The woman inside’s face is bare, but I still recognize the Painted Pig. Her eyes are ringed with red, and her unpainted cheeks have a faint mottle that reminds me of Paul’s skin. Her hand flutters to cover it under my look. ‘White lead paint poisons the skin,’ she says. ‘The more one uses, the more one must use.’

I find a stool. The Painted Pig’s left foot is bandaged. The rest of her seems untouched. ‘I may not die from my burns,’ she says once we’re alone. ‘But somefolk meant to kill me. I fear greatly for my life. I wish to recite my sins now, lest my opportunity be lost.’

I say the words to begin the Recitation. Like the last chamber, this one’s warm. It makes me want to sleep.

‘Covetousness, arrogance, vanity,’ she begins. She’s prepared for this. Her sins shoot off like arrows from her soul to mine. ‘Fault-finding, meanness . . .’ My eyes get heavy, and it’s my own head jerking up that wakes me. She’s quiet, as if she’s done.

‘Any last words—’ I start.

‘Did Corliss recite a sin that warranted a deer heart?’ All at once I’m very much awake. ‘Did Tilly Howe?’ The Painted Pig looks to the door, but we’re alone. ‘Well, I will not recite something I did not do, no matter the consequence.’

She knows something about the deer hearts.

Please say more. Please say more. Please say more.

I remember my uncle Uric. He knew how to get folk to talk. I saw it more than once in the Daffrey kitchen. What he’d do is this: sit opposite them and say nothing. It seemed too easy, but a few minutes with quiet, terrifying Uric staring at them, folk’d rush in to fill up the silence with words.

I look the Painted Pig direct in her red-rimmed eyes and count my breaths in silence. It takes only until eight for her to speak. ‘It was Corliss and that frumpy little midwife, in all events.’ She says it sharp-like, then stops like her body’s at war with her thoughts. ‘I shouldn’t blame Corliss. All of us were living in Katryna and Baron Seymaur’s household – Corliss and the other ladies, their tutors, Katryna and Bethany’s physicians . . . Maris was still queen and desperate to produce an heir so Angland would remain Eucharistian.’ She worries a ring on her finger. ‘We all saw what Bethany was involved with. None of us protected her well enough. Katryna, her stepmother, should have done, but she was with child and doing poorly. Bethany was a rash, choleric, untethered girl, just like her father. And Bethany’s own mother was killed for witchcraft, incest, fornication! We knew well what might happen.’