‘I have asked them to let you leave the priory,’ the Prioress continues, ‘to go your own way in the world, but they respond that you will only broadcast our failure abroad and bring yet more shame on us.’

A silence lasts. The Prioress looks Katherine over, exasperated.

‘The nun of Watton cried out, child,’ she says. ‘She cried out to be beaten. She cried out that she deserved to be punished! Yet you lie in silence, as if your sin is worthy of neither comment nor shame.’

‘Holy Mother,’ Katherine whispers, finding her voice, ‘I spoke but three words to the canon. He came to my rescue as I was being pursued by men on horses beyond the walls. Had he not done so I would now be dead.’

‘Ha! Even now the devil disports in your mouth, child! For you make no mention of our Sister Alice.’

Katherine cannot stop herself gasping. She did not want Alice mentioned, to be blamed, to be involved at all.

‘Sister Alice said nothing to the canon. Not one word! She did not even look at him!’

‘But the canon looked at her! She will be reciting one thousand Credos in the chapel all night tonight and in the morning she will be taking up your penitential task of carrying the bucket from my cell to the dung heap—’

‘No!’

Katherine writhes but the Prioress launches forward so that her broad face fills her vision. Her breath is septic.

‘No?’ she asks. ‘No? You dare command me?’

‘Holy Mother, you cannot send Sister Alice out to the river tomorrow. Those men will be there. I know it! They will be waiting for her. For all that is holy, I beg of you!’

Her voice rises in a scream as the door is slammed.

The long night passes. Katherine wakes three or four times – never conscious for more than a few instants – and each time she hopes she is waking from a nightmare. Sometime towards the morning she is roused with a bucket of water sluiced over her body by a figure in the doorway. Her body arches, pulling on the muscles that have cramped in the night, grinding the ropes deep into the wounds in her wrists and ankles. Sister Joan is there with a knife and she slashes through the cords that bind Katherine’s hands to the wall. Katherine crashes to the ground. She does not scream. She has nothing left to give. She lies there as the Prioress comes in and looks her over again.

‘Is she alive?’ she asks.

Joan nudges her body with a clog.

‘She is.’

‘Get her on her feet and have her carry two buckets of water to the infirmary. She has a job to do.’

The Prioress leaves and Joan picks Katherine up by her armpits.

‘Walk,’ she says.