Sin Eater: A Novel Read online

  ‘Your belly?’ asks Meg.

  ‘My lips,’ answers Tilly. ‘Give me the cup, I’m like to die of thirst.’

  Her lips, I see with startlement, have turned bluish. I feel the same niggle as when I saw Corliss’s blue lips. But this time, the memory comes into my head, the picture clear and well lit. I know what makes lips turn blue, the body shake, and foam come out of the mouth. It’s not the falling sickness or the flux, though it looks the same for most of its course. That’s why the herbs are so dear to purchase. And why, when the gallipot described them to my Daffrey uncles, it was safe inside their house in the black of night. Corliss and Tilly were poisoned.

  I tried my best to forget every moment from my dark year at the Daffreys. But it doesn’t mean I managed to. My uncles were upright men, which in thieves’ cant means top-of-the-heap rogues. Before going to the Daffreys I hadn’t known that rogues and other crooked folk have ranks and orders just like nobles do, with the most cunning of the rogues right at the top. My uncles were the rulers, my granddam the dowager queen.

  All manner of rotten men tramped through the Daffrey house considering themselves lords and dukes of roguery. Highway robbers who would kill a man for his calfskin boots, priggers who thieved horses, jarkmen selling begging passports. There were others, but their names I forgot. Or at least tried to during those nights when they’d fill up the kitchen. Me cooking them supper. Them eating my pottage, looking at me through my clothes, though I was only a girl, so I’d shiver even beside the fire. But I do remember a certain type. Gallipots.

  Gallipots were men who would have been apothecaries if the herbs and concoctions they sold ever helped a body towards health. Their wares nudged folk the other way. How plain or subtle the nudge was a difference of price.

  One night when I’d been at the Daffreys a few months, the rogues came one after the other, first filling the twin benches of the kitchen table, then the stools from the hearth, then the two pails, overturned, then sitting atop the firewood placed on its end, and finally standing all along the wall over to the stove where I was stirring the soup. It was a meeting to divide out territory and collect duties for the right to work it. Rogues pay duties too. But not to the Queen. These duties went to Misgett, my elder uncle, the king rogue.

  Uric, the younger uncle, more silent, but frightening in his silence, drew the map of the area in oat flour on the table. When it was done, and everyone knew their place, Misgett banged his cup on the table and called attention. A new peer was joining the ranks, and it was time for his baptism. The men pushed to the side so there was a place for the new man, Barnabas he was called, to kneel before Misgett. Misgett rose from his seat. ‘We see you be a man, is it so?’

  Barnabas answered, ‘As I’ve handled a woman, I say so.’ The rogues all cheered.

  ‘We see you be an Anglishman, is it so?’ said Misgett next.

  ‘As my mother was an Anglishwoman, I say so.’ More cheers.

  ‘We see you be a rogue, is it so?’

  ‘As I pay allegiance with this purse, I say so.’ Barnabas raised a little sack to Misgett, who shook it all around the room, spilling the coins for the men to grab for.

  Uric banged the table for quiet. Misgett raised his cup. ‘I welcome you as a man, an Anglishman, and a rogue!’ And with that he poured his beer over Barnabas’s head right at the kitchen table, leaving a sweet puddle for me to mop up later.

  Then, it was time for Barnabas to share his ‘game’ with his new peers. He took out a leather box. Then he brought in the dogs.

  There were three of them. Not skinny, little mongrels that root around in rubbish, but sturdy farm dogs. They were nervous to come into a room full of men, but Barnabas had them muzzled and leashed so in they came. Two were of sound health, the third doing poorly, its breath coming hard and whining as if pained.

  Barnabas opened the leather box. Inside were three glass jars wrapped like new babes in wool fluff. Inside the jars were his poisons, for Barnabas was a gallipot.

  The third dog, the one doing poorly, Barnabas told the rogues, had been given poison that worked in small bits each day from one of the jars. Over a month, it’d kill a grown man with none the wiser. Barnabas kicked the dog hard in the gut. It fell with a howl and couldn’t get up. The men cheered while the dog tried to crawl to the door. Misgett waved, and a lower rogue dragged the dog out into the yard.

  Barnabas brought the second dog forward. Then he opened one of the jars from the box and poured three drops into a bloody slurry in a bowl. He let the dog at it. It dived for the bowl, lapping up the blood. The other hale dog barked and leapt for the bowl. Barnabas must have been starving them so he’d be sure they’d eat.

