Sin Eater: A Novel Read online

  ‘There!’ he hisses.

  I dash out and make for the front of the hall. I hear the woman’s feet on the stone floor pursuing me. She’s faster than I am. I don’t know that I’ll make it.

  Look to your advantage.

  I don’t have any. But then I remember the Willow Tree’s voice. He’s kept it low and quiet. They don’t want any folk to hear what they’re doing. I cannot speak, but I can surely scream.

  I open my mouth and hurl my voice wordlessly into the hall. The stones echo my scream back again and again. The woman freezes, her eyes widening. I don’t stop to see what she does next. I stumble into the vestment room. There’s a small door to my right. I race to it. I don’t know where I’m going, but in I go. The door swings closed behind me.

  The passageway is narrow and completely dark. I keep my hands along the walls to feel my way. I make a turn and then another. I listen for the woman or the Willow Tree, but they must have fled when I screamed.

  At long last, my fingers find a door. I open it as quiet as I can and come out in a hall dimly lit by moonlight. A table sits centre, and the Queen’s badge, a falcon above a rose, hangs on the wall over the head chair. Along the other walls are the banners of the most loyal families. Black Fingers’s lion hangs to the side of the Queen’s banner. Beside the lion is the family banner of Katryna, the Queen’s stepmother, the fair-haired maiden rising from a flower. Beyond that is a banner with a stag. The Country Mouse’s family.

  In my head I see the dark pool of blood on the altar. I didn’t stop them. I crawl under the table and hug myself into a ball. I breathe in and out, in and out, for a long, long time.

  Dawn light’s just creeping in the window when I’m startled awake by voices passing outside the hall.

  ‘It was witches?’ a woman’s voice asks.

  ‘Don’t know,’ a second woman answers. ‘But the Queen’s likeness was on the altar. And the blood . . .’ I see the altar again in my mind. ‘Hope you’ve plenty of rags in that basket.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen how the little ones bleed out,’ says the first voice. ‘You’d think all they had in them is blood!’ My heart lurches in my chest. She says it so easy, as if it’s nothing to have seen a babe murdered.

  What black place have I come to? What hope do folk have in a world such as this? I bury my head in my knees, so I only barely hear her when she finishes. ‘Slaughtering a piglet on the Maker’s altar, the sin eater will feast on that one day.’

  It takes a moment for her words to settle in. When they do, my bark of laughter is so loud, I fear the women will hear it from the corridor.

  A piglet, not a baby.

  It’s the first good news I’ve had in I can’t remember how long. Whatever the Willow Tree is about, it’s not murdering folk. I shove my skirt into my mouth, because after all the misery of this night, my heart wants to laugh. Never did I guess I’d count a pig slaughtered in a Makerhall as good fortune. Which just makes me laugh all the more. Which is how they hear me.

  19. KIDNEY PIE

  I’M HELD IN a chamber on the ground floor of the castle. Through the window I can see the dungeon entrance across the courtyard. The window’s glass is old and has thickened near the bottom so the dungeon door seems to be sinking down towards the earth.

  The Willow Tree refolds his hands at his waist. The thick, silver needle on his finger catches the light from the misshapen window.

  Black Fingers stands across from him, his eyes dark from rim to centre. ‘The sin eater was not summoned,’ he says low and hard to the Willow Tree.

  ‘Her arrival is surely a portent,’ says the Willow Tree back. ‘Where was she found?’ He seems calm and settled, not at all like I saw him last night. It makes him all the more terrifying.

  ‘She was found in the banner room,’ Black Fingers says. ‘Near the Makerhall.’

  The Willow Tree gets very still. If he didn’t know it was me who saw him in the Makerhall, he must surely guess it now. The air in the room feels too close and smells of smoke like the chimney’s not been swept.

  Black Fingers tugs at his ear. ‘Is she responsible for the bloody horror found this morn in our Queen’s Makerhall? Is she our witch?’

  The Willow Tree lifts his head. A square of sunlight falls on half his face, ‘If she was near the place . . .’

  Oh, Maker mine. He’s going to blame me for his sorcery. My teeth start shaking again.

  Black Fingers’s voice gets low. ‘I will question her. And I will make this one speak.’ The shaking moves from my teeth to my guts.

