Cried over the witches?" I looked at him blankly for a moment. But it stirred something painful, something humiliating. Too many of my memories had that quality. And now I had to remember crying over witches. "I don't remember," I said.
"We were little boys. And the priest was teaching us our prayers. And the priest took us out to see the place where they burnt the witches in the old days, the old stakes and the
blackened ground."
"Ah, that place." I shuddered. "That horrid, horrid place."
"You began to scream and to cry. They sent someone for the Marquise herself because your nurse couldn't quiet you."
"I was a dreadful child," I said, trying to shrug it off. Of course I did remember now --screaming, being carried home, nightmares about the fires. Someone bathing my forehead and sayi
