‘Is that my father?’

Lisbet jumps. Ilse has moved on catlike feet to stand beside her.

‘Ilse.’ Plater’s voice is silky soft. ‘Open this door, will you?’

Ilse looks uncertainly up at Lisbet. ‘It is up to you,’ she tells the child.

‘Open the door, girl,’ says Plater.

‘You do not have to—’

‘Do as I say, Ilse.’

Ilse opens the latch. Plater moves immediately inside, shunting Lisbet back, and lifts his daughter with one arm. He looks haggard, his red hair slick with oil and sweat.

‘Where are my boys?’

‘Asleep,’ says Lisbet. Her fingers twitch. The knife is within reach.

‘Wake them.’

‘They are tired—’

‘Alef! Martin!’ Plater kicks aside the bench. Still holding Ilse, he thumps on the doors. Immediately, Rolf begins crying. Lisbet rushes past Plater into Nethe’s room. Alef and Martin are tousle-haired, Martin’s lip beginning to tremble. She scoops Rolf up from the floor as Plater snaps his fingers at his sons.

‘Come on. We are going home.’

Lisbet rocks Rolf side to side. ‘They are fine here, they are settled. The least you can do is—’

Plater drops Ilse to the floor and comes very close to Lisbet then. Even Rolf stills as his shadow breaks over them. The clove on Plater’s breath does not mask the liquor. He is drunk. His eyes are bloodshot, and she wonders if he has been crying.

‘Do not tell me what I may or may not do with my own children, with my own wife. They are here, all of them, by my grace.’

He thumps his chest once, twice.

Mathias crowds into the already full room. ‘Alef. I thought it must be you making this racket.’

‘Shut up, old man,’ sneers Plater.

‘I will not,’ says Mathias. ‘I have held my tongue all these years, watched you portion out punishment to my child as though you yourself are without sin. But you are just a man, Alef Plater. Less than a man. Look how your own children cower from you. All you have over them is fear.’

Mathias places himself between Plater and Lisbet, forcing the man to retreat a few paces. ‘Know this: fear is a weak hold. It will not bind. That is what you never understood. You could have given Ida mercy, even love – but all you offered was pain. You failed her, and I will not let you fail her children too.’

‘They are my children.’

‘Then ask them,’ says Mathias. He advances, and Plater steps back again. ‘Ask if they wish to go with you.’

‘They will come,’ says Plater, glancing back to where the children crowd around Lisbet’s skirts, at Rolf squalling in her arms. ‘Ilse, Alef, Martin. Home, now.’

Martin burrows deeper into Lisbet’s skirts. There is no mistaking the expression on Plater’s face as his son withdraws from him: it is despair, complete and abject. And then it is masked by his familiar, cold smile.

‘What need have I for such sops, such misborns? Stay if you wish, but the mill is no longer yours, Herr Metz. You will never set foot on my property again.’