I burned a batch for the first time in eleven years, and the half sleep cake Vey had left sat on my counter the whole while, rook's foot up. Ten loaves black as boots, and all of Brook Row would smell my fear by four. What does a woman do with the last hours of her bakery when she already knows the name?
I knew it the way I know my oven's temper, without looking.
So I wrote it down, on the back of a flour bill, pressing hard enough to scar the bench. I, Tamsin Rook, baked the sleep cakes and fed them to the guards Fenn and Albright. I alone took the boy from the cart. I alone hid him. Captain Crowe knew nothing. Hazel Thistlewood knew nothing. The boy did as he was told, being a child.
I dated it the ninth of October. Ten years to the day since my mother. My pen did not shake, and I was proud of that, which tells you what sort of afternoon it was.
Hazel's kitchen on Brook Row smelled of boiled nettle. Pip slept behind the settle with his boots on. His grey cap was in my apron pocket, and I kept a hand on it.
"If they take me, this goes to the sergeant," I said. "Then nobody else burns."
She weighed the paper in her palm and put it in her bodice without unfolding it. "Have you eaten, chick?"
"Hazel."
"That's a no."
I signed the lease at the flour bin. Mott's lease, the one he'd waved at me for a week: the bakehouse and everything under its roof, made over to Davey Mott, in my hand, with the ink I use for stock. That morning Mott had stood by the cart asking, very casually, where the boy was sleeping, and his price for not finding out was the one he had waved at me all week.
Mott was at his gate in his Sunday coat. I put the paper into his fist and closed his fingers on it myself.
"That's the bakery," I said. "Eleven years of it. You've had your price, so you never asked where the boy sleeps."
"Good lass." He pocketed it, smiling, and patted the pocket. Then he crossed the green to where Magister Vey stood by the well and bent to his ear.
He did not even wait until I was out of sight. Vey nodded, once, gently, the way you'd nod at a child reciting.
Eleven years of three o'clock mornings, signed away in the time it takes to boil an egg to keep a child out of it, and he had still gone straight to Vey.
I had given away my mother's oven for the price of a whisper.
I went over anyway. My legs did it without asking.
"Magister. I'll sign a confession before the whole parish. A witch, freely given. In return there's no Forfeit on Ashgrove, and the captain walks out of here untouched."
"That's handsomely put." He looked at me with real kindness, which was worse than Mott's smile. "Let's hear the orders first."
"You'd refuse me?"
"I'd refuse nobody, Miss Rook. I would only like to hear them first." He glanced at my sleeves. "You have flour to the elbow. Wash, and come and sit where you can hear it properly."
I stood there with my hands open. A hunter had just turned down a witch who was handing herself over, and I could not make it add up. Unless he wanted me sitting in a pew when it fell.
The bell went at dusk, and St Brannoc's took in the whole village like a mouth.
Tallow, mostly, and wet wool from a hundred coats. The cold of the flags came up through my boots. Hazel sat beside me with her hand folded over her bodice, and I sat very straight with Pip's cap crushed in my fist under my apron.
Mott had the witness's chair beside the lectern, parish keys on his knee. Vey sat on the front bench. He did not look at the lectern. He had turned a little on the wood, and he watched me, openly, from the moment I came in, as a man watches bread he has put in an oven himself.
On the path in, I had passed Sergeant Ede taking his post at the lychgate. Shoulders square, hand on his hilt. The only way out of St Brannoc's, and he was standing in it.
Well, Vey had always been a tidy man.
Bastian came up the aisle with the chain at his wrist and the lantern swinging yellow, and set the lantern on the ledge. The sealed packet lay on the wood: red wax, a lantern stamped in it throwing three rays.
He looked at me once. Over the flame, across forty heads. He did not smile, and I loved him for it.
The wax cracked under his thumb.
I was on my feet before the sound had finished. The pew creaked. Hazel's hand caught at my skirt and I pulled free.
"Sit, chick," she hissed. "Sit."
"Captain," I said. "Before you read."
He wasn't listening. He had unfolded the page and his eyes were going down it, and I watched the colour leave him from the collar up, until his burn stood out on his jaw like a brand.
He had promised me, in the bakehouse at first light, that he would read another name. He had not needed to. I could see mine on his face.
His lips moved over a word and made no sound.
"Aloud, Captain," said Vey, in his gentle voice.
My own name was ready in my mouth. I had practised it all afternoon. Tamsin Rook, baker of Ashgrove, and I did it alone.
Bastian lifted his head. He read it flat, to the rafters.
"Agnes Rook, of Ashgrove. Recorded dead the ninth of October, ten years past. Open her grave. If it is empty, find her, and bring her to Carrow."
My name sat in my mouth with nowhere to go.
Agnes Rook. My mother. She died ten years ago tonight, in the bed upstairs where the captain sleeps, and two days later I threw the first handful of earth on her coffin myself.
Somewhere behind me a prayer book hit the flags. On the front bench Vey had not looked at the lectern once. He was still watching me, and smiling a little, like a man whose loaf has come out of the oven exactly right.
Then who had I buried?