  It took only a moment for the poison to work. The yelps of the dog were so piteous, I covered my ears. ‘Burning a hole right through the dog’s throat, it is,’ said Barnabas. ‘In a man, you can see it more plainly because there’s no fur.’

  The dog’s yelps frittered into whines. Misgett waved his hand again, and that dog was dragged out too. Not long after, its whining stopped.

  Barnabas removed one more jar from his box. This one had a powder inside. With a gloved hand, he took several pinches and mixed it in a pan of offal. The last dog gobbled it down.

  ‘A pinch’ll take a day or two to do its work,’ Barnabas said. ‘But I’ve given more so as to see the effects quicker.’ The men filled their cups again, but they weren’t halfway drunk before the howls began. The dog shook and howled and howled and shook. When its bowels opened, Misgett had the same lower rogue take the dog outside.

  ‘Looks like the bloody flux,’ one of the other rogues said.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Barnabas. ‘But it can be known for a few moments just before death by blue lips, foaming mouth, and great shaking.’

  It was one of the worst nights at the Daffreys in a year of worsts.

  Bastard Daffreys. They gave me something useful after all.

  I’m snapped back to the moment by Tilly moaning. She’s growing more senseless by the moment. She curls to her side and whispers something to the bed curtains.

  I lean forward but I’ve missed the words. ‘What did you say?’ I urge her. But Tilly doesn’t reply.

  Meg squeezes Tilly’s hand and looks away. ‘She said there’ll be deer heart on her coffin too.’

  9. MUTTON CHOP

  IT’S LIKE SEEING a big, clawed print in the mud. The first time you see it, you think, sure it’s bigger than a dog’s, but mayhap the mud was soft, mayhap the dog’s foot was swollen. But after the second print, you know it’s wolf.

  Two ladies poisoned. Two deer hearts on coffins. Something dark’s afoot. Surely others must have noticed. I name all the folk who saw Corliss and Tilly in their final moments and might have witnessed the signs of poison.

  Healers? The Willow Tree, the Queen’s physician, saw to Corliss, but not to Tilly.

  Maids? Folk like Tilly don’t have chambermaids.

  Who might have come and seen the prints in the mud?

  Me. I’m the only folk who saw how both women died. The only folk who heard both Recitations. What do I do with this knowledge? I know I should tell somefolk, but how?

  Da said things just want to work right, but they’re getting more broken and muddled. There’s only one thing the poisoning has shown: it wasn’t the witch’s poppet that killed Corliss. I know that much for certain now. There’s another fiend at work as well. A witch and a poisoner. I wish the other Sin Eater were here. Ruth, I named her, I remind myself.

  Meg’s waiting for me. I list off the foods. Clotted cream for gluttony, plain cream for envy, hippocras for drunkenness, mustard seed for lies, whipped syllabub for deception, until there’s none left, only Tilly’s last whispered words hanging in the air between us. Meg’s eyes stay keen on the floor rushes, waiting to see if I add the heart.

  Beyond us, on the bed, Tilly begins to shake again. White foam comes to her lips.

  I close the Recitation. ‘Any last words?’ But Tilly
is beyond that.

  When I come out of the scroll door, for a moment the sunlight warms away the muddle. I take a deep breath. The air is still just air. The stones are still just stones. The day is still day. If I walked away now back to Dungsbrook, mayhap I could leave these grim dealings behind.

  But then I look out across the courtyard and see the tower. Underneath it is the dungeon. That’s where Ruth is.

  My guts say, Flee. They say it loud and plain so I barely even notice the uneven cobbles beneath my thin slippers, still on the wrong feet.

  It takes fewer steps than I think to cross the courtyard, fewer steps than I want to reach the dungeon. There’s no guards to block me going in. It’s only going out that’s forbidden.

  Ten mouldy, green stairs take me down into the earth. At the bottom is a doorway guarded by a lumpy man on a stool with a beard as furry as the mouldy steps. Beyond him is a stone hallway that’s wet like it’s weeping. The hallway has wooden doors every few paces along it until it’s too dark to see. It’s not like the jail I was in, a big, earthen room with a lock on it and everyfolk crowded in. This one’s only for traitors and highborn folk.

