The Queen whispers, ‘I forbid this. I forbid you from leaving me.’ Then, from nowhere the Queen gives a fierce shriek that startles us all. ‘Who shall sleep at the foot of my bed? Who shall share my meals? Who shall take care of me?’ The Queen takes the cup by Corliss’s couch and throws it wildly. It hits the Painted Pig’s skirts. A stain blooms across the orange fabric.

The Willow Tree bows low as a dog. ‘Your Grace, I beg you to guard your temper.’

‘I shall do as I please!’ the Queen spits back at him.

The look between the Willow Tree and the Painted Pig is small, but I see it nonetheless. Choler must be common in the Queen’s privy life, like her father, the old king, who married and killed wife upon wife.

‘Corliss is beyond help,’ says the Willow Tree to the Queen. ‘You who loved her must witness her passage to the Maker. It’s all that’s left.’

The Queen holds still a moment, then takes a breath. The air goes straight into her back, raising her up, and all at once she’s the sober Queen again. ‘Did she finish her Recitation?’

The Sin Eater, who’s been like a stool or a tapestry, comes back to life. ‘I say the words to end this Recitation: When the food is et, your sins will be ours. We bear them in silence to our grave.’

‘I will take the list of foods to the kitchen,’ the Willow Tree says.

The Willow Tree stands before us in the corner, breathing noisily with a musty mouth-smell that hits me in waves. The Sin Eater names the foods, and he scratches them on a parchment. His brow furrows once at the pomegranate for witchcraft but then goes back to flatness. With a last smelly breath, the Willow Tree finishes his writing.

Back in the corridor, we turn down one passage and another. We go down a set of stairs. It’s colder farther away from the Queen’s rooms. I wrap my shawl close around me. The Sin Eater pauses at each turn as if she’s remembering the way. I’ve never been inside any house large enough to get lost in. I look to the tapestries along the wall. I suppose they could be like particular trees in the wood that you recall to retrace your steps. This one’s got unicorns on it. Farther along the wall is one showing a rich lady with a goat in her lap. I think it’s meant to look like a deer. That would be more fitting.

When I look up from the goat-deer, the Sin Eater’s disappeared around the next corner. I hurry after, but she’s gone from sight when I get to the corner. Left or right, I can’t tell.