Sin Eater: A Novel Page 6

  ‘Has Diana in the Wood become so absorbing?’ Mush Face asks Fair Hair.

  ‘I heard Lady Corliss commissioned it for a thousand pounds.’

  ‘A thousand pounds,’ repeats Mush Face. Her eyes get dull. ‘It’s nothing compared to the gifts the Queen showers on her favourites.’

  I look at the tapestry woman’s face. Something niggles. She looks just like the Queen. The same hair and eyes. Surely there’s something wrong about that. A weaving of the Queen without her clothing.

  I look over the rest of the tapestry. There’s a border of vines and leaves all around the edges. But in one place, the vines are uneven. Mayhap they’re letters. Two of them look like little N’s, which I know from my own name. The middle one I’ve never seen, but then there are probably hundreds of letters I don’t know. This letter looks like a skinny boy leaning over to study a stone in his hand. Or a small tree leaning under the weight of an apple. There’s also little letters underneath the big ones. One looks like a gallows. Another looks like the littlest of worms. Mayhap these letters explain why the tapestry is so costly. I look at Fair Hair. She’s still looking at the tapestry too.

  ‘I heard the Queen’s favourite was married once,’ Fair Hair says so quietly I barely catch the words. ‘But just after he joined the Queen’s court, his wife took a nasty fall down a stair and broke her head like an egg.’

  Mush Face crosses herself across shoulders and hips, ‘Maker save us from such misfortune.’

  ‘Misfortune, was it?’ Fair Hair’s tongue darts against her upper lip, letting her words sit.

  The ladies are so intent on their talk, they don’t notice the Painted Pig come back into the room and cross towards them.

  ‘You’re suggesting she was pushed?’ Mush Face plants her leather slipper like a mule. ‘The Queen’ll take your tongue for slander.’

  ‘Don’t chastise me,’ Fair Hair says. ‘Your mother’s dead and your father was executed for treason. His badge of golden wings was taken from the banner room wall. If not for the Queen’s mercy, you’d be a beggar.’

  All at once, there’s a loud slap. The Painted Pig stands above Fair Hair, her face so fixed you’d never know she’d just struck the blow.

  Fair Hair looks like she’d like to stick her thumbs through the Painted Pig’s eyes.

  ‘Wipe off that sour face,’ the Painted Pig hisses. ‘There are ladies clamouring for these positions.’

  Fair Hair’s eyes get sharp. ‘Ones without Eucharistians perched in their family trees?’ She says this direct to the Painted Pig, nasty-like.

  The Painted Pig’s face gets so still it seems she’s become wood. After a long, quiet moment, she finally turns her broad body towards the Sin Eater and me and points to the chamber’s inner, guarded door. All the while her eyes stay on Fair Hair.

  An old body bowed like a gnarled willow tree leans over a lady on a couch and sniffs at a bowl of urine. He’s got bulgy eyes and a cracked face. Over his flat-backed head he wears a white doctor’s cap.

  The Painted Pig has followed us in. ‘Is this the appropriate place for a Recitation?’ she asks. ‘The Queen’s privy chamber?’

  The Willow Tree doctor answers, ‘The Queen asked for Corliss to be treated here so she can remain nearby.’ He nods to an inner door where the Queen must be. It’s like a fairy mound, this castle, door upon door upon door, going on forever.

  ‘The flux is catching,’ the Painted Pig says as if the doctor doesn’t know. ‘Can this truly be the most appropriate place?’

  ‘Flux only passes at night when mists are about to transport it,’ answers the Willow Tree. His claw-like hand goes to the couch to help himself to stand. I see that he’s got something silver covering his smallest fingernail. It’s a witch pricker, a thimble with a long, thick needle on top used to test witches. True witches don’t feel pain.

  The Willow Tree hands the bowl of urine to the Painted Pig. She takes the bowl, not knowing quite what to do with it.

  ‘Lady Corliss,’ the Willow Tree prompts gently to the lady on the couch.

  Corliss turns her head and sees the older Sin Eater and me. She darts her eyes away, then laughs softly. ‘Past that, I suppose.’

  ‘Shall we leave you, Corliss?’ asks the Willow Tree.

  ‘A swallow before you go? My mouth burns so,’ Corliss says.

  The Willow Tree fills a cup and pours a few drops into her mouth. Then he and the Painted Pig leave for the outer sitting room.

