Sorcha looked at Nettie and frowned. Janet was speaking as if she’d never see them again. It wasn’t like her to be so maudlin. The sooner she was set at liberty, the better. Nettie didn’t appear to have heard; she was too busy looking out for whoever was approaching.

‘Come away lest it be the guards,’ hissed Nettie.

Hearts beating fast, the pair picked up their skirts and stayed close to the shadows of the kirk, then slipped into the graveyard before they were seen. Dodging the tombstones that loomed like soldiers in the night, they silently wove their way back to Marygate, coming out at the entrance not far from Sorcha’s.

Only once they were inside the cottage with the candles lit, the fire stoked and a soup on the boil did they allow themselves to consider Janet’s plight.

Why had she been moved to a lower cell? What were the reverend’s intentions?

‘I don’t like that he’s denied her any comforts,’ said Nettie, accepting a bowl of soup gratefully. ‘That’s not been his way; not after he extracted confessions.’

‘Aye, but don’t forget, Janet retracted hers very publicly.’

‘And he locked her away for that and, from what you saw, had her beaten again.’

‘She suffers, though you won’t catch her complaining.’

‘Not to us, anyhow,’ said Nettie. Janet was the kind of woman who made a career out of complaining about the small things just to get a rise out of people. When genuinely afflicted, she was as tough as a Highlander’s fist.

‘It’s a puzzle. I cannot think what the reverend hopes to gain by allowing her nothing. Moving her to the lower cell makes no sense. And to leave the window unsealed and with the grate so worn and loose a bairn could shift it…’ Sorcha stared at the burning peat, the soup forgotten.

Outside, the wind howled, the sea rumbled and groaned, throwing itself against the shore and the harbour wall. Tomorrow banks of kelp would lie upon the sand like ploughed fields, waiting for the fishwives to reap their harvest.

Grateful she wasn’t the one confined to the Tolbooth any more, she recalled how it felt when she was emancipated. How she’d never really appreciated her freedom until it was taken from her. A thought struck her. She stopped the spoon halfway to her mouth.

‘What is it?’ asked Nettie.

Sorcha’s eyes were wide. ‘You don’t suppose the reverend put Janet there, in that room, so she would escape, do you?’

Nettie’s spoon dropped into her bowl. ‘Dear God —’

‘If Janet does, then the reverend can not only call in the constables to arrest her…’

‘Worse, hen, he can send guards out to hunt not an auld woman, but an escaped witch…’ Nettie glanced towards the window. Rain lashed the glass, rattling it fiercely.