‘I . . . The sins are now mine . . .’ I begin, my voice sounding high and faraway. ‘I bear them in silence to my grave.’

I expect to feel something, a change. Same as when I got my monthly courses. Then, all I felt were cramps. Now, it’s much the same, a cramp in my belly from so much food after so little. And a stinging on my tongue. I fear I may retch. She eyes me when she stands and barely shakes her head, but I see it. I must keep the food down.

The goodwife drops a few coins into the Sin Eater’s hand as we go, careful to avoid her touch.

Two steps outside, I’m puking by the road. She takes hold of my ear again.

‘I can’t help it!’ I squeal as another retch rocks up from my guts. Her fist hits my chin on an upswing, and my teeth slam together so hard, I fear they will shatter.

I must not speak.

She pulls me on down the road, and I have to swallow half the mess in my mouth. The rest dribbles down my chin as I bob along behind her.

She lets me go when we are back in town. By then, the waves in my belly are no longer crashing upward. She looks me over again, eyeing me fully, but this time waiting. I sniff and nod. She nods back. It’s the first care she’s shown.

‘None knew the old woman,’ a neighbour says too loud. Perhaps to explain why the body’s started to rot. Or why there’s no coffin.

‘If only we knew who her folk were,’ another neighbour says with wide eyes, but I can tell she’s not honest. It must have taken them days to find the body. And then only by the stream of rats and other vermin filing in. It’s her funeral procession.

All about the room are the signs of a cunning woman – marjoram and sage drying in the window, a clyster pipe for constipation on a little wooden shelf, mandrake root and a dead dove for a love charm it looks like the dead woman was lately making. Gracie Manners said some cunning women use baby’s blood in love charms, but my mother told me that was all donkey paddies. Love charms are white magic, my mother said. Only black magic uses blood. Blood and other nasty things like hairs plucked under a full moon or wax poppets. I look for signs of black magic in the room, but don’t see any.

The neighbours have laid out the salt, leek, garlic, and bread for the Simple Eating. None brought cream.

‘I brought the salt,’ huffs one neighbour through a kerchief pressed to her nose. ‘And the leek.’ She eyes the others. Who eye her back. Cream comes dear in early spring.

Finally a neighbour goes and collects a saucer of milk.

Miserliness: garlic.