She turns her back on the trees as she works, humming tunelessly to calm her nerves. She collects the darkest honey in a separate jar. She will make mead, she will brew it herself and make it the finest drink Henne has ever tasted.

The honey is amber, sap-gold, and though she pulls her mind again and again away from him, she thinks of Eren, his eyes turning amber in the sunlight. The wax is soft and giving under her touch, still warm from where it has been plucked from the hive’s heart, and the bees brush over her wrists soft as kisses. Her vision blurs. She wants to hike up her skirts and run, keep running until she catches Eren on the road or in the forest, to tap him on the shoulder and then—

What? She has imagination enough for it, especially after sighting Nethe and Ida by the tree trunk. She straightens, turns to the tree line quickly, as if to catch someone staring at her. If anyone were to approach, she could rouse the bees, have them swarm and sting to death any attacker. Mistress of the bees.

‘Frau Wiler?’

Lisbet forgets all her comforting thoughts, and screams. She drops her bucket, and a figure starts towards her out of the trees, dark pinned against dark.

‘Sorry, I—’

She is slow to recover herself. Her heart is galloping, driving hard hooves into her chest. The figure has resolved itself into someone much smaller and slighter than she. A boy.

‘Frau Wiler,’ he says again. ‘It’s me, Daniel Lehmann.’

‘I know it’s you, Daniel,’ she snaps. ‘What are you doing here?’

She reaches awkwardly down, tilting the bucket to stop the honey on its slow encroachment towards the ground, then straightens and looks full at him. His left eye is swollen shut, his neck splotched with poison. He is wearing the clothes he wore as he stood with Plater: she can see his cuffs are stained with blood. It turns her stomach.

‘I have a message.’

‘From who?’

‘Plater.’

‘What does he want now?’

‘Your husband has been refused.’

‘Refused.’ Dully, she registers him scratching his eye and she catches his wrist.

‘In Heidelberg.’

Her blood roars. No. She forces herself to stand steady, to show no weakness to this child, but beneath her the ground feels soft and swallowing. No.

‘The debt must be paid in wax,’ says Daniel, pulling free of her grip. ‘Or the hives will be taken. It will be collected in two days.’

There is no way she can match the debt in wax. This is a false offer of salvation. She would have to strip every hive. It is the work of a week, and several men. It is impossible. But she will not cry in front of this whelp.

Coldly, she says, ‘Anything more?’

Daniel looks dartingly at her. ‘I did not want to lead him to them.’ He scuffs his foot. ‘He made me.’

‘My friend was to be drowned,’ says Lisbet, allowing her terror to morph into anger, fly upon the boy. ‘He ordered you to murder my sister.’