The night wears on. I can see the flickers of the pit fires now and again all the way over at the field kitchen. There’s less bustle there, which I take to mean folk are giving their attention to the play more than the food. Not many folk are going to the jakes. I worry that my plan won’t work. Mayhap Fair Hair won’t need to piss. Mayhap she’ll find somewhere else to do it. More crickets join the first.

Just then, two wide skirts sway into view. Young ladies from the way they walk. One waves at a linkboy, and his lantern bobs as they start on their way to the jakes. I can’t yet see if it’s Fair Hair. They’re talking, though the voices don’t carry the way Frederick’s does. No, only one of them’s talking. As they come past I see it’s the girl who wore yellow taffeta to Tilly’s Eating, walking with Mush Face. They go on by. It takes a moment for me to remember to breathe again.

I am a curse, I remind myself. I am the terror of the night. But when I recall the poppets and the dead women, my breath gets stopped up again. My courage begins to wane. Catching a killer alone in the tight quarters of a jakes suddenly seems like a poor plan.

Before I can think on it more, two gentlemen leave the tent. They catch up with Yellow Taffeta and Mush Face. One of the gentlemen bows, and the ladies stop. He says something to make Yellow Taffeta laugh. The other gentleman turns away as if bored. He reaches into his coat and brings out a small box. Even before he opens it, I know him. The recorder. Like the day of the emissary’s arrival, he pulls out a small pinch of something and sniffs it up his nose. Yellow Taffeta asks him a question, and the recorder gives her a pinch from the box. She sniffs it and coughs heavily. The other man laughs with his head tilted up, and I see his face. The recorder’s brother, same as the other day. His brows are heavy, and the shadows dip in and out across his cheeks. Then I see a third dip: a thin cleft in the middle of his chin. My finger goes to my own cleft. There’s a cold dripping under the skin of my neck. Not two folk in twenty have such a thing, Da said.