The river swept its southern wall, while a moat, as filthy and stinking as the sewer it was, guarded its other three sides. On the hill to the northwest London’s crowds gathered for public executions.

The Tower of London was a royal palace, an armory, a garrison, a zoo, and the strongest prison in the city. In its cells were priests and noblemen, soldiers and civilians, all of them deemed to be enemies of the Lord’s anointed. The prisoners here were not the common prisoners, not the murderers and thieves, but the enemies of the revolution. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, upholder of the Divine Right of Kings, was the most notorious.

At nightfall, when Campion came beneath the outer gates for the first time, the Tower’s Parliamentary governor had been puzzled, even irate. “Who is she?”

“Dorcas Slythe.”

“So?” He reluctantly took the warrant given him by a trooper. He grunted when he saw the seal of the Committee of Safety. “Charge?”

“Witchcraft and murder.”

The governor sneered. “Put her in the clink.”

The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was not overawed by the Tower’s governor. “She may be a Papist spy.”

“Ah.” The governor frowned at the warrant. “It says nothing about that here.”

“You may argue with the Committee of Safety. If you prefer, I can ask Sir Grenville Cony to explain.”

The governor glanced up. “Sir Grenville? That’s different.” He climbed on to the step of the coach and looked inside. “Is she to have privileges?”

“None.”

The Governor, who was annoyed at being summoned from his quarters by the captain of the guard to deal with the unexpected prisoner, bawled at the captain to do the paperwork. Campion was taken from the coach, the hooves of the horses were loud as they turned the cumbersome vehicle about and then the gates clashed shut. She was a prisoner.

There was no window in Campion’s cell. The only light, feeble at best, came from the tallow candles that lit the tunnel beyond the door’s grille.

The cell floor was stone. In one corner was a heap of old, stale straw. There was no furniture. She was given one blanket, ridden with lice, but it was hopeless against the cold. As there was no day or night in this place, so there was no season but winter.

She shivered. She moaned to herself, and sometimes she sang in a small voice that was thin in the dank gloom. She rocked herself in the straw corner, huddled with the blanket, and the cell reeked with the stench of sewage. Rats scuttled about, their claws loud on the stone.

She lost count of time, lost count of the number of pots of thin gruel that were pushed through the door. The bread was rock hard. She stank. Her hair was matted, her body bitten by lice, and her sleep was broken by the clanging of doors and the scraping of bolts that told her other prisoners were somewhere in these cells.