The sin-eater

“The sin-eater is here, mother!”

Agnes heard the child’s voice long before the wagon had rolled all the way from the gate to the doors of the house. She glanced behind her, and saw that the voice belonged to a small dark-haired girl, clad in fine but mud-stained clothes. The girl skipped alongside the wagon until a sharp voice from inside called “Joanna!” to which she answered by darting ahead of the wagon, and disappearing into the house.

Agnes pulled the shawl closer to her head and shoulders to keep out the late October chill. Richard Griffith stopped the wagon, and the heavy wheels sunk down in the muddy grass.
“Off you go, girl. Be sure to tell your father my greetings”, he said over his shoulder, while Agnes carefully balanced her way down from the piles of wood on which she had ridden the journey from the village to Woodville House. She had to jump the last bit down to the ground, and managed to land on a quite steady piece of earth, and thus saved her feet from getting downright sodden. A smell of old leaves and wet grass reached her nose, not unpleasant.
“Thank you, Mr. Griffith”, she mumbled with an awkward wave, and then stood where she was, as the old horse strained to pull the wagon out of the mud, and finally out of the grounds.

Agnes waited until the wagon was out of sight until she turned and faced the front of the house. Seen like this, the house looked like any other ordinary farmhouse, but she knew that once inside it, a visitor would be awed by the cunningness with which it had been designed. Thomas Woodville was well-renowned for his new thoughts and ideas on building and the house reflected his brilliancy in every way. She glanced at one of the windows, and was rewarded with the sight of a small, pale face making a face at her.

“Agnes Turner. Please follow me.” She was interrupted in her reveries by the house servant, old Giles, who had been old for as long as she could remember him, and had worked for the Woodville family for many years. In old age, old Giles had been cursed with a crooked back that forced him cock his head sideways to be able to look at the person he was talking to. His features, though withered, were regular and fine and his pale blue eyes were clear as on a young man. It struck Agnes that Giles must have been a very handsome man in his youth. Suddenly self-conscious about herself, she drew the shawl over her nose and chin and stepped towards the door. Her twisted ankle, once broken when she was very little and never really healed, should have made it hard for her to step over the high threshold, but she knew how to handle the situation and came steadily inside.

Inside the house, Agnes carefully wiped her muddy feet on a few rushes just inside the door. She followed old Giles into the main room, which had completely lost the light and airiness it usually possessed. The Woodville family had let the windows be covered with coarse cloth to keep daylight out in this house of sorrow, and at first, Agnes did not see the man seated at the end of the table.

"Miss Turner, is it?" said the man and rose from his high-backed chair. "Alice's girl." The last comment was not a question, and Agnes started at it, as her mother had never implied that she had any connections with the Woodville family. She raised her chin carefully, so that she could sneak a look at the man in front of her. His face was for an instant lit by a strand of afternoon light. Thomas Woodville had always been a handsome man, but for once, his face was haggard and grey.

"Well, you know why you are here", Woodville went on, without waiting for an answer. "My son is in the room next to this. I expect that you are prepared for your task. The family would want to say some last words to Jeffery before you..." With this, his voice broke, and he turned around for an instant. Agnes lowered her gaze to the dark slates that covered the floor, not yet overlaid with straw for the winter. She concentrated on an irregularity that drew her attention, until Woodville spoke again.
"Giles will show you inside. I will gather the rest of the family." Woodville stepped out of the room before Agnes even had lifted her head to nod in agreement.

Old Giles had been waiting by the door where she entered, but now he limped forward and once again cocked his head to look at her. Agnes blushed. How could he bear to look at her, deformed as she was? Oh, she had heard them, the women at the square, gossiping about unknown ill-doings of her beloved mother, and that her daughter had been cursed with the huge, blood-coloured blemish across the lower part of her face because of that. She pulled at her shawl again, and despite the damp chill in the room, she felt sweat bead on her upper lip.
"I know about your little secret", chuckled old Giles. "Oh, you thought you were so clever, but I know..." He tottered towards her, and Agnes grew rigid at his words.
"Do not worry, girl." Giles took her hand and patted it affectionately with a dirty, callused hand. "I will not tell on you. I too have been young once. I too know how it feels to want more of life." Agnes kept her stance, but relaxed a bit, and followed the old servant into the next room.

* * *

He looked as if he was sleeping. His eyelashes shadowed the pale skin beneath his eyes, and the corners of his mouth were angled slightly upwards, as if smiling just a little at a private joke. His hair was combed back, quite the opposite of its normal, messy appearance, so that a few rebellious strands strove to move away from the rest of his shiny, black mass of hair. He was dressed in his best clothes, although the shirt he wore was not buttoned all the way up, and revealed a pale and hairless chest.

Agnes fought to keep her look steady, when old Giles started to plant chairs around the table on which Jeffery Woodville lay. The tiny room seemed to press its entire weight on her, and despite that the small window at one end of the room was uncovered, it kept the daylight out efficiently. It had grown so dark, that she could see herself, narrow and pale, with eyes as dark shadows in the glass of the window, like a skull. It struck her that she looked like the terrifying picture of Death from church, especially as she still peered out of the shawl, hiding her face from public display.

