In the wide bed of the cart is a bundle of carefully wrapped candles, enough to light a modest church for a week. Beside it is a package of bread, baked with much of the remainder of Ida’s gift, dried strips of lean bacon, a waxed cloth covering it all, though there is no sign of rain. Sophey had bit her lip hard seeing them off, almost as though she would cry, and Lisbet searched herself and realised that she felt nothing close to tears. Apprehension perhaps: but it is all for the bees, and the baby that spent a fractious night stirring her insides like cud.

The Metz mill sits halfway between Strasbourg and their farm. The forest is better managed here, though the roots constantly snake to the river, threatening to choke the water to a crawl. It is fastest to reach through the trees, a journey Lisbet has made so many times she could do it blindfolded. But as is the same for any settlement built near the Black Forest, where feet may pass, a cart cannot. This is why it offers safety for Joss Fritz and his rebels, for Lisbet and her dance tree, and why it takes double the miles to travel by horse than by foot.

Lisbet will be glad of a glimpse of Ida, of her ordered house and rose-cheeked children, the smell of fresh-baked bread that rises always from the timbers of the Metz mill. If the city is lately even more of a nightmare, the mill is like something from a children’s story, sitting in the fork of the road between church and city, solid and square, clean and neat. Lisbet always leaves with her dark hair coated in a light film of white.

Agnethe’s straight back stiffens further as the lines of the roof come into view, and the fetch-and-carry sound of the millwheel in the river rises over the clop of the horse’s hooves.

Outside the door, Ilse sits in the dirt with a doll. A serious, watchful girl of six, with her father’s hair and mother’s large eyes and mouth, she is the sole daughter in a sea of sons, as Lisbet had been. She stands as the cart approaches, dusting herself down.

‘Good morning, Ilse,’ says Lisbet, as neither Henne nor Nethe offer a greeting. ‘Will you fetch your father?’

She waits until the girl goes inside, releasing a snatch of childish voices from behind the door, before turning to Henne.

‘Could you not raise a smile for the child at least?’

Henne’s jaw juts mulishly. At her other side, Agnethe stares straight ahead, her hands jammed beneath her armpits, her expression so similar to her brother’s Lisbet would laugh if their countenances weren’t so grave.

The door opens and Ida comes out, her face unguarded, a smudge of flour on her cheek and her thick blonde hair uncovered. She startles at the sight of them, and immediately retreats, calling an apology before reappearing with a scarf covering her head, as her husband demands.