Or was it not about Bethany at all, but her faith? The countess in the dungeon plotted to kill Bethany to put a Eucharistian on the throne. Mayhap others tried the same.

The questions swirl thick and muddy. I can’t sort them all out. Somefolk is killing the Queen’s women and then blaming them for a royal child’s murder. That’s what I know.

I climb up to the loft and lie down on the mattress, but my head’s full of bees. My eyes settle on the wooden boxes lining the shelves up and down the wall. I wonder what’s in the rest of them. I open the shutter to let in the moonlight and take a box from the lowest shelf.

A lock of brown hair tied with a silk ribbon

A seashell, pale and glimmering like it’s wet

Three caraway seeds wrapped in a kerchief

That’s what’s inside. No rhyme or reason. I replace the box on the shelf and take out another.

An old embroidery of a wren done poorly like by a child

A hazel twig to clean your teeth

A nightshift

Three straight pins, as you use for pinning clothes

In a third box, I hear clinking before I open it.

A folded linen smock

A head coif

Bunches of soft blood moss

Short blood breeches for the monthly courses

At the bottom of this box I find coins, a whole handful, but not Anglish. Two have square holes cut in them. And flat against the bottom is a parchment. I lift it out, but it crumbles between my fingers. As it falls away, I feel something inside. I brush away the pieces. A pressed violet.

Usually you keep one sort of thing in a box like blood moss or tools. But these boxes are all odd collections. I look over the shelves. Twelve’s as high as I know how to count with surety, and there’s more than that. What are they, and why are they on the wall of the Sin Eater’s house?

I reach up to the top shelf and take a box from there. It’s covered in a thick layer of dust that gets up my nose. I’ll be sneezing out black snot tomorrow.

A hare’s paw, like folk keep for good luck

A toadstone amulet

A wax portrait, cracked with age, of a girl in a hairstyle and dress far out of fashion

There’s a kerchief too. It has two letters I know embroidered on it, an E and W. It’s not Ruth’s. Mayhap it’s the girl in the portrait’s. I look again at what’s in the box. The hare’s paw. The amulet. Could they also be the girl’s? A superstitious girl from a long time ago . . .