Nethe’s prayer continues unabated.

‘Do you wish to walk with me? We could go to the tree.’ Lisbet sets the honeycomb down beside the door.

Curiosity is so sour in her throat she could gag on it. Even after she has walked to the dance tree and back, still it sits there: the curiosity and the honeycomb, both.

For the next few days, Nethe’s piousness persists, and Lisbet does not see her, nor hear her except at night, when by pressing her ear to the wood of her door, she can hear the whisper and urgency of Nethe’s voice, praying.

•

Ida moves against the tide of churchgoers, a furrow between her eyebrows. Plater is not at church, kept away from home with the commotion in the city, and Ida looks well on it, better rested. Lisbet opens her mouth to greet her, but Ida speaks not to her, but to her sister-in-law.

‘Are you well?’ Ida steps closer to Nethe and Nethe steps back, as though it is a dance between them. Nethe had emerged from her room only that morning, hollow-cheeked and stinking, and washed in the trough they kept for the dogs. It is as though the stone Lisbet felt she’d chipped away at over the past week has recalcified and made Nethe back into Agnethe the penitent, the stranger.

‘I am,’ says Nethe, Henne’s jut to her jaw. The tension thrums in Lisbet’s ears. Ida’s hand makes a movement, so small and impulsive Lisbet might have blinked and missed it.

Nethe turns and strides to the door, and to Lisbet’s surprise Ida hurries after her. Lisbet raises an eyebrow at Sophey, but her mother-in-law is already following. Lisbet stands a moment as though caught in a net. Her head is all confusion at Ida’s pursuit. She pushes herself heavily after them, out into the searing light.

Whatever the women were saying, Sophey has stopped it. She stands between them, planted as a fence. There are spots of colour high in Nethe’s pale cheeks, and Ida is agitatedly plucking at an imaginary loose thread in her impeccable sleeve.

‘Foolish,’ Sophey spits. ‘God damns you both.’

‘You think I do not know that?’ says Nethe, furious brightness in her eyes. She is breathing as though she has run a race. ‘What do you think I have prayed for the past week?’

‘What has happened?’ says Lisbet, looking at Ida.

‘Go now to your almsgiving, if you please, Frau Plater,’ says Sophey, with her practised blend of venom and politeness.

‘I—’

‘Now.’

Ida obeys, meek as a daughter, making for the cart. Lisbet starts after her friend, but someone taps her firmly on the shoulder. ‘Wiler, yes?’

‘Yes,’ says Lisbet confusedly, turning to see Herr Furmann looking at her with detached interest.

‘You are in charge of the alms, with Frau Plater?’

‘Yes she is,’ says Sophey, with her usual mix of deference and defiance in the presence of the wealthy. ‘Can we help, Herr Furmann?’

‘I have several flagons of beer to offer.’ He gestures at his horse and covered cart with iron spokes and polished leather seats. ‘Times like these, any extra service is a pleasure.’