‘Very kind,’ says Sophey, though she knows well as Lisbet that men like this see generosity as down-payment against favour here or else in Heaven. ‘We will move them to Frau Plater’s cart now.’

‘You’ll never manage,’ he scoffs. ‘What about you?’

Nethe stands behind them, unavoidably strong-looking despite her week’s self-imposed fast.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Of course.’

She follows him, transfers the heavy clay pots from cart to cart as he watches and shouts occasional advice. When she is finished and Lisbet goes to swing herself up onto the cart beside Ida, Herr Furmann tuts. ‘No, no, I want those pots returned. You will have to pour them into different vessels, whatever they have available. Can you manage that? Or you?’ He glances between pregnant Lisbet and slender Ida, and then looks to Nethe again. ‘You must go.’

All of the woman flinch, as though he’s produced a whip.

‘That is impossible, Herr Furmann,’ says Sophey. ‘Agnethe is needed at the farm.’

‘It will be the work of a moment, a woman that size.’ He waves aside her concern. ‘And with such madness in the air, I would think you’d want to keep that one safe?’ He points at Lisbet’s belly, and Lisbet’s mind clouds with shame, with anger. ‘There are sixteen flagons in all. Do count them out and back in, won’t you?’

If it were anyone else, Sophey would stand her ground. But instead she is forced to chew her tongue as Nethe, looking as though she goes to her death, climbs up beside Ida. Ida is straight-backed, staring ahead.

Herr Furmann swings himself up heavily onto his fine stallion. ‘Be sure to tell your husband who made this donation, won’t you, Frau Plater?’ Ida jerks her head tautly, flicks the reins.

Sophey holds herself long enough for Herr Furmann to ride from the churchyard, and then presses her fists to her eyes.

‘Imbecile!’ she rages, and Lisbet doesn’t know if it is aimed at her, Herr Furmann, or Sophey herself. Before Lisbet can respond her mother-in-law begins hurrying along the path home.

Lisbet doesn’t even try to catch her. The exchange has set her body pitching, and instead she cuts through the forest. On her way to the dance tree she must cross the river. The heat has shrunk it to a stream, and it is warm enough to be uncomfortable as she wades across, the smell brackish as Nethe’s breath. The skin at her wrist is blue with her blood, the channels swollen.

She steps clear of the water, trying to untangle what she has just witnessed.

She knows they were childhood friends: Henne and Nethe Wiler, Ida Metz, Alef Plater. But those ties were broken before Lisbet arrived. She sometimes wonders if a match would have been made between Henne and Ida, leaving Alef for Nethe had she not sinned and been sent away. The neatness of it punctured by Nethe’s departure and, as all things were, by Lisbet’s own arrival. Stepping into Nethe’s space, into her shadow.