‘They should not have been dancing.’

Lisbet wonders if he did not understand what he saw at the river. ‘Your mother does.’

He nods at the ground. ‘Not on the stages. They are sanctified.’

‘And our hives?’ Lisbet gestures at the newly righted skeps. ‘They are nothing to you?’

‘I only meant to take a little,’ says Daniel. He scratches his neck: she sees fluid leak from the stings.

‘You are lucky,’ says Lisbet, her anger weakening. ‘They could have killed you. Or else Nethe would have, had she caught you.’

‘Where are they now?’

Lisbet laughs hollowly. ‘To tell you would be to pour it straight into the ear of Plater. We are not friends, Daniel.’

His face crumples, and he scratches his stings again. She looks the boy up and down. She should hate him, but she feels only an enormous pity. Ulf sniffs gently at the boy while Fluh runs in a loop, snarling and barking until Lisbet throws her shoe at her, and the dog settles down to chew at it instead.

‘Are you hungry?’

•

The kitchen is sweltering. She had left the door open and the sun is angled squarely through the doorframe, heating the rushes into warmth beyond bearing. Ilse and her brothers sit around the table uncertainly, eyeing the last of the bread.

‘Did you sleep?’

The girl nods. Alef yawns widely.

‘We have company. It is too hot in there,’ says Lisbet. ‘Come into the shade, here.’

All she can think to do, with the world shattering to pieces around her, is be a good host. They arrange themselves around the log pile, the place Lisbet had sat with Ida and felt the fine grain of Mathias’ flour. Before Henne’s journey and Nethe’s return, before women danced themselves to death in the city streets. A lifetime ago.

Alef and Martin ask Daniel what is wrong with his face, and take great delight in counting the sores. Lisbet brings the bread and some raw honey, milk for the infant. She takes Rolf from his sister and dips a clean cloth into the cup, drips it into his pink little mouth. He sucks hungrily, mewls for more. The warm weight of him makes her breasts ache. Among it all, can it really be her own baby still lives, still grows inside her? An everyday miracle, at last bestowed on her in the midst of this, the most cursed of times?

She looks around her, at Ida’s beautiful children, at Daniel, filthy and sore and thin. Five children, like she’d always imagined. Children filling their yard, fighting over crusts and chasing the chickens, as a baby sleeps in her arms. She swallows down tears.

Alef reaches for the last of the honey, and Lisbet shakes her head.

‘That’s not for eating. It’s for Daniel’s stings,’ she says. She frees an arm from under Rolf, and dips her finger into the honey, motions for Daniel to tilt his head toward her. He does so, and she dabs it onto the worst of the stings. ‘You must not scratch,’ she says. ‘It spreads the poison.’