Martinmas: A Hew Cullan Short Story

In St Salvator’s college at the start of the academic year a young student claims that he has seen the ghost of a Spanish soldier. Giles and Hew dismiss this as the fevered product of a wild imagination; the students are unsettled by a spate of violent storms, and fears of the apocalypse readily resurge. In the close confines of college, they can be contained. But when a merchant dies, on the feast of St Martin known as `killing time’, with the words `dead Spaniard’ the last upon his lips, the terror of the students spills out to the streets, and Hew is called upon to rid the town of ghosts.