I lie back and wait. My stitches itch. I do my best not to touch them. My shift is stiff from the dirty ditch water. I crinkle the cloth with my hand to soften it. Then my foot starts to jiggle. I take another breath and try to listen to the lock again.

Finally, finally, something speaks. But it’s not the lock, it’s my noticings from the past days. The noticings I told to walls or stones or swallowed whole. Corliss and Tilly were both poisoned. What have they in common? Not much. Corliss was highborn and Tilly hardly more than a servant. But Corliss was a governess, so she would have lived in the household with the Queen when she was a girl. Tilly said she did too. So they were together in the house where Bethany lived growing up. It was Bethany’s stepmother’s house. The old king’s last wife, Katryna.

I wait for more noticings to come. Instead, Frederick’s voice comes through the floorboards like bees. It’s bothersome. But then it’s calming too, the chitter and chatter of a home. I stick my hand in between my thighs where it’s warm, and the flesh feels like bread dough. There’s more flesh there than before, I think, as I listen to my vagabond squatters.

It sounds as if Frederick and his acting troupe have come to town to play in some revels. The Norman prince, who is a stranger and an enemy, is sending an emissary to ask for Queen Bethany’s hand in marriage to make an alliance.

‘She’ll never marry the Norman prince,’ says Paul. ‘He’s Eucharistian.’

‘I would put money on the Queen’s secretary,’ says Frederick. ‘I heard the Queen stabbed a serving girl’s hand for batting eyes at him. She’s said to be quite the jealous lover.’

‘You don’t believe she’s a virgin?’ Brida asks.

‘They say the Norman prince sent a doctor here to perform a test to see if she is,’ answers Frederick.

Brida clucks her tongue. ‘She’d lose her throne if she’s not a virgin. She’s unmarried.’

I hear Frederick’s laugh. ‘Then no folk better find her out. It’s all a great pageant anyhow. Pageantry is power. The Virgin Queen. Now that is quite a role,’ Frederick laughs again. ‘If she were clever, and I believe she is, she would encourage her likeness to the Holy Virgin and convince everyfolk she has divine right to the throne. Why would she want to marry anyhow? All she’d get is a king to take all the decisions himself and leave her sewing in the corner.’

‘Then why the suitors?’ asks Brida.

‘Why, Brida,’ says Frederick saucily. ‘How does the courtesan keep her conquests happy? By making each and every one believe he has her heart.’