The head of the woman had been shaved, but not recently. Jack could guess, from the length of her stubble, that her ordeal had been going on for about a week. They had been going at her feet and legs with the old wedges-and-sledgehammers trick, and so she would have to be burnt in the seated position. When they set her down on the pile of faggots she winced from the pain of being moved, then leaned back against the stake, seeming glad that she was about to leave Bockboden for good. A plank was nailed into place above her, with a piece of paper on it, on which had been written some sort of helpful information. Meanwhile, a man tied her hands behind the stake – then passed the loose end of the rope around her neck a couple of times, and flung the slack away from the stake: a detail that infuriated the front-row crowd. Someone else stepped up with a big earthenware jug and sloshed oil all around.