The recorder pronounces Chasy’s punishment, as the dirty girl said he would. She’s to be whipped and then burned through the gristle of her ear with a hot iron as thick as a man’s thumb. ‘And should you come before this court again,’ the recorder goes on. ‘You will be hung by the neck until dead.’

This is foolish too, since when does a folk hang until not dead? But I don’t tell the others. I just say it inside my head. Then I scold myself. Unkind thoughts: The sin eater will eat parsnip on my grave.

The recorder runs us down, girl by girl. Some get hanging, some get whipping. The rat-faced girl is to be burned alive. The recorder doesn’t look at any of us. Asks no questions, except if we’ve got credible witnesses to speak for us, which he knows well enough we don’t. Each time he asks it, I get star-shaped heat right in my chest where the rib bones meet. By the sixth or seventh time, I’m angry, and I’m not prone to choler. I want him to stop asking it. Or at least look at us.

‘May Owens,’ he calls.

‘Yes,’ I speak loudly, surprising myself as well as the turnkey, who gives me a scolding eye. But I’ve done it. I’ve made the recorder look.

He looks long. He stares, more like, his eyes turning to dark creases. The other girls raise their heads at the silence, broken out of whatever daydream they fell into. ‘May Owens,’ he says again, this time turning over each letter, running them across his tongue. ‘Born Daffrey.’

‘I’m an Owens,’ I say, my voice coming sharper than I mean it to. My fingers go straight to my da’s ring. I don’t know how the recorder knows my mother’s family name. His eyes don’t even blink. Little moons of black, watching, watching. Mayhap he’s seeing my insides like I wished for before, like a witch’s spell.

Then, from nowhere, he calls out, ‘Winnie Fletcher,’ and the spell breaks. We all gaze at the recorder dumbly. ‘Winnie Fletcher!’ The recorder looks to the turnkey, who looks to us. Winnie Fletcher stands uncertainly. ‘Picking a man’s purse. Any credible witness to speak for you?’

After the last pronouncement, the recorder leaves through the same side door. The turnkey waves at us to stand.

‘But I didn’t get a punishment,’ I say to him. I didn’t even get a crime. All I got was my name. And that look.

We walk back through a dirty, wet midday to the jail.

‘What about me?’ I say again to the turnkey as I pass him at the cell door.

He shrugs as if to wash his hands of it and goes. I look at the other girls.

‘What about me?’ They avoid my eyes as we all did the rat’s.