Legally dead, that man was, when they cut him down from the gallows, with no signs of life. No breath nor heartbeat. Sentence had been passed. They said the hangman took a bribe from the man. Sometimes a hangie can be bribed to give you a way out. Cut you down quick when you’re still faintly alive and then you can come to some time later. Things like that.

Finally we reach the ominous city walls and pass through the towering gate of Netherbow Port into the heart of Edinburgh. The gentle royal pastures and the dazzle of the afternoon sunshine give way to the shadows of the tenement-lined street that snakes up the hill, and my heart darkens too. The cart slows, for there are a dozen or more carts around us now, piled with logs and bales and poultry cages. Men shout and swear at each other for taking too long or blocking the way. Water-caddies hunch under barrels strapped to their backs, which look even heavier than fishing creels.

We all stare now: me and Ma, and Da and Joan, and the McIvors. We cannot help it. There are market stalls set with weighing scales, and shops with signs and flags and patrolling high constables – they make me flinch: all of these sights pass us as we ease up to the Tolbooth Jail. I have only ever been on this street as a prisoner, but there are sights you cannot help but be astonished at. Buildings ten storeys tall. Wynds and closes crammed with inns and taverns and roaring drunks. Boys and girls collecting the gardeyloo waste thrown from the tenements, bundling it onto carts for compost. It is not a place for the faint-hearted.

We come to the forecourt of Parliament House. It is a commanding square, where men in sleek black hats mill around, carrying polished silver-handled walking canes that match the silver buttons of their coats. We are the only folk here on a rickety cart. Me, Ma and Joan are the only women. I have come to know the world of men in power these past weeks. It is a world of confidence, even amongst those who lack the good looks or wisdom or godliness to have earned it. It is not a world I am comfortable in, but I have had to find a way through. Theirs is a black-and-white world of certainties: of good and bad, and right and wrong. To them, I am wicked. So they strung me up in front of a baying crowd. But none of them had ever been in my shoes. If they had, I am not sure they would have reached such an easy judgement. For who can say what any of them would have done, if they had been me?