Nethe’s lips twitch. ‘Walking.’

‘Where?’

‘Where is there to walk here?’

‘Alone?’

‘You are same as my mother,’ says Nethe, throwing back the sheets, ‘all questions and no care for the answers but to sate your curiosity.’

She starts to strip the sheets, and Lisbet helps her. ‘That is not true,’ says Lisbet, but it is a little. ‘How was the city?’

‘How should I know?’

‘From your visit with Ida,’ frowns Lisbet.

‘Yes.’ Nethe’s lips twitch again – this time Lisbet is almost sure it is a smile. ‘Yes of course.’

‘Well?’

‘I have never seen the like. The women dance so light and the stages are so high it is as though they float. The music makes a church of it.’ Lisbet snorts in disbelief, and Nethe rounds on her. ‘If a tree can be a church, why not a guild?’

‘Do not,’ warns Lisbet. She bundles the sheets and stomps outside to the waiting bucket and lye. How dare she? The stings on the webs of Lisbet’s fingers throb as she takes a paddle to it, letting them soak before throwing the sheets over the mangle board.

Lisbet works the rolling pin, splashing her skirts, flinging the sheets back over to work them through again and again, until they are wrung out. Still she repeats the wringing, enjoying the ache in her lower back, the heaviness growing in her arms, the sweat coming hot behind her ears, the handle catching sometimes on her hip, sometimes her belly.

‘You are a demon with that mangle.’

Lisbet gasps and straightens, fearing Plater returned. But this time Frederich is there, leaning against the side of the house, his long limbs arranged like an upright cricket’s. His smirk is back, lending his face a lopsidedness that is not wholly unbecoming.

She smooths her hands dry on her dress, knowing the lye will eat at the dye and leave streaks, not caring. ‘Good morning, Herr . . .’ She realises she has no other name for him, waits for him to provide it. ‘Frederich. Back so soon?’

He levers himself upright, pushing off the wall and loping closer. ‘So soon? I have barely been here, Frau Wiler.’ Her cheeks colour, and still he moves closer, pushes on. ‘The city has many intrigues. Not that your farm is without them of course.’

Frederich yawns without covering his mouth, and Lisbet is minded of her mother clapping her own hand over Lisbet’s wide lips. The Devil enters there, and must be kept out. A mouth, Lisbet decided young, is inherently duplicitous. It does not help she has a large mouth, and her lips sit apart when she thinks or sleeps. She tries to correct it, keeps her tongue latched to the gilled back of her mouth, but always it parts with some irrepressible impulse.

Frederich has no such qualms – she can count each gap in his gums. Lisbet shudders, casts around for another topic. ‘Did you lose your drum?’ She gestures at his hip.