I hear Jane’s children below me knocking about with each other. Brida’s soft voice bubbles up the ladder.
A sin eater might pull too much notice near the festivities. But there are surely other sorts of folk whose presence won’t be questioned, especially in the bustle of getting everything ready. My uncles kept men in their company who used disguises. Abraham-men who feigned they were mad, lame folk that pretended to be heroes from past wars, dinder-danders who dressed up as highborns so as to make folk trust them before they fleeced them. I could do the same.
The best folk to counterfeit are the kind other folk want to forget. It takes some thinking to contrive a good disguise. It’s my squatters, finally, who spark the notion. I climb down the ladder with a handful of coins. Before I do, I put on my collar, securing it again with a pin. I daren’t let anyfolk see I can take it off. The punishment for removing it is surely dire. At the least, it’d be locked back on.
Outside, the messengers are ready with their words, but I’ve errands to do first. I need a new shawl, a bit of chalk, a tallow candle, and some hay. And a pail of old piss.
At the market, the vendors are wary, but when I put my coins down, they give me space to take what I need. Shopping done, I make my way to the old earthen jail with an empty pail.
A new turnkey guards the cell. He jumps up at my arrival, looking side to side as if he might find the whys and wherefores there. I wait until he catches my meaning and unlocks the door.
I expect the women and girls inside all to scamper off to the four corners, but instead they do something astonishing. They crowd in.
A thick woman who smells like old hops comes right up to my shoulder. ‘Hear my Recitation, would you? I’m to hang at tomorrow’s dawn.’
‘I haven’t any coin,’ says a girl who can’t be more than twelve but has eyes much older. ‘But I’ll tell you where to scrump strawberries if you hear mine. There’s a goodwife never locks her garden gate.’
‘Elders first.’ An old body pushes through. ‘I’ve got the most sins, as I’m the longest lived. I should be first.’
In truth I’ve come for the pail of piss, but hearing their voices I can’t help but think how unjust it is that folk in jail aren’t allowed a Recitation. Once I would have said they weren’t goodly women and so didn’t deserve one. But what sense does that make? A Recitation is to cast off your sins, and who needs that more than jail folk?
There’s a skinny girl at the back of the crowd. Her brow is creased with worry, but she’s not pushing forward. I move towards her, the women giving way so as not to touch me.
‘The Unseen is now seen,’ I say to the skinny girl. ‘The Unheard is now heard. The sins of your flesh become the sins of mine to be borne to my grave in silence. Speak.’
Her voice won’t come at first. It starts and stops like a wheel stuck in a rut. But when it does come, it rolls out strong, stronger than you’d ever guess a skinny girl’s voice could. ‘I’ve such fury in my blood. I get enraged. And I do things I wish I didn’t.’
As she speaks, the other women settle in. There’s nowhere for them to go, so they listen. The skinny girl goes on. ‘Most times I keep my anger in and hold myself against it. I know a girl’s meant to be meek and kind. I’ve been told enough.’ The thick woman who spoke first gives a murmur like she’s been told the same. ‘I worked as a maid in a fine house. You know the two-storey house in merchants’ row that’s got yellow-painted shutters and red tiles on its roof?’
‘I know it,’ says another girl. ‘Next to the one with blue glass in the window.’
‘That’s the one,’ says the skinny girl. ‘I’ve been there three years now, keeping the house as tidy as you’d ever want. Brushing cinders every day from the hearth. Scrubbing out the closestools. Caring for the goodwife when she’s poorly. I do it the best I can. But then last Makersday, she comes to tell me her husband is moving them to his family’s estate for the summer months, and they won’t be bringing me because there are maids in the countryside.’ A couple of women suck their teeth. ‘I told her I haven’t any other work. Where am I to live? How am I to eat? She said it’s none of her concern and I shouldn’t speak so boldly to my betters.’ A girl takes the skinny girl’s hand, but the skinny girl throws it off. ‘The goodwife never even learned my name. Three years I work there, and she still calls me “girl”! I told her she wasn’t my betters, she was my worse because she was leaving me with no work. She slapped me for that. Then she said she’d tell all the other goodwives that I was of so choleric a temper that none would take me on as a maid.’
