It was then that the pastor, whose eyes had so chilled my youthful blood, returned to grace the narrative of my existence with the cruelty of his Midas touch. He had followed his wife to the square that day, for one reason or another, perhaps to barter for a bottle of Italian wine or to flirt with the milkmaid who sold him his butter. It did not matter. What mattered was what he saw - two souls united in love, that new, burning, brutal thing called love, shared so desperately and in its rawest, truest form between myself and his wife, his perfect wife. 

I do not have a clear recollection of what happened next. There was a shout, the pastor's, and the rage in his voice was of a kind that could not be quelled by words or diplomacy. It was a violent, bestial sound and I believe it was in that moment that I knew I was to die. He pushed through the square towards us, casting aside children and knocking fresh produce to the floor as though it were worth less than nothing. With one furious, fluid movement, he grasped me by my throat and tossed me to the soil. Tears slid down my burning cheeks and my heart beat at my ribcage, begging me to run, to hide, to scream. There was a pain in my chest then, yes, but nothing like that I had felt so often in my love's drawing room. This pain was different - it felt as though my heart had been turned to glass and was shattering within my chest, scraping against my vital organs, exploding into shards within the vessels that carried my blood. All of my body and soul were to be consumed by my treacherous heart and so I lay, a broken doll, nothing more than wood, straw and patches of colour, cast away like shit onto the cruel dirt and cobbles of my market streets.

"You bitch," he spat, his canine teeth grinding against one another. "You fucking bitch. I always knew you were one of them."

"Harry, please," his wife grasped at his chest, pulling him close, trying to force him to look into her tear-filled eyes - I think she was trying to appeal to some human instinct within his granite heart, to invoke the protectiveness, the compassion, a groom ought have for his bride. "She's just a child." 

"She's not a child," he did not meet her gaze. "She's a witch."

"No, no, Harry, she's young, it was an amicable gesture," caressing his bricklike jaw with shaking hands, the pastor's wife continued to beseech. "She's not a witch, I know her, she's good, she's a good girl. Isn't that right? She's a friend, and nothing more - she kissed my cheek, you must not have seen, my love. You kissed my cheek, didn't you?" 

She turned her eyes to me, soft, floral eyes whose attention seemed to me to be worth all the more than her husband's venom. I nodded, unable to force my bleeding lips to lie. 

The pastor seemed to pause in his tirade and turned to face his wife. Those seconds in which he considered his judgement were to me an eternity. Exhaling forcefully from his flared nostrils, he turned away from both of us altogether, focusing his gaze on the woman selling her wares in the stall behind us. 

"Rosemary," he demanded. "Is it true that you lost six of your chickens this year?"

"Yes, Father," she responded, dutifully bowing her head. "My son found them, sir, with claw marks, bites and the lot - all mauled, all broken, all bloodied. We was distraught, sir."

"Thank you, Rosemary," graciously, the pastor turned his attention to a ragged-looking man across the square. "Bartholomew?"

"Yes, Father," the raggedy man kept his gaze low to the ground. His eyes flickered towards my defeated form once, perhaps twice, and I knew he had pity for me. It is funny, I think, how even the poorest in our twisted civilisation can find sympathy in their hearts for those others who are suffering, whilst the most blessed seem to shun all those whose lives are not so sanitised as their own. I knew that this broken man would keep me in his prayers, as I would keep him in mine - bound by the unspoken oath of shared misery.

But what could prayer do to save me from the fury of a holy man?

"Is it true that your home was destroyed in a fire just six weeks ago, Bartholomew?" the pastor arched a single eyebrow in my direction and in that instant I knew his plan.

"Six weeks and four days, sir, yes," swallowing, the man clutched at his tattered clothing anxiously.

"Tragic."

"It was, Father, I... I lost my little girl," Bartholomew began to tremble, his eyes shining with pain. "She was only sixteen, but she's with the angels now." 

"Yes, yes," the pastor muttered, turning to his final victim. "My love."

His wife stared at him, aghast. "Harry?" 

"Do you remember when our son was only a few weeks old?" 

"Like it was yesterday, Harry."

"It very nearly was as you bore him so late," the pastor smirked. "When he had spent but a few fortnights on this earth, we were forced to call the physician, were we not?" 

"Yes, Harry."

"Why did we call the physician?"

"Because he had marks on his cheeks, red, blistering marks." 

"How many were there, my love?"

She choked on her words as they escaped her lips, knowing that they were my condemnation. "Six." 

"Six," the pastor's eyes glinted with satisfaction as he appraised the people of the square. "Six of Madam Carpenter's chickens died. Master Ashdown's house was lost to flames but six weeks ago. My son was, while still so young, cursed with six marks of the devil. Six. Six. Six."

"Perhaps a witch does live amongst us," Master Ashdown protested, casting his concerned gaze to me openly now. "But how are we to know it is this girl?"

"She has just been caught, in broad daylight, attempting to solicit another woman, undoubtedly to coax her into a cursed coven," the pastor shook his head with righteous fury. "We cannot stand for this. We will not stand for this. We shall take her to the river this instant and if this witch survives, she will burn."

"No!" his wife clapped her hands to her mouth, tears now streaming from her eyes. "But, Harry, what if she does not?" 

"Then she is an innocent woman and we will bury her as such," he replied, teeth gritted. 

With a grip so tight that my wrist burned red beneath it, he dragged me along the soil towards the miry banks of the River Syngian. I offered no protest, how could I? Instead, I cast my eyes skyward, hoping to spend my final moments in an appreciation of all the beauty that surrounded me. And there she was, sprinting in a desperate effort to keep up with me, her lacy hems doused with marsh soil and her cheeks aflame, the pastor's wife, my love, my Mathilde.  

In our time, the trialling of witches was frighteningly common, and the accusing of innocent women of being witches was even more prevalent. Just last summer, a young girl - Isolde, of a nearby village - had been thrown to the flames because her dough seemed to her husband to be too filled with bubbles, a doubtless mimicry of her cauldron simmering. This likely had nothing to do with her husband marrying their sixth neighbour to the left after an obligatory two day period of mourning. Oftentimes, trials were quite public - most people love the gore and drama of a public trial and execution, as it provides an exciting reprieve to the humdrum of everyday life - involving several examinations, a turn on the ducking stool and finally a very public incineration.  

The pastor chose to forego almost all of these carefully created steps, kneeling beside me as he fastened a large rock to my ankle with rope. "Any last words?" he muttered. 

"Yes," I whispered, my lips cracked and my voice hoarse from weeping. "You don't deserve her."

Those were indeed to be my last words as just a moment later he hurled me from the soggy mud of the riverbank into its frosty waters. I saw him set his jaw with a brutal kind of satisfaction as I fell. I saw Mathilde sobbing into his chest, reaching out a single, pale hand in a futile effort to meet mine as I sank. Her delicate fingers just grazed the surface of the water before she was pulled from the scene, kicking and sobbing, her voice ragged as she offered cries of my name to the empty air. 

I felt water weeds grasp at my skin, I felt as the world went blue and I felt as my lungs drained of precious air. My whole body seemed to fold in on itself as it settled, as gently as a feather, on the silt of the riverbed, the water my coffin. For a few seconds, I fought - with terror and desperation - to return to the surface, to the earth, to all that I knew, but I failed. I felt as my whole system of being was crushed from the inside out and I felt as the lids of my eyes closed to the water against my will. 

It is often said that your life flashes before you when you die. For me, this was the truth, for all my last thoughts were of Mathilde, the woman to whom I had bequeathed my earthly existence.