It’s under the pressing stones, a dark carpet that I missed at first because of the dim light.

Mayhap it’s old blood, but even as I think this, I know it’s not true. Oh, Ruth.

I look closely at her hands. The fingers are dark and blistered. No, not blistered. Burst. Burst from blood being squeezed until her fingertips split. She’s not waiting. She’s dead. I’m looking at the memory of her, the husk that was discarded to the side after the stones pressed the life out of her. I’m too late.

Grey Beard’s voice makes me jump. I forgot the guards were behind me. ‘Was good fortune the little sin eater had sense enough to eat when the big one didn’t.’

What must Ruth’s face look like? Her big chestnut eyes?

Grey Beard’s voice goes on. ‘If the little one had baulked too, they couldn’t have put the elder sin eater under the press. The Queen’s secretary would’ve had to do something else. Can’t have a town with no sin eaters.’

A drum thunders in my ears. It’s my own blood coming hard. Could I have kept her from dying? Did I make her expendable by choosing to eat?

‘Couldn’t they just make another sin eater?’ asks Mouldy Beard.

‘It’s not like being made apprentice to a smithy,’ huffs Grey Beard. ‘Making a new sin eater takes care.’

‘Just need a girl, don’t you?’

The guards go on talking like their words haven’t grabbed hold of my heart. Like they’re talking about crops in the field or if it’s like to rain.

‘Not just a girl,’ says Grey Beard. ‘Think on it: if the recorder pronounced a girl of your own blood and kin to be the next sin eater, what would you do?’

‘I’d never let them!’ spits Mouldy Beard.

‘You’d be shouting in the road in protest!’ agrees Grey Beard. ‘As would every honest man. So the recorder has to choose with care who he makes a sin eater. Our recorder is vindictive.’ Grey Beard nods towards Ruth, dead in her cell. ‘His wife lost two babes one after another, then had one that was simple. So he cursed her back, made her into that sin eater there.’

I remember the two bone pendants from the box at the foot of the mattress. Her two lost children. Is that why she sat on the stool before the hearth? Is that why she moaned and drank? Mouldy Beard’s feet shift on the stones. ‘And what’d this young one do?’

‘How the fug should I know?’ says Grey Beard. ‘Why’s the body still here?’