Sin Eater: A Novel Read online

  ‘I’ve never heard the like,’ Brida says.

  Frederick’s voice gets softer. ‘Paul, you could find work. You are still strong, and we’ll need folk who know how to build a stage and arrange a tiring room. And we could always use a good dresser backstage. You are a knack with a needle.’

  ‘I have descended to such a state,’ Paul says. ‘I could not . . . I would not wish to be seen.’

  ‘You are not the first to be so scarred by painting his face. Why, it’s practically a badge of the trade. And you know all those highborn women suffer too. It’s why their layers of paint grow thicker with each year they age – to cover their scars.’

  ‘None are so awfully disfigured as me.’

  ‘You were beautiful,’ Frederick says, gentle-like.

  ‘I was irresistible,’ says Paul. ‘I was given a ruby ring. Did you know? A true gem, and I would know. I have gentle blood.’

  ‘You were loved,’ Frederick agrees. There’s a scraping sound, like somefolk getting up from the stool. ‘Where are you going, Paul? Good company is the only balm for hard living.’

  ‘I’m not distressed, I’m just fetching more wood,’ Paul says back, and the door to the yard opens and shuts. It’s plain he’s lying.

  ‘He’s a fair piece worse than last I saw him,’ Frederick says almost too low for me to hear. ‘He sweats melancholy.’

  ‘He’s of a fickle humour these days,’ Brida says back. ‘He calls me such things! Eve’s handmaiden and, what is it now,’ Brida searches for the words, ‘foul Mefite?’

  ‘Mephitis, the goddess of sulphurous stink,’ offers Frederick. ‘Paul’s the bastard son of a lord, you know. His sire educated him. Refused him his name, but equipped him with a ranging knowledge to call upon when cursing his companions.’

  ‘All the same, he cares for me as kin,’ says Brida with warmth in her voice. ‘So there you have it.’

  ‘He ever had a kind heart,’ sighs Frederick. ‘Bruised and beaten as it is. Justice would see that villain whipped who stole his heart and then cast him off when he was no longer beautiful.’

  The yard door opens. Frederick’s voice gets louder again. ‘Paul! You must read the lines I’ve been given. The scholars who wrote it read Aristotle and believe that makes them poets, forgetting as they always do that wit must be accompanied by irreverence, lest the audience succumb to sleep as the verse is spoken.’ As he says this bit, a new thought brings me fully awake.

  I’m down the ladder in a moment. Frederick and Paul scoot away as I near the hearth, while Brida does her best to make herself smaller on the rug. I hold out the book I found in Ruth’s box. Frederick and Paul have their letters. I can learn what kind of killing the deer heart signifies.

  ‘You told me the sin eater didn’t trouble you!’ cries Frederick, tensed like a rabbit against the wall.

  ‘It’s the book from the box,’ Brida sees out of the side of her eye. I turn the cover and indicate the first collection of letters. Brida grasps my meaning. ‘She wants you to read it.’

  Paul pulls his hands back. ‘I told you I’ll have nought to do with her!’

  I need their help, so I hold my ground a pace from them, the hearth embers crackling in the quiet.

  Finally Frederick mutters, ‘If the book’s verse hastens her retreat, then I yield.’ He reaches out to take the book, careful to keep from touching me. He clears his throat. ‘A Compendium of Diverse Sins Both Large and Small and Their According Foods.’ He takes a breath. ‘“In which it is set forth the foodstuffs accorded each sin and by which means the sin eater may verily cleanse the sins from the soul.”’

  ‘A tale of intrigue and feeling,’ Paul says like he doesn’t mean it at all, settling his back against the wall by the hearth. And so we begin.

  Frederick reads from the beginning of the book. It’s just a list of all the sins and their foods. Adultery, assault, arrogance, and many more, but no deer heart. I guess it will be under the sin of killing, but I don’t know where killing comes in the book. I keep waiting, hoping it will be next.

  What Frederick reads is still useful. I knew before that adultery is dried raisins and bearing a grudge is porridge, but bigamy is orange marmalade and blinding folk is pork pie. Hippocras, I knew, was for drunkenness, but it’s also for blood sacrifice. And there’s six kinds of coveting, and they’re all different creams: plain cream, clotted cream, curdled cream, posset, butter eggs with cream, and whipped cream.

