A cold wind blows in across the Tay, bringing with it the smell of burning wood from the salmon smokers and the silty tang of the mudflats. High clouds hide a weak sun, and out across the water the port of Dundee can be seen as a smudge of dirty air blurring the Sidlaw hills. There will be rain later on, she knows. A storm from the North Sea to make life yet more miserable for these people. She won’t be around to see it, although there is scant comfort in that knowledge.
‘Agnes Carter. You have been found guilty this day of the foul practice of witchcraft. Your sentence as decreed by King James himself is that you be burned at the stake. Do you renounce your evil, reject the worship of the devil and take the Lord into your heart?’
The man’s a fool, but he’s a dangerous fool. Head addled with power and a little learning. He understands nothing, and yet she’s the one tied to a pole, surrounded by wood dowsed in oil. The smell of it makes her senses spin. Easy enough to just do as he says, but then if she’d been that kind of person she’d never be in this situation in the first place.
‘Will it do me any good?’ she asks. ‘If I sing praise to the Lord, will you cut me down and send me on my way, sir?’
He startles at her voice, perhaps not expecting anything from her, perhaps thinking she will rant and rail, curse him in strange tongues. How many women has he executed now? Him and his like, travelling the land, sowing discord and mistrust, finding small grievances and building them into stories of horror these superstitious folk accept without question. Gullible people, so easily swayed and controlled. They blame her for their misfortune even though they’ve brought it on themselves. Will they stop and wonder, once she’s gone and nothing has changed, that they might not have been wrong about her? She doubts that very much.
‘The Lord is forgiveness.’ The witchfinder steps towards her pyre, one hand clutching his leather bound bible. With the other he draws his sword from its scabbard, and she can see well enough how sharp he has honed its edge. ‘Recant your sins and I will send you to him swiftly.’
‘Not much of a choice then, is it.’
She is trying her best to keep the fear and panic from her voice, but even she can hear the tremble. They will kill her here, and it will be painful. There is nothing she can do about that though. No one is going to ride to her rescue, and even if she were to escape the ropes that bind her to this stake, the mob would rip her apart before she could take more than a dozen paces. They have gathered with the morning, their numbers growing until it is clear nobody tends the livestock or tills the fields for miles around. The forge will go cold, the loaves in the bakery fail to prove, and the blacksmith and baker both will blame her. The farmers will blame her for the weather and the fishermen for their poor catches. Same as they have blamed her for every little thing that has gone wrong in their lives even as they have turned to her for help with their ailments.
‘Well, do you recant, witch?’
She looks at the man in surprise. Had she really forgotten he was here? She has let her mind wander too soon. It would be easy enough to sing his song, take an easy death, quick and clean. Except that she no more believes in his mercy than she does his intelligence. This is a show for the people, not an exercise in leniency for her. He wants to extract a confession and repentance from her so that he can show them he is in charge, doing the Lord’s work. And the king’s. Well, they will all be disappointed this day.
She fixes him with a stare that would stop a rampaging bull. ‘A plague upon you, and all of your kind. I cannot recant that which I have never done, and neither will anything I say change your blinkered mind.’
He recoils as if her words sting. Good. She wants him to remember this day. May it haunt him for what remains of his short and miserable life. He says nothing, but sheathes his sword and then beckons for the torch. For one slow breath she thinks he is going to prolong the moment, perhaps give her one more chance to play his game. But instead he merely shrugs before setting the pyre alight.