The reverend began to laugh. It was a sound to make the hair on Sorcha’s neck rise. ‘Prove it? To them? I ken what you are. I heard you chanting your spells down on the pier, calling up a storm fit to wreck everything we’ve worked to repair. That’s what you witches do. Destroy, wreak havoc and mayhem.’

Sorcha stared at him. Was he referring to the song she sang? The song from her mother’s homeland?

‘That was no spell, you fool!’ She worked at her wrists, twisting them first one way then the other, trying to loosen the ropes that bound her. ‘That was a song my mother taught me when I was a bairn. A song about the sea, about fishing.’

‘Nae,’ said the reverend, unwrapping the rope that connected Sorcha to the mast from his arms and twining it around his midriff. He dropped to his knees before her and began to heave upon it. ‘It was about death.’

Without warning, Sorcha was lifted off her feet. The air was dragged from her lungs as the rope drew tight around her waist. She rose into the air, swinging as if she was already upon the gallows.

‘Forget Edinburgh. Forget the Privy Council,’ the reverend hollered into the rain and wind, as if they were his congregation and this his sermon. ‘They know not what they do. You have bewitched them, you and all your damnable coven. This —’ he pulled down hard on the rope, ‘this is justice. This is what the town wants. This is what God wants.’

Sorcha made one last attempt to appeal to him. ‘This is not God’s will, this is yours and you will be punished for it; just as you will be for releasing the prisoners from the Tolbooth.’

The reverend froze. ‘How do you ken that?’ He half-rose and she plummeted towards the deck before being drawn up short. ‘There’s no natural way you could. If I’d any doubts you be a witch, there be naught now.’