In an age when witchcraft meant torture and death by burning, it is foreseeable that she would end up in the Tolbooth in Edinburgh.  She is accused by Hector, her stepson, who has reason to hate her; she refused him in marriage because she loved and eventually married his father.

Catherine has brought against Hector a similar charge, and the double trial is the climax of the book.  It takes place over twenty-four hours, but the story ranges back and forward, swinging from the transcript of the trial to narrative by various characters and back again.  It is more than a straight fight between two people.  There is underlying drama, intrigue and suspicion, and a great interlinking of family politics.

The protagonists have their own theological difficulties.  Hector’s god gives him no joy; the doctrines of the Reformed Kirk were stern and pitiless.  Catherine, apparently with a foot in both camps, has more compassion.  Hector himself is lured into the black arts by the doctrine of predestination.  This, and Catherine’s pantheism, makes neither of them blameless.  The final solution between them is, I feel somewhat contrived; and meanwhile, the covens meet, as ever, and the man who plays the devil is revealed at the very end of the book, to shock the reader even in the last paragraph.

It is a clever book, but difficult to summarize.  Nevertheless, it is brilliantly written.  One may find the poetic dialogue too good to be true, but Elizabeth Sutherland obviously knows her Highlanders, so no doubt her dialogue will be as accurate as her historical research.  Her description of medieval Edinburgh in the heat wave can make one almost physically aware of the stink and heat.