It is all Lisbet can do to keep from creasing over and rocking. She turns her face towards the forest.

‘I have said something wrong,’ says Agnethe. ‘Please forgive me, I’m out of practice with speaking, especially of such things. There was none of that at the abbey, as you can imagine.’

Lisbet shakes her head, but to her horror the tears she held back in the city are falling now, dripping off her chin. The trees melt into a grey-green haze and she feels the cart draw to a stop. A strong-fingered hand takes hers. She is worried Agnethe will ask her questions. It is what Ida would do, desperate to know what is wrong, to fix it, but Agnethe only sits, her hand in Lisbet’s, and waits.

At last, Lisbet wipes the wetness from her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘The heat, and the dancer. The bees. I am worried for our future.’

‘Yes,’ says Agnethe. ‘And for your child’s, of course.’

‘I am hopeful of it – their future. But . . . you must not suppose. That there will be a child.’

‘It is wise to be cautious, but you have no reason to be afraid.’

Lisbet’s laugh is more of a hiccup. ‘I have a dozen reasons.’ She thinks of her tree, of the ribbons, and it seems a very small comfort in that moment, a miserly display. She can almost hear Agnethe’s thoughts, arriving suddenly at understanding. The hand in hers twines more tightly.

‘A dozen?’ Agnethe’s voice is strained.

‘You think it foolish to count?’

‘Of course not. Lisbet, I am sorry. Where are they rested? Might I see the graves?’

‘There are none,’ says Lisbet, her own voice cracking. ‘None lived long enough to warrant a burial.’

‘But you must have marked them, no matter their age,’ says Agnethe, and Lisbet looks up at her, shocked. Henne never thought to suggest it, nor Sophey. Even the ones with small fingers, lidded eyes, perfect-pale and froggish, slipped from her too soon – they were grotesque to her husband and mother-in-law, unblessed, taken from her and buried unmarked and unremarked-upon. But Agnethe seems to understand: they were there, they existed. Lisbet remembers the lock of hair, kept careful and curled in Agnethe’s pillow.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I did.’

‘You must show me when we are back at the farm.’

‘They are not there,’ she says. ‘Henne wouldn’t . . . they were not babies, yet. They did not breathe.’

‘They would not mark them?’

‘Nor seem to remember,’ says Lisbet. ‘Except that I failed.’

Agnethe’s face becomes shadowed. ‘I know this feeling. But it is no failure, to love. No failing.’

She sounds suddenly angry, and Lisbet feels emboldened by her raw emotion. ‘You understand.’

‘Of course.’

‘You have felt it?’ So this is the secret, the sin: Agnethe has had a child, perhaps even lost it before birth. Already she is drawing Agnethe tight to her chest, keen to share stories. Already she has pulled her from the cart, through the forest, to the dance tree.