Sin Eater: A Novel Read online

  ‘You do not see her, Lee!’ Lee’s eyes fall to the ground. ‘If she speaks to you, you must silence her with your holiest prayers. No matter what she says.’

  ‘But, Bessie,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her tongue?’ Lee cries. ‘There’s a snake on her tongue!’

  ‘“Maker mine, forever of the sun’s light,”’ Bessie chants. ‘Pray, Lee!’

  ‘“Maker mine,”’ Lee says uncertainly.

  ‘Bessie, where am I to go?’ I plead.

  I see Bessie hesitating.

  It’s Lee who helps, though I don’t know if she means to. ‘Where will she go, Mother?’

  ‘Why, she’ll go to the other, won’t she. Now there’s two. They’ll be company to each other, I should think.’ Bessie pauses. Waits for me to leave. ‘Over in Northside,’ Bessie prompts. ‘That’s where she is.’

  It’s always women who eat sins, since it was Eve who first ate a sin: the Forbidden Fruit. Some say that’s why so many foods for sins are fruits. But there’s other foods as well, like cream and leeks, that aren’t fruit at all. There’s some reason in it, for cousin sins will sometimes have the same foods, like covetousness and envy both being cream. But there’s also some with no reason. Why are thieving and thinking ill of the dead both roast pigeon? It’s like how there’s two words rock and stone that mean the same thing, but the words don’t sound alike at all.

  There’s also lots of dark beliefs about sin eaters. Folk believe a sin eater grows closer to Eve with every sin she eats. So looking at a sin eater opens you up to Eve’s eye. And hearing her voice, you might be lulled into temptation, so you say the Maker’s Prayer to drown out her voice if ever she speaks outside of Recitations and Eatings. To touch a sin eater is worst. It’s a curse and burns the flesh of goodly folk. I touch the skin of my forearm, but it feels the same.

  I think about Hans and Greta. In the fairy tale, Hans and Greta’s parents send them into the woods to collect mushrooms and berries. The children leave a trail of acorns to find their way home, but squirrels eat them. It gets cold and dark, and Hans and Greta fear they’ll starve or freeze, but then they see a light. It’s in a cottage made of brambles, rose hips, cattails, and other things folk eat in lean years. It isn’t theirs, but Hans and Greta are so hungry, they eat the rose hips and cattails anyway. The door to the cottage opens and an old sin eater comes out. She welcomes the children to warm themselves by her hearth fire. Hans and Greta go in and apologize for stealing food from her house. The sin eater just smiles. Hans curls up by the fire and falls asleep, but Greta stays awake and hears the sin eater singing:

  Lost children roam,

  I lure them home.

  They steal and sin,

  While I laugh and I grin.

  I’ll toss them in my fire,

  On the morrow find their sire,

  And eat roast pigeon on their graves, graves, graves!

  In the story, Greta pushes the sin eater into the fire instead and they find their way home. When I heard the story I always pictured myself as Greta.

  I make my way beyond the north wall of the castle, where winds come worst. Northside’s the sort of place mothers use to scare daughters. Any more of that lip, and I’ll sell you up in Northside. I never knew exactly to what a purpose a girl might be sold, but my fantasies were enough. Worse, mayhap.

  The edge of Northside looks like the rest of the town, except a bit dirtier, a hair poorer. The homes all have thatched roofs, no tiles or slate. One even has a sheet of heavy felted wool instead of a wall that fills and snaps in the wind. In the lane I walk down, two boys run about in oversized men’s clothes, like me playing dress-up with my mother’s nightdress, but out on the road like it’s their real clothes.

  The boys use a stick to hit a pig’s bladder. When they see me, they go to the side of the road, wanting to look but not nearly daring. Just as I pass, the larger one shoves the smaller at me. The smaller cries in terror and turns to beat the larger with his fists.

  A row of taverns and alehouses signals Northside proper, whores in twos and threes standing at each door to wave folk in. ‘Want a look? One bit. Two for a touch.’

  They see my collar, and a whisper flies across the line. Eyes go every which way. But I feel them on my back when I go by. I still don’t know where I’m going.

