‘I’m hungry,’ he says, voice distorting as he yawns. He has fine teeth, lined up straight and solid as gravestones. Lisbet tongues the gaps in her gums, ten black holes. For almost every baby lost, a molar rocked itself loose and was pulled by the empiric.

‘Coming,’ she says, and listens to the thumping tread of him, the hushing scrape of the bench on old rushes. In her haste she has disarrayed the fine alignment of the token, and she straightens it as best she can, before sliding it back into its place, so Agnethe will find all as she left it.

•

The returned penitent arrives in the early afternoon. She is tall as her brother, tall as the stooped horse she has ridden since dawn from the abbey at the crest of Mont Sainte-Odile, a distance only thrice as far from their farm as Strasbourg itself, but of such fame and notoriety Lisbet feels she stands in the presence of a being from another world.

Agnethe Wiler’s appearance does little to amend this fantasy. Aside from her height, which she wears without apology, there is the matter of her head, which is shaved pale as a peeled onion, and covered in a great many nicks and scars from repeated shearing, ranging from old skin brown as preserved rind to new pink. There is even, at the coarse collar of her tunic, a fresh bloom of red. Her hands, when she has dismounted and folded them before her, head bowed to her mother, are similarly scarred, and her face, now lifted to the sun by Sophey’s twisted fingers, is hollow beneath the cheeks as if whittled clean away.

And yet she is handsome still, Lisbet cannot deny it. Henne’s features are worn more smoothly on her, and even her eyes with their plucked-out lashes, the lids pink and crusted, only serve to show their blue more purely, like pearls presented on the plump tongue of an oyster. Had she hair as blonde and long as Ida’s, she could perhaps match her for beauty. As it is, she stands apart, the strangest woman Lisbet has ever seen.

‘Are you hungry?’ asks Sophey, by way of greeting the daughter she has not seen for over half a decade. Agnethe nods, supplication in her every gesture, though Lisbet cannot think her meek. She radiates strength, though she tries to suppress it.

Nothing is hidden, that shall not be made manifest.

It was one of Geiler’s favourite passages, parroted by Sophey and lobbed like a spear at Lisbet whenever a chicken is taken by a fox, when the farm cat fitted and died in Lisbet’s arms. But Lisbet sees a new meaning to it looking at Agnethe: not an accusation, but a statement of intent.

Sophey turns without another word, goes inside. Henne steps forward and embraces his sister briefly, bumping his jaw against her concave cheek, before taking the reins of the panting horse and leading it into the shade of the coop, to the long trough where the old mule is drinking. Lisbet and Agnethe watch his progress, neither willing to break the skin of the silence settling between them. Lisbet supposes the mule will go to the slaughter at last, now the horse is returned to them. The ancient animal has swollen knees, and sores on its back that will not close however much Lisbet coaxes them with honey.