‘Wait. What about E—’ She swallows his name. ‘What of the Turk?’

‘Have you not listened? I thought Nethe told you all.’ He sighs. ‘He burnt the hives.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not him. I know it was not.’

‘The boy saw it all, the one who pulled you from the fire. He saw the Moor, or Turk, or whatever godforsaken creature he was, light it and pull you into the pyre. You are lucky to live. He murdered Plater besides.’ Henne crosses himself, but he does not look reverent in the least. ‘They are hunting him now.’

They will not find him, Lisbet thinks. The Black Forest has swallowed Joss Fritz. It will offer the same shelter to Eren.

‘Henne, it was not him.’ She struggles upright, her stitches pulling. ‘The fire nor the murder. Plater—’

‘No.’ Henne takes her hand again. ‘The Church will allow us more land for planting, Lisbet. Beets, onions, cabbages. The crops of my father and your father both. It is the best we can hope for.’

‘Henne, you are not listening.’

‘You must listen to me, wife.’ He is hurting her now, his hand a vice. He knows, she realises. He knows it was not Eren. Has even perhaps guessed at Plater’s responsibility. But who can take up a charge against the Twenty-One’s man?

He is looking at her intently, warning in his eyes, and she nods only so he will let loose her hand. She tucks it under her armpit, her breasts sore, heavy. Soon her boy will be returned to her and he will drink, and she can be rid of Henne and be alone with her son.

‘I don’t know what Mutti was thinking, letting a Turk sleep here. In this bed!’ He shudders, and Lisbet closes her eyes to keep the tears from sight. ‘If I were here, I should have run him through.’

‘You would murder a man,’ says Lisbet faintly, though she knows he witnessed the near-murder of his sister.

‘They are not men, Lisbet,’ says Henne. ‘The Church itself says to kill such a beast is only malecide, only the defeat of evil. It is in the service of God to do such a thing. I have been assured of it. It is not murder when you cast out a devil.’

She wants to throw herself upon him, bite and scratch and tear. She wants to tell him he is the Devil, he and Plater both, for what they did to Nethe, to Ida. She wants to say, I love him, the Turk you hate. But even if she could, he would not give her space to speak. Henne charges on.

‘Fifty skeps, burned! At least all the wax was farmed, and we have six buckets of honey.’

That Lisbet collected. She knows then she is the same as the poor bees, that all his sadness is for their value, all the grief is for what they gave. If she had died and left the child living, would he care? The answer is obvious, and it breaks what is left of her heart. Only the boy when he is brought to her breast, and Nethe who carries him, begin to mend it.