The man was a doctor, he recites. He worked for a highborn family most of his life but left their employ when the daughter of the family, by then a married woman, died in childbirth and her babe not long after. He couldn’t bear to stay. But before he left, he did something. ‘I partook in a grave misdeed.’ He doesn’t name names, but I start to put things together, because the old body doing the reciting is called Old Doctor Howe. He’s Tilly’s father. The lady he served was Katryna. And her stepdaughter was Bethany.

Another old body sits with Old Doctor Howe. A man with a stoop and a merry look in bulgy eyes. When Old Doctor Howe begins to weep with his rememberings, the bulgy-eyed man takes Doctor Howe’s hand and holds it to his cheek, like a mother or a goodwife.

Doctor Howe tells me the rest, confirming what I guessed in the field that night, without even a prompt. ‘The stepdaughter was with child as well, and far along.’ He slows his words. ‘She made her ladies swear that when the babe was born to smother it in its swaddle.’

Old Doctor Howe gathers himself. ‘We decided . . . We agreed,’ he amends, ‘that we would keep her from ruin. We would bury the past, but we could not murder the baby girl. We placed her where she would be safe and never spoke of it again.’

It’s the bulgy-eyed man I give the list of foods to. He has a musty-mouth smell that reminds me of the Willow Tree, but his eyes are filled with grief as he marks the foods down on a slate.

Two days later, the old sin eater and I are at Old Doctor Howe’s Eating in his large home. Lots of folk come and sit. The main chamber has a big tapestry across from where they’ve set the coffin. It’s of the heavenly plains and shows Adam, the keeper of the fields and orchards. It reminds me of Corliss’s tapestry, and I recall that I never sorted out who placed the deer hearts on the women’s coffins.

As I’m chewing mustard seeds, I give it a good think. Queen Bethany thought her babe was killed. She would have expected to see deer hearts on Corliss’s and Tilly’s coffins. Mayhap somefolk placed the hearts to continue the fiction. Mayhap they thought she would have the bastard killed if she learned of it. Or mayhap they thought she would claim it. My granddam said once a babe’s out and living, a mother can’t deny it. A queen with a bastard would lose her throne, and her closest advisers would lose everything with her.