Chapter 54
Kitty Muirhead
THE CAULD IS IN MY bones. I’m frozen to the stone floor of this cell. I can’t move a muscle, and I don’t want to.
My eyes are closed tight; the world is dark and small, and cauld, so cauld. You will be executed, he said. I wish they’d get on with it. His words repeat in my head, over and over. And I feel nothing.
The bairn moves inside me, a weird churning. I hate it. If it wasn’t for this child, I’d be dead already. I wouldn’t be here on this stone floor.
This day was always coming. I ken it now, not as a thought but as a weight lifted.
Something has gone – that stupid desperation to make something of myself.
How could I have been so foolish? All the times life kicked me and kept me down, why did I fight it?
I belong here on this floor, lying in my own filth with the Devil’s bairn in my belly. Death will be a relief.
The heavy door of the cells scrapes open. I don’t look up but the solider who guards me peers right into my face, with a look of fear and disgust. ‘Someone’s here to see you, witch.’
Lady Alvah Gordon walks towards me. She carries a jug of water and a bannock of bread. For a moment, I feel something again. I want to jump up, to claw her eyes out. The woman who raised my hopes, made me believe things could be different, that I might have a clean life, a good life. I hate her.
But I don’t have the energy. I try to lift myself from the ground and fall down again, collapsing back into the dirt.
She’s with a man. I’ve endured plenty of disgust in my life, but the expression on his face is a new low. He holds his hand over his nose and looks at me like I’m making him sick in his throat.
‘Kitty, we’re here to examine you,’ Lady Alvah says. That kindness in her voice, the terrible pity, makes me want to stab her. If I could move my frozen limbs, if I had any kind of weapon in this place, I would kill her.
All I ever wanted was a chance for a decent life – one where people looked at me with a bit of respect.
I never wanted to choose the path of sin.
I tried to change my fate in every way I could think of but I see now it would always end here.
My one consolation is that Ma isn’t here to see how low I’ve been brought.
I only hope that when they take me up to Castle Hill, God will have mercy on my soul. I roll over, turn away from Lady Alvah and the man who retches at the sight of me. They can do what they want with my body – I’m not here.