“What then? Are we agreed? Clara pacta, boni amici? Zbyszek? And your answer?”

“Clara pacta.”

Ostrog and Kuropatwa actually returned earlier than they had promised, before the fourth night hour, and in the morning gave the signal to march out. To Reynevan’s slight amazement, Prince Fedor didn’t lead them to the Siewierz road, but ordered them to head east, straight into the red rays of the rising sun. And after barely two miles of riding along the highway and then fording a stream, he ordered them to leave the road and ride cross country.

“That river was the Liswarta, if I’m not mistaken,” said Reynevan, trotting over to the prince. “Where are we headed? If I may ask?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“Stay calm, physician,” said Kuropatwa, electing for a slightly kinder tone. “You’ll see. Everything will be as it should.”

Reynevan shook his head but said nothing. He reined back his horse, to go to the rear of the party.

They rode on. The sun was high when the terrain became unpleasant, boggy and sticky. They left one swamp to immediately ride into another, crossing numerous marshy valleys and stream after stream overgrown with crooked willows. It was beside one of them that Reynevan saw the Washerwoman.

No one else saw her apart from him, from his position at the rear some way behind the others. At first, she wasn’t there; there was a bright, sunlit patch on a dry willow trunk stripped of bark. And suddenly the Washerwoman appeared where the patch had been. She was kneeling by the willow, bent over the stream, with her arms up to her elbows in the water. Slender to the point of thinness under a clinging white dress. Her face completely veiled by a curtain of dark hair, which reached down to the water and swayed in the current. With rhythmic, ghoulishly slow movements she washed a blouse or shift, rubbing and squeezing it. With each movement, clouds of dark red blood billowed from the shift. The entire stream was flowing with blood and bloody foam.

Reynevan jerked his head up and turned around. But Samson wasn’t beside him. Although he felt his presence, although he would have sworn he had heard him whisper, Samson wasn’t there. There was a wind, a sudden, fell wind, which rattled the greening branches of the willow and rippled the surface of the water, making it glisten. Reynevan narrowed his eyes. When he opened them, the Washerwoman was gone. There was a white patch of willow trunk stripped of bark.

But the river was still dark with blood.

In the afternoon they arrived at drier ground, between some flat-topped hills. And then they saw some isolated, higher hills, light in colour.

Almost white. In the sunshine, almost snow-white.

A church tower rose up into the sky from the hilltop.