“Your future is not in my hands, Jenny,” she said. “I would not even have taken this step, to bring your work here, had not Hugh extracted a promise from me that I would allow you to go on with it, whatever happened. I am too close to this, too distressed, to judge you with any fairness. It is for my brother to hear your case, and to decide your fate. In Hugh’s absence, he is the head of this family, and must judge as he thinks fit. But he, too, wishes to avoid any suggestion that the proceedings will be less than equitable. So he plans to await Father Stephen of Ravenglass, whose business should bring him here after Lammas. On the matter of sorcery, it is prudent to consult a man of the cloth.” She looked around the cell again. “It would hurt my son to see you housed here. But not so much as the truth will hurt him.”

What truth? I thought bitterly as the door closed behind her, and I heard the scrape as the bolt slid across. Didn’t Red once say, there are as many truths as stars in the sky, and everyone of them different? Perhaps that was the only real truth.

The rats were my only companions. They crept out at night and nibbled the straw bedding. It was the one time in my life that I was grateful for the spiny barbs of the starwort plant, for that the rats would not touch. With nothing else to occupy me, with nothing around me but the four stone walls, I worked as long as the light lasted, and tried to sleep when it was dark. Many days passed, each like the last. I found that if I disregarded the way my hands stiffened with the pain, if I forced the fingers to move, I could make reasonable progress. I paid for it at night, for my hands ached fiercely, denying me sleep. The sixth shirt slowly took shape. It was not as well fashioned as the others, for the light was poor and my vision sometimes blurred, but it would do. It must do.

By the changing light through my small window I judged it to be around the time of Lugnasad, close to summer’s end, when I began to receive visits from Lord Richard. He had taken his time before he came to gloat over me, but once he started, it became a regular occurrence and one I came to dread. Perhaps foolishly, I had allowed myself to feel hope when Lady Anne had given me back my work. The task was within my grasp, and had she not said they were waiting for Father Stephen so that I might have a fair trial? Then Richard came, and I saw that the truth was quite different.

“Well, my dear.” He could have been greeting me over a sociable goblet of mead. His tone was affable. His gaze went around the tiny room, and back to me. “Your reign as Lady of Harrowfield was indeed short. I had credited you with more cunning; seems I was wrong. Very silly mistake, my dear, very silly indeed. Played right into my hands.” He gave a delicate sniff. “Odd sort of smell in here. Reminds me of pigswill.” He fished out a snowy white square of linen, and dabbed at his nose. There was a faint scent of bergamot oil. “Shouldn’t bother you, I suppose. I imagine things at home were quite—rough? I’ve heard your kind have no aversion to wallowing in their own filth. Scum will find scum.”