Sorcha and Nettie had thought there were more strangers clustering in the High Street outside the Tolbooth each day to await news or to catch a glimpse of the Weem Witches. That is what they’d become. A lurid novelty to attract tourists. Nicolas told them they were imagining things, but Camron’s words and other whispers that came their way proved they were not. Nevertheless, the women ceased to oblige the people by appearing at the window. If it hadn’t been so macabre and frightening, Sorcha thought it would be funny. She knew crowds gathered outside Holyrood and the great palaces in London to see the Queen or any member of the royal family, but to see her? She gazed across at Nettie, knowing she looked the same if not worse. Nettie’s hair now covered her scalp, growing in uneven patches, much the way it had been shaved. Her teeth were foul, her skin so grimy it was streaked in shades of grey, her clothes were rags. Examining her fingers, Sorcha couldn’t bear the thought of biting her long nails, so encrusted with dirt were they. Dirt and dried blood.

They all scratched ceaselessly because of lice and fleas, and the wounds from the pricking and the beatings never seemed to heal. Whereas they would once pace the cell and take it in turns at the window, describing what they saw, inventing tales, singing on occasion, or bathing each other’s wounds and trying to care for them, they now mostly lolled on the hard floor, the straw too repellent to lie upon.

At least with summer arriving it was marginally warmer.

They’d been reduced to a grotesque spectacle. They were living versions of poor Thomas — something for folk to gawp at, judge, and ghoulishly revel in. They’d also heard their reputation was bringing much needed money into the town — something Cowper would be gloating over.

The thought of Cowper was almost more than Sorcha could bear. But bear it she must and use the idea of his triumph — a victory based on the cruel extraction of lies — to give her the strength to survive. That would be her greatest revenge, outlasting this. Whereas she honoured her family by living when they could not, she would have vengeance upon Cowper by doing the same. They all would, damn the man’s soul.

There were times she wished she really was a witch and could cast a spell upon him. She would wish him to suffer all she and the others had endured tenfold. Nae, a hundredfold, for all eternity.

But when Nettie was taken out of the cell one day, just when they’d begun to believe all the separations and punishments were a thing of the past, all thoughts of revenge upon Cowper were replaced by dread.

What did the men want now? What more could they do to them? And why Nettie?