21. GARLIC

WHEN I OPEN the door to the Painted Pig’s room, Fair Hair and Mush Face are gone. A shudder runs up my back at the sight of the Willow Tree, not two paces away. Was he listening at the door?

‘I’ve come to take the list of foods,’ he says as if to the Painted Pig, but I know it’s meant for me. I stand before him and tell him the foods, smelling the same musty smell I did when he took the list of foods after Corliss’s Recitation. I wonder that he doesn’t let a steward or maid bring the list to the kitchen clerk.

Once he’s gone, I lean against the wood-panelled wall to have a think. I still smell smoke in the air, and there’s tracks of ash along the floor.

Let it tell you, comes Da’s voice.

I let what I already know come back to me. Corliss and Tilly Howe were poisoned and hearts placed on their coffins, saying they murdered a royal babe, even though they never confessed such a thing.

The Painted Pig’s door was stuck with pitch and a fire set in her room. She was meant to die next. Her words echo in my head. We’re being murdered so the crime will be revealed to the world by our coffins.

It’s like the fairy tale of Mr Fox where Clever Mary kills him and, in so doing, shows the town his crimes. If the Painted Pig’s right, the killer isn’t blaming them for another folk’s crime. The killer truly believes they killed a babe. But they didn’t.

So who did? And what babe? And who placed the hearts on their coffins?

It’s like thinking through honey. What would my mother say?

Look to your advantage.

Knowing something others don’t is an advantage. That’s the root of every rogue’s play, know more than your mark. The Painted Pig’s given me something most others don’t know: a tapestry with a secret. Mayhap that’s where I’ll find my advantage. And I have a mind which tapestry she means. Diana of the Wood, the one from the Queen’s sitting room that Fair Hair said Corliss gave to Bethany.

I daren’t go back to the Queen’s quarters to look at it with Black Fingers so eager to torture me. But I don’t need to. The tapestry’s stuck in me like porridge in the gullet.

I slide down the wall until I’m crouched on the floor. In my head I go around each part of the tapestry.

The naked Queen under a full moon. Easy to remember, that.

Her hand against the trunk of a tree, a winged fairy in its branch, coming out of a flower.

The Queen’s other hand on her belly. Something about the belly, I remember, felt wrong.

A blue boar curled like a dog at her feet. A lion too, and a stag.

Each small bit I recall helps me remember more, like the links of a chain necklace bringing me round to the pendant.

There was a word too, woven into the tapestry’s leafy border. The word had letters from my name: two little N’s and between them was a curved line with a dot next to it like a tree leaning over one apple. Under the apple tree was a little gallows. Under the second N was a little worm. Would the word help unravel the riddle? It doesn’t seem very secret to have a word in plain sight. Then again, I don’t know what reading’s like. Mayhap it’s a very rare word or a word only some folk can read.

I think about what I’ve got from the tapestry, and I know what I need. It’s waiting for me at home. I go to wrap my shawl around me, but it’s not there. I took it off in the Country Mouse’s room. I chide myself for forgetting. At least it’s near him, I can’t help thinking.

Passing through the town square I come upon a newspanto touting the upcoming revels to mark the end of the Norman emissary’s visit. A feast in the field beyond the castle. The crowd’s larger than usual, packed with folk already come to town for the festivities. It’s just a few days away. I used to love feast days, not that everyday folk were invited. It was only highborn folk, but older girls and boys could get work scrubbing pots or carrying dishes to and fro. There were lots of scraps to eat.

Cakes and comfits, I think. Roast potatoes. My belly rumbles. Mayhap it’s thinking on the feast, or that I’ve become accustomed to regular feedings, but I’m dreadfully hungry.

I walk on into Northside smelling the stink get stronger and stronger until I reach Dungsbrook. Almost home. My belly rumbles again. Rich gravy atop a chop.

A laugh barks out of me with the horridness of my own thought. A chop is for betrayal. How could I wish for such a thing?

I turn onto my lane. There are two messengers outside my door. ‘Was a fire in the castle,’ the first announces. He’s got the Queen’s badge on his arm. He must have been sent before they discovered I was already at the castle.

The second boy straightens up. ‘Fever at the jail.’

I try not to be grateful.

It’s the same jail cell where I waited what seems a life ago for a sentence that didn’t come. Or, rather, came different. Ten prisoners and two turnkeys have been buried in a common grave. Six Simple Eatings are laid out in the cell. The families who brought them remain outside on the road where the air passes freely and no infection is like to touch them.

The loaves are small, but I know now why the Sin Eater had a slow way about her. Six loaves in one sitting is a great lot. I squat on my haunches since there’s no stool. As I eat the first loaf, the recorder comes to my mind. Grey Beard in the dungeon said the recorder made his own wife a sin eater. So why did he choose me?

The recorder sentenced me in more than this life, I think. A true curse. When it’s his turn to pass, I’ll be sure to thank him in kind.

I chew the second loaf of bread. It’s good. I look for a baker’s mark, but it’s homemade. The others still left to eat don’t look nearly so nice.

The day passes to evening. Some of the families go. The air cools, and finally it’s me in the jail cell, blue like a rock cave, licking cream from a bowl. I haven’t slept in a good long while. It’s in the noticing that I get weary.

My belly is heavy above my hips as I walk home. Rounding the corner onto my lane in Dungsbrook, I see shadows idling outside my door. I get taut as a bow, readying to run. But then the shadows step out into moonlight. Old bodies, bent and cracked, not cut-throats. No fight in them at all.

‘Who’s that come?’ says one shadow as I near them. He carries a long staff, his hand over its top.

‘Frederick’s doxy,’ says the other. At first he looks to be a hunchback, but it’s just a sack hung over his shoulder.

