But I had been spared. And I do not believe in a life for a life, or anything like that. I just know that Dr McTavish is a man who thinks he is God. I have not met God. But I know he is not in Dr McTavish. There is more of God in me than there is in Dr McTavish.

As we passed the gallows last night I turned to Dorothy. We stopped then and there, under the trees, under the stars.

‘This is where they hanged me,’ I told her.

‘I should like to see a day when no one is hanged for concealing a pregnancy,’ she replied. ‘For it doesn’t seem right to me to put a mother to death when she is grieving for her lost child. It does not seem right to me that women are blamed for things they cannot help, and are told what to do with their own bodies.’

She began to weep. She had had a bellyful of wine.

‘Men use my body, then shun me,’ she said. ‘I can have a man naked in my chamber all night, but should he see me around Greyfriars the next morning, he will not meet my eye. Imagine if we ruled the world, you and I. There would be no need for women to sell their bodies, for folk could be given an allowance, say, if they fell on hard times. And men like Dr McTavish would not be allowed to get away with wickedness like poisoning their wives.’

I knew then that Dorothy had so much wisdom and worldly experience that she must not be snuffed out. That would be a terrible sin. More so than anything else I had ever done.

Then I told her. I told her who my hangman was, and her eyes widened and I thought she would gasp herself into a fit.

‘That awful, awful man,’ she said. ‘That murderer. All those times I went to his cottage in Kelso. He sat and played dominoes without a care in the world. And oh, I shared a bed with him. I have been intimate with a hangman, Maggie.’

‘You were not to know,’ I soothed.

‘I am utterly relieved I ran away from him. For he is revolting and one day he would murder me too,’ she added.

Then she looked at me and realized.

‘You bribed Dr McTavish. But not with sex. You bribed him with me.’