  ‘Who’s been granted a visit from a sin eater?’ Mouldy Beard says aloud. His voice echoes down the passage.

  An older guard wearing a neat, grey beard shaped like a spade comes out of the dark corridor. He lets his eyes rove across me without settling. ‘None to die today. Send her away.’

  ‘How?’ asks Mouldy Beard like he’s been asked to remove a snake.

  ‘None to die today,’ Grey Beard says louder.

  Like a squirrel, I make a dash around them, expecting their pull at my clothing. But all they do is yell. At each other. ‘You let her pass!’ scolds Grey Beard.

  ‘What was I meant to do?’ says Mouldy Beard.

  ‘What does she intend? Follow her!’

  I hear their footsteps behind me as I peer in a small hole cut into the first door. Inside the cell’s a young man on his knees in prayer.

  Inside the next is a large man lying on a dirty pile of rushes, still as the dead.

  ‘She’s looking for somefolk,’ says Mouldy Beard.

  The following cell is larger. It has a bed and a table. There’s a woman in a fine dress writing on a parchment, a nub of a beeswax candle lighting her work.

  ‘She’s looking at the Eucharistian countess,’ says Mouldy Beard.

  ‘You needn’t recite what we both see plainly!’ curses Grey Beard.

  The countess looks up at the voices.

  ‘Have you a parcel for me?’ she says to the guards in a tired way. ‘I was to be brought one by my kinfolk.’

  There’s some quiet, and then Mouldy Beard calls, ‘There was, milady.’ His footsteps go and come back. He unlocks the countess’s door, a basket in his hand. It’s covered in a yellow cloth embroidered with a red badge like the Painted Pig was stitching.

  ‘And would you have given it me had I not asked for it?’ says the countess like she’s in her own home, addressing a servant. ‘Or kept it for yourself?’

  Mouldy Beard looks at his shoes and locks the door again. But Grey Beard says, ‘You’re a traitor to the Queen, so mayhap you shouldn’t complain.’

  ‘Perhaps you should not address me so boldly!’ the countess says back through the door. ‘I may be Eucharistian, I will not deny my faith, but I have never plotted to overthrow Queen Bethany. My own cousin serves as a lady of the bedchamber! We are loyal.’

  ‘Eucharistian spies all over Queen Bethany’s court like vermin. Eve’s own daughters,’ says Grey Beard, nasty-like.

  ‘I was a dear friend of the dowager Queen Katryna, Bethany’s stepmother, and lived in her household the same years Queen Bethany did. She should recall as much and take care lest the cuckoo call too loudly.’ Then the countess sings a rhyme:

  The cuckoo is a sly bird

  It never builds a nest

  It will not claim its hatchling

  It leaves it to the rest.

  ‘You speaking riddles now? I’ll call the witch finder,’ says Grey Beard.

  The countess doesn’t answer him. ‘There’s only candles and cakes in the parcel. My cousin was to send me ink.’

  ‘So you can write your spy letters?’ asks Grey Beard.

  ‘Give me my ink!’

  Grey Beard says nothing back.

  After the countess’s cell, the dungeon’s weepy walls disappear in a long, dark curve. There’s a sudden howl, like from an animal, coming from the black that makes my guts drop. What will I find if I go on?

  But she’s here. And she’s the only folk I’ve got left.

  ‘She’s going to the interrogation cells,’ Mouldy Beard says. I hear the sound of Grey Beard’s fist hitting Mouldy Beard’s flesh.

  A few paces into the dark curve I see a whisper of light. It’s another several paces before it brightens into a lamp lighting a second row of doors. A low howl comes from the first door. A bitter taste comes up into my mouth as I step to the peephole.

  Inside is like a shadow image of a picture I’ve seen before. The Willow Tree, the Queen’s physician, is there. He’s leaning over a bowl of urine, just like he did when he tended to Corliss. But this time he’s next to an ancient, shrivelled woman, and he’s not trying to heal her.

  She’s dressed in rags, and her face and neck have small burns and needle pricks all over them. The Willow Tree sniffs at the urine. ‘Inconclusive, again,’ he says. ‘You carry your secrets close, mistress.’ He places the bowl of urine on the cell floor. As he does, there’s a glint from his hand. It’s the witch pricker on the nail of his little finger. He lowers the thick needle towards her. Its tip doesn’t shine because it’s dark with her blood.