  Frederick’s only a short way through the book when he yawns and rubs at his eyes. ‘Regretfully, I must suspend this edifying labour for the evening and rest my eyes.’ He holds out the book. ‘I have surely more than met this creature’s demand.’ I take the book from Frederick and try to ignore how his hand jerks back at my nearness. I’ll have him do more another night.

  I’m woken before dawn by yelling outside the house. Sleep drunk, I first think somefolk’s come again to do me harm. But then the sounds shift into two men fighting. I think it’s Paul or Frederick, but the fighting men’s words are too rough, like clods of earth.

  ‘Got nought against her,’ says one.

  ‘Old bitch,’ says the other. Mayhap one is a woman, but with such a low and gravelly voice as to be taken for a man. I peek out of the shutters. A constable and an old body.

  ‘Saw you drawing a devil’s sign on a house,’ says the constable.

  ‘Was nought but scribbling!’ The old body is tied at the waist. She does her best to hobble away from the constable, but she’s so ancient, the constable doesn’t even need to run after her. He catches the rope and drags her on towards town.

  ‘Burn you like the devil fugger you are,’ he says.

  ‘Haven’t done nothing!’ shrieks the woman.

  They turn a corner, and the house sinks into quiet for a moment. Then low voices come up the ladder.

  ‘Everyfolk’s on the hunt for witches because of that poppet,’ whispers Frederick.

  ‘Could have been me,’ I hear Brida’s little voice.

  ‘She was making the marks,’ Paul says. ‘Should know better than to get caught.’

  Brida speaks again softly, ‘Could have been me.’

  12. HUMBLE PIE

  IN THE MORNING when I climb down the ladder, my squatters are asleep. The house smells of farts and Brida’s rot. The broken doorframe’s been hastily repaired. The ewer is filled with water, and they’ve piled more wood near the hearth. I best get used to the noise and funk. They hope to stay.

  Outside I find a sky threatening rain and three messengers. Two are using sticks to poke at a frog half-eaten by some night-time fiend. The other is picking his nose with spirit. The nose picker sees me first. ‘Eating for Tilly Howe at the castle.’

  The frog pokers are next. ‘Milly Beane’s labouring with child in Northside tavern row.’

  ‘I got a Recitation for a lady in child labour too,’ says the second frog poker. ‘Goodwife Twarby. There’s a witch’s mark on the door.’

  It takes me a moment to hear the last bit. I turn to my door, but there’s nothing to be seen. The second frog poker uses his stick to lead my eyes to the lower corner down by the ground. It’s a small marking in charcoal that nearly disappears into the weathered wood. The marking has two eyes on either side of a shape that looks like a woman’s skirt. Keen sight, that second frog poker.

  I squat and try to rub the marking out with my fingers. All I get is a splinter.

  Why is my door marked? The thought drives me to a shiver. Everyfolk knows a witch’s mark’s a curse.

  The rain holds off as I walk to the first Recitation. It’s not that I’m putting off going to the castle, I tell the road before it can say anything. I’ve promised I’ll sort this all out, and I’ll keep my word. It’s just the dead have time the dying don’t, I tell it. So Recitations come first.

  The first frog poker leads me to an alehouse in Northside.

  ‘Well, that took a fugging long time,’ says a fat woman in an apron to the first frog poker. ‘The bab
e could’ve been born, raised, and shrived in the time it took you. Fortunate my sister is a slow birther. Don’t be expecting a penny from me.’ The frog poker cries out an excuse, but the woman waves him off.

  She leads me up the stairs to a family bedroom above the alehouse where Milly, also fat, lies abed, her belly swollen with child. There’s a toddler asleep at her side and an older child whose eyes match hers holding a mug of small beer at the ready. This isn’t her first time reciting before childbirth.

  ‘How’s it down there?’ asks Milly.

  ‘Folk drink just fine without you,’ says her sister.

  ‘You tell Carter Parris he owes me for three pints. Don’t you let him run any stories at you.’ Milly waves at the child for the small beer and takes a drink.

  ‘Carter Parris isn’t going to run any stories at me,’ the sister answers.

  ‘Bring us a light, would you? Dark as Eve’s heart in here,’ complains Milly.

