“I cannot bear it!” Mary cried out, putting her hands over her ears as the cat howled again. I wanted to comfort my child but could not for disgust at myself. I shooed them all out, carrying Mary upstairs, then returned to the stink of my vomit and the screams of the cat.

I cried for the animal and for George and Arthur and Mary and dreams now impossible.

Before dawn, when the watch lamps were out and cooking fires not yet lit, I let myself out of the back door into the clear air of St. Paul’s yard, carrying a small parcel. Around the preaching cross the cobbles had been lifted for the construction of a new wall. I began to dig in the exposed earth with a large spoon. My eyes were stinging. Putting the cat out of its misery, as it clawed at my arms, had felt like drowning one of my own children. I sobbed as I harrowed the earth with the blunt wooden tool. I was lost. My soul was damned. I stabbed the earth harder and harder, ripping into it as if ripping into my own body to let out the evil.

The spoon snapped and I fell on my hands into the shallow pit that I had gouged. The shattered wood scraped my wrist and blood welled up. I did not stem it but pushed myself up to kneeling and gently laid the shrouded body of George’s cat in the grave. Blood dripped onto the white napkin and spread like mold across the damp linen. I left the spoon where it lay and pushed the earth over the small corpse with my hands. This sin would need repaying. Pray God it was on me that vengeance was wrought for I could face my own death better than that of any of my children. May God spare Mary, I begged. May it never be my child that I bury. May this creature find a place with George and carry to him this message: I am sorry.

From Cheapside to Charing Cross, the poisoner trailed me. Drops of warm rain exploded on my hood with the soft noise of threshing flails. I was sweating yet cold as if I had taken too much tobacco. The skin inside my elbows and behind my knees itched mercilessly and bled, and as I walked I prayed that the same would not happen to my hands and face, as it had when George died; just when it was imperative to conceal my agitation, my body risked trumpeting it.

Franklin spoke only once, as we passed a tavern open late. “I’m hungry,” he whined. I was hungry myself but could not watch this man stuff his belly, with the knowledge I had of him.