the Hawthorn road. We have obtained from you that you saw the leech part from his natural body, having by black magic so blinded the guard that they went on bearing with them but a shadow, a double, and yet unsuspecting that cheat. Now tell us what the sorcerer did.”
Mother Spuraway plucked at the stuff of her kirtle. “He mounted in the air.—Storm—storm—break storm!”
“He went toward Hawthorn Wood?”
“Yes, oh, yes! Hawthorn Wood.... Rue around the burned cot.”