Read an extract from The Repentants by Kate Foster

St Monans, Fife, Scotland 1790. Two women are forced to publicly repent in church, one for adultery the other for breaching the sabbath. Wealthy housewife, Florrie, and salt serf, Eliza, form a quick and unusual bond over their mutual humiliation. So when Florrie’s husband decides she must accompany him on a trade venture to Iceland, she insists Eliza comes as her maid.

Far from home, isolated and fearful, the two women grow ever closer. Then Florrie’s husband reveals his sinister plan: he will leave her in Iceland, banished for the shame she has cast upon him. Florrie must escape, but when she turns to Eliza for help she realizes nothing is quite as it seems…

READ AN EXTRACT FROM THE REPENTANTS

3. Kirk Session

FLORRIE

Thursday, 15th April

There are two cases called before the members of the Kirk Session today, myself and a sabbath breacher. The Kirk Session, a committee of five upstanding men chaired by Reverend Mitchell, will decide whether we must do public repentance.

I know it is just a formality. In the week since the thing that happened at the Mermaid Inn I have been in a scandal sheet. A man was selling them on a stand in Kirkcaldy. Jonny went straight there and confiscated them, as soon as we heard. The Afternoon Adventures of Mrs A. ‘Men will pleasure them-selves, reading that,’ Jonny had blazed when he got back, a vein in his forehead bulging in fury. ‘I’d divorce you if I could.’ I get ready without asking Martha to help. If I look close enough at my cheek, I can still see the trace of a slap on it. Last night, Martha cut my hair to shoulder length. I will shudder at the cold snip-snap of her shears for the rest of my days. It was my own idea. I had the notion it would make me look humble and lessen the penitence. They can put you in the scold’s bridle if they think you wanton enough. I have written to the innkeeper asking him to return the wrapper for it is sentimental, but I burned that whoring gown. I couldn’t bear to look at it again. I tore it along the seams and stuffed it into the parlour grate and up it went like a wicked witch on dry kindling and Jonny said, ‘That was a waste of money, but lucky for you that you have that kind of money to burn.’

The Kirk Session meets in the front room of the manse. Reverend Mitchell is at the head of the table and the men at either side. Jonny has not come. He does not want to hear the lurid details again, not after forcing me to spill them the first time in front of the minister. I wear a thick cap over my short hair and the chill of the room creeps across the back of my neck. Next to me is the other sinner, a young woman around my age who is one of the salt serfs who works in the pans. Her name is Eliza Wood. Perhaps I have seen her around town once or twice, but I do not really know the serfs. In front of us all, in the middle of the table, is the Parish Book of Discipline. Reverend Mitchell is new to the parish, arriving last winter from the Highlands, where folks are humbler and better, and he has brought strict Presbyterian ways with him. Whilst repentance stools are barely used in most places now, he thinks that a grave mistake.

He tells us this after we sit together and recite a prayer. ‘Before we begin, let me be clear. God has told me to run the Devil out of St Monans because the Devil is in our midst.’

The men beside him murmur. Eliza folds her arms across her chest.

‘We shall hear your case first, Miss Wood,’ says Reverend Mitchell. I frown at that, for surely I take precedence over a common salt serf, and ought to be heard first, even in the matter of sinning, but perhaps the Kirk Session is giving me a lesson in humility.

‘Tell us, Miss Wood, why you have been summoned here.’

She seems unimpressed at having to describe her situation. ‘Sabbath breaching you have me for,’ she says. ‘For I have missed three Sundays.’

‘And what is your excuse?’ asks Reverend Mitchell.

‘In truth, before God, I have no excuse that you would understand. I was not sickly, as you will know if you check the register for the salt pans, and I worked all my shifts since it opened anew after the windmill fire.’

‘So you were able to attend your workplace but unable to attend kirk. And with no excuse.’ Reverend Mitchell is solemn and one of the men at his side scratches away at a parchment with a long, dancing quill.

‘No excuse that you would understand,’ she repeats.

‘And what does that mean? For God understands everything.’ Eliza falls quiet but only for a brief lull. Her eyes sweep the room. She has long thick lashes and piercing eyes and she is the kind of pretty that I would envy, were she not a serf. ‘It was better for myself that I took time away from Kirk,’ she says, finally.

‘That sounds like some devilment has been afoot,’ says Reverend Mitchell, a warning-horn in his voice.

She places her hands in a prayer-steeple and brings her fingers to her lips. She talks in a low voice. ‘The Devil does not frighten me, minister. But men do.’ The Kirk Session does not like that. There is a shuffle of knees under the table and I suspect she is making their pricks half-hard with all the finger nibbling and lash fluttering. She has arts, this salt serf. But I like her outspokenness. She continues. ‘I know you shall make me wear sackcloth and repent. And you shall enjoy the sight of that, shan’t you? But I shall not tell you why I was absent from kirk for it does not matter now and anyways it is my business and no one else’s.’

‘That is enough,’ says the minister.

I focus on the bookcase for I am scared she will have made them furious. I see prayer books and bibles and books by John Knox. A wood-and-silver bowl and a miniature globe. I have never heard anyone talk like this sabbath-breaching salt serf. Not in all of my days. Ladies like me are kept away from outspoken women like her.

The minister turns to me. ‘Mrs Aitken,’ he commands, ‘explain why you are here.’

I tell the story as Jonny said I ought. Say you had a moment of madness. You can barely remember the half of it. Indeed, only yesterday Jonny had me examined by our physician to check for a weakness of the mind and the physician said I am currently compos mentis but extraordinarily delicate, so it might have been a fit of distraction that caused me to seek extramarital sexual satisfaction. A fever of the brain, I tell them. Eliza scrutinizes me as I recount it, and although I fear she will snigger or mock, she does neither but looks at me as though she feels sorry for me.

‘A moment of madness,’ repeats Reverend Mitchell. ‘Indeed, minister. I was tempted by a foreigner.’

‘Yes, you did in fact fornicate with a Danishman and were it not for the fact that you were caught you would in all likelihood have continued, although Mr Nielsen has since vanished and no one has seen hide nor hair of him since.’

‘I am sure I would have come to my senses,’ I plead.

‘And there is the matter of the scandal sheet,’ says Reverend Mitchell, ‘which has ripped your reputation to tatters and that of your husband. There is a line in the article that incenses me to read aloud, but here I go. And Mrs A, of St Monans parish, of all places which is said to be more pious than most, but her affair shows there is no moral leash on its congregation at all!’

‘It is not my fault someone wrote that,’ I say.

‘Oh, it is your fault entirely that someone wrote that. The Afternoon Adventures of Mrs A indeed. And I will show everyone my leash,’ says Reverend Mitchell. He leans forward and taps the book on the table. ‘According to the Parish Book of Discipline, sins that are committed publicly must also be punished publicly.’ The rest of the Kirk Session murmur their agreement.

We are to repent in three days. Another woman will join us, a scold who is to be whipped for cursing her husband in the street. And a fourth repentant, a man who is a vagabond and thief. We are to meet a quarter hour before the Sunday sermon and don sackcloth. The minister dismisses me and Eliza and I find myself walking down the manse path with her at my side.

The Repentants is published by Mantle on 28 May 2026