  After the tavern row is a lane of fortune-tellers. Northside seems to be like the rest of town where lanes all have shops of the same trade along them, but here the shops are the kind folk don’t want to be seen visiting. One fortune-teller has incense burning in the doorway. Mayhap Egypsies. Bessie said Egypsies are like witches.

  Simple-makers and apothecaries are on the lane that comes next. Some windows have unnatural things in them like an unborn piglet in a jar and a tiny vermin with a caterpillar-like body and lots and lots of legs. This last one gives me a shiver in my guts.

  The lane ends, but there’s still no sign of the sin eater’s house. The bottoms of my feet ache through my slippers. I’m accustomed to rough use on my hands from washing clothes but not on my feet.

  An apothecary in a thin, black robe steps out of a shop. He looks greedily from my face to my chest.

  Keeping my tongue as still as I can, I say, ‘Good sir, where may be found—’

  A great hissing cuts me short. He shrinks back into his robe, chanting the Maker’s Prayer and crossing a hand about his chest and hips in the Maker’s sign. ‘Curse me not!’ he cries, and goes back into his shop like he never meant to leave.

  There’s eyes on my back, but when I turn around to look, shutters clap closed. The lane’s become empty. More than empty. An empty lane still feels alive. This one’s become dead.

  Inside me too. I’ve often been empty over the years. Empty, like alone. But now there’s something worse in me. A deadness creeping into my heart. I look up at the sky. It’s a high, white sort of sky that doesn’t care two pennies about me. I don’t know what to do.

  Da’s voice comes up from my guts. Things just want to work right.

  I breathe in his voice. I breathe it out. I twist his ring on my finger. I am on the lane of apothecaries.

  What kind of lane would a sin eater be found on? I ask a stone on the road.

  One worse than the lane of apothecaries, it answers.

  Who are more unfortunate than the apothecaries? I ask a beetle next to the stone.

  Beggars, dung men, it lists. Woad dyers.

  I remember there’s a bend in the river known as Dungsbrook. The river widens and slows, and you can smell the rotting parts from the pig men who dump their offal there and the shit from the dung men who dump the town’s shit there, all to be swept away by the river water. The land near the river bend is called Dungsbrook too. The rakers who collect the town’s rubbish burn it in an open field there. And it’s where the woad dyers must live too. Their work stinks so foully they’re forced to live a certain distance from the castle. Dungsbrook is where all the worst smells in the world get gathered and dumped together. No place is as unfortunate as Dungsbrook. So I think I know where the sin eater lives.

  It’s not hard to find once I put my nose to it. The slaughterhouse and rubbish field come first. Then I pass the dung dump and the lane to the woad dyers. I even pass the old Domus Conversorum, a big, stone dwelling crumbling like a biscuit where Jews were made to live by the old king while they converted to the new faith. It’s no surprise to find it’s in Dungsbrook too.

  Beyond all this is a last, little lane. Its houses are close on one another, slouching towards the river like they’re bent on drowning. In the middle of the lane is a house with an old brass S, just like the one on my collar, hanging above the door. Mouldering thatch, walls badly needing plaster, but a two-level house with shutters on the windows. The door’s not barred, so I push it open.

  She sits on a stool, a jug in her hand. She waves me away without looking. I don’t know where to go, so I stay.

  She’s heavy with flesh. It
makes her seem a giant, though I doubt she’s taller than me. Middling height. She must have eaten a thousand sins. Her head pauses mid-drink like she’s listening. Then she turns.

  I dare not look direct at her, but I feel her eyes walking me up and down like houseflies. My S gleams with a spark from the fire. Her breath stops, then drops out all at once like a sack of grain hitting the ground. Then she turns back to the hearth and takes another swig from the jug.

  ‘What shall I do?’ I ask. I mean now, but also more widely. What shall I do?

  Her head swings over again, loose like a marionette’s. She’s well into her cups.

  I look down. Then up. Do I look at her? She’s a sin eater, but I am too. I don’t know the manners for this.

  I take a peek. Her eyes are like chestnut moons. She has a nest of honey hair and her skin’s honey, too. She’s handsome, but with a look like something’s been broken and won’t ever be fixed. She hiccups and offers the jug. I catch a scent as she reaches out. Wild onions. And then there in my mind is the picture. Her. Younger. Smaller. She’s the same sin eater as came to my mother’s Eating.

