The Queen looks past the Painted Pig to Black Fingers. She assays him. He lowers his head and raises his hand. After a heavy moment of held breath, the Queen takes it. They find seats before the coffin.

Black Fingers holds the Queen’s hand, but his eyes are on the deer heart. I daren’t not eat it. Not with him there watching. So for a second time, I do it. I eat a deer heart from a murdered woman’s coffin.

It’s only after I’ve eaten every bite that I recall the Queen didn’t even startle at seeing the heart.

13. BARLEY GRAIN

MOTHERFUGGER, I CURSE to myself as I step carefully down the servants’ stairs. It comes out unbidden, strange and filthy in my mouth. And right all the same. This is why we have cursing. I never understood what made folk do it. But now I know. All our dire feelings stain the heart, and the stains bloom into curses. I don’t know how to sort this mess. The ways I’ve tried have only put me in danger.

The rain’s finally come, and it’s coming down hard. I sit on the bottom step of a set of stairs near the kitchen to wait for it to let up. It clinks like piss in the pot, but nicer because it’s just rain.

A maid walks down the passage. I’m enough in the shadows that she doesn’t notice me. Another maid, tall and pimpled, comes out of the kitchen, her cheeks pink with heat. This pimpled maid rolls her eyes. ‘Cook’s moaning about ladies requesting special dishes.’

‘He’s always moaning about making food,’ says the first maid. ‘Why’d he become cook?’

‘It’s the Queen’s revels that’s got him out of temper. Hasn’t been a feast this grand since the old king. Best not have come with a request,’ warns Pimples.

‘But I have,’ says the first maid. ‘Calf liver. The lady gave me fourpence to give him for it,’ she adds as if that should settle things.

‘Is it for a certain fair-haired, young lady with a growing appetite?’ Pimples smiles.

‘Do you . . . What do you mean?’ the first maid asks.

‘She’s the one got the cook moaning with her requests!’ answers Pimples. ‘One appetite gets another, as the old wives say.’ Pimples says this last part like she means more than she says.

‘She’s with child?’ mouths the first maid.

Pimples hushes her, then checks the passage. As she does, she catches sight of me in the shadows. ‘Maker mine!’ she starts.

The first maid follows Pimples’s eyes to me. ‘What the fug is she doing here?!’ she hisses.