  ‘No,’ the Willow Tree says quick. ‘I will take her and perform a witch’s trial instead.’ He doesn’t want me to tell Black Fingers what I saw.

  ‘The Queen’s protection is my purview, not yours,’ Black Fingers snaps.

  ‘And witches are my purview,’ the Willow Tree says back.

  I don’t know which is worse: to be crushed by stones by Black Fingers or bled and burned by the Willow Tree. The smell of smoke gets stronger. I must be swooning.

  ‘The Queen is threatened on all sides,’ spits Black Fingers. ‘Witches, Eucharistian spies, and two of her own ladies shown to be murderesses of royalty by the deer hearts on their coffins! Other sovereigns will not waste time in taking advantage of a Queen so weakened by scandal. If this creature’ – he nods towards me – ’can offer any intelligence on the matter, I will discover it!’

  The Willow Tree gives a barking sort of laugh. ‘The Norman king doesn’t believe Queen Bethany is complicit in her ladies’ sins. Neither does the Lowland king, nor her Eucharistian cousin in the North. No, sir, they hear of deer hearts on coffins and see our Queen surrounded by traitors and spies, just as they fear they themselves are. The deer hearts are no threat to her.’

  ‘And the witches?! The Eucharistians?!’

  ‘I will protect her!’ The Willow Tree’s voice gets too loud for the room. ‘The ancients foretold a virgin queen who would unify the world under one faith. I do the Maker’s work! And you, sir?’ His voice gets even louder still. ‘Your statecraft is to kill and scheme and plot like a common rogue!’

  Suddenly there’s a scream from deep in the castle. More cries follow, coming from the courtyard. ‘Find the doctor!’ I hear.

  All at once there’s banging at the chamber door.

  ‘How now?’ cries Black Fingers.

  A guard steps into the room, ‘Fire!’ He nods to the Willow Tree. ‘The doctor is needed urgently.’ Then he sees me. ‘The sin eater as well.’

  The Willow Tree’s voice booms. ‘There it is! She’s not our witch.’

  ‘What?!’ Black Fingers cries. ‘Moments ago you wished to perform a witch’s trial!’

  ‘Yes, when I believed her to have come to the castle without purpose. But now I see the Maker’s work in this. He drew her here with the prospect of death!’ The Willow Tree goes on. ‘Like a maggot to rotting flesh. This is why she came.’

  ‘Not good enough!’ says Black Fingers.

  ‘Then I shall perform a trial here, now. Will you act as witness?’

  Black Fingers’s eyes narrow.

  The Willow Tree raises up his hand, his witch pricker catching the light. It’s half the length of a finger and as thick as a coffin nail. Quicker than you’d ever guess he could, he thrusts the needle deep into the meat of my shoulder. A howl rips from my guts out of my mouth. The guard who announced the fire begins the Maker’s Prayer. The Willow Tree pulls the needle out, and I clutch at my shoulder to stop the blood.

  The Willow Tree looks at Black Fingers with wide, bright eyes. ‘I am certain, my lord, you have heard enough cries of true pain to recognize that as honest. She is not our witch.’

  I don’t know what Black Fingers believes, but he doesn’t want to let me go.

  The Willow Tree keeps speaking. ‘The sin eater is the Maker’s servant. I believe you once said yourself that to interfere with the Maker’s will is’ – the Willow Tree clears his throat – ‘treason.’

  A vein bulges
from Black Fingers’s brow. Finally, finally he gestures to the guards to allow me to pass.

  As we walk down the passage, the Willow Tree speaks aloud. There’s no folk but me to hear. ‘I do believe the Maker gives signs to his most trusted servants. This fire is his sign to me that you are necessary, and, therefore, I should show you mercy.’ His flat-backed head sways side to side as he goes, his words light and easy. ‘But should you prove a danger, I will use you on the altar. A sin eater’s blood would no doubt prove a most potent offering.’

  He starts up a set of stairs. I follow. My shoulder throbs where the needle stuck me, but little giggles break into my breaths.

  No curse can harm me. I am a curse.

  The chamber smells of meat and sage. Two bodies lie on couches. A slender apothecary in a dark robe is already at work over one body covering the burns with salve. The uncovered parts of the body are black with ash and mottled white and red like a skinned rabbit.

