Noble Seatree had told them that he had been keeping watch on them ever since Grace Wren Saltmire had warned him that they were preparing to escape, but Gentle blamed Teal Leadwood. ‘Why she wasn’t arrested along with us, it isn’t that she got away. It’s because she made a bargain with the constable.’

Pilgrim tried to convince him that Teal had wanted to help them, that if they hadn’t arranged to meet the representatives of the Invisible College they would have tried to steal a boat instead and fallen into worse trouble, but Gentle refused to believe any of it.

‘Most likely she didn’t send those letters, or receive that tapcode message,’ he said, staring at the shadowy wall beyond Pilgrim. ‘Most likely that Invisible College of hers doesn’t even exist. Or if it does, it neither knows nor cares about you and your work.’

Pilgrim slept fitfully, woke to find spears of grey light lancing through chinks in the plank walls. Their guards brought in a tray carrying beakers of strong tea and two bowls of gruel flecked with bits of salt fish, and they were given no other food and received no other attention for the rest of the day. There was a bucket of well water, and another bucket for their necessaries, and that was that as far as amenities were concerned.

Pilgrim was free to limp up and down, eight paces to the far wall, eight paces back; Gentle spent most of the time asleep, or pretending to be asleep, stirring when it began to grow dark and there was the crackle of fireworks and distant snatches of music as the feasting and dancing and coupling began again. He stood up, the chain between his ankle cuff and the stake rattling, and put back his head and howled long and loud, stopping as if to listen to the echoes rolling around beneath the high peak of the roof, then howling again, and again, until one of the guards banged on the door and told him to shut his noise or they’d come in and gag him. Gentle laughed, and sat down heavily, wincing in pain, saying ruefully that the constable and his gang had got him good when they’d caught him. ‘One of ’em was a fellow I went hunting with. Didn’t hold him back any.’

‘They should not have hurt you.’

‘Oh, they had the right, seeing as I was trying my best to throw them off.’

‘This is a lawless place.’

‘It’s how life is, at the edges of the Union. Did you find any likely way out when you were prowling around earlier?’

‘The walls are sound. No rotten or loose planks that I could discover. And even if we had something to dig with, it wouldn’t be easy. The ground is still frozen from winter.’