  She’s still holding the jug. I’ve never tasted spirits.

  What have you to lose? the jug asks.

  I take it and tip it back. Warm liquid runs over my lips and down my chin. It burns my tongue so sharply, I shriek. Only a few drops get down before I’m coughing off the burn. She pulls the jug back.

  ‘What shall I d—’ I begin to ask again. Before the words leave my mouth, she leaps up, hands grabbing at my face. Her fingers dig all about my cheekbones, her thumbs under my chin. I think she means to put out my eyes. I bat her with my strong, washerwoman arms. But it’s not my eyes she wants; it’s my mouth. She clamps it shut, her nails biting through my cheeks and chin. I’m near as strong as her, but when she does no worse than hold my jaw shut, I fall still. She gives my head a shake. A good, rough shake that would knock my teeth if they weren’t held together. It’s as plain as if she were saying it: I am not to talk. Even to her.

  She returns to the stool. I find a dirty rug by the fire.

  I’m a sin eater, I say to the red embers. What does this mean?

  It means you’ll never again see folk smiling at you with their eyes, the embers say back.

  It means you’ll never again feel the press of a chest against yours in a hug.

  It means you’ll never sit with Lee or Tom, giggling together, eating blackberries and watching the swallows dive.

  The embers keep going, cracking and popping. I raise my hands to my ears so I don’t hear the words they spit, but they needle their way straight into my heart.

  You’ll never marry.

  You’ll never bear a child.

  You’ll never have a lover or even just a good friend.

  The only one you’ll ever have is her.

  I look at her, the Sin Eater, a wooden figure staring into the fire.

  The deadness is creeping back into my heart. I hold Da’s ring, wrapping both fists around it.

  She’s my kin now, I tell the ring.

  I have a roof over my head. A fire to keep me warm. These are good things. I look again at the Sin Eater. Her flesh pushes against her clothes. I always dreamed of having such a beautiful shape. A body of plenty. I’ll have that too.

  The deadness slows its creeping. My hands soften around Da’s ring. My tongue’s still throbbing as I fall asleep on the dirty rug.

  She rouses me with her foot. It’s morning. She wears her same clothing, but her hair’s tied back. I sit dumbly, the rug about my shoulders. The fire’s out, and early-spring cold nips in from all corners.

  She walks to the door and waits. I hastily pull my shift down and my stockings up, my hair down and my collar up. I feel along my cheekbones. There are four half-moon cuts on each, made by her nails last night. My tongue feels swollen but less painful. I’m dreadfully hungry.

  On the hearth is an old iron pot dressed in cobwebs. She looks at me and snorts. Again, she doesn’t even need to say the words: Eating’s for work.

  Outside there’s four boys trying to coax a beetle from under a stone. When the Sin Eater comes out of the door, they stand up like so many little soldiers.

  ‘Recitation for Bernard Harrington,’ says the plumpest one. He looks to the others.

  They each give their message calling her to a Recitation or an Eating. The plump boy nods when they are done, and they go back to the stone. Must be a big beetle.

  It’s not plain I’m meant to follow her, but it’s not plain I’m meant to stay, so I follow. She walks with long, strong steps, like the soles of her shoes are thick.

  At the edge of Northside, along the tavern row, the whores sitting in the weak morning sun look down when she comes past and do not cast glances at her back. The same two boys in the same too-large men’s clothes scatter to the ditch and don’t play in her wake. No folk swerve out of her way because no folk get in it. It’s like she’s got a lamp shining yards in front of her telling folk of her approach. I try my best to keep up.

  I’m out of breath when she finally stops at a fine house inside the town proper. There’s glass in the windows and a metal ring outside the door for a lamp to be placed. I look for a ledge to catch my breath, but she goes in direct for the Recitation, without a call or a knock or a moment’s rest.

  Burning herbs cloud the stench of flesh and bowels, but I still smell them. The sweet mingles with the sour, turning my stomach. I’m glad there’s nothing in it to spill.

  A goodwife with silk brocade on her kirtle comes through a door. She keeps her eyes down but raises a finger to point the way up a set of stairs.