All the folk, even the turnkey, suck their teeth at such a thing.
‘She said she’d take my good name! How would I find a place after that?’ cries the skinny girl. ‘And that’s when the rage came up all over me. When it comes on, I get deaf, like I can’t hear my own thoughts. I regret it sorely now. Maker forgive me, but I slapped and scratched at her as hard as I could.’ Some suck their teeth again, some harrumph like they’d have done the same. The skinny girl’s voice gets smaller. ‘I put out her eye. And so I’m set to hang.’ She tells me a few other small sins, lying and forgetting her prayers and the like. I tell her the foods I’ll eat after she hangs.
‘But I’ve none to make the food,’ the skinny girl says once I’m done. ‘Not even for a Simple Eating.’
I wish there was something I could do or say, but there’s nothing except to make the Maker’s sign across her body. May it bring her comfort. I turn to the next woman.
I hear the Recitations of all the women set to die. It comes to me that they’ve not done much worse than some of the folk I’ve heard outside the jail cell, they just had the bad luck to be caught. Most don’t have kin to bring the foods to their graves so the Recitations become a heavy sort of thing, not the relief they should be. Many, like the skinny girl, sinned out of anger because folk were cruel or things unfair. Anger seems to make folk feel strong, but not in a way that sticks.
At the end, I go to the piss pot and fill my empty pail. The day’s done when I come out onto the road. Still, I can see folk moving about in the field beside the castle. They’ve already begun preparing for the revels.
In two days, I tell the field, I’m going to catch Fair Hair.
Once I’m tucked up in the loft, I remove my collar and place it on the mattress next to me. I idly rub at the skin on my neck, delighting in just being May, until sleep comes.
The next morning, the day before the revels, it’s not just me readying myself at dawn. The whole household is abuzz. I pin on my collar. Frederick sings a song. Paul wraps a clean cloth about his face. Jane ties her smaller child across her back, while the larger child jumps around in everyfolk’s way. Brida watches from the hearth.
We all end up starting out of the door at the same time, the gaggle of them just ahead of me on the road. They must be going to the field to see about work. For my part, today I’m going to assay where the jakes are and where the tent is. Get acquainted with the place, like my uncle Misgett would do. Before a dodge, he’d watch folk. He’d watch the place. Note things like if the door opened in or opened out. One makes a swift exit. The other might get you caught. I haven’t dressed in my disguise. I’ll save that for the revels themselves tomorrow evening.
‘Paul, you could be taken for a Saracen with your face wrapped so,’ says Frederick as we leave the stink of Dungs-brook.
‘It’s better than folk hissing at my scars as if I’m no better than a filthy sin eater,’ Paul says, nasty-like, as if he doesn’t know I’m just a few paces behind them.
‘Imagine,’ Frederick says. ‘At one time all you needed to assure your soul’s passage to the heavenly plains was to kill a dozen Saracens in the Maker’s name. Now we must all live a good and dutiful life or join Eve in eternal torment.’
‘Not all of us,’ comes Jane’s voice. ‘Where I’m from folk don’t believe in Eve.’
‘Ah, there’s a question for the Makermen!’ laughs Frederick. ‘Do sinless heat
hens go to Eve? What about the goodliest pagan grandmamas? The sweetest of heretic babes?’ Frederick tickles Jane’s eldest. ‘Surely their souls are not forfeit. Tell us, Jane, what do your folk believe happens when we pass on to the ghostly realm?’
‘I was sold young,’ says Jane back. ‘But I remember an altar in my home for kin who had passed on. For the grandpapas and grandmamas and the ones before them.’
At the edge of the field I feel a right fool. There isn’t going to be one tent. There’s going to be at least four, each as big as a house. No, two houses. One of the tents is already raised, but the others are just being laid out.
A richly dressed man oversees the folk already at work. A clerk stands beside him holding open a large scroll with drawings and figures on it. They venture a glance towards me, and I see them stiffen. Frederick’s approach pulls their attention away.
