Mathias’ hand starts to tremor, and he places it behind his back so Plater will not see. Lisbet knows the mill is Mathias’ soul, that he hacked it from the forest, built it plank by plank with Ida’s mother.

‘And I would not rest so easy here,’ he says. ‘There will be a reckoning, Lisbet Wiler.’

Now Lisbet steps forward, made bold by Mathias, by the children watching her. ‘You threaten me in my own home? The debt is paid. I owe nothing.’

Plater growls. ‘You think the wax a clearance of all? Debt and stolen honey besides?’

Lisbet grips Rolf tighter. ‘It is not stolen.’

‘It is as I told your husband. You stand in quicksand. All you have is not yours.’

‘You’re lying. Daniel said—’

‘Is it a lie if I can make it so?’ Plater sways. ‘You have made a powerful enemy in me. He who is not with me is against me, he who does not gather with me, scatters. You have made an enemy of the Twenty-One, of God Himself.’

‘You do not speak for Him,’ says Lisbet. ‘Leave my house.’

‘Gladly.’

He leaves the door hanging open. Lisbet watches him go, disappearing unsteadily. She has the sensation of a lamb circled by a wolf, rocks Rolf until he and her heart both quiet. Into the silence, Ilse speaks.

‘Thank you, Bet.’

The girl draws close to her side once more. Ida’s children circle her with their arms, and hold on with all their might.

Five hundred and eighty-seven dancing

Agnethe remembers the first time they kissed. They were so young it was not even wrong. A chaste touch of lips as they paddled in the river, hands clasped to keep themselves from falling. It had been a kind summer, soft and mellow, and she and Henne and Alef and Ida were allowed from their chores early each evening to run in the forests like Gyptians. It was the last summer it was ever so, for there followed the bad year: ice stones the size of fists pummelling the fields and churning the harvest to mush, the bees dying frozen in their skeps.

But none of that mattered. Because from that moment, with the river running sweet and full over her ankles, and Ida’s lips just the same on hers, Agnethe at last felt there was somewhere she belonged. Ida prayed so hard for their sins her knees bruised, but still she came each week to her, to the skep yard or the forest, and they would kiss until their lips were tender as her knees. Agnethe could never bring herself to pray. She could not see what they did as unholy, had never come so close to bliss, to heaven, to an angel as Ida.

It was Ida who touched her first, a clear year after the first kiss, Ida who moved her mouth down over her body by the well, her fingers finding a place Agnethe never knew existed. She reached right to the core of her, and she did the same for Ida, and though they never named it, it was love.