“Then it’s our job to avoid common soldiers and find officers,” Weronika said, getting up from the board and letting her habit down. “And it’s possible to do so. Let us then wait for events to develop, Jutta, and keep an eye out for an opportunity. Are we agreed?”

“Yes, we are. We’ll wait and keep our eyes open.”

Events were indeed developing; at least, the shreds of information and rumours reaching Cronschwitz suggested that.

Soon after Saint Lucy’s Day the convent was electrified by news of another attack, of a powerful Hussite army that had invaded Thuringia via the Ore Mountains, along the Labe valley. Weronika glanced meaningfully at Jutta and Jutta nodded.

All that remained was to wait for an opportunity. One came quite quickly. As though on cue.

Guests often appeared in Cronschwitz, in the form of high-ranking secular men or senior officials in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Dominican convent was important in Thuringia, and the voice and opinions of the prioress—a member of a notable family—were also heeded. During Jutta’s stay there, the convent was visited personally by Anna Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, the wife of the landgrave. The archbishop’s assistant curate from Mainz, the scholaster of Naumburg, the abbot of the Benedictine abbey in Bosau and sundry wandering prelates from various—occasionally very distant—dioceses visited Cronschwitz. The rule—which was in fact the prioress’s accomplishment—was that every guest would deliver a sermon or a lecture to the nuns. The subjects of the lecture were various: transubstantiation, salvation, the lives of the Saints and the Church Fathers, the exegesis of the Bible, heresies and errors, the Devil and his doings, the Antichrist. All in all, the subject was unimportant; what mattered was for it to be a distraction. Furthermore, some of the speakers were as handsome and manly as hell and for a long time supplied the nuns with fuel for sighs and daydreams.

That day, the nineteenth of December 1429, on the Monday after the last Sunday of Advent, ad meridiem, when the winter sun was exquisitely dyeing the stained-glass window depicting the martyrdom of Saint Boniface, four people appeared before the nuns gathered in the chapter hall. The stately Constance of Plauen, the prioress of the convent. Piotr of Haugwitz, the convent’s confessor, the canon of Zeitz. An elderly, tall, ascetically thin gentleman, a priest, but dressed in the secular manner in a doublet of Venetian brocade. And finally, a younger, fair-haired man of Reynevan’s age, in the attire of a university lecturer, with a pleasant face, sparkling eyes and hair as wavy as a maid’s.