  The sister nods at the child, who finds a rush candle and lights it from the hearth fire. Milly peers over at me. ‘A new sin eater.’

  ‘The Unseen is now seen,’ I say. ‘The Unheard is now heard. The sins of your flesh become the sins of mine to be borne to my grave in silence.’

  Milly’s eyes go to the ceiling. ‘There’s scolding, vanity, not saying my prayers as I ought, putting money before goodliness, more scolding. Fanny, what all have I done?’

  The sister puffs out her lips. ‘Quarrelling, miserliness. You smacked Carter Parris a good many times.’

  ‘Miserliness? I never!’ cries Milly. ‘I watch my pennies. That’s good sense’s all.’

  ‘You’re the one asked,’ says the sister, Fanny.

  ‘Wait till you’re doing the reciting: ill-temper, churlishness, scolding . . .’

  ‘That’s all the same sin!’

  ‘Being moody all the time,’ adds Milly.

  ‘You just said that,’ says Fanny.

  ‘Being a sourpuss,’ adds Milly.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ Fanny announces. She looks at the older child. ‘Call me up when your mother’s too pained to talk.’ She disappears down the stairs.

  ‘Don’t let Carter Parris drink!’ Milly yells after her. She looks in my direction. ‘Let’s be done then.’

  ‘When the food is et, your sins will be mine,’ I say. ‘I will bear them in silence to my grave.’

  The next Recitation is for Goodwife Twarby. The second frog poker follows me close by. When I near the merchants’ row, he comes to my elbow and guides me not to the front of the houses, but around the back. We go down a little lane and then through a garden gate past pretty boxes of spring flowers.

  A maid lets us in the garden door. She nods her head up the stairs just as a moan comes down it. I’ve become accustomed enough to steps that I barely even need to hold the wall as I climb.

  On the second storey, another maid waits outside a shut bedchamber with a brass ewer. ‘Madam?’ she calls through the door. ‘I brought cool water for you.’

  A voice comes back, ‘Leave it outside.’

  The maid notices me behind her and knocks again. ‘Madam?’

  ‘You may not enter!’ urges the voice.

  The maid holds out the ewer for me.

  Inside is Goodwife Twarby and her daughter, a girl no older than me. But it’s not Goodwife Twarby who’s labouring, it’s the daughter. There’s a wooden spoon between the girl’s teeth. Her mother wipes her brow as the labour pains come.

  Goodwife Twarby wears a loose gown of the sort women wear when they’re with child, but as she takes the ewer from me, the bulge under the gown squashes under her elbow like it’s made of blood moss or wool batting. The daughter whimpers through the spoon, and the mother takes up the moan loud enough to carry down the stairs.

  I wonder if the housemaids have fallen for this ruse. The goodwife and her daughter are not the first to try. Even the rumour of lost virginity stains an unmarried girl for good. There’s girls cast out of their own homes for less.

  The daughter’s Recitation is quick. Fornicating, it comes as no surprise. Not much besides, not even disobeying her parents. So many with such worse sins, yet this girl’s the one who’s stained.

  Finally it’s time for Tilly Howe’s Eating. I look for more messengers as I make my way to the castle, just to be sure there aren’t any more Recitations to be done, but none find me. The Eating it must be. With luck, it will be too small an affair to draw the likes of Black Fingers.

  A maid guides me through the servants’ quarters. Grooms carry parcels and guards pull at their stockings. We stop for a moment for porters bringing in ale barrels. There’s one shaft of sunlight coming in a window along the passage, so I take a peek while we wait.

  The window looks out onto a garden where some courtiers play at bowling. The sky’s lightened some, at least enough for the bowlers to make a go of it. They strut and scratch like cocks on bony legs. Beyond the bowling on a stone bench, I see a man alone. There’s a tingling in my guts. The Country Mouse.

  What is he doing on the bench alone? Mayhap he dislikes bowling. Then I remember he said the other highborn folk look down on him for being from the North. The porters behind me are still loading ale barrels, so I settle in for a gander. He’s looking at something in his hand. A coin? A pocket clock? His ring. Thinking of his friend from home. I wish I could keep him company.

