It was enough to bring her to her knees, this longing for home, for all that was familiar, for all that she loved and had been forced to abandon. All its rituals and rhythms, sounds and tastes, faces and places and voices—all of it had been taken from her, and she was alone now, far from her parents, a world away from everyone and everything she had once known and loved.

“Is anything wrong?” came Agnese’s soft voice. “You were making such a face just now.”

“No. I have a . . . a sore tooth. That’s all.”

“Rosa has some oil of cloves,” Angela said. “That’s what she uses when we get a toothache. That might help.”

Carlo wrinkled his nose. “It makes my tongue burn.”

“I’m fine. Now go and help Rosa load up the cart while I take care of the dishes.”

The others went on ahead while Nina did the washing up and swept the floor, and then she went to follow them, her thoughts turned resolutely away from the calendar and its depressing reminders. The sun was bright, the sky was clear and endlessly blue, and the journey to the stream was exactly what she needed to clear her head.

She walked past the vegetable garden to the bottom of the big fields, empty now and waiting for their seeding of winter wheat, then east along the rutted path, then north again, the land growing ever steeper, until she could hear running water and the sound of the girls’ chatter. Up and over a hillock she climbed, her boots slipping a little on the pebbles, and down to the grassy bank where Rosa and the girls were rinsing the morning’s laundry in the stream.

“I’m here,” she called out cheerily. “Do you want me to bring you another basket?”

“Yes,” Rosa answered. “The one with the sheets.”

Nina heaved the basket down from the cart and lugged it to the edge of the stream, where a border of wide, flat stones was set into the ground. Although the stones made it a tidier spot for the women to work, they were also awfully hard on their knees. It would be Wednesday or Thursday, Nina knew, before hers would stop aching.

The stream was pretty but its water was breathtakingly cold, and before she’d finished rinsing even a single pillowcase her hands were numb. Dunking, shaking, squeezing, again and again, and still there was more water to wring out. She paused a few times, rubbing her hands on her skirt, trying to restore some feeling, but as soon as she’d warmed them it was time for another shirt, another bedsheet, until her entire body was chilled through despite the golden sun and bluest of blue skies.