It is time. Although the meagre pre-dawn light cannot penetrate the subterranean pit where I am imprisoned, someone somewhere is tolling a bell, calling the faithful to witness the witchfinder's justice.

I am impatient to be out of this slimy pit. Lord! If I had but a mickle of the powers the townspeople credit me with I would not have allowed them to shut me in this fetid Hell. The smell of my own filth chokes me.

The toll of the bell measures the moments until they come for me. I have heard carts bringing kindling, building the massive pyre under the terse direction of Jack Douglas the Blacksmith. The men's cheerful banter betrays their keen anticipation for the dawn spectacle. Jack Douglas is a meticulous man who takes his work seriously. The fire will be built well to his order.

At last they slide the stone slab aside and sweet air rushes in. Piemen are strolling among the gathering crowd. The scent rips a growl from my empty belly which amuses the men who drag me from the dungeon. My arms are tied at the elbow behind my back with thin rope causing my breasts to strain the thin bodice of my tattered dress.

They shove me before them along the rough road. My bare feet stumble and splash through frost-rimmed puddles. The first flakes of a late snow fall sting my eyes bringing tears I I don't want them to see. The salt smell of the ocean is carried on the breeze from beyond the town. How I wish I could see it; the rolling waves have helped me through other hard times.

The townspeople part before us and regard me with fascinated revulsion. They think I have grown above myself. My mother cleaned the "Big Hoose" and the laird's wife having no children of her own took pleasure in my schooling. I had tried always to use what she taught me to help. Yet I am disconnected, neither fish nor fowl. Meg Moon is here with her youngest bairn at the breast. She will not meet my eye although they both owe their presence here to my skills in the birthing room. I have aided many here in the physick of bairns and beasts yet I am strange to them and thus alone.

The noise increases as we reach the edge of the town, foul obscenities the like of which I never heard from Christian folk, no mercy in their hearts. A warm, wet gob of spit hits my cheek and I stumble forward on to my knees. I am sobbing now, I cannot go on.

A surprisingly gentle hand helps me to my feet. I look into the expressionless eyes of Jack Douglas, my executioner. He leads me forward past the contemptuous gaze of Donal Mackenzie; my accuser, my husband.

Donal took me as his wife only two years ago. He is an ambitious man and I do not doubt my father's fishing boat seemed a good dowry, albeit deferred as he thought until my father, who had no sons, should retire. The loss of The Fey Maid in last year's storm was as much a blow to Donal as it was to me. He began to drink then, returning to me in a fearful stooshie. I suppose I must take comfort that I shall never face his fists again. He no longer bothers to apologise in the morning. He will be free to pursue the widow MacFee whose late husband's business is doubtless in need of a guiding male hand. She would not look twice at a married man, of course, but a man whose wife has been revealed as a spaewife could hope to meet considerable sympathy.

The witchfinder waits at the cliff head. The wind whips his hair into a mad halo. His eyes are black and shiny as coal. He is never wrong. The witch is always pricked with his special pricking pin and shown to be full of sin. Up here the sound of the crowd is all but stifled by the greiting of gulls and the rushing wind. I remember playing here as a child in the caves and tunnels formed naturally among the rocks. Only the smugglers kent the labyrinth better.

As I am fastened to the very centre of the structure the tolling bell ceases, its last note hanging in the air. The sea air is damp and I am trembling. A priest begins an incomprehensible drone and there is a metallic taste on my tongue, my heart in my throat - I can barely breathe.

I want to scream as torches are touched to the straw bales at the base of the pyre and the hungry flames lick easily up to the waiting wood. The dampness makes the wood pop and crackle and thick black smoke rises in to the air. "Oh God! Help me! Our Father which art in Heaven …"

I can no longer see the crowd; sweat flows down my face and into my eyes. "Hallowed be Thy name …" Smoke billows, black and swirling all around, I cannot see, I cannot breathe, I am choking, choking. "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done!" Suddenly I feel movement. The post behind me tilts. Is the fire collapsing? I still cannot see. I feel disoriented, the post twists and seems to drag me down into the heart of the fire and further into the very earth. Am I dead? Is this my banishment to the eternal fires of Hell? A metal sound, scrapes and clicks.

It is cooler down here. I feel hands untie me and I rub my eyes. I hear a gentle voice and finally I can see. Praise be! Jack Douglas! In a cave below the fire. How clever of him to fashion this mechanism for my salvation! And how clever of me to have taken the blacksmith for my lover.