A sister screams. Alice pitches against Sister Maria, who staggers and cannot hold her. She slips and falls to the ground, her head bouncing hollow on the flagstones. The infirmarian scuttles over and the sisters mill around her fallen form. Katherine steps back, and while the others are clustered around Alice, she turns and rushes for the door, not pausing to glance at the Prioress, who remains standing at the lectern.

Katherine throws open the heavy chapter house door and hurtles out into the cold white of daylight. From the tail of her eye she sees a blur of dark cloth. She manages two more steps until she feels a barking pain on her shin. She is tripped and goes sprawling in the snow. She tastes blood in her mouth. She looks up to see Sister Joan stepping over her, raising a staff and crashing it down on her, and after that, nothing.

She wakes on her back in one of the stables. Her feet are tied to an iron hoop set high in one wall, and Sister Joan is looming over her, tying her hands together above her head. When she is happy with the knot, Joan runs the rope from her hands through another hoop set on the wall behind Katherine’s head and she pulls on the rope, stretching Katherine so that she is lifted off the ground. The cords burn her wrists and ankles but she will not cry out. She will not let Sister Joan see her weep.

Joan ties off the rope and leans over her for a moment.

‘We ought to peel your skin,’ she says, ‘like they wanted to do to that nun.’

Katherine feels the older nun’s rough palm sweeping over her leg, from ankle to thigh, pushing away the skirts of her cassock so that they hang bunched around her waist. Katherine can hear her breathing thicken. After a moment Joan turns and leaves, locking the door behind her. Katherine lets out a sob and her tears run to meet the fine strands of hair at her temples. There is no air or light in the stable and she is unable to hear the ringing of the bell that has until that morning ordered her life, so she cannot say how long she is there. It feels like a lifetime and Katherine has soiled herself twice before the door is opened and the light from a pair of rush candles spills in. Two sisters – one of them Joan – step aside to admit the Prioress.

She sniffs in disgust.

‘Sister Katherine,’ she begins, ‘the sisterhood is roused and wonders what to do with you for the shame you have brought on our community.’

Katherine tries to speak but her throat is constricted.