The boys outside call their messages until there’s just one small boy left. ‘The great mill,’ is all he says. He’s lost the rest of his words. His eyes look up, as if to find his message on the roof. The Sin Eater and I start down the lane. As we near the turn, finally, a reedy voice follows after, ‘By the great mill, Eating for Goodwife Stow!’

We go to a Recitation straightaway. A nervous-eyed housekeeper answers the door to a cluttered two-storeyed home. She makes the Maker’s sign across her shoulders and hips when we pass as if we’re a catching illness. It sours me towards her.

We follow a loud, wet cough to the hearth where an old body, hair tucked in a brown coif, sits before the fire. On the wall is a shelf with more books than I’ve ever seen in one house. Eight, I count. I can’t even fathom the number of words it’d take to fill them. Or how many years to read them.

‘Miss Albers, the sin eater’s come,’ says the maid, as if the two of us weren’t standing there, filling up the room.

The old body turns her neck and shoulders, all of a piece. ‘I never called her, Nellie.’ She’s got an accent like from a stranger country and talks in a sharp way that makes me cringe for her maid, Nellie, despite my earlier sour towards her.

‘You’re poorer and poorer with each day, Miss Albers,’ Nellie the maid says back.

‘It’s you wants to see me in the grave!’ her mistress spits with more venom than you’d think such an old body could muster.

‘Maker forgive you, Miss Albers, for saying such a thing, when I do nought but care for you!’ The maid makes the Maker’s sign across her shoulders and hips again.

‘I’ll none of your sham piety, Nellie.’

Nellie whispers something under her breath before she goes. The Sin Eater stays where she stands.

‘Still here?’ the old body says. ‘Shame to waste your coming. On with it.’

‘The Unseen is now seen, the Unheard is heard,’ says the Sin Eater.

‘She thinks me a witch,’ the woman cuts in. ‘I’m old, and I enjoy reading in stranger tongues.’

A good start for a witch, I think. Add to it the eight books . . .