“The son of my neighbours, impoverished relatives. A distant cousin. We used to meet… I was inflamed, so… You understand. For six months, time passed blissfully; now in a haystack, now in the hayloft of the stable, and when we managed to—in my parents’ marriage bed. As regards me, to be honest, I was much fonder of the activity itself than of my cousin, and I was thinking of changing the object of my interests. But my foolish cousin didn’t understand what it was all about, he thought it was a great love and hastened to my parents to ask for my hand. Everything was revealed. Marriage was out of the question, my father and mother wouldn’t even think about it, but were dismayed enough to lock me up with the canonesses. While my cousin’s parents sent him to Malbork, to the Order of Saint Mary, so the Lithuanians have probably already caught the drip and made a drum out of his skin. Thus there’s no hope he will ride up on a white charger to rescue me. And yours?”

“What about mine?”

“Your lover, the celebrated physician, sorcerer and heretic. Will he come on a white charger to free you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I understand,” said Weronika, nodding. “Oh, I do. You mentioned it. He’s a Hussite, a man of ideas. Loyal to ideals. First and foremost, to his ideals. Meaning there’s no use waiting for the white charger. We’ll have to take things into our own hands, for I don’t mean to embroider tapestries until the end of my life. I’m already sick at the sight of them. Jutta? Have you yet thought of—”

“Of what?”

“Have you thought of escaping?”

“Yes, I have.”

She had made her first escape bid towards the end of January. A mundane matter had decided it: the cold. She couldn’t stand the cold; it made her unhappy. In the Magdalene nunnery in Nowogrodziec the only heated room was the calefactory; of course, it was also warm in the kitchen. Jutta joyfully greeted the days when she had kitchen duty or worked in the calefactory making parchment or ink. But those were rare moments of happiness, and afterwards she had to return to praying. And spinning, which in Nowogrodziec was done on an industrial scale. The convent functioned like a manufactory, unceasingly, with a three-shift system. Spinning was cold, the floor and walls made the room into an ice house. Jutta had had enough of it. At the first opportunity she hid inside a pile of kitchen scraps earmarked for being thrown out.

The prioress closed the book she was reading: Walafrid Strabo’s Liber de cultura hortorum.

“Well, and how are we feeling now?” she asked without anger, more with reproach. “How do we feel after being hauled out of a compost heap? Was it really worth it?”