The soldiers were not embarrassed. One tied her hands, pulling the knots behind her back so tight that she cried out. Another soldier laughed. “Watch it, Jimmy! She’ll put a spell on you!”

Their captain snapped at them to be quiet. He felt uneasy performing this duty, even troubled by it. He had believed the law to be sacred, yet only the night before he had taken dinner with his parents at Caleb Higbed’s house and the lawyer had laughed when asked about the trial. “Of course it’s all nonsense! There are no witches! That girl’s no witch! But the law says there are witches, so there are! This is very fine pork.”

At least, the captain thought, the girl was quiet. She seemed drained of life and emotion. The only remnant of her last, troubled night was the drawn look on her face, her red eyes, and one quick glance she gave him that seemed, somehow, to reek of the terror he guessed she must feel. The captain, wishing he had thought before her hands were tied, stepped forward with a leather bag in his hands. It seemed heavy and had a long, looped thong hanging from its neck. He smiled nervously. This was not part of his duty, but his father had suggested it and the captain was glad. “Mrs. Scammell?”

The eyes looked at him. She said nothing. She could, he thought, have been miles away.

He hefted the bag in his hands, smiled. “Gunpowder, Mrs. Scammell. If it can be hung about your neck, under your shift, it will give you a swift end.”

“Gunpowder!” Faithful Unto Death frowned. “Gunpowder? On whose orders, Captain?”

“No one’s, sir. It’s customary.”

“I doubt that.” Faithful Unto Death Hervey smiled. “The witch’s victims did not have a swift end, so why should she? No, Captain, no. Take it away. She must suffer the rigors of the law!” He turned back to Campion, and his onion-smelling breath hissed on her face. “‘Ye have plowed wickedness,’ woman, ‘and ye have reaped iniquity.’ Repent! It is not too late! Repent!”

She said nothing, not even when the soldiers pushed her toward the door and one of them fondled her breasts through the cotton shift.

“Stop it!” the captain shouted.

The girl seemed oblivious.

A bell sounded the single, flat note that told the world it was a quarter past the hour. The captain looked at the beautiful, pale face. “We must go.”

She walked as if in a trance, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, crossing the Archbishop’s footprints in the grassed courtyard. Behind her and above her, at a barred window, the Archbishop made the sign of the cross toward her. One day, he knew, he would tread the same path and walk toward a death that the Puritans would applaud. He watched her disappear beneath the archway, then turned back into his quiet room.

Some of the crowd were calling out, impatient for the witch to be brought, while others waited more good-naturedly and pointed out there were still fifteen minutes to go. A great pathway had been cleared by soldiers from the Tower’s gateway to the heaped faggots, a road that was kept clear by levelled pikes and by hard pushing. Some vendors were allowed into the roadway to sell pies, ale, or the rotted fruit that always sold well at executions and was hurled at the victim.