He turned around. And recognised her right away. Not just by her voice. The illusion she had disguised herself with in Wrocław couldn’t hide what he saw again now. The insolent, yellow-green eyes. Eyes he remembered.

“Only a year ago,” she said, moving closer to him, quite unceremoniously linking an arm through his, “only a year ago the mob would have been chased away and the rabble-rouser arrested. But now look: he talks and talks. And in a busy part of the city. Has something ended? Or begun, perhaps?”

“Who are you?”

“Not now.”

He felt her warmth against his side, emanating through her cloak and padded man’s doublet. He also remembered her warmth from back in Wrocław, when searching for symptoms of the plague on her body. Her hair was under a hood, but it gave off the faint scent of rosemary he remembered from Racibórz.

“Verily do I tell you,” said the fellow in the mantle, becoming more and more heated and raising his voice, “that the Roman Church is not the Church of Christ, but the Diocese of the Devil, a den of brigands! Hallowed laws, Divine mysteries and the incarnation of the Word are all haggled over! The indivisible Trinity is divided into pieces. Cunning fraudsters, false prophets, deceitful priests, lying teachers, treacherous shepherds! They were prophesied to us! It was predicted: owing to them, the way of truth will be obscured by blasphemies; to satisfy their own avarice, they will sell you with duplicitous words. And look at the Roman curia, at its bulls, its false Masses and indulgences. In truth, are they not selling us? Are they not selling our souls to damnation?

“Brothers! We must distance ourselves from the scoundrels and rogues sent by the Devil. We cannot commune with them or join the abomination they are creating. For in the whole of creation there is only good and evil, believers and non-believers, light and darkness, those who are of God and those who consort with Belial against the will of God!”

“Let us not tempt fate,” said the owner of the yellow-green eyes, her rosemary scent surrounding him. “All well and good talking of changes, but this world has a long way to go before it becomes ideal. There is darkness, there is light and there are those that inform. In a moment, there will be thugs from the town hall and the Inquisition’s lackeys. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where to?”

“Out of here, I said.”

“No. First explain to me—”

“Do you want to recover Jutta or not?”