The first shadow gives me a good look, then raps the other shadow on the arm, ‘It’s not! It’s verily not! ’Tis a sin eater.’ He turns and covers his eyes.

‘Hardly fat enough for a sin eater,’ says the second shadow, his eyes on the dirt lane. Then: ‘’Tis a poor idea, a sin eater’s place as a stalling ken. A poor idea.’ He spits and shifts the sack.

‘Don’t offend her now.’ The first shadow doffs his dark cap in my direction, then pulls the second shadow’s cap from his head.

‘What’s that for?’ the second shadow says, but he follows the other, taking a step away from the door so I can go in.

My home has become an inn. Brida is seated in a corner, sipping from a bowl. Frederick lounges by the fire with Jane’s children, chatting with Paul, who has his rags wrapped carefully about his face despite the warmth. An inn and an ordinary house as well, since Jane is also about, stirring a pot over the hearth. Then the door opens behind me, and the two shadows come in too, caps still in their hands. The first shadow places his staff by the door.

‘Coins in the basin,’ calls Frederick from the fireside. ‘For the feed pot. We take no profit from it.’ His eyes walk past me. ‘Our benefactress has returned!’

I thought I had made myself mistress of my own house, but now I see they’ve been creeping up on me. They’re like the slow rot that overtakes roof thatch. I’m on top of it, you think each day. Not so bad, you tell yourself. Until the one day you wake in a pile of rotten thatch and nothing over your head but white sky. If my mother were here she’d chase them all out, but first I need something from them.

I go direct to the hearth, where there’s a bed of grey ash. Jane scoots out of the way, taking a platter of oysters with her. I kneel and draw the letters I remember from the tapestry in the ash. Jane’s children dart forward to see what I’m doing. Jane gives the older boy a hard slap across the hand that makes him howl.

‘What is it?’ asks Frederick, gathering the boy into his arms and nuzzling his belly until giggles take over. Frederick looks at the ashes and shakes his head. ‘Don’t know that one.’

One of the shadows speaks up hesitantly. ‘You talking to a sin eater? That’s bad truck.’

‘I’m talking to the room at large,’ Frederick says. ‘A solilo-quy, not a dialogue. If she overhears, so be it.’

The first shadow looks at Frederick doubtfully. ‘Lot of words there.’

‘What’s her catch?’ asks the second shadow, taking an eyeful of the room but nodding towards me. ‘She’s not a rogue, is she? I’m not paying duties to angle in these parts.’

‘She has her mysteries,’ says Paul from the hearth. ‘’Tis the price of sanctuary.’

‘Is it sanctuary?’ says the first shadow. ‘The door was marked so, but I’ve never been at sanctuary like this. It smells of death and it’s got a sin eater and a leper.’ He glances at Brida, who eyes him back. ‘What’s next? Egypsies and Eucharistians up there?’ He looks up the ladder.

‘You are free to leave!’ says Paul, hard.

The first shadow shifts, taking the measure of Paul. Paul is young and strong, despite his scars. The shadows have had many a lean year.

The first shadow raises his hands for peace. ‘We’re just here a short time. Do our business while the Queen’s revels are on, then be on our way.’ He pokes his thumb back to his staff. I see the hole that his hand had covered around its top. That’s where he puts a hook for angling. Anglers look for unshuttered windows and hook out linen and clothes to sell. It’s a not very clever or dangerous sort of dodge, usually done by folk who’re not very clever or dangerous.

The second shadow takes a step back and says, eyes to the floor, ‘We thank ye for your hospitality.’

‘Fine,’ says Paul.

I turn back to the ash letters, tracing my finger over them a second time.

Frederick leans over to look. He points to the little N with the dot next to it. ‘This is the mark for a constable, no?’

‘Wouldn’t know,’ the first shadow says, puffing himself up. ‘Upright rogues never use beggar’s marks.’

‘You found the sanctuary sign on the door well enough,’ says Frederick, sharp-like.

The shadow’s silent.

Brida squints. ‘Constable mark has a dot under, not beside it.’

Beggar’s marks. Sanctuary sign on the door. My mind chases after their words. Is that what the messenger took for a witch’s mark? A picture language for beggars and vagabonds. It explains why all sorts of folk keep coming in.

Jane looks up from her oysters and wipes her brow with the back of her hand. ‘What she’s drawn in the ash isn’t marks, it’s reading.’ Her voice is flat and tired.

‘Your doxy’s spoken,’ says one of the shadows to Frederick.

Frederick takes a closer look at what I’ve drawn. He shakes his head. ‘I read Anglish, French, and some Latin’ – he looks to Jane – ‘and this is not a word.’

Paul looks more closely. ‘The old tongues have different letters.’

Jane dumps the oysters into the pot. ‘Must ask a physician or a Jew.’

I click my teeth. How the fug am I to do that? The only physician I’ve met is a pig-slaughtering witch, and all the Jews were converted or driven away by the old king. Then I recall the musicians in the Domus Conversorum. The ones I threw burning wax at to scare.

‘Not happy, this one,’ says the first shadow, waving his hand at me like I’m giving off a smell. ‘Not happy at all.’

I hiss and run at him like a goose. He steps back, nearly tripping over Brida’s stump of a foot, and grabs the second shadow’s arm. ‘Oh, fug! What’s she doing?!’

I keep at them. The first shadow grabs his angling staff. With his head turned to the side, he waves it blindly in my direction like a sword. ‘Stay back.’

I herd them towards the door until both shadows stumble out of my house. Then I pick up the ewer and a rag.

The bang of the door startles the shadows who are hurrying away down the lane. I look over the mark on my door, two eyes astride a woman shape. I squeeze the water from the rag and scrub. This house is my sanctuary. It will be home for who I choose only. A reeking leper, a peevish cripple, a gabby-goose actor, a pregnant whore, and her bastards. My folk.