‘This flour is finer than we are used to,’ Henne remarks. ‘In honour of Agnethe’s return?’

‘A gift,’ says Lisbet. ‘From Ida.’

A choking sound from beside her. Lisbet turns to see Agnethe clamp a hand over her mouth, and shove herself roughly back from the table, almost overbalancing the bench and Lisbet with it.

‘Nethe,’ says Sophey, a warning. Agnethe lowers her hand, and with all their eyes upon her, chews until the bread must be mush, and finally, with great effort, swallows.

Sophey nods, seemingly satisfied. Lisbet’s heart is beating absurdly, as though it had been her that Sophey’s hard gaze pinioned to the bench.

They continue to eat in silence. Henne’s face is forcibly vacant, but Lisbet can read him well enough to recognise tension in the slight hunch of his shoulders. She has forgotten her resolution to eat slowly, and her plate is half empty before Agnethe pushes hers away.

‘Did they allow you to waste food at the abbey?’ says Sophey sharply, but Agnethe shows no sign she has heard beyond lifting the egg to her lips and taking tiny bites. When Sophey’s attention has again turned to her own meal, Agnethe palms the remainder of the bread, and quick as a blink places it on her lap, out of sight of her mother. In another blink, she passes it sideways to Lisbet, who accepts the still steaming crust gratefully.

She nudges her knee against Agnethe’s in thanks, the two of them allies. Agnethe’s leg is cool and firm as marble against hers, but then she withdraws, ending the contact as fast as Lisbet began it.

She rises to tidy the table, and Lisbet comes with her, taking Henne’s plate and carrying it to the door to throw the crumbs outside. She nudges it open with her elbow, and it snags. She pushes harder, and an exclamation comes from the other side.

The obstacle is removed suddenly, and Lisbet feels herself tip. She braces for the fall, resigned already to pain, to blood, to the loosening ties of her belly, to another ribbon in the tree, noticing as she does how there is the sound of wood clattering, how the man – for it was a man’s voice that exclaimed – moves aside to avoid being crushed by her mass, and then how cold, thin fingers with the strength of wire grasp her under the armpit and around the ribs, and knock a shocked gasp from her throat.

Agnethe pulls her upright and back, yanking the bench toward her with an ankle, and lowering Lisbet gently onto it. Her breath is ragged, and she pulls Lisbet’s skirts straight where they have ridden up, exposing the dark down of her calves. It all took the measure of seconds, the plate Agnethe dropped in her haste to rescue Lisbet continuing to clatter and roll.

‘That was quite the welcome.’

A heavy foot stops the plate’s progress with a definitive thump. Lisbet knows him by his voice, by his sturdy boots, thick-soled and calfskin-soft, sent from the outer reaches of the Empire, and by his smell: leather from his jerkin, worn even in the hottest days, inscribed with the crest worn by those in service of the Twenty-One, and smoke from his pipe, and sweat. She smells it on Ida sometimes, though she knows her friend washes with a fanatical diligence every time they lie together, as though she could scrub his scourge from her skin.