Lord Leith liked that. I could tell by the way the colour bloomed in his cheeks.

‘Downhill, eh? Would you say your daughter was easily led, sir? Weak-minded? Frail?’

Mr Suttie rose to object, but the sheriff nodded at Da to answer.

‘I know your instinct will be to protect your daughter. But remember you are under oath, Mr Dickson,’ he warned.

Da looked scared. ‘Perhaps not weak-minded, no. Perhaps too strong-minded, I’d say,’ he mumbled.

Lord Leith liked that even more.

They did not call Ma, for it was decided, after a huddle with the sheriff that, as head of the household, Da’s views were enough to establish my background and character.

‘Frankly,’ Mr Suttie told me when he returned from the huddle, ‘I am not sure your mother would help your case. Mothers have a tendency to cave under questioning, and a mother’s testimony tends not to be taken as seriously.’

I looked over at Ma but she wasn’t looking in my direction. She was surveying the courtroom, her eyes darting in fear. Mibbie Mr Suttie was right.

There’s not much to say about the evidence the Baxters gave, for it was all factual. Neither had guessed my state of pregnancy, nor had I given any inclination or even asked for extra meat or milk, or shown an unusual appetite for sweet or strange foods.

‘Some might say,’ pondered Lord Leith to Mrs Baxter, ‘that you cannot be a very observant landlady if you did not notice the gestation of an infant under your own roof.’

‘I had no clue,’ protested Mrs Baxter. ‘Mistress Dickson acted perfectly normally. This has all come as a terrible shock to me. To have a dead infant brought into own kitchen. The inn has become notorious and we have lost our usual patrons, and instead we have folk calling at all times of the day and night asking to see her room, asking for a viewing, as though we are a house of fascinations.’

I heard a ripple through the crowd, then of ‘Oh! We must go to Kelso and view it too!’

Joan looked at me constantly and every time I caught her eye, she flinched and looked away.

When the Baxters and the fisherman had taken their turns describing the events, Lord Leith called my sister to the stand. She rose, a small, bewildered slip of a girl, yet somehow still pretty, and the men on the balcony edged forward.

‘Your instinct will be to protect your sister,’ Lord Leith said. Joan looked wide-eyed at that. ‘But you are here to tell the truth of what happened on the day she went into labour and the baby died. First, so that the court is clear – very clear, my dear – did Mistress Dickson know she was with child?’

‘Yes, she did,’ replied Joan, her voice barely a squeak. ‘But she was hiding it from the Baxters.’