Frederick bows to the overseer and clerk. I can’t hear them talk, but Frederick points back to Jane and Paul. The men look askance at Paul’s rags and Jane’s stranger face. Frederick’s arm gestures get bigger. A few moments later he comes back. ‘They’ll take us all on. Paul, I told him we were rakers by trade and that you had been badly burned as an apprentice. It seemed ill-advised to spell out our association with the play performing tomorrow as they seemed rather pious.’ Frederick looks to Jane. ‘The painters are working on the adjacent tent, my love. Makerspeed.’
Jane and her children disappear behind the bulk of the one raised tent. Frederick and Paul join several men working at raising another. The centre tentpole is as tall as a two-storey house and topped with a big, wooden bird. It’s meant to be a crowned falcon, like from Queen Bethany’s badge, I think. The men pull the pole to standing using three long ropes.
While they work, I notice that the canvas for the tent roof is still on the ground. Canvas is as heavy as velvet, and the roof canvas as wide as a Makerhall. Just by looking you can see it’s far too heavy for Frederick, Paul, and the others to lift. I don’t know how they’ll get it up to the roof. And then the sorcery begins.
Frederick and a man with a crooked nose take hold of a small rope running up the tentpole. Together, they pull on it. Just the two of them. As they do, up goes the roof canvas, drawn by smaller ropes. There’s no reason in it. Only two men are pulling, but the enormous, heavy canvas is going up all around them. A porter and two boys stop to watch, as struck by it all as I am. The porter calls out to ask how they’ve done it. Frederick calls between heaves, ‘Pulleys!’ As if that answers anything.
The porter’s question brings the tent raisers’ attention my way. Their looks don’t linger, but I feel the men mark me. After that, like nervous horses, they glance towards me every now and then to see if I’m still there.
Paul, Frederick, and the other men continue to raise tentpoles and canvas. As they go along, the crooked-nosed man uses a measuring string to show the others where to stake down the ropes and plant other poles. Before I know it, the sun’s high in the sky, and an entire canvas chamber has been conjured in the field before me.
Some of the men pause to drink some small beer. Crooked Nose steals a look at me, then says low to the others, ‘Why’s she still about?’ He picks up a fist-sized stone, and glances around. Some of the others pick up stones too. Their meaning’s plain. I look over the men threatening to stone me. Paul’s among them.
Right at this moment I take a decision. Once I’ve sorted out this mess, I will cast Paul from my home. He’s not company. He doesn’t deserve sanctuary. Brida and the others can stay, but he’s no longer welcome.
I go on my way. Farther into the field, I see that the large tents are all getting joined together like the wings of a great manor house. There’s small tents too, that seem to grow off the larger ones. I don’t know what the small tents are for.
I pass Jane and several others painting the canvas wall of the largest tent. They’re making a great picture together. They’ve already finished some trees heavy with fruit and a grassy meadow. I remember the painting I saw her doing in my house. Was it for the revels? Now Jane is doing a deer with a fawn. She’s skilled at it. Her deer doesn’t look like a goat at all.
Beyond the tents, there’s a whole other band of folk at work building a field kitchen. There’s reason in it, I suppose. If you’re to have a feast out-of-doors, you need a place to cook. There’s fire pits already dug, and folk are setting spits above them for roasting meat. A wagon full of cauldrons, grates, and flesh-hooks sits nearby for when the kitchen’s done, and stacks of noisy crates hold ducks, rabbits, chickens, and pigeons to be slaughtered. A bit farther off, a herdsman shows off his sheep to one of the castle butchers. One sheep has already been hung up to bleed out. The kitchen builders and tent raisers need to eat too.
Much farther off in the field I see the lone back of a man. Pissing. Looks as if the jakes haven’t yet been dug. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to finish my assay.
One messenger sits with his back against my house snoring in the sun when I get home. His foot jiggles along with his dream. I kick a small stone at the dreamer, but he doesn’t rouse. I come close and stand so my shadow covers his face. He starts. ‘Never did! Never did!’ It takes a moment for him to recollect where he is and why he’s come. ‘Eating for Sorrel Beckworth on the Foundry Lane by the river,’ he finally says.
Foundries must need water if they’re by the river, but entering Foundry Lane, it seems all heat and fire.
