“It’s just like Emilia, or The Poisoned Chalice,” she said. “She had to run away too, you remember? And then the robber chieftain captures her and they tie her to a stake and—”

“Miss Charlotte, we’ll have to get a move on,” I said. “Get all your warm clothes and put on everything you can. Cover yourself up tight—it’s so cold outside that you’ll freeze otherwise.”

Lucy jumped out of bed and ran shivering to the great oaken wardrobe. She paused for a second, and then pulled back the heavy curtains across the window. The bedroom overlooked the sheer drop into the valley and the mountains opposite, and the wildness of the scene—though I’d known it all my life—seemed suddenly more harsh, more wild and terrifying, than I could bear. Lucy looked back at me, and in her eyes I could see that she felt the same as I did. It was a fantasy to Charlotte—play, almost. But not to Lucy.

She swallowed hard, again, and began to dress. Charlotte jumped out of bed and did the same, shivering and hopping with chill on the drafty wooden floor. They bundled themselves so thickly with furs and rugs and scarves and hoods that I began to wonder if they’d manage to get through the door; and I filled a bag with spare linen for them.

“Where are we going, Hildi?” said Lucy.

“Are we going to the village?” said Charlotte. “Can we go to your mother’s inn? Would she hide us there?”

They liked Ma. She’d looked after them for a day or so when they’d first arrived a year ago, before Count Karlstein found Frau Muller to take charge in the castle, and they’d been so happy to have someone warm and kind nearby, after days of traveling in a strange land among somber grown-up strangers who didn’t speak their language, that they’d wept like fountains when she’d had to go back to the Jolly Huntsman. But the inn was full; and besides, it was bound to be the first place to be searched. And then, of course, Peter would be found. I told them what he was doing.

“He’s a fugitive from justice!” said Lucy. “He’s an outlaw. We won’t betray him, don’t worry. We know what it’s like to be on the run from a cruel fate….”

I hushed her, and helped wide-eyed Charlotte to do up her topmost coat.

“Now, we must be absolutely silent, d’you hear? The count’s still awake and Herr Snivelwurst is bound to be creeping about somewhere. We’ll leave the castle through the stables and slide down that rocky slope beyond the wall until it meets the road lower down. But not a word!”