Suddenly his eyes crease into a smile, and his mouth opens into a laugh. He’s like a spring day this man, thunder one moment, sun the next. ‘Why for this?’ he says easily. ‘Why you come and the candles throwing? Why?’ He looks into my eyes like he’s truly searching for the reason, but there’s something else too. Something different. He’s looking at me like I’m folk. Like there’s nothing about me that’s cursed or vile. I haven’t been looked at like this since I became a sin eater. Not even by the Country Mouse.

I move my hand like Frederick does when he talks, urging the Instrument Maker to say more, to tell me what the word means.

‘Chavah, yes? You know this name?’

I shake my head.

‘Is from the holy book we share.’ His eyes crease again. ‘Chavah: Eve.’

It catches me in the guts. But his face is open, and his eyes don’t blink. He’s speaking the truth.

‘Eve,’ he says again, seeing the question on my face.

The word above the tapestry’s picture of the naked Queen is Eve? It’s not possible. Or if it is, it’s blasphemy. Eve was the foulest sinner in all Makerdom, the original rebel who fell from grace.

A noticing flutters up from my heart. The Queen’s belly in the tapestry was wrong somehow. It was all one smooth belly. Why did I find this odd?

Because there should be a hollow in the centre. A navel. It’s the sign we all carry that we’re woman-born. Only one woman in the world wouldn’t have it because she was made direct by the Maker himself. Eve.

The Instrument Maker is right. The picture shows the Queen as Eve. But why ever would the Queen’s dear friend Corliss make such a terrible tapestry?

‘You have surprise it is Eve’s name.’ The Instrument Maker tilts his head. ‘Well, one of her names. She has two, yes?’ He sees my confusion. ‘Chavah, but also Isha. The mother and the woman . . . no, the mother and the virgin, yes?’

I choke back a giggle. There’s no sense in his words.

His head jerks back like he’s going to become angry again. I cover my lips and look down in apology. After a moment, he seems to accept it and continues, ‘Chavah and Isha, the mother and virgin. The Eve who has the baby, and the Eve who has not yet had the baby. Two different names.’

Livestock have different names, like how cattle are called heifers before they’ve gone to the bull and are called cows after they bear a calf. Mayhap the old tongue does too.

He points again to the letters in the wood dust, ‘This is one name for Eve.’

The riddle is that our Queen is the virgin Eve?

‘Chavah,’ he repeats. ‘The Eve who has the baby.’