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“Not unless you've suddenly decided to start giving things away.”
He lets out a great belly laugh. “Tha'll be waitin' a long while for that, lass!”
“Worth asking.”
While he measures out the herbs, I set my basket down and dig about beneath my skirts for my purse. Honestly, I've no idea how anybody is supposed to keep their money safe in York. Between the crowds and the bloody great folds of fabric I'm wearing, a thief could probably make off with the whole thing without my noticing until winter next.
“There we are, lass.” Oswald sets two neatly tied parcels on the counter. “That'll be fourpence.”
“Fourpence? Good God, Oswald, are you selling me the herbs or the whole bloody field?”
“Best feverfew in York, that is.”
“Hmm. So you keep telling me.”
I loosen the strings of my purse and tip a few coins into my palm, picking through them while Oswald busies himself with another customer.
“Tha's from Lancashire, aren't tha?”
I glance up to find a woman beside me, wrapped in a thick woollen shawl, her nose red from the cold.
“I am, yes,” I say slowly, picking a penny from my palm. “Why?”
“Thought I recognised the way tha speaks.” She steps a little closer, lowering her voice beneath the market noise. “Is it true, then? What they're saying about that mad priest?”
I pause, another coin caught between my fingertips. “The mad priest?”
“Aye. Tha must have heard about him.”
“I’m afraid you'll have to be a little more specific. There are rather a lot of priests in Lancashire, and I daresay half of them are mad.”
She glances towards the passing crowds before leaning a little closer. “Folk say there's one storming about the Pennines with a band of holy brothers following him. Burning houses and preaching about some devil that's got loose amongst them.”
My gut tightens. Surely not. There must be dozens of religious men wandering about the north preaching about the Devil, and I've no intention of spoiling my own day by worrying about…
“Oh, lovely,” I say, returning my attention to my purse with trembling fingers. “That sounds like a perfectly reasonable use of one's time.”
“I'm serious, lass.” She catches my sleeve before I can turn back to Oswald. “My sister's lad came through Skipton three days past, and he says there's whole villages frightened to open their doors. The priest's been going from house to house, demanding to know if anybody's seen a woman travelling with a devil.”
“A woman travelling with a devil?” I repeat.
“Aye! Though nobody seems to know who she is. Some reckon she's a witch, but I've heard all sorts.” She peers at me expectantly. “Tha's not heard owt about her, then?”
“I'm afraid not. Though if I happen upon a devil whilst I'm out shopping, I'll be sure to ask whether he's seen her.”
She chuckles, clutching her basket a little higher against her hip, but her attention’s over my shoulder. I’ve given her nothing worth carrying home, apparently, and she slips away through the press to the next stall, where a man’s trying to choose onions in peace.
“Have you heard about the dreadful business up north?” she asks him, leaning in with the very same whisper.
I turn back to Oswald, pay him, tuck my goods into my basket, and step into the crowd.
A priest. A woman. A devil.
There are plenty of priests in the north, plenty of women unfortunate enough to know them, and, if half the holy folk are to be believed, devils lurking beneath every loose floorboard and suspicious-looking turnip. It need not be Gideon. It almost certainly isn’t Gideon. When we left Beswick, he was still there, shouting himself hoarse at a village that had already grown far too used to shouting, and unless he has taken to sprouting wings, he can’t possibly have followed us all this way.
He does not know where we are.
I squeeze past a porter struggling beneath a sack of grain and nearly catch my basket on the corner of a fishmonger’s table. A woman curses me. I apologise without meaning it and keep walking.
