The fear, too, will be forgotten. For now, if she sleeps, Ulf sleeps with her, hot and heavy over her ankles. She even lets Fluh lie on the kitchen floor. The dogs stink, the matts of Ulf’s fur catching in her fingers as she strokes him, but she doesn’t care about that either. It is the only time she feels safe. She dreams in colours vivid as prophecy that Daniel returns with Plater, come to pluck the hives from their places, or take her screaming away.

Mathias and the children show no sign of leaving, even when the wax is bound in place in the cart, lined up in neat cylinders that sweat slightly in the heat. They have wrung the hives dry, the bees are distressed and Lisbet, Ilse and Mathias are exhausted, but it is done. She has met Plater’s demand.

Three men arrive to collect it, slinging their careful work without delicacy atop a pile that must have come from the monastery. It already begins to soften, throwing up an overpowering smell of honey.

‘You should cover that,’ she tells them, but they laugh.

‘All being melted anyway,’ says one.

•

They kill another chicken that night, to celebrate their work being done. It is a luxury Sophey will no doubt scold them for, but they need the food, as well as the reward it represents. The kitchen fills with its slow scent, and Ulf twitches his eyebrows so hopefully at the door Lisbet relents and gives him a leg not fully stripped, and a wing to Fluh. The children are exhausted too, but elated. They gabble about the wax press, compare their bee stings and scars from hot wax, and as Lisbet feeds Rolf she feels a sense of such contentment she sighs aloud.

It cannot, does not, last.

The next morning, with the chicken carcass stripped and making stock in the pot, she knows the knock the moment she hears it. The dogs leap to their feet and growl at the sound.

The children and Mathias are still asleep. She resists the urge to bar the bedroom doors, to pick up the knife she used to chop the last of the carrots for the broth. She considers pretending she is still abed too, but then he speaks.

‘Frau Wiler, I can see your shadow beneath the door.’

She hovers at the latch. ‘The wax is already collected.’

‘Open the door.’ Plater’s voice is pleasant enough. It makes Lisbet’s skin crawl.

‘For what purpose?’

‘I wish to see my children. And do not pretend they are not there. The Lehmann boy saw them.’

Lisbet bristles. ‘Where else would they go? They know they are not safe at home, with the man who would have seen their mother drown.’

‘And where is their mother now? Is she there too?’ Lisbet knows he doesn’t really think so. He would have battered the door down days ago. ‘You know I can return with a guard. I could have you arrested for abduction.’