It seemed to Campion that every thought, every action, took minutes for her. She ate clumsily, still not understanding what was happening, though the feel of clean skin, of freedom from lice, of hair that was washed fine, was wonderful to her. It seemed heavenly. She cried, and the woman patted her.

“That’s all right, dear, you cry. It’s good for you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

The woman smiled. “You’ve got friends now, dear. Friends. We all need friends. Now eat up all the pastry! That’s it! That’s a good girl.”

They let her sleep. When she woke it was evening. A fire burned in the small parlor and one of the women waited with a jug of wine and yet more food. Campion wore a great wool robe, and her hair was tied in a ribbon. The woman smiled. “Warm enough, dear?”

“Yes.”

“You sit by the fire.”

It was marvellous to be clean, to be warm, but she still felt filthy inside. She shrank from the memory of Faithful Unto Death touching her, sliding his dry hands over her skin. Nothing, she thought, could ever be the same again. She had been mired in Hervey’s filth, and it could not be removed. Yet what did it matter? She had no future. Someone had paid for this comfort—she assumed it was Lady Margaret for she could think of no one else, and she knew it to be a kindness that her last days on this earth should not be spent in filth. She looked at the woman. “How’s Toby?”

“Toby? I don’t know any Tobys, dear. We’ve got a syllabub in the kitchen. Would you like some?”

The next day, standing at the barred window of the bedroom, she looked down on a small, graying man who walked up and down in the tiny courtyard beneath her window. He walked the same course every day so that his shoes had made scars on the grass. One of her new jailers nodded down at him. “That’s the Archbishop, dear.”

“William Laud?”

“That’s right, dear. He’s been cut down to size.” She laughed. “He’ll be cut down some more soon, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Campion watched the Archbishop of Canterbury as he walked, up and down, up and down, his head bowed over a book. He was a prisoner like her. Like her he faced the services of the executioner. He looked up once, saw her, and gave a slight inclination of his head. She raised a hand and he smiled. Thereafter she looked for him each day, and he for her, and they would smile through the window bars.

Then, as if her blessings could only increase, a lawyer came to see her. He was called Francis Lapthorne and he exuded certainty that she could win her trial. The Grand Jury had committed her to judge and jury. She asked Mr. Lapthorne who had sent him, but he just smiled and winked. “Now that would be dangerous, Miss Slythe, most dangerous. Even stone walls have ears! But be glad I’m here.”