I have known Frankie for nearly seven years.

She is twenty-five years old and eight months pregnant.

I am thirty-nine years old and about to die or be pardoned.

Before dawn a young woman is shown into my bitterly cold cell. By the light of two candles I note that she is not much older than Barbara.

“What is your name?” I ask, as if the day is ordinary, which it is not. The girl remains mute, a reminder to me that I have no authority, even over a low servant. I try to smile so as not to frighten the girl. I could not bear to frighten her. She is life.

She pours water into a bowl and it steams in the icy air. I dip a cloth into it, enjoying the warmth on my cold hands. Every sense in me is greedy for what little there is left to experience. I stare into the small mirror the girl has brought and am shocked by how sad and tired I look. My hair, dirty gray strands among the gold, is pulled back from a face hollowed out by fear and regret.

I put the mirror down.

“Do you know how to dress me?”

“Yes, mistress.”

The girl unpins the black silk I have been wearing since the trial. The feel and smell of it is sickening and reminds me of the stench of the silk farm. Layers are peeled off until I am naked. The maid casts furtive and anxious glances at my shivering body, perhaps looking for signs of witchcraft: a birthmark shaped like a goat, a wart that bleeds, freckles in the shape of the Pope’s mitre, as had the confessor. There are mainly goosebumps. For the last time, I also look at my body, shaped by life. My breasts are sinewy from the suckling of six infants; my belly and hips scarred by the reversals of fortune that led them one year to be round, the next flat; my toes are slightly crossed from the long wearing of pointed shoes with heels. Yet my body has more good years left in it; years in which I could have cradled children and grandchildren. It grieves me that this good, strong body will go to waste.

The maid has brought a pile of clothes that I recognize as my own, and I take up a white undershirt. From the care with which it has been pressed, I can tell that Barbara has prepared it. That my daughter has had to perform such an onerous task is so dreadful I bury my face in the scented linen and weep. It is these unexpected moments of unbearable pain that bring death closer than all Dr. Whiting’s talk of the hereafter.