My own mother knew all the royal heraldry even though the old king had six wives. She’d draw the queens’ badges over and over in our hearth cinders until they stuck in my mind too. A crowned swan for his first wife, the mother of Queen Maris. A crowned falcon for his second, who was Queen Bethany’s mother and killed for treason, fornication, incest, and witchcraft. A phoenix for his third wife, who died in childbirth. This one was my mother’s favourite because the phoenix, she said, rose from cinders to greatness. After that was a plain golden badge for the fourth wife, a plain crown for his fifth, and, finally, a maiden rising from a rose for his last wife, Queen Katryna. She lived longer than the king and was Queen Bethany’s stepmother, raising her up in her own household.

I’m brought back by the older Sin Eater starting off down the lane. The boys have finished their messages, and I heard not a one.

The Queen’s messenger accompanies us at a distance, so we must be going to the castle. I’ve never been inside the castle, only seen it from a distance. I have to take two steps for every one of the older Sin Eater’s. I keep my eye on her skirts swaying across her jiggy-joggy buttocks so I don’t lose her on the busy morning roads. As we approach the queue at the castle gate, the carts and carriages slow. I can see the stoppage ahead: a young farmer driving cattle across the road.

‘Get out of the way!’ cries a cart man.

‘Got the same right as you,’ the farmer calls back, trying to move his cows along. He sounds uncertain. Mayhap it’s his first time to town.

‘Slaughterhouse’s in Dungsbrook, back behind you,’ the cart man tells him, and not kindly. ‘Follow the stink if you can smell it above your own.’

‘Going to the bull, not the slaughterhouse,’ says the farmer, nodding to his cattle.

‘Heifers, are they? Young’uns going to meet the bull?’ says the cart man with a lewd nod like they’re young ladies.

The older Sin Eater doesn’t wait to hear the end of their talk. She pushes right past the farmer and his heifers. Then she goes up the side of the queue, cutting in front of all the folk waiting to enter the castle. A salt man is just stepping up to the guards when she makes it to the front. He swallows his surprise and moves aside. Even the castle guards turn away when we go in. I have never felt so important.