LITMIR.BIZ

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far down the hill. They were OK. They had escaped. He reached for a rock, to haul himself to his feet.

      Amy whispered, fiercely: ‘Wait.’

      He felt the jarring fear return.

      Amy hissed again. ‘What’s that?’

      She was pointing. David squinted, and froze. About five hundred yards away a tall, thin, shadowy figure was treading slowly through the mist, looking this way and that; the drifting fog made it hard to identify, but not impossible.

      ‘Miguel?’

      Her question was surely unnecessary. It was surely Miguel. The black wolf, stalking them through the woods.

      He grabbed her hand again. ‘Come on…’

      She nodded, saying nothing; together they backed away, slithering into the deeper darkness of the woods; slowly, agonizingly, they retreated and crawled over damp mossy logs, trying not to break the smallest twig or scrunch the tiniest leaf.

      David glanced behind but couldn’t be sure what he was witnessing. Was that really Miguel – still hunting them down? The mist shifted in the wind, black figures turned out to be trees, trees bent in the drizzly wind, with a forlorn mewling sound.

      He turned and concentrated: searching out a route through the bleak, autumnal maze.

      ‘Down here –’

      David had no idea where he was leading Amy – just away from Miguel. For sixty or seventy minutes they descended; the forest was thick and treacherous. Several times Amy slipped; many times, David felt himself skidding on the leaves and muck. Despite the cold of the dank mountain forests, he was sweating. Amy’s hand was clammy in his. And still he could hear, or he could imagine hearing, the soft, menacing crackle of someone behind them. Or maybe it was just another pottok.

      The incline lessened, the black of the crowding wet trees yielded to whiteness – sky and light. They were approaching what looked like a path. An hour of crawling and fear had brought them to civilization.

      ‘Here…down here.’ He reached for her hand again. They were ducking under an old half-fallen oak. Brambles guarded the route. The rocky path turned and twisted, towards a little valley.

      Amy spoke: ‘I know where we are.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘Very near Zugarramurdi.’ She pointed at the clearing mists. ‘A village, it’s just over there, over the hill.’

      ‘So why are we waiting – let’s do it! We can go to a cafe and –’

      ‘No. Wait!’ Her voice was sharp, insistent, frightened. ‘He knows these forests…He’ll expect us to go there, to head there. We need…’ She was reaching in her pocket, pulling out her phone. ‘We need to hide,’ she said, ‘until someone can help, can fetch us.’

      She clambered a few yards up the damp slope, apparently to improve her signal. He watched her key a number, heard her say Zara and por favor in desperate whispers; he guessed it was her friend the journalist, Zara Garcia. Moments later she pocketed the phone and gave him her attention: ‘OK, she’s coming to the village. It’ll take her half an hour.’

      ‘But where do we hide…until…?’

      ‘This way.’

      She was already descending with an air of quiet purpose. Bewildered and clumsy, he followed behind, grasping at tree roots to stay upright. Finally the muddy path curved and widened – to reveal a forecourt of natural flagstones. And beyond that, the gasping mouth of a mighty cave.

      Amy gestured. ‘The witch’s cave of Zugarramurdi.’

      The enormous cavern was open at either end, a natural rock tunnel with a stream running along the bottom – like a trickle of sewer water in an enormous concrete pipe. Dim grey light bounced from the bubbling water, flickering on the elongated cave roof.

      ‘The what cave?’

      Her expression was fixed.

      ‘The witch’s cave. Zugarramurdi. We can hide here. These cave systems are endless.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      She didn’t wait to give him an answer; and maybe, David surmised, she was right. Their escape through the woods had been exhausting, he yearned to rest; Amy looked utterly wearied, her face smeared with mud. They needed to hide out for half an hour.

      Her careful steps led them along a secondary path that ducked beneath the roof of stone. It fed onto a flat rockshelf overlooking the main cavernous space, the vast echoing tunnel. All around, shadowy recesses ate into the soft white rock, speaking of further tunnels. Amy was correct, they had entered a labyrinth of passages and chambers. Beckoning them deeper inside.

      They sat down. The dry warm stone felt like silk after the chilling misery of their escape through the woods.

      David rested his head against the rock, exhausted. He closed his eyes. And then he opened them, alert and frightened. He shook the sleepiness from his head and gazed out over the cavern.

      ‘You said this is the witch’s cave.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So, why is it called that?’

      She shrugged, bleakly.

      ‘Quite an alarming story. José told me. He loved telling this story.’

      ‘And?’

      Amy’s smile was replete with tiredness. ‘You always want to know.’

      ‘I always want to know. Please, tell me something. I don’t want to risk falling asleep.’

      ‘OK. Well.’ She moued: thinking, and remembering. ‘This cave, and the meadows beyond, this was the akelarre, the place where the Basque witches held their Sabbaths.’

      He went to ask a question; she silenced him with a gesture. And explained.

      ‘About four hundred years ago Zugarramurdi was the centre of a huge witch craze. A French witch hunter, Pierre De Lancre, became convinced that…’ Amy grimaced. ‘He decided that all Basques were essentially witches. Because the Basques were so different, the easily identifiable minority. They were the other.’

      ‘You mean…like the Jews?’

      ‘Of course. It began around…1610. A Basque girl who had been working away from home, in Ciboure, near Saint Jean de Luz on the coast, she came back to her village in the hills. To Zugarramurdi.’

      The reflected light of the stream bounced off the cavern ceiling. Stalactites pierced the emptiness.

      ‘The young woman’s name was Maria de Ximildegui. She began to denounce her friends and relatives – as witches. The local priests called in the Inquisition. Children were dragged from their families and interrogated. The kids started to report nightmares, dreams of naked greased-up witches who took them on strange flights, to the Devil’s sabbat.

      ‘Satan would appear as a huge billygoat, walking on his hind legs. He had intercourse with the women and children. He has, apparently, a very thick and icy black penis. Afterwards he would mark them on the forehead with his claw. The infamous marks of the Devil. Showing that he had possessed them.’

      Amy stared at David, deadpan. He didn’t know what to say; whether to laugh or protest. She continued the story, her voice echoing softly in the cavern. ‘And so the craze began. The priests reported their findings, and the witch panic spread down the valley, into Elizondo, Lesaka, San Sebastian. Thousands were arrested, David, literally thousands of women, men, children…And then the priests went to work, putting people to the rack, pricking them for blood, torturing everyone.’

      David was trying not to think about her scar. He said: ‘But…they did the same across Europe, right, it wasn’t that unusual? Around that time. It was like Salem, it was just

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