The windows here are lined with greased paper, just like the rest of the gaol. Every room dim as mist. Still, the light dribbles in. Pale, but enough to watch the heads around you go from black to ash to white. Like coals burning down in a fire. The same high windows as the courtroom, and the same green velvet, come to think of it. The room is laid out much the same as well. I suppose it’s so you know they’re both about the same business. The King’s chapel, and the King’s court. Though it’s the Ordinary who’s in charge here, not a judge, and he wears white robes, not red. For we’re washed clean of blood, now. We are judged. Condemned.

When they came for us, for the service, I told them I didn’t want to go. But you’re to have God in your last days, here, whether you like it or not. Like swallowing a purgative. I’d rather have laudanum, given a choice, but Newgate is a clockwork universe, and everything in it works towards a single end. Mine.

Hanging’s an efficient business.

There we sat. Knees twittering, like birds on stumps, heels clanking like bell-clappers. Who could be more restless than a group of the condemned at forced prayers? There are six of us for tomorrow. I sat next to a thin woman with a jaw like a shovel, legs scabbed with sores big as coins. She kept lifting her skirt to pick at them. ‘What will happen to us?’ she said, fishing up one of her plaits and sucking it. I told her not to look too far ahead, because when you can see what’s coming it makes pain more like pain, and pleasure less like pleasure. Then we fell silent, though she began to cry. I didn’t say more, not wishing to bring her spirits down further, for they’d have nowhere to land but on me. We don’t speak much among ourselves, as a rule. Or with anyone else for that matter. There’s no point.

The Ordinary, stout, white-frocked, waved his arms and spoke to us about the wages of sin. The only wages I’ll ever earn, it seems. I tried to lean around him to read the plaques on the wall. I could see they were writings from Exodus, but not what they said. I’m so hungry to read I’d read anything, though the Bible would not be my first choice. But he blocked them with his waving arms and his sour face. He’s to write an account of each of us, as you know, before we’re hanged, and publish them in his Ordinary’s Accounts. Another thing they don’t give you any say in. He’ll try to make us sound pious and repentant, no matter how nasty we are at our rotted-apple cores. Full confessions and cautionary tales. I plan to say nothing, when it comes to my turn.

An hour outside with the sun on our faces would have been a mercy, far kinder, and God knows I need that more than Him. Besides, He’ll have all the words soon enough if they’re right. Why does He need the last one?