  Corliss looks the Sin Eater in the eyes. ‘I’m ready.’

  The older Sin Eater searches for a stool but there’s only a wooden bench by the wall. She nods at me, which I guess means go and fetch it. The bench is heavy built, so I drag it. It makes an awful scraping noise and takes half the rushes on the floor along with it. The Sin Eater gives me a hard look, but Corliss seems not to have noticed. The Sin Eater says the words to begin.

  ‘Maker forgive me,’ Corliss starts. ‘I have many a sin. I am vain; not as charitable as I should be.’ She waits, and I think from the way her eyes move that she’s in pain. Bad pain. ‘Lying. Envy.’ She suddenly pitches to the side, retching. The Sin Eater passes a bowl in time to catch the puke. I pick up a cloth and wipe Corliss’s lips.

  ‘Thank you,’ Corliss says to me like she means it.

  The Sin Eater names the foods she’ll eat for the recited sins, then waits.

  Corliss takes a ragged breath and swallows, ‘I should get on with it. Nothing to gain by hiding. I’ve, oh. I’ve used my favour with the Queen for gain. Took money from folk who had too little to spare and promised them the Queen’s ear.’ Corliss breathes like the air’s heavy. ‘The Queen ever had her own mind. I wasn’t like to sway it.’ She takes another breath and says softly, ‘But that’s not what I said to those who came to me.’

  ‘Roast peacock,’ the Sin Eater answers.

  Corliss looks as though she’ll puke again, so I lift up the bowl, but all that comes out is a little choke and a sick-sweet smell. Her lips’ve turned a bluish colour, and something niggles in my mind. I try to catch the thought, but it flits away, too quick to grasp. Corliss lies back with a sigh. ‘I fornicated with a man. He was a wolf. A wolf with women. I knew better. And he was married.’ Her eyes close. ‘But we shared . . . an ambition.’

  ‘Dried raisins,’ says the Sin Eater.

  Corliss’s eyes go from the Sin Eater’s to mine. ‘I cast horoscopes and other auguries.’

  ‘Pomegranate,’ the Sin Eater says.

  My breath pulls in. Pomegranate is for witchcraft.

  Corliss seems taken aback as well. ‘But horoscopes are white magic.’

  ‘Trying to know the Maker’s plan is spell casting. Spell casting is pomegranate,’ is all the Sin Eater says.

  Corliss is quiet. When she speaks again her voice is high, like a girl’s. ‘I believe I have one more thing to recite.’ She chooses her words. ‘I sinned to protect a folk I dearly love. I swore never to speak of it. But if I am to die, the Queen should know. Well as I taught her, she may not decipher the pictures.’ She shudders, but this time I can tell it’s not from pain, it’s with feeling. ‘I was the Queen’s governess. I’ve lived with her since she was a girl, when she was no more than a cast-off in her stepmother Katryna’s household, long before her fortune turned and she became queen.’ Corliss speaks quicker. ‘Maker help me, I only wanted to protect her. But if others discover what we’ve done, the Queen will fall.’

  Corliss shudders again, but this time it seems to linger. No, it begins to grow. The shuddering turns to shaking. Then it’s like she has the falling sickness, she’s shaking so badly. Foam comes to Corliss’s blue lips. The Sin Eater nods me towards the sitting room where the Willow Tree and the Painted Pig went.

  All the eyes in the outer sitting room shoot to me when I open the door, then fly away at angles like a clay pot dropped on the floor.

  The Painted Pig twists a ring and calls to the room, ‘How now?’

  The Willow Tree grasps why I’ve c
ome and sweeps through the door without pause.

  He goes direct past Corliss, to the innermost door and knocks. A low murmur comes back through. I have a feeling like water running down my back. Then the inner door opens and in walks the Queen.

  I want to drop my eyes, and I want to look. It’s like five folk have walked into the room, but it’s only her. Barely thirty years of age but with as much presence as a granddam. She’s magnificent. I could work all the years of my life and not afford a yard of her skirt. It’s stranger silk, with embroidered birds in gold and red. Her stomacher is gold-embroidered black velvet that highlights the black of her hair. Her curls have been brushed up to give her even more height than she already has, parted only in front to reveal her gold crown.

  ‘Your Grace.’ The Willow Tree and Painted Pig bow.

  The Queen steps forward, but just before she sits, she starts to back up. ‘Is it catching, this flux?’

