‘Two sacks of flour,’ he says. ‘It’ll get Lisbet in, and then you’ll have to find Karl on your own.’

‘Karl?’ says Lisbet, at the same time as Sophey says, ‘Two?’

‘If it is two sacks,’ continues Sophey, addressing the guard directly. Her swollen cheek shines, pitted with pox scars. ‘Then it will be two of us going in.’

Peter sighs. He is short and broad, like Eren, but his face is beet red from the heat. ‘That was not the agreement.’

‘Is there any official agreement for such an arrangement?’ says Sophey, fixing him with her familiar black-eyed glare.

Peter shifts foot to foot. He is hot, and bored, and Lisbet knows he will give in even before he says, ‘Fine.’

‘Good,’ says Sophey. She turns to Frederich, who despite the seriousness of their mission has not lost his air of faint amusement. ‘Who is Karl?’

‘He is blond, has a beard,’ says Frederich. ‘Tall as me and with brown eyes. Give him this.’ He slides his signet ring from his middle finger. ‘He will know it’s mine. He’ll help you as best he can.’

‘Thank you,’ says Lisbet, taking the ring and clasping the drummer’s hands, and repeating herself, for there is nothing else she can say. ‘Thank you.’

Frederich shrugs, and takes a pipe from his pocket. ‘I cannot promise anything. I’ll watch the cart at least.’

Peter knocks three times on the heavy wooden door. A small window at head height swings open, and Peter has a muttered discussion with the guard inside. It opens without so much as a creak onto a dirt courtyard. Lisbet’s stomach drops, but Sophey grips her hand, and leads her without hesitation through the gaol’s outer door.

Fifteen

Frederich’s ring is hot in Lisbet’s hand, and Sophey’s palm matches it in her other. They have never held hands before, and Lisbet is surprised by how easy it is, like holding Mutti’s. She looks around, at the high walls segmenting the blazing sky into a square cut from blue cloth. Ida is here, somewhere. From the barred windows hang hands, shirts, underthings, and for a moment Lisbet’s vision flickers, and she is back at the dance tree, ribbons swaying, the sky sliced apart by branches. There is the same sense of having crossed a threshold into another world entirely. But this one has an altogether different feel: utter isolation, complete dejection.

‘Is that him?’

Lisbet follows Sophey’s finger and sees that there, at a second door, stands a man matching Frederich’s description, alongside another guard who sits at a broad table with a ledger before him, and leans back in his chair as an elderly man supports himself upon the wood and makes beseeching gestures.

‘I believe so.’

Sophey squares her shoulders and approaches. ‘Karl?’

The standing guard squints down at her. He is narrow-faced as a ferret, with ruddy cheeks. Lisbet thinks of him lying with Frederich, with his head tipped back as Ida’s had been. Why does he stand here, before the gaol gates, while Ida stands behind? Even in sin, men have the upper hand.