Brown was the only man identified by Peter Morton. Worried the lad had misstepped, it wasn’t until the Laing woman also named Brown as one of those who had made a pact with the devil that the decision to imprison him was validated. If she hadn’t, then they’d be in more trouble than a Jacobite at Whitehall.

Running his hands over his face, Cowper took a few more deep breaths and began to feel better. It would be all right. They’d done nothing wrong. He’d done nothing wrong.

He sank into a seat and thought about Thomas Brown. Moderately well-off, it didn’t hurt that he owned shares in a boat that were now, with his death, free to be bought by someone more inclined to divide them among the councillors. Could Brown’s daughter be persuaded to sell the half she was entitled to? Maybe. Not immediately. She would be too angry, too caught up in grief. But perhaps later… They might even be able to seize all his property. After all, he died locked up as a witch. Admittedly, he didn’t confess, but he was named an accomplice…

God. The authorities in Edinburgh wouldn’t like this. Not at all and he didn’t need that bloody soldier, Captain Ross, to tell him that.

Even so, news of Brown’s demise shouldn’t have surprised him. The man had fallen ill within days of being imprisoned. The pricking, beatings and enforced sleeplessness weakened him further. But it was that idiot guard — what was his name? Rab Burne — who not only over-used the witch goad, the paddle the men used to beat the prisoners to prevent them sleeping, but denied the man the sustenance they were by law required to provide. Brown wasn’t only tortured (he winced as the word loomed in his mind), but was, according to the doctor, starved to death. Water, as Dr McLeod, a man prone to supporting Patrick’s decisions in the past, had pointedly said, will only maintain life for so long.

Burne, the greedy fool, kept the meals Brown’s daughter brought to the Tolbooth for himself, gulping them down within hearing of the prisoners. Patrick shook his head. He should have had Burne removed. Should have him whipped. Patrick could scarce believe the emaciated corpse was Brown, the man they’d interned. Not man. Witch. He must remember that. They may not have extracted a confession from Thomas before he died, but would have done eventually.

Anyway, what did it really matter? Brown had enjoyed three score years and ten or more. Testimony to his hardiness that he lasted so long. His death was inconvenient rather than a tragedy.

Running fingers through his thinning hair, the reverend stared out the window of his drawing room. Beyond the gravestones in the neighbouring kirkyard, the grey sea roiled. Wisps of mist hovered over the water. In the spaces between the stones he caught glimpses of the fishermen’s boats bobbing, their nets flung wide, their lines unspooled. Gulls hovered above them, cawing and shrieking as the men hauled in their catch. Closer to shore, he could see figures walking along the sands. Some he recognised, more were unfamiliar. That had been an unexpected boon of this witch hunt. The number of strangers who, learning what was afoot, flocked to the Weem to see for themselves.