Food was scarce, but that was because even when the guards took coin to pass on meals prepared by family and friends, they more often ate what was provided. She couldn’t blame them, not really; everyone was hungry, not just those for whom the food was intended. The catch was still meagre; the land hadn’t recovered from the famine that ravaged it only a couple of years previously. Astounded by the generosity of those who sought to ensure the prisoners didn’t starve, she worried that they did. The guards, clearly, had no such compunctions. Blankets and even clean clothes did find their way upstairs. It was a relief to dress in them, to huddle beneath the extra warmth, even if their bodies were foul, scarred and beaten.

What they all wanted more than anything, apart from this protracted nightmare to end, was information. Information about those in the room below, about Beatrix in the cave down the wynd, and about what the reverend and council intended to do with them.

Especially now that, with the exception of Thomas Brown, they’d all confessed.

Becoming weaker by the day, Thomas refused to confess or sign anything. Sorcha was in awe of his strength, his will. What she feared — what they all did — was it would outlast his body.

As Sorcha sat against the wall, her knees drawn up and her arms resting limply upon them, her chin sank towards her chest. For days they’d held out. Days and days. After all that, what had finally broken her, broken them all, was the incessant pricking. Allowing them short periods where they were left alone, lulled into a false sense that maybe the torture was over and real healing could begin, only made its resumption worse. Ruthless, endless, it wouldn’t stop. Bollard would not stop. Awash with blood, delirious with pain, her mind wandering, she’d finally uttered the words the reverend was imploring her to say.

Believing that he and the pricker were responsible for the eventual admission of her sins, what Sorcha would never tell Patrick Cowper was that it was the spirits of her dead family who finally persuaded her to concede. Appearing before her in a vision after one terrible session with Bollard, they’d begged her to admit to what was being demanded. Weeping, her da and Erik, even her mor, had whispered they feared she would die if she did not. She must do what she promised and live — if not for herself, then for them.

It wasn’t violence, but love that made her confess. By then, she’d lost her faith in God (no matter what she promised Him, He did not listen), in justice, but not in her da, nor Erik. Not even in her mor. Memories of them were strong, untarnished by current circumstances. They lived in guiltless perpetuity in her heart.