‘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 folk 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.