IN TOWN
Guilhem didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he talked to himself. “This is the country,” Guilhem was full of self-reassurance. “Artemisia is not of us. I do not even need to confess this.”
Finally he compromised. He confessed to sleeping with a fairy, to Fr Peire. After confession he hung around the village for a bit, not wanting to go home. He became vastly drunk and told every man present that he had slept with a woman from under the hill. He talked about it as a form of exorcism. He had exorcised them, as if they were demons, by sleeping with her. Alcohol was as effective as bell, book and candle, he told Sibilla and Berta. Fairies aren’t men, he told Guilhem-the-smith.
18 December
Under the hills, Luke was overseeing first aid, his shoulder and his beard expressing sympathy,