  I drop into a little daydream. The courtiers decide to jape the Country Mouse for being a Northerner. They take a ball from their bowling and plan to knock him on the head with it. From here, at the window, I wave to him. He spies the movement and stands, moving out of the ball’s path. He rounds on the courtiers and they scatter in shame. He finds my face, like a picture in the window . . . all at once the Country Mouse’s face does rise. I feel when his eyes arrive at my face. There’s a quick look of startlement. Without knowing why, I raise my da’s ring into the sunlight and twist it to send a sunbeam to him. It hits his chest. He looks down at the white circle of light hovering on him like a moth. Slowly, he raises his own ring and catches the light with it. Sends it back to me. It makes me laugh as it pricks at my eyes.

  There’s a rough cough beside me from the maid, pulling me back into the servants’ passage. Everything seems dim and sunken after the bright garden light. The porters are gone, and the maid wants to go.

  He sent the sunbeam back. The thought bounces down the corridor. I tuck my little sunbeam memory into my heart and follow the maid to Tilly Howe’s Eating.

  It’s warm enough in the small hall where the coffin’s laid out that the oil slips down the deer heart like water. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see it. Tilly warned me.

  But the folk who’ve come to pay respects weren’t warned. In their faces I see the reflection of the deer heart, like a pall. Many come, some women with grown children and some of the Queen’s ladies too, but none stay to take one of the stools. They are aghast at the crime. Tilly was a midwife as well as a healer. Supposed to bring life into the world, not end it. And so soon after Corliss’s Eating.

  The only one who stays is the Willow Tree. He stands in the corner, his eyes glancing off the coffin like a fly after a pie. Mayhap he’s checking to see if I’ll eat the heart.

  Should I? There are no sword blades against me now. I start on the hippocras, so as to put off the question.

  Fair Hair and Mush Face, I notice, are among those come to witness. They walk with a girl I don’t know who wears yellow taffeta. As they near the coffin, I see Mush Face is wearing the same dress she did before.

  The yellow-taffeta girl turns to the other two. ‘I only went to her once when I overturned a candle and burned my wrist.’ She looks to Mush Face. ‘You saw her, didn’t you, for your headaches?’

  Mush Face nods.

  ‘I heard she passed with blisters on her belly,’ Yellow Taffeta whispers. ‘Do you think she was a victim of the witch?’

  Fair Hair shakes her blonde curls. ‘Those ghastly poppets!’

>   ‘I know she was a murderess,’ Mush Face answers, looking at the deer heart. Her eyes run over the other foods. She has a look as she does. It’s a look I know but never would expect to see on one of the Queen’s ladies: hunger. Suddenly Mush Face’s head comes up. ‘Poppets,’ she stares at Fair Hair. ‘You said poppets.’

  Fair Hair looks blankly back at Mush Face.

  ‘I thought only one had been found.’

  But Fair Hair’s eyes have gone to a figure darkening the doorway. Black Fingers. Who nearly killed me twice. Who tortured Ruth to death. The mustard seed catches in my throat, and I feel great thumps of blood under my stitches.

  I catch a movement in front of the coffin. A kerchief flutters from Fair Hair’s hand to the floor. Swift as a kite, Black Fingers cuts across the room to pick it up. He’s only feet away from me.

  If Black Fingers is startled to find me alive, he hides it well. He can’t hurt me in front of all these folk, I remind the mustard seeds. Still, I measure in my mind how many steps it would take to reach the door, an old habit from my year at the Daffreys’.

  Black Fingers offers the kerchief to Fair Hair. ‘Milady.’ Close as they are, I see Fair Hair pass him something small and square as she takes the kerchief from him. A slip of paper. All at once I recall seeing them leaving the same closet after Corliss’s Eating. The herb dispensary, it was. Mayhap they’re lovers. A dangerous game, to be sure, if he’s the Queen’s favourite.

  A choked burble draws all of our attention. It’s the Painted Pig, recovered from her faint the day before, and bobbing towards the coffin in a great ruff. Black Fingers leaves Fair Hair with a light nod and crosses to the Painted Pig, offering his arm.

  I can see the Painted Pig hesitate before resting her arm upon his. I also see that while she may look recovered from afar, it’s only with the help of much face paint. She’s been weeping, which ought to soften me towards her but doesn’t.