  I’ve climbed a step here and there, at the Makerhall and the like, but I’ve never climbed a whole set. Ladders, sure, but ladders are easy. There’s rungs to hold with your hands. The Sin Eater climbs these stairs like it’s nothing. I wobble behind, trying not to tumble. Trying not to picture my head cracking like an egg if I do. The climb takes my breath away as fast as beating a soiled rug clean.

  In the bedroom the smell’s thicker. A maid’s waving a smouldering bundle in the air. That’s the herbs. Not thyme like we use when somefolk’s got the farts. Something from a stranger place. At the bedside is a bowl of fat leeches. Willow bark too.

  The Sin Eater goes to the bed and looks the man over. He’s got a velvet dressing gown and cap. Velvet, heavy as it is, is one of the hardest to wash. Was. I guess I’m not a washerwoman any more.

  The maid fetches a stool, placing it near the Sin Eater, and then ducks away with the goodwife, closing the door behind them. It clicks like there’s a lock on it. I don’t know why you’d need a lock on a bedchamber.

  ‘The Unseen is now seen.’ After her muteness it’s uncanny to hear the Sin Eater’s voice. It’s rough and low, like you’d expect from her looks. With a start I see a sliver of black in her mouth. Her S brand, like a snake in the mouth. Like mine. She goes on. ‘The Unheard is now heard. The sins of your flesh become the sins of mine to be borne to my grave in silence. Speak.’

  The man breathes very shallowly. He struggles side to side as if speaking hurts him. A word passes his lips. Nothing I can grasp, but she nods along.

  ‘Lying for gain or for protection?’

  He says another half word.

  ‘Mmm, mustard seed,’ she answers.

  His speaking gets better. I start to hear more. Placing wealth before faith. Disobeying his da. Pride in his wealth.

  ‘Lamb shank, pickled herring, pigeon’s egg,’ the Sin Eater lists off the foods she will eat for those sins. I recognize some, but not the wealth ones. They’re very particular and not the kinds of sins poor folk like me have the chance to fret much over.

  Then the man gets quiet. I wonder if he’s died. Then there’s a small squeak. ‘Barrenness,’ he whispers. ‘I blamed my wife. I turned from her. I sought a lady. A . . .’ He doesn’t want to say the word. Mayhap ashamed.

  ‘One who was not your wife,’ the Sin Eater helps him. He’
s done adultery. I don’t think she should make it easier.

  ‘For years,’ he goes on. ‘But she, too, never conceived. I had blamed my wife. It drove me from her bed. But I fear . . . I fear all that time it was me.’ He’s talking quicker now.

  ‘Barrenness is not a sin,’ she tells him. ‘But holding a grudge and faithlessness, yes. Oat porridge and dried raisins.’

  He lies back, looking smaller than he did before.

  ‘Last words for she who will take your sins?’

  ‘I have no heir,’ he says like it follows on her question. ‘I have a cousin who will gladly inherit. But no heir of my body. I would even claim a bastard had I one to claim.’

  Folk’ll do all sorts of things for an heir, I think.

  There’s a long silence that comes up between him and us.

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

  ‘May it be,’ he says back with the words that finish all prayers.

  The Sin Eater does the Maker’s sign across his body, left shoulder to right hip, then right shoulder to left hip. It’s the one time a sin eater touches you.

  When the Sin Eater opens the bedroom door, it startles the goodwife and maid. They look to their shoes. The Sin Eater lists the foods to be got. The Recitation of sins is usually private, unless the dying wants it otherwise, but the food must be prepared by somefolk, so the sins come out, at least to the household. Sometimes the dying will ask that only a maid or only a husband hear the list of foods and prepare them. Of course then the gossip goes wild, everyfolk claiming they saw the husband buying fresh grapes for bearing a bastard or cooking up a pig’s heart for killing.

  The goodwife and maid nod along with the list of foods, but their nods sort of falter on the dried raisins for adultery. I take a gander at the goodwife. She’s not supposed to look at me, but there’s no rule about me looking at her. She has pimples on her chin, even though she’s fully grown, and her eyes look like she’s lost sleep. And for a fornicator.