IN MY OLD life, I never purposely walked the town at night. What girl would when there’s hog boons and goblins and worse trolling the darkened alleys looking for a choice bit? A howl from the lane to the woad yard scares me and the messenger right proper. I remind myself, I am the hog boon. Brida’s the goblin. And the worse? They’re all tucked away in the castle poisoning and setting poppets at one another. Safer out here.

Crossing the town square, I wonder if the condemned prisoner is the Eucharistian countess I once saw in the dungeon. The one put there for plotting against the Queen.

A constable comes into the square and raises a lantern towards me and the messenger. I open my shawl to show my S, and he leaves us to our business. My nerves fade. There’s a sort of peace in the night-time. Figures melt into shadows, eyes watch from the dark, but like putting my own box on the shelf, I feel a sort of belonging. Mayhap my place isn’t a house or a family, mayhap it’s my trade, sin eating.

At the castle, I’m led across the quiet courtyard. The plum stone in my heart seems to swell, my breath coming harder around it.

I climb down the ten mouldy steps into the dungeon. The countess’s cell was one of the nearest to the entrance, I remember. But it’s not hers I’m taken to.

A man waits outside the cell, wearing the same badge as the messenger. Mouldy Beard, the young guard from my last visit, unlocks the door. Inside is an old body, sitting as if waiting. There’s candles and a writing table and his chair has a cushion. He offers me the chair. Then he kneels on the stone floor. It’s the Eucharistian way to give your Recitation.

He hasn’t much to recite. He doesn’t even recite being Eucharistian. I think it’s because he doesn’t believe it’s a sin. It feels odd for me to know he has a sin, but for him not to recite it. I keep wanting him to say it. I even say it in my own heart. But then he finishes, and there’s nothing for it. I say the words to end and give the scant list of foods to the man with the badge waiting outside the cell.

I’ve done my duty, but I can’t quite leave. It’s Ruth. I feel like part of her is still here, farther down the passage, in the cell where she died. A part of her that’s unsettled. Waiting.

She’s with the Maker now, not in a cold, stone cell, I remind myself.

But then my feet start down the passage, and soon I’m in the dark curve that takes me to the nethermost part of the dungeon.