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the marzipan all up inside my nostrils.

Chapter 4
    On no account will I speak to this man first.
    If it’s the Devil himself kneeling before me, then I have nothing to say to him. And if he is God? Well, there’s more chance of me being Moses than there is of this fella being God. That much is for certain. He don’t have the stature. Not by a long way.
    Oh, he looks smart enough. I get a good look at him as he kneels over a tiny silver pot, pouring water from a kettle that he takes from the fire to make tea. He dresses like a gentleman, but his eyes are far too busy in his head. And they’re little. He keeps ’em wide open and they dart about like he can’t decide on any one thing to look at. Makes me think he’s the kind of man who ain’t got full control of his nerves.
    He wears a brown suit that would fit a slimmer man, and though he has no waistcoat he wears a plain shirt with an old silk necktie. The lining of his brown bowler hat has come away at the back and hangs a full inch below the rim.
    And then there is his smell. He smells of … well … he smells of many things and none of ’em are fresh, ’cept maybe the sweetness of the liquorice stick he has in his mouth. It’sa relief when he straightens up and walks back over to the mule that still stands a few steps to the side of us, giving me the evil eye.
    I lower my head, not wanting to appear confrontational to either of ’em.
    ‘Go on over to the shade of that tree.’
    There’s that voice again. High-pitched. Like a girl, only not a girl. Not ladylike in any way. I see an arc of four trees, only littl’uns, hunched up against the wind that must blow through here most times. They’ve got enough leaves to give me some shelter from the sun, but it ain’t easy to stand with my hands tied behind my back, so I scramble across on my knees till I’m sitting at the foot of a trunk. I can see we are somewhere on a plain, in the lee of a low hill. A brook trickles through the ground behind us, so it’s not exactly desert, though it sure ain’t no hospitable place.
    He takes a good long look at me. ‘You ain’t the fella I was expecting. I was told you’d be younger.’
    ‘That’d be my brother.’
    The man crouches down. ‘That’s right, that’s right. That’s what the priest said.’
    He puts his face up close to mine and sniffs. He takes hold of the lid under my eye and pulls it down so I can feel the air on my eyeball where it shouldn’t be. I’m holding my breath, but he opens my mouth to look at my teeth, and when I breathe in his face he grimaces. He runs a finger along my gums, then stands, leaving me open-mouthed. ‘How old are you, boy?’ He chews on the liquorice stick and it moves from one side of his mouth to the other. When I hesitate, he slaps my face. ‘I asked you a question.’
    ‘I’m twelve, sir,’ I say quickly. ‘Close to turning thirteen, I think.’
    ‘Don’t look it.’ He sniffs. ‘Expect you haven’t been fed much. Expect you haven’t been made to work too hard neither.’
    He walks back to his teapot and produces a china cup and saucer from a hinged wooden box that he has on the ground. He pours himself a cup, then sits down in the dirt, lifts it to his lips and drinks, his little finger all cock-a-hoop and dainty. He don’t sip quietly.
    I watch him, wondering whether he really could be the Devil. I got a bump on the back of my head, all bruised and tender, which tells me that whatever my fate is, it ain’t gonna be good. But maybe there’s still hope. Maybe this place is some sort of purgatory, the sort of place where I might still be able to influence how things turn out and if it is, I gotta have faith.
    I start to pray, out loud, speaking the words of the 27th Psalm, which I know by heart. ‘‘‘The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”’
    The man looks up at me but I ignore him.
    ‘“When evildoers assail