  Meg, Tilly Howe’s friend, leans over a second body, placing linen bandages on one shoulder. I take up a bandage from her stack and press it to my own shoulder.

  The Willow Tree holds a kerchief to his nose and assays the room. Just standing so near to him makes my guts feel loose. ‘What’s happened?’ he asks.

  The apothecary doesn’t answer, intent as he is on his work. Meg does instead. ‘One of the ladies heard a cry from the bedchamber next to hers and called for help. Took four guards to open the door. The lady inside was saved, but the fire spread to the chamber above. Young lords,’ she nods at the bodies, for it’s difficult to tell who they are. ‘I helped Tilly Howe, Maker keep her soul, with enough births, I’m not bothered by the blood and the . . . the smell.’ A soft moan comes from the man Meg tends.

  ‘Poppy oil,’ directs the Willow Tree. ‘And snails. Their phlegm pulls heat from the body.’

  The apothecary sits back. ‘They’ve had their dose of poppy oil. More’s like to kill them.’ He says nothing about the snails.

  I stay as far from the Willow Tree as I can manage in the close space, but my eyes keep finding their way back to him. He may not have killed a babe, but he’s still a witch. I wonder if he made the poppet.

  The apothecary stands.

  ‘Your work is not done,’ says the Willow Tree.

  ‘There is a third patient, sir,’ the apothecary says back.

  ‘Oh?’ asks the Willow Tree. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘She,’ answers the apothecary. ‘The lady whose room caught fire. She was brought to a private chamber for her comfort.’

  ‘I shall go to her myself,’ announces the Willow Tree. The apothecary wants to argue, but gives in, bowing his head.

  Once the Willow Tree’s gone, I let go of a breath. I take a moment to wrap my shoulder tightly in the bandage. It’s sore and throbbing.

  ‘Meg, fetch a bowl of water, would you?’ the apothecary asks. As she’s leaving, the apothecary goes on. ‘I hope the sin eater will allow us to stay and soothe the injured during her work.’

  I find a stool and set it out of the apothecary’s way, which I hope is answer enough. The man with the piebald flesh has red stockings under a layer of soot. It’s the Rooster. His eyes are partly open, though he seems to be asleep. I say the words, but he doesn’t stir. The apothecary clears his throat and moves a small jar on the table. Poppy oil.

  I hear a voice behind me. ‘Would you hear my Recitation?’

  My heart gets too big for my ribs. I know the voice even though I only heard it once. It’s the Country Mouse. ‘Tell me,’ he asks slow and thick, ‘is my arm woolly like a sheep?’

  I tuck a laugh inside a cough. The burns cover his whole shoulder. I hope the poppy oil is strong.

  ‘You may speak your sins to me,’ I say. I expect my words to be crusty and hard, like bread left out too long, but they come out right.

  Meg arrives carrying a full ewer of water. She sees me with the Country Mouse and makes herself useful squeezing drops of water into the Rooster’s mouth.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it.’ The Country Mouse takes a few slow breaths. ‘The one who found my ring.’ His eyes stay on the ceiling like it hurts to turn his head. ‘My burns are not deep, not the worst of burns. Not like . . . him.’ He must mean the Rooster. ‘The apothecary says the great risk is corruption, but the pain might do me.’ His face almost smiles and, in spite of my weariness, or mayhap because of it, it makes me smile too. The room’s warm, so I unwrap my shawl and place it to the side. ‘So, I recite everything I’ve done wrong now?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say as gentle as I can. ‘And I’ll tell you the foods I’ll eat.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to burden you with my sins, seeing as we’re old friends?’ This time I do laugh. It’s what he said when I first met him.

  I look to Meg and the apothecary, but they pay me no mind. ‘You could give me your virtues instead,’ I tell him.

  ‘Why there’s a thing! How is it no folk has ever thought of that? Reciting our virtues before we die instead of our sins. How brilliant.’

  In my mind I hear, you’re brilliant. I start to laugh a little again, but tears come out too, like I’m too worn out to know which is which. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. ‘Speak.’

  ‘Well, now I can’t recall any virtues, only sins. Not praying enough. Thinking poorly of my father for sending me here to seek the Queen’s hand. Who am I to marry a queen?’