  I remind myself the old woman may well have made the poppet that was found, the one fashioned to curse a highborn lady with bristles stuck in the belly and cunny. That’s blackest magic. I hurry to the next cell door and look in.

  A whimper escapes my lips when I see the Sin Eater. It’s dim in the cell, but I see her nonetheless. She’s sitting on the floor, facing away, hanging over herself. The stones that will press her are in a pile nearby.

  I gruff to pull her attention. I sound like an animal, a horse or a cow. But the Sin Eater is as still as the stones. She must be drunk. But no, there’s no drink here. Not in a dungeon. Only cold stones and waiting and the much worse that comes when the waiting ends.

  I don’t know what to do, so I wait too. I wait with her. Mayhap my breaths in and out will take the place of words. Mayhap she’ll hear the catches in it and know I’ve come to comfort her. That I’ve given her a name. That I’m sorry. That I miss her.

  And then I see the blood on the floor.

  It’s under the pressing stones, a dark carpet that I missed at first because of the dim light.

  Mayhap it’s old blood, but even as I think this, I know it’s not true. Oh, Ruth.

  I look closely at her hands. The fingers are dark and blistered. No, not blistered. Burst. Burst from blood being squeezed until her fingertips split. She’s not waiting. She’s dead. I’m looking at the memory of her, the husk that was discarded to the side after the stones pressed the life out of her. I’m too late.

  Grey Beard’s voice makes me jump. I forgot the guards were behind me. ‘Was good fortune the little sin eater had sense enough to eat when the big one didn’t.’

  What must Ruth’s face look like? Her big chestnut eyes?

  Grey Beard’s voice goes on. ‘If the little one had baulked too, they couldn’t have put the elder sin eater under the press. The Queen’s secretary would’ve had to do something else. Can’t have a town with no sin eaters.’

  A drum thunders in my ears. It’s my own blood coming hard. Could I have kept her from dying? Did I make her expendable by choosing to eat?

  ‘Couldn’t they just make another sin eater?’ asks Mouldy Beard.

  ‘It’s not like being made apprentice to a smithy,’ huffs Grey Beard. ‘Making a new sin eater takes care.�
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  ‘Just need a girl, don’t you?’

  The guards go on talking like their words haven’t grabbed hold of my heart. Like they’re talking about crops in the field or if it’s like to rain.

  ‘Not just a girl,’ says Grey Beard. ‘Think on it: if the recorder pronounced a girl of your own blood and kin to be the next sin eater, what would you do?’

  ‘I’d never let them!’ spits Mouldy Beard.

  ‘You’d be shouting in the road in protest!’ agrees Grey Beard. ‘As would every honest man. So the recorder has to choose with care who he makes a sin eater. Our recorder is vindictive.’ Grey Beard nods towards Ruth, dead in her cell. ‘His wife lost two babes one after another, then had one that was simple. So he cursed her back, made her into that sin eater there.’

  I remember the two bone pendants from the box at the foot of the mattress. Her two lost children. Is that why she sat on the stool before the hearth? Is that why she moaned and drank? Mouldy Beard’s feet shift on the stones. ‘And what’d this young one do?’

  ‘How the fug should I know?’ says Grey Beard. ‘Why’s the body still here?’

  Mouldy Beard passes me, key in hand. Then there’s a grunt and Mouldy Beard’s heavy breath as he drags Ruth’s body out. Two dragging sounds for each of his footsteps. Then a rest. Two drags, then a rest. A word in each drag. I try to catch the shape of the two words. You . . .? No, one word:

  Judas.

  Her body says it as he drags her from the bloody cell. Judas, the betrayer. I ate the deer heart that was never recited and so Black Fingers, the Queen’s secretary, was free to kill her.

  My head shakes like a dog shaking its wet fur, but the name won’t shake off. Mouldy Beard drags her body past me. There’s mud at the sides of her mouth and eyes, mud caked into her nail beds. No, not mud. Blood.

  ‘Oh, Ruth,’ my lips trace. My breath fritters away into a howl. A howl at her pain and my sorrow and the loneliness that presses on my chest like the stones that killed her. My lips grab at the sounds coming from my mouth, making them into whispers. ‘Forgive me, forgive me!’