‘This is why I needed her naked,’ Mr Bollard intoned, interrupting her woolgathering, a teacher at his lessons. ‘Yesterday, as requested, I examined her for devil marks, for those signs that indicate she is indeed a witch. There are a number, which I will reveal to you now.’ Before she could protest, Mr Bollard grabbed one of her breasts and, lifting it, pointed to a large mole that sat atop her ribs. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘This is a devil’s teat upon which the beast will suckle. As you can see,’ he weighed her breast in his hand, ‘it has been well used.’

There were some chuckles.

‘What rubbish,’ said Beatrix hoarsely, wanting to slap his hand away, to cover her modesty. She could do neither. ‘I’ve had that mark since I was a wee bairn…’

‘Exactly,’ said Mr Bollard and drove a needle into it.

Much to her shock, Beatrix felt little pain. Again, it was as if the needle merely grazed her.

‘Look, sirs,’ said Mr Bollard triumphantly, withdrawing the needle. ‘No blood.’

The bailies murmured, but they didn’t stop watching and leering. After a few more insertions, Beatrix understood what was happening. There were blunt needles, used to prove the so-called witch’s marks didn’t bleed, ones that retracted the moment they touched the surface of the skin, and long, sharp, painful ones designed to draw blood from the fleshier parts of her body.

Changing from one type to the other, Mr Bollard prodded and pricked again and again. Shafts of pain shot through her body, lodged in her throat. She struggled to breathe. Her body went rigid, her legs stiffened, her head rolled back.

Beatrix lapsed in and out of consciousness, unsure how long her torment went on. The light changed as clouds coursed across the sky. Grey, bruise-blue, silvery then pewter as rain began to fall. Before inserting each needle and withdrawing it, mapping her arms, legs and torso, Mr Bollard would repeat, in that reedy voice, ‘All you have to do is name your fellow-tormentors and this will stop.’

She would shake her head, swallow her wails, her moans.

At some stage, the Reverend Cowper appeared by her side, adding his churned-butter pleas to Mr Bollard’s, promising to pray for her, to help her seek salvation. He vowed to baptise her again so the evil spirit within her could be banished and she and anyone else she named would be welcomed back into the fold, into the Weem family, into his kirk.

It was tempting. Dear God, it was tempting.

When she spat upon his boots, the reverend said something to the pricker.