The empty walls made the room seem uninhabited, which made the presence of the dead young man on the table in front of her look particularly eerie. She kept her eyes on the man whose sins she was supposed to eat and drink, and bit her lip to keep it from trembling. It was generally accepted that a sin-eater could show appropriate grief, but to start crying was not. Old Giles had finished his task with the chairs, and was now lighting the large, yellow wax candles that sat at each corner of the table.

Agnes waited by the wall, her eyes still fixed on Jeffery Woodville's still face in front of her. She felt numb, and distanced from what happened this day. It was the first time she was given the questionable honor of taking over the sins of a newly deceased, and she was both nervous and sad about it. Her bad foot prevented her from doing any physical work to help her family, and her misshapen face to become married, so when old James Short died a month ago, it was a relief to her parents to have her accepted as the new sin-eater of the village. The rich were anxious to let their dead pass directly to heaven, and this ceremony guaranteed their wish. In addition to that, what was not expressed in words was that they did not want their deceased family member to haunt them in afterlife - the more important to have a serious sin-eater. Agnes herself had felt a cold lump settle in her throat. To become shunned and forever associated with the sins of the dead - until she died! She knew her family needed what little money there could be get, so she had silently accepted. But to do it for Jeffery...

"Mother? How come she has to be here?"

Agnes heard voices in the large reception room, muffled by the wall and the dark cloth hanging over the door. Joanna was a precocious child, and far too curious for her own best. She was now the only remaining offspring of Thomas and Cicely Woodville, and destined to be held back and married off, being a female child. Agnes knew that Jeffery's untimely death had come as a hard blow to the family.

"Hush, child", Cicely Woodville's dark voice mumbled. "We need to show respect to Jeffery now. We do not want him to end up in purgatory, do we?"
The rhetorical question had effect on the child, who muttered discontentedly, but kept quiet after that.

The family entered the room, followed by the village priest, and took their seats. They did not waste a look at Agnes, except Joanna, whose round, blue eyes soon lost interest with her dead brother, and examined her thoroughly instead. The priest read a litany over the dead, and after that, old Giles poured a small circle of salt on Jeffery Woodville's naked chest. Upon the salt, he placed a round piece of bread, and balanced a small bowl of dark ale on top of the bread. Agnes heard her stomach grumble and felt her mouth water at the sight of the food, and she could have gone through the floor with shame. Joanna sniggered at the sound of it, but a sharp whack on her cheek by her father silenced her.

"... and may you enter freely through the gates", the priest finished in English, as a cue to Agnes. She had not been listening, but her attention was now caught. She took a step forward, and stood in front of Jeffery. She had not been this close to him in weeks, not since he caught his disease. The cold lump in her throat grew, and took over the numbness she was feeling. She let her shawl settle around her shoulders, so that her head was naked before God and Jeffery.

"Jeffery Woodville", she began the ceremony, her voice hoarse from not speaking in a while. She strained to focus on the ale and the bread, to make Jeffery just another dead villager rather than the important person he had become to her.

Running through summer fields, chasing butterflies

"I take the sins from thee", she continued, her voice steadier. The tears she had fought back burned beneath her eyelids.

The sun on her laughing face, burning it golden, feeling free and happy for once

"I drink thy sins", she said and took the bowl between her hands. Slowly she drank the dark, tepid fluid. It tasted sweet and rich and satisfied her thirst. The Woodville's saved the best for their only son.

His face shadowing hers, his lips tasting summer-warm strawberries and salt, his hands tenderly stroking her naked skin

"I eat thy sins." Agnes pressed the bread once in the salt and took a bite from the freshly baked bread. Such sweet sins, she thought. In the corner of her eye she saw Cicely Woodville move on her chair.

Resting afterwards, fingers intertwined, laughing and talking, with the soft wind cooling their faces and bodies

"The salt takes thy sins, and I bring them with me." She drew a cross through the salt, shivering a little when her fingertip touched Jeffery's skin.

Him, seeing and loving her for who she was, and not for how she looked

"May you enter freely through the gates", she echoed the priest's words, and finished the ceremony. She stepped back, still with the bread in her hand, as she was supposed to bring that with her, to secure and complete the sin-eating. She could not help but shed a tear when she looked at Jeffery's beautiful face, and she bit her lip. The old feelings welled up within her and she could not move, nor let her eyes let go of the last sight of Jeffery.

She remembered the candles being blown out. She remembered old Giles taking her arm, leading her out of the room, and out of the door. She remembered a sixpence coin being pressed into her hand. And she remembered hearing Joanna's laughter before the door was closed on her. She peered out into the early evening, listening to nightly creatures waking up in the dark, before she started walking towards home. The night was going to be cold, but nothing would thaw the lump in her chest.

The deed was done. The ceremony performed. Her task was over. The family could now rest assured that their dear Jeffery's tormented soul would pass freely to God. Also, he would not haunt the family like the living dead he had seemed the last long days of his life, but remain in their memories as the laughing, intelligent young man he had been.

However, she knew she had failed.

Jeffery was still with her. His blue eyes with the long eyelashes, looking tenderly down at her. His lovely mouth smiling at a private joke of theirs. His thick, shiny hair, always resisting to look neat. The man whom she loved, who loved her with his entire being, and who made the world an easier place to live in. If what they had experienced together was sinful, then who was she to take over his sins?

Agnes wiped a tear from her eye, and trudged on through the dark. Jeffery might not haunt his family, but his memory would stay with her forever.