Mouldy Beard passes me, key in hand. Then there’s a grunt and Mouldy Beard’s heavy breath as he drags Ruth’s body out. Two dragging sounds for each of his footsteps. Then a rest. Two drags, then a rest. A word in each drag. I try to catch the shape of the two words. You . . .? No, one word:

Judas.

Her body says it as he drags her from the bloody cell. Judas, the betrayer. I ate the deer heart that was never recited and so Black Fingers, the Queen’s secretary, was free to kill her.

My head shakes like a dog shaking its wet fur, but the name won’t shake off. Mouldy Beard drags her body past me. There’s mud at the sides of her mouth and eyes, mud caked into her nail beds. No, not mud. Blood.

‘Oh, Ruth,’ my lips trace. My breath fritters away into a howl. A howl at her pain and my sorrow and the loneliness that presses on my chest like the stones that killed her. My lips grab at the sounds coming from my mouth, making them into whispers. ‘Forgive me, forgive me!’

It was right that I was made a sin eater. I am vile. I am filthy. I turn from the cell and run past the guards, up, up and away, trying to outrun my guilt, my regret, my grief.

10. BITTER GREENS

I run out of the castle. I run through town and don’t stop until I reach the great Makerhall in the town square. I think somehow if I can hear the High Makerman’s prayers or dip my hand in the light from the coloured windows, mayhap I can be clean again. I don’t know what else to do.

The road is full of folk in their white clothes on their way to noontide service. I push straight through, my breath all caught up in my chest. Forgive me, Ruth.

Ahead of me, I see the statues of Hagi Saul and Hagi Gabriel cut into the stone beside the Makerhall doors. I hear folk saying, ‘Peace to you,’ and the Makermen just inside the doors answering back the same way.

But before I make it in the door, there’s a sharp hiss in my face, then the crook of a Makerman’s staff an inch from my nose. ‘The sin eater will not defile the Maker’s house!’ a voice shrieks.

Folk stutter and spin away all around me. The Makerman jabs his staff forward, hitting me hard in the pocket of my shoulder. Another blow strikes my ear from the side. I look up to see a second Makerman raising his staff to strike. ‘Sin monger!’ he yells.