The dogs lie slumped in the centre of the dirt yard. The small one, Fluh, is new and fierce and yaps like she is caught in a bait trap every time she sees Lisbet. Ulf, the wolfhound with matted fur, she minds less. He came to them as a pup, not long after she did, and does not jump up at her, or bite at her skirts.

Fluh scuffs the dirt around her, burrowing deeper in, but Ulf heaves himself to his feet and trots to catch up with them as they open the gate, pass the buzzing cones of the skeps with their wakening bees, and enter the forest.

The ground is all shadows, and Lisbet lifts her feet as though wading. The flies gather around her ears, but she cannot bear to let down her hair in the soupy heat. No sound but them breaking crisp leaves, dried early off the trees, and her breath already ragged.

Henne is walking a little ahead, turned slightly sideways to fit down the narrow path. He does not ask which way they should go: he leads and she follows behind. His hand trails and she wonders if he will mind her taking it. But then he lowers it to Ulf’s head, and she rests her own on her belly instead.

They push upwards to the bluff, the closest thing to a view in this furrowed part of the world. She imagines them pressed down as seeds beneath His thumb, planted irreparably deep, and walks faster, overtaking Henne. On clearer mornings, when the wind pushes aside the miasma that hovers over Strasbourg most days, she can see every notch on Notre Dame’s spire.

‘Lisbet?’ Henne is beside her, his hip butting hers. ‘Slow down.’

She begins to tell him she is fine, but a wash of faintness sluices down her back, blessedly cold.

‘Careful.’ Finally, he loops his hand about her waist. She leans against him until the path stops leaping with little sparks. Still he holds her, and she closes her eyes. A sigh escapes her lips, and he releases her as though she had screamed. She stumbles, catches herself. ‘Come, home.’

They are still more than a dozen paces from the summit. She used to run up it in the first months of their marriage, and be back before Sophey noticed her gone and her chores left untended. She feels lumpen and stretched, wishes she could have come alone, taken her time, gone to the tree. But now the sun is up and Sophey will be too, readying for Agnethe’s return. Lisbet lets Henne lead the way back to the farm without complaint. At the skeps she moves to put her hand on the gate, but he nudges her on.

‘I’ll see to it.’

‘They need fresh water—’

‘I know,’ he says with another flash of temper. ‘They are my bees, Lisbet.’

Not yours, she thinks, not mine.

•

Already Henne is looking beyond her, to his tasks, to his day, so intent that he does not even notice the woman in their dusty yard, until Lisbet catches his arm. Her head is so full of Agnethe she lends the visitor a head or two in height, broadens her shoulders, places Henne’s mouth and jaw over the fine features already breaking into a smile at the sight of them.