She dares a look at his face. His beard is clipped closer than Henne’s or her father’s, showing a straight jaw, high cheekbones and cheeks scooped in between. The moustache is fuller than an Alsace man’s, and curls about his lips. She studies him as she would a hive, appraising, until he looks up from his empty plate, and smiles. His teeth are very straight.

‘Thank you,’ he murmurs, and Lisbet shrugs to say she only sliced the bread, poured the mead. ‘Am I right that you are the beekeeper?’

She nods. ‘And my husband.’ Her voice is very small, but he hears her.

‘Heinrich Wiler, a man with a head for business,’ he says, smiles again at her surprise. ‘Frederich asked about you in the city.’

‘Me?’

He gestures at the room. ‘The Wiler household. Herr Metz the miller is fond of you.’

She relaxes into her chair a little, cups her belly as the bread soothes her stomach. ‘We are loyal customers. Where is . . .’

‘Frederich is still in the city. My friend is fond of nights. As you are, it seems.’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ It feels an intimate detail, but she parts with it easily.

‘My mother was the same, with my sisters.’ He nods at her stomach. ‘And even then it was not so hot.’

‘Is the city . . .’ She searches for the word, and he waits, does not rush in to guess at her meaning like Henne would. She wants to ask if it has changed, but he would not know it before.

‘Are there many dancers?’ she asks finally.

His hand trembles slightly: she would not have noticed it but for a drop of mead escaping his cup and slipping over his fine fingers. She imagines, absurdly, catching it in her mouth, and takes a sip of her own. It is made with the honey from her favourite hive, the dance tree bees.

‘The guilds are full,’ he says, swallowing. ‘They’ve opened another stage, in the carpenters’ guild, and yet more dance in the streets. There is talk of building a chapel at Saverne.’

‘Another stage?’ Lisbet frowns.

‘Yes,’ says Eren heavily. ‘I’ve never seen the like. They dance until they fall down, and the authorities revive them with ale and watered wine, and they dance again.’

A silence then. She wonders if he is recalling, as she is, the sight. It is easy to double the stages, and double them again, until the world is full of naught but women with lank, loose hair, their arms outstretched, their feet torn and bloodied. She presses down on her belly.

‘You have not played for dancers before?’

‘Dancers, yes, at feasts and festivals. Dancers like this, who wheel and spin and will not stop?’ He shakes his head. His brown eyes shine in the candlelight, which picks out his lashes and chases them up his forehead in long streaks. ‘Never.’

‘But it will work,’ she says. ‘The Twenty-One have decreed it.’