  The Painted Pig takes the smallest of pauses, then answers, ‘No, Your Grace. Your physician declared so himself.’

  ‘No danger, Your Grace,’ agrees the Willow Tree.

  The Queen sits down beside the shaking Corliss. ‘My dear one?’

  Corliss’s eyes shift to the side.

  The Queen whispers, ‘I forbid this. I forbid you from leaving me.’ Then, from nowhere the Queen gives a fierce shriek that startles us all. ‘Who shall sleep at the foot of my bed? Who shall share my meals? Who shall take care of me?’ The Queen takes the cup by Corliss’s couch and throws it wildly. It hits the Painted Pig’s skirts. A stain blooms across the orange fabric.

  The Willow Tree bows low as a dog. ‘Your Grace, I beg you to guard your temper.’

  ‘I shall do as I please!’ the Queen spits back at him.

  The look between the Willow Tree and the Painted Pig is small, but I see it nonetheless. Choler must be common in the Queen’s privy life, like her father, the old king, who married and killed wife upon wife.

  ‘Corliss is beyond help,’ says the Willow Tree to the Queen. ‘You who loved her must witness her passage to the Maker. It’s all that’s left.’

  The Queen holds still a moment, then takes a breath. The air goes straight into her back, raising her up, and all at once she’s the sober Queen again. ‘Did she finish her Recitation?’

  The Sin Eater, who’s been like a stool or a tapestry, comes back to life. ‘I say the words to end this Recitation: When the food is et, your sins will be ours. We bear them in silence to our grave.’

  ‘I will take the list of foods to the kitchen,’ the Willow Tree says.

  The Willow Tree stands before us in the corner, breathing noisily with a musty mouth-smell that hits me in waves. The Sin Eater names the foods, and he scratches them on a parchment. His brow furrows once at the pomegranate for witchcraft but then goes back to flatness. With a last smelly breath, the Willow Tree finishes his writing.

  Back in the corridor, we turn down one passage and another. We go down a set of stairs. It’s colder farther away from the Queen’s rooms. I wrap my shawl close around me. The Sin Eater pauses at each turn as if she’s remembering the way. I’ve never been inside any house large enough to get lost in. I look to the tapestries along the wall. I suppose they could be like particular trees in the wood that you recall to retrace your steps. This one’s got unicorns on it. Farther along the wall is one showing a rich lady with a goat in her lap. I think it’s meant to look like a deer. That would be more fitting.

  When I look up from the goat-deer, the Sin Eater’s disappeared around the next corner. I hurry after, but she’s gone from sight when I get to the corner. Left or right, I can’t tell.

  Behind me I hear boot steps. I move to the side, and a man of an age with me passes by. Not tall, but built broad and strong and wearing sleeves slashed to show burgundy silk. He’s dark-haired and dark-eyed and as handsome as you’ve seen.

  He goes to the same corner the older Sin Eater disappeared beyond. Just as he turns, something small and bright bounces from his hand and onto the rushes on the floor, landing as silent as a shadow. A ring, gold like the one I wear for Da, but thick all around. I pick it up and follow after to return it

  He hears my steps and looks back. I drop my eyes and raise the ring.

  ‘What’s this?!’ he says sharp-like, but doesn’t move to take it. Mayhap he’s discovered my S collar. Mayhap he’s afraid to touch the ring now that I’ve soiled it. I didn’t even think on it, I just picked it right up. But when I look up, his face is open like a sheet.

  ‘I must confess to you,’ he says. ‘A moment ago I wouldn’t have believed any folk in this castle honest enough to return a gold ring.’

  I’d never steal, I think. Then I remember the bread. But that was because I had to, I remind myself, not because I’m dishonest. My face must show my thoughts knocking about, because he goes on.

  ‘I don’t mean to cause insult. It’s just I’m not from here. And since I’ve come I’ve not met two in twenty who wouldn’t sell their mother’s soul to Eve for their own advancement. The ring is a token from a friend back home.’

  My hand goes to my own ring.

  ‘You have one too,’ he says in a sober way. ‘So you know.’ He waits as if it’s my turn to speak. If it were a week before this, I would tell him that I do know. I would tell him about my da. But why is he talking to me? He must see what I am.

  I feel for my S collar. I find my shawl wrapped over the top of it. That’s why he’s still looking. When he discovers what I am, he’ll hate me. He’ll think I hid it from him. I drop my eyes.

