“Pardieu, Jutta, you and I are cut from the same cloth. I’ll wager we’re stuck here for similar reasons. You don’t like being alone, I see it, which is why you react like this. I’ll be like that in a month. Let’s help one another. You’ll help me, I’ll help you.”

“Indeed?”

“You help me and I’ll help you,” said Weronika, lowering her voice. “Because… Jutta, this is my third nunnery. I’ve had enough. I shall lose my mind here. I want to escape. And I have a suggestion: let’s escape together. The two of us.”

Jutta was still staring at the crack in the wall. But nodded in spite of herself.

Weronika’s efforts yielded success, it must be admitted. Jutta had calmed down and after four days the girls began sitting beside each other to embroider tapestries. After a week they had grown closer, and after two they began to confide in one another. Weronika’s surname was Elsnitz; her parents had estates near Halle. The Dominican convent in Cronschwitz, it turned out, was her third in a row; she had previously been held at the nunneries of the canonesses in Gernrode and the Poor Clares in Weissenfels. She had been locked up, she claimed, on her parents’ instructions, as a punishment for immoral love. When Jutta finally decided to tell her own story, Weronika’s mouth fell open in awe.

“By Saint Veronica, my patron!” she cried and held her hands to her cheeks. “It’s just like a romance! Conspiracies and spying! Robberies and kidnappings! Heresy and magic! Dukes, brigands and sorcerers! Is your lover really a Hussite and a sorcerer? Oh, my. Well, my story pales into insignificance, it’s paler than the fish we had for lunch yesterday! To think I was put here by a fool who wanted me for marriage!”

“What do you mean?”