“And the charge of murder?”

“Guilty.”

Sir John half expected the girl to cry out, but she kept her composure as she had throughout the trial. Sir John looked at her. A pretty thing, he thought, but the devil often chose the best. He looked sardonically at Caleb Higbed. “You had a plea, Mr. Higbed?”

Caleb Higbed shook his head, smiled. “The substance of the plea is already before your Lordship, unless you wish it repeated?”

“No, no!” Sir John closed his great book. He picked up his black cap and stared at the scarlet-dressed prisoner. A few seconds before she had been on trial, now she was a witch and a murderess. Sir John’s mouth curved in malevolent dislike.

“Dorcas Scammell, you have been found guilty of offenses so vile that they defy Christian comprehension. You willingly entered into a pact with the devil and you thereafter used the sorcerous powers he gave you to murder your husband, Samuel Scammell.

“The penalty for witchcraft is hanging. Parliament, in its wisdom, decreed that should be so, but you have also been found guilty of your husband’s murder for which the penalty is death by burning.” He shifted heavily in the uncomfortable chair. He hated trials in the Tower, a drafty, cold, inconvenient place.

“I would bring it to the court’s attention, and for the edification of those lawyers here who will one day bear my responsibilities, that there was a hallowed belief in this land that witches should be burned. The purpose was not to give pain, but to prevent the spirit of evil from passing away from the body of the witch into her family. This seems to me to be a precaution worthy of this court. Therefore, using the discretion given me by your conviction of murder, I sentence you, Dorcas Scammell, to be taken tomorrow forenoon to a place of execution, and there burned to your deserved death. May God have mercy on your soul.”

There was a second’s silence in the courtroom, every eye on Campion, and then a great explosion of exalted applause.

Campion, her face pale, her hands tied behind her back, did not move a muscle. She showed no shock, no distress, nothing. Then the guards turned her and led her away.

The next day dawned as fine as any man could wish. There was a feeling of cleanness to the city, as if the rain had scoured it and the night wind aired it, and in the morning the burgeoning crowd on Tower Hill saw the last, high, ragged clouds fleeing eastward.

The crowd was huge, as big, some said, as that which had collected for the Earl of Strafford’s death. They were in good mood, cheering as the gibbet was taken down and the wagonloads of faggots brought to the stake which had been hammered between the cobbles. The crowd shouted at the workmen, “Build it high!”

“Remember the people at the back!”

The workmen piled it eight feet high and only the shortness of the stake prevented them building it higher. They provoked laughs by pretending to warm their hands at the unlit pile, but stood respectfully back when the executioner came to inspect their work.