  ‘Loyalty,’ I interrupt. ‘That’s a virtue.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘The ring. Your gold ring.’

  ‘Of course, my ring.’ His bandages rustle with his breath. ‘I remember that day, you know, the day I met you. Your face was so different from everyfolk else’s. Open, if you will.’

  My tears come a little harder, but so does my smiling. It’s my daydream of how a lord and a common girl might meet come to life. Come to my life.

  ‘Kind,’ I say. ‘Another virtue.’

  ‘Charitable,’ he answers. ‘That’s one for you.’

  ‘Not always,’ I say.

  He coughs or laughs; I can’t tell which. ‘Good, I don’t want to look poorly by comparison. I’ve thought of another sin.’

  ‘Honesty,’ I say back. ‘Another virtue.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he warns. ‘I’m a thief. I’ve stolen a cat.’

  ‘A cat?’

  ‘A kitten,’ he amends. ‘This town, it’s a hard sort of place.’

  ‘I’ve always lived here.’

  ‘I can tell you, there are other places. Winter’s still winter. Plague still comes. But folk wish each other well, if you know what I mean. Here it’s not like that.’

  ‘So you stole a cat?’

  ‘Kitten.’ He shifts his head and breathes hard for a moment. ‘I imagine I’ll return home now. I’m surely not fit for a queen now, if I ever was.’ I look at his shoulder. At the very least he’ll be deeply scarred, worse than Paul’s face. ‘What’ll become of the kitten when I go? Or if I die?’

  He says it easily like he doesn’t really believe it might happen. I want to tell him death does happen. Every day, I see it. More regular than rain. Into my head comes a picture of what his coffin lid would look like. I think another thought to get away from the picture. ‘The kitten survived the fire?’

  ‘She did at that. I tucked her into my shirt. Is she about?’

  I look over the couch, but there’s no kitten. But then there she is, underneath, asleep on the floor rushes.

  ‘Did you find her?’ the Country Mouse asks. ‘She would be a comfort.’

  I scoop her up. She has grey fur and grey eyes. She sniffs about my clothes, pulling at them with needle claws.

  ‘Wait.’ His breath catches. ‘Have you touched her?’ There’s fear in his voice.

  Drops of water fall into the basin behind me. My daydream fades away.

  ‘My touch won’t curse her,’ I say quiet.

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Oh . . . fine, the
n,’ he says, but his voice falters. It says this moment is made of paste, like the jewel in the necklace my da mended. But I don’t want the Country Mouse to be false.

  ‘Faith,’ I say hotly. ‘Another virtue.’

  There’s a moment before he speaks again. ‘Do you ever think we’re living the wrong life? Like if we could choose for ourselves, we’d choose better than the one we’ve got?’

  ‘I’d choose my da back,’ I say before I can stop myself. I have to remind myself my da wasn’t really my da.

  ‘I’d trade places with my younger brother,’ he says, and the finger with the gold ring twitches. ‘But there’s no use in wishing is there?’

  ‘We can make little choices,’ I think aloud to him. ‘Like how we go about the day. And who we want to be like.’

  ‘I suppose we can.’ He gives a shuddering sigh, and his breathing gets rougher. The poppy oil must be waning. Behind me the apothecary gives a small cough.

  I want to talk a little more, even just to prove the moment isn’t paste. Instead, I place the kitten on the stool and say the words, ‘When the food is et, your sins will be mine.’ My hand is a little bird, my fingers like feathers, as I touch him shoulder to hip and shoulder to hip again. ‘I will bear your sins in silence to my grave.’ Then I whisper so low and quick he’ll never hear it, ‘I’d choose you.’

  ‘May it be,’ he says back. My heart catches, wondering if he heard me.

  Even if he didn’t, it’s a good ending. Me touching him. Him saying my name. I know how he would say it, if I could choose for myself. I take the empty bottle of poppy oil and put it in my sleeve for my sin eater box. A token of him.

  20. DRIED RAISINS

  OUTSIDE IN THE passage, grooms carry away burnt wood and cloth. Maids kneel with brushes, scrubbing at the ashes.

  ‘Her lock was stuck with pitch so the door wouldn’t open,’ a skinny maid with a few hairs on her lip tells a plumper one. ‘Took four guards.’