  ‘What?’ he asks hard. ‘Even a maid won’t speak with a Northern lord, is it? This whole court is so puffed up none will deign to keep company with a country mouse raised by rustics. I’ve not a soul to speak to.’

  There was an old rhyme about a country mouse and a town mouse, but all I can think on is what will happen if he finds out what I am.

  He speaks again. ‘I would welcome a kind word. Excepting my father, all the world knows my suit for the Queen is fruitless, and they haven’t minced words in telling me.’ He pulls at his ruff. ‘And these pleated collars you Southerners wear are uncomfortable, useless, and take an awful lot of starching.’

  A laugh comes out of my mouth before I can help it.

  ‘And now you laugh,’ he says as if I’m mocking him, but then he starts to laugh a little too. ‘I’ve told you something about me, and now I’ve ferreted out something about you. You know about washing clothes. Look at that, we’re nearly old friends. Perhaps you can help me pass the time until the Queen declines my marriage suit and I can return home. How about it, old friend?’

  A thought comes, Mayhap he won’t mind. Mayhap I could show him my S, and he would still want to know me.

  I reach for my collar, but slapping footfalls in the passage turn his head. A young man appears wearing scarlet hose that make him look like a rooster. ‘Dallying with a maid? Not a means to ply your suit with the Queen. Your father would be’ – but he cuts off his words because my collar has come free of my shawl – ‘that’s a sin eater!’

  I look to the Country Mouse. His colour drains away. The Rooster tugs on his sleeve. The Country Mouse drops his eyes and follows him away down the passage. I hear the old rhyme in my head:

  Said the Country Mouse to Cousin Town Mouse, ‘Adieu,

  Town life may do for you,

  But I prefer bacon and beans secure from harm

  To feeding on fine cakes in fear and alarum.’

  The older Sin Eater’s not happy when I finally catch up to her in the courtyard. I think on the Country Mouse all the way back through town. How his cheek had little pins of dark hair that needed shaving. How his voice got happier when he learned I knew about washing. Imagine, a rich folk who cares that a girl knows about washing.

  We make one more stop, at a merchant’s house. In the kitchen there’s a small box, a roll atop it. The cook and steward, the only folk to witness, stand with heads bowed. Such fragile things, ba
bies. How can there be so many grown folk, when so many babies die?

  After the Eating, the older Sin Eater’s steps take on the heaviness of the walk homeward after a day’s work. In the town square she slows for a newspanto but doesn’t stop, so I catch only snippets. A poppet was found by the castle wall under the Queen’s windows, the newsboys tell. Not a white magic love charm, but dark magic made to curse folk. It was fashioned from yellow beeswax and made to look like a highborn woman. Worse still, whoever made the poppet stuck pig bristles through its belly and nether parts.

  I feel a clench in my own cunny just thinking on it. What a dire thing, not just to curse a woman but to curse her baby parts. Of course, the newsboys don’t shy from playacting it. For them, the more terrifying, the better the show. A witch with a devil’s teat on his cheek holds a little poppet in a blue dress. The witch mutters in a stranger tongue and pushes a pin into the poppet’s belly. An actor dressed in blue like the poppet clutches at his belly, for everyfolk knows what’s done to a poppet is felt by whoever it’s fashioned to look like. Stick pig bristles through the poppet dressed like a lady, and the lady feels the pricks. The newsboy playing the lady howls and howls.

  Well past the town square, I can still hear the howling. The lady in the panto died just like Corliss, clutching at her guts, I think. The thought gives me a cold dripping feeling in my neck.

  Soon the sounds of the show get swallowed up by the bump and din of Northside. My feet are like ants, marching one in front of the other, towards home. I put Corliss and the poppet out of my mind. Instead, I piece again through my moments with the Country Mouse up until the footfalls of the Rooster. I stop just before then.

  5. DEER’S HEART

  WHEN I WAS a little girl and Maris was Queen, the Makerhall had great stone altars with pictures and statues of the Maker’s son, the angels, and the hagis all around. But the new faith doesn’t hold with decorations, so when Bethany became queen the altars were changed to wooden tables with nought on them but the Maker’s Book in plain Anglish, instead of the old tongue. The Anglish is supposed to make it so we common folk can read the Word of the Maker ourselves. But as I can’t read to start with, it doesn’t make a lick of difference to me.