I try to join in with the prayers I’ve never heard, sing the hymns I don’t know. Kneel, stand and sit when others do and, when the service is done, follow everyone out into the dazzling sunlight.

In hopes of catching Seth, I linger, but Bett takes my arm and drags me to a quiet corner of the graveyard. I stumble as I try to keep pace with her.

‘It’s well you brought me,’ I say. ‘I’d no idea it would be so—’

‘Hush, lass. You make a show of yourself, babbling on as though you’ve never stepped inside church before.’ She bends her head close to mine. ‘The talk is all of Sam Finch.’

My happiness floats away into the warm air, leaving me chilled under the beating August sun.

‘What do you know of it?’ she asks, glancing past me to the crowd gathered near the path. I turn. No one approaches.

‘I know nowt,’ I say.

‘You know that there have been troubles for him, a series of luckless happenings, and now he is suffering with the flux.’

‘Well, aye, I knew that—’

‘And you know that three times now who has been seen running from the house but your brother?’ Her words a near-silent hiss. Behind her a spadger sits in the branches of a tree and chirps, and I long to listen only to its song and keep her words from my ears.

She stops, hands on hips, scrutinising my face. Her chest rises and falls quickly.

‘Sarah?’

‘I know nowt of it.’ Though even as I say the words I think of the crumbled clay image of Sam Finch, of the mysterious business John’s been about. I knew it was he I saw in the village. I swallow but the bitter taste in my mouth returns.

Bett breathes out heavily, purses her lips and turns her face up to the sky. ‘They say he’s dying.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘If they are about some wickedness, your brother or your mam, you must make them stop. This place is changed. If Sam dies, they’ll gather together and punish those they blame. I’ve heard talk of a plan to march with torches to the house again. I have begged Nathaniel to calm them and he does what he can, but he is just one voice. And the next they look for shall be you, folks have started asking why we’ve not seen you beg— out with your sister of late. Understand?’

I do.

Bett gasps and presses her hand to her mouth, looking past where we shelter from view under the trees. I turn to see a woman, caught in the clutches of the magistrate.

‘Please,’ she cries. ‘Please, sir, I beg you, show mercy.’