I paused. Ambrose nodded. This nod of his made me want to ask him whether he had ever had a similar thought, but I did not, it seeming very unlikely that this immovable crag of a man ever suffered the torments of this kind of temptation.

"When I came to Whittlesea," I went on, "I believed that all of what I had been in my former life I would no longer be. I thought Whittlesea could re-make me."

"And has it re-made you, Robert?"

"It has re-made parts of me. John understood this when he told me I had made 'some progress'. And perhaps – though he never spoke of it – he knew that I would be tempted by Katharine and that I would resist, but that eventually my resistance would falter."

"And if he had seen it falter, he would have felt betrayed by you Robert."

"Betrayed?"

"Yes. For it is understood by the Keepers of Whittlesea that we stand towards those we protect as parents towards children. And for the parent to lay any hand on his child for his own pleasure and satisfaction is a betrayal of the most horrible kind."

I sighed. I was forced to admit to myself that this was indeed how I had thought of Katharine and it was for a "child" that I had made the doll, and thus the Time of Madness with her now appeared to me more foul than ever and Ambrose's sternness with me entirely justified.

I had not seen Katharine for several days, having been asked by Ambrose to stay out of Margaret Fell. He now described to me how – since my betrayal of my trust -Katharine could not be induced by any means, save the giving of laudanum, to sleep and how, day and night, she repeated my name and asked for me and shrieked and sobbed and touched herself indecently and how my very name had become synonymous with her madness so that the women of Margaret Fell told the Keepers she was suffering from a "lunacy of Robert, a most terrible derangement."

This description made me feel so afraid that all strength went out of my voice and I longed to curl up into a cowardly heap at Ambrose's feet (remembering for a fleeting moment that I had once lain thus before the Royal footstool) and be covered by absolute silence and darkness. Aware of my fear no doubt, Ambrose reached out and put his large hand on my shoulder.

"I know," he said, "that you are sorry for what has happened. We love you and we forgive you, Robert."

"Thank you, Ambrose."

"But I also know that you will want to make amends, and it has come to me from the Lord how you are to do this."

"It has come to you from the Lord?"

"Yes."

"What has He said? What am I to do?"

"You are to leave Whittlesea."

"I know. I knew that I would have to do this."

"But not alone. You are to take Katharine with you."

I looked up at Ambrose. I swallowed. I put my fists together and held them out in an attitude of supplication. "Ambrose," I began, "please do not ask me to do this…"

"I am not asking. The Lord is commanding."

"No! He would not…"

"Did He not hear you say that if you could cure one of them and see him walk out from here you would feel useful again?"

"Yes. I said that – "

"And He heard you. And now He has made it possible for you to achieve the thing you hoped for."

"But Katharine is not cured…"

"Not yet. But the means have been found. You have found them and only you hold them. The means are you."

"No, Ambrose!"

"Love is the means, Robert. If you love her, she will sleep and when she has learned to sleep she will no longer be mad."

"And besides, she is yours entirely now, for she is expecting your child."

That night, I did not sleep.

What passed through my mind I cannot remember. All I know is that I was filled with a dread of the future so profound that all my life until that moment appeared to me to have been filled with a happiness I had never perceived. When George Fox first heard the word of God, coming directly to him, he declared that from that moment "all the creation was given another smell under me than before", and now I felt as he had felt, except that he had begun to smell the newness and freshness of things and what I had begun to smell was despair.

When Ambrose told Edmund and Eleanor and Hannah that "Robert is not shirking his responsibility towards Katharine," they were very tender in their behaviour, smiling sweetly at me and promising to pray for me. Only Daniel looked at me sadly. "It's a shame," he said, "that you were never able to teach us the game of croquet."

During the days that remained to me at Whittlesea, I tried to decide what road I would take when I went out from there, whether north to the sea or north-east to Norfolk or south to London, but I had no appetite for any journey nor for any arrival; I was filled with a loathing for my life. And so I chose the road to London, remembering the plague there and imagining that in the pestilence resided the ending of my story – an ending I had brought upon myself.

The Keepers fetched Katharine out from Margaret Fell. They bathed her and washed her and combed her hair and put a clean dress on her. And they gave her Pearce's room to sleep in, promising her that I would come to her and comfort her "with the tender love he feels for you and the child", and that, so comforted, she would indeed sleep.

And so I was forced to go in to the room where my friend had died and there was Katharine sitting quietly on the hard chair where Pearce used to sit and read, his knees neatly together, the book held up to his nose, like a fan, the words of Harvey circulating so sweetly in his brain that it became oblivious to everything else.

When Katharine saw me, she rose from the chair and came to me and put her arms round my neck and began to sob and say Robert, Robert, Robert, twenty or thirty times. I held her. The dress she wore was made of clean linen and so the smell of Katharine was not the smell of her that I remembered. And for this change I was grateful.

I told her that we would be going away from Whittlesea. I told her that I loved her and that I would not abandon her.

That evening, she supped with us in the kitchen. She ate with a spoon in her right hand and with her left hand kept a hold on my arm. And that night, as Ambrose and the others had predicted, she went to sleep and did not wake till dawn.

The money that remained to me in the world was twenty-four pounds and three shillings.

With this, with my clothes and possessions put into two flour sacks, and with Katharine dressed in a woollen cloak waiting for me outside, I stood in the parlour of Whittlesea House, in the room of all the Meetings, and the Keepers came, one by one, and took my hand and bid me adieu.

The sorrow and disappointment that I beheld in their faces was a very terrible thing to endure and I wished for this leave-taking to be over quickly. But it could not be so, because there was a corner in each of their hearts that did not want me to leave and would rather have had me stay, my crime notwithstanding. And so they reminded themselves how the Lord had sent me to them "out of the windy sky", and how, in coming to Whittlesea, I had brought a great gift and that was the gift of my hands, which had helped them for so many months in their tasks of healing.

"How shall we manage?" asked Ambrose. "Now that mine are the only physician's skills? Pray for us, Robert, for life will be hard for us – without John and without you."

"Yes. Pray for us, dear Robert," said Hannah.

"And pray for me," said Daniel, "for if ever there is to be more dancing or skipping about, I will be the only musician."

"I will pray for you all," I said, "and remember you for ever, how you took me in and how it was never part of any plan that I had to betray you or make you ashamed…"