There is something else I must do now. Put my hand to my throat and touch the place where it throbs. The fabric of my collar is gauzy. This is definitely not mine, not the good dress I was wearing earlier, but – oh, above the ruffles is the raw welt of my skin! A swollen wound. A bruise that curves from ear to ear. Slashed with rope-burn. The mark of a thick hemp noose. It must look awful. If Joan could see it, she would shriek and shriek.

The hanging hasn’t worked. But dear God, I am marked for life.

And according to the Courant, I should be meeting His Judgement right now, followed by an eternity down below with the Devil himself. But this is not heaven, nor hell, for – hear that? – the muffled snorts of horses chewing hay, and I could swear it was the chime of a kirk bell that roused me and sent the dream-snake slithering away. I’ve survived! I am supposed to be at my rest, but I have never been more awake.

They said I would swing for the crime, and I did. I stood on the gallows convulsing with fear, and the floor gave way and I dropped, and I tried to scream, but the scream caught in my chest as my neck tightened and everything went black.

The scream bursts out of me now. I gasp like a fish on a riverbank – like a baby on a riverbank, but I’m trying to forget what that looks like. I would scream again, but my throat has seized up.

Still your heart. Think. The sun creeps through the cracks in the wooden planks that cover me. I am in a coffin! The parish coffin of St Michael’s. They had argued whether it was even proper to cart me home in the common coffin, but in the end decided it was cheaper, and less of a fuss than buying one. But sunlight through gaps means they haven’t buried me yet. I was due to go back to Musselburgh and be buried beside all the other dead Dicksons, all the fishermen and fishwives who went before me, to save me being laid to rest with the Edinburgh criminals, for who could ever rest in peace in an Edinburgh graveyard? But we are not in Musselburgh. Not yet. I can’t hear the gulls.