Just then a different newsboy comes out dressed like Queen Bethany herself. His crown has paste jewels and trailing after him are four little boys, baby fat still cupping their chins. The boys are all made up as the Queen’s suitors. Three are meant to be Anglish lords bearing their little coats of arms. One has a stag on white, another a blue boar, and the third, a golden ship. The fourth boy’s dressed as the Norman prince, who’s Eucharistian and a stranger but would become an ally through marriage. There’s hissing from the crowd as he goes by.

A man nearby spits in the dirt. ‘Heathen prince would make us all into Eucharistians.’

‘Dirty Normans,’ says a goodwife. ‘Their women are whores.’

Before the crowd gets too rowdy, a final boy comes out. He’s a sweetie barely past toddling, with a quill in his plump, little hand – the Queen’s secretary, who folk all say is her favourite at court. He’s an Anglishman, new faith, and of good family, which calms everyfolk. This is when the bigger newsboys swing through the crowd with their hats in their hands for coins. There’s no news, this part of the show’s just to make us all cluck and coo over the sweet babes and dig into our aprons for a penny. Not that I have any to give.

The sun’s set, and I think we’re done for the day, but the Sin Eater takes us to one last Eating. It’s for the new mother who did incest by marrying her husband’s brother. When we arrive, we find a second Eating’s been laid out too. Just one roll of fresh bread atop the smallest of pine boxes for her babe. It’s expected for babies to pass, still it catches my breath to see the little roll. Then my belly rumbles. Shame spreads warm and sticky into my heart. I pray to the Maker that the folk come to witness didn’t hear the rumble.

We eat the baby’s bread, for the sin that we’re born with, Eve’s original trespass, along with the sins of the mother. I eat slowly.

I will not puke, I tell the coffins. Not just to do the Eating right for the mother and her babe, but because I need food that sticks.

In the evening we pass the jug between us before the fire. When it burns low, she points to a door out to the garden, where I find a small pile of firewood neatly stacked.