It’s Spring again in the village of Montacute, and people want nothing more than to celebrate the season with maypole dances, festivals, and visits from the nobility. The festivities are dampened, though, when a young boy turns up dead outside the village. Then they learn that three other boys have also disappeared lately. To the parson, this tragedy is a perfect excuse to kick off the only thing guaranteed to get his spring-giddy parishioners back to church – a witch hunt. Cecily may have occasional visions, but that doesn’t make her a witch! Fatherless and without friends, Cess knows she’s lucky to be employed by a grand estate like Montacute House, even if it is as a poultry girl. On her thirteenth birthday, Cess finds a precious locket in one of her chicken coops, a strange discovery that’s quickly overshadowed by her best friend John’s disappearance two days later. The parson has already started planting rumors that the missing boys were bewitched, and the villagers think Cecily may be the culprit.  The only way Cess can prove her innocence is by finding John, but she’s soon embroiled in a plot that threatens her world and forces her to draw upon powers she never knew she possessed. Witchcraft, politics and religious ambition combine in this gripping and wonderfully realized novel set in the Somerset of the 1500s.