Jutta pulled a cabbage leaf from her hair and rubbed the slime from a rotten turnip off her ear and cheek.

And raised her head proudly. Sister Leofortis noticed it.

“It’s no use talking to her,” she decided. “Let me take her to the stable, Mother. Twenty lashes should get her out of these contrary moods.”

“Think over what would have happened if you had succeeded,” said the prioress, paying no attention to the nun. “Let’s suppose you did. You crawl out of the compost heap during the night and are as free as a bird. Where do you go? You don’t know the way, after all. Do you ask somebody? Who? You’re a solitary girl without a guardian. Do you know what a solitary girl without a guardian is? A sexual toy for anyone who wants to play. For every village farmhand, every peasant, every wanderer. And for a gang of cutpurses—dozens of which roam around here—you are a toy for a longer period of time. For the whole gang. Until they tire of you; until, depending on what they do with you, you become a bruised rag, a misfit with a face swollen from the beatings and the tears, who can barely drag its feet along. Did you take all that into consideration when planning your escape? Did you take that risk into account? Answer me, for I’d like to hear.”

Jutta jerked her head away and carrot peelings fell from her hair.

“She is blind to everything,” said Sister Leofortis, pointing an accusing finger. “She thinks only of one thing. Her lover. And there’s no ill road to get to a lover.”

“Were you really so blind?” asked the prioress, not taking her eyes off Jutta. “I have been informed, I know this and that about you and your beloved. Your parents—people of considerable status—will never accept that union. Do you intend to live in sin, without your parents’ blessing? Why, it cannot be done. It’s against the will of God.”

“Her paramour is a Hussite, an excommunicate dissenter,” interjected Leofortis. “What do her parents mean to her, what does God mean to her? She prefers a life of misery. As long as she’s with him!”

“Is that right? Answer! You will answer me, Miss!”

Jutta pursed her lips.

Ludmilla Prutkow, prioress of the Poenitentes sorores Beatae Mariae Magdalenae convent in Nowogrodziec, spread her arms.

“I give up,” she said, “Sister Leofortis—”

“Twenty lashes?”

“No. Bread and water for a week.”