‘Step two,’ Ferron said. ‘Agnes Wooler, you are being shown these instruments of God’s mercy. Do you understand what they are? Repent now and spare yourself this righteous pain.’

Agnes stared dully, but said nothing.

The clerk made another cross in his book, and Ferron said, ‘Step three.’

One of the brothers closed his huge fist at the neck of Agnes’s shift, and pulled. The filthy cloth ripped easily, and she was left naked, surrounded by men, in the middle of the cold room. She hunched her shoulders against the cold, but did not try to cover herself. Geoffrey knew she was nearly thirty years old, but she was so emaciated she looked like a child, her ribs showing, her legs like saplings. The flesh between her legs was stained with piss, shit and blood, and her back was marked with bloody weals. The brothers leered at her shrivelled dugs, the patch of auburn hair between her legs.

Again Ferron asked her to confess. When she did not speak, Ferron said, ‘The fourth step.’

The brothers grabbed her and pushed her onto the table. They took hold of her wrists and ankles, pulled them back so her arms and legs were stretched, and fixed her in place with tight bonds of metal and leather. Agnes did not resist. One brother went to the winch at the top of the table. He tugged it experimentally; the table creaked, and the mechanism under it, a mesh of gears and levers, shuddered as if eager.

Agnes lay passively, her body a white strip of fragile flesh laid over wood and iron.

Ferron stood over her. ‘Have pity on yourself, child,’ he said. ‘You were an anchoress. You don’t deserve this. Just tell me the truth.’

She whispered, ‘I know only one truth. That my father’s love doomed me to this.’

Ferron frowned, clearly wondering what new heresy this was. But Geoffrey knew that the father she spoke of wasn’t God.

Ferron ran out of patience. He glanced at the brother at the winch, who spat on his hands.

‘Step five.’

The brother hauled. As gears bit and ropes tightened, the wooden tabletop lengthened, creaking. Agnes screamed, the noise huge in the confined room.

But still she would not speak. Ferron ordered the winch turned again, and then again.

Geoffrey forced himself to watch. He heard a ripping, cracking sound. Agnes’s knees and elbows turned red and lumpy, and her shoulders were oddly twisted. Of course it would be the joints that would fail first, he thought helplessly, not the bones.

Still she did not talk.

Ferron made a curt gesture. ‘Enough. Keep her conscious. We’ll try the water.’