Waving away a few stragglers, she draws out the golden tablet, amazed as always by its easiness, the way it snaps in her hands and, loosened by the heat, throws up its thick scent. Henne says it is proof they do God’s work, that the bees give to them so freely, that it is hardly toil at all to keep them, but Lisbet likes to think they would not yield so lightly for just anyone.

She inhales deeply as she places the first comb into her bucket, humming softly as the bees circle and settle and fly away again. She breaks a second and a third, lifting any caught bees from the bucket and letting them return to the hive. She leaves the rest of the combs so they can begin their work again, and moves to the next skep.

When she leaves the yard, all is as she found it, and she still hums to herself, to the baby, as she walks to the press housed in its rough shed. It is not so fine as the machines they have at the monastery, where counterweights lift and drop the thick slabs of oak, but she can manage. She arranges the trough below the press, checks the fine mesh is beneath the lowermost slab, and lays the tablets of comb onto the wood.

Bracing her elbow against the shelf Henne put up for this purpose, she hoists the other slab on top, and tightens the clamp so the wax cracks and squeezes. She breaks off a corner and wraps it in wax paper. The baby pushes out a shoulder or a foot, and she cups it. She could be here half a decade ago now, when all this was new to her and their third child was inside her. Years folded close as cloth.

The honey drips, and then pours, chasing the channels of the mesh, and she waits a while, counting heartbeats, until it settles to a steady stream. She tightens the clamp once more, picks up the smoking rosemary, and regretfully, without letting herself look back, goes outside.

‘Frau Wiler?’ The voice is all too familiar to Lisbet, and sets a rocking motion in her stomach, sickening as a rotten tooth.

‘Herr Plater.’

‘At work still I see,’ says Plater, smoothing his jerkin. ‘Henne’s journey progresses apace?’

‘So soon you come to visit us again. Can I help you?’

She does not invite him in. Let him stand in the sun. Already he is sweating: it streams down his cheeks and into his collar. His face is oddly hairless. His breath is sweet with clove and mint. He smiles wider, and Lisbet resists the urge to shove him, to kick him, to do violence to this man who threatens all they have.

‘Straight to business, like your husband.’

She waits.

‘He’ll have missed the dancers,’ he says. ‘You’ve seen them?’

She gives him a tight nod.

‘My wife said so. The Twenty-One want it quickly resolved. They called an emergency council, and both physicians and clergy are in agreement for the cure. They have ordered High Mass and emptied the city of hures and vagrants, built stages, ordered strong men to dance with the afflicted.’