Two benches have been moved outside the shop where the man died. Inside, three men stand along a wall, leather aprons across their fronts. A body covered by another apron is laid out on the earthen floor. One muscled arm is uncovered, its skin reflecting the yellow flames of the forge.
‘Coffin’s coming,’ says a great bull of a man when I step in. ‘Isn’t it?’
A younger man, most like an apprentice, nods his head. ‘Bart said he’d be by with it shortly.’
‘Don’t we have nothing to put him up on?’ the bull man says suddenly. ‘Get the trestle.’ He waves at the apprentice.
‘’S gone, Fitz,’ says the third man. ‘Won’t mean nothing to Sorrel now.’
The Bull wipes his brow leaving a line of dark soot across his skin. ‘We’re too small a workshop to be making cannon. Told the Queen’s man we were too small.’
There’s no food I can see, let alone a stool.
The Bull seems to think the same thought. ‘Where’s the . . .? Get the . . .!’ the Bull cries at the apprentice. The young man hurries to a bundle on top of a sack of sand. He unwraps bread, cream, salt, garlic, and a skinny leek. He turns with them, then pauses, not knowing where to put them down.
‘You dumb fug,’ says the Bull, yanking off his own apron and laying it down gentle-like in front of me. ‘Wait, wait,’ he says, and goes to a great cannon mould. He pushes its bulk towards me and offers it as a seat.
As I eat, other founders join the three witnesses, fitting their bulk into the cramped workspace.
‘Where’s the coffin?’ asks a man no taller than me, but broad as he is high.
The Bull swells up for a quarrel, but the apprentice answers quick. ‘Bart’s bringing it by shortly.’
The Bull sinks back into himself. ‘Why’re we all set to making cannon? Too small for cannon here. Thought it was peacetime.’
The broad man nods. ‘What’s the Queen marrying a stranger prince for, if not peace?’
An older man says, ‘She’ll not marry him. She’s the Virgin Queen! What would she be if she married him? The king’s wife, is what.’
‘Bart’s here,’ says somefolk by the door, and the men make way for a newly planked pine coffin. Despite their bulk, the men are nimble. Must be, I think, to work in such close quarters.
There’s quiet while I finish the Eating and say the closing words. Walking out of the door, I see the Bull and the broad man have come out to smoke their pipes. ‘Bet the cannons’re for the bloody Eucharistians in the North,’ the broad man says softly to the Bull. ‘Northern f
olk believe the Queen and her ladies used witchcraft on Maris to murder her babes and take the throne. Fighting words, those are.’
The Bull nods. ‘Baron Seymaur was killed for that, wasn’t he?’
‘Nah, he was killed for trying to get on the throne himself. Got the axe. Fortune and title both forfeit. Burned his golden wings outside the castle.’ The broad man checks his pipe, then looks back inside the foundry door. ‘Was it the cannon mould that did for Sorrell?’
‘Fell and crushed him like a press.’ The Bull spits on the ground. ‘We’re too small for cannon.’
I walk back under a sky spotted with plump clouds like wool batting. I think about what Jane said on the way to the field this morning, that where she comes from folk don’t believe in Eve. I think on how the Instrument Maker doesn’t believe in sin eaters. The thoughts make me unsettled, like they had said the earth wasn’t firm or the sky could crack and fall. I’m like the untethered river wherry again, spinning in dark waters.
Up in my loft, I take off my new shawl and shoes. I unpin my brass collar. I turn the collar around, peering close at the thing that so recently bound me. It was to remain locked forever by the Maker’s will. But it’s unlocked now, and the earth hasn’t split, the sky hasn’t fallen. I don’t believe Jane and the Instrument Maker are right. But mayhap they’re not wrong, either.
You’re just a thing, I tell the collar, trying out the words.
It looks right back at me, hard. It wants to be as big as a Makerman. It wants to be as weighty as the Maker’s word. It wants to lock me up with no breadth for choices. But it can’t any more.
You’re just a bit of metal now, I say. Then I add, a little tremble in my guts, a bit of metal that I own.
The Sin Eater Page 21