When she returns to the table Eren has moved the pot further off, resealed it with the dough and placed it beside the fire so it will continue to steep and strengthen in flavour. Lisbet wonders who taught him such things, who taught him to stitch at all. Henne would never contemplate learning such work.

As she settles to sew, first unpicking his stitches with the sharp end of the spindle, she watches him from beneath her eyelashes. He has his lute on his lap, and is moving his fingers over it as though to play, hands hovering just above its surface. The distance constant, aching. Has he a wife, who showed him how to darn?

She takes up the shirt and folds over the torn fabric, lightly runs a stitch to bind the edges together to hide the tears. His lips are moving, his eyes half closed, away from her and this room, the music and song inside somewhere she can’t reach. She starts to bring the new seams together with a stitch her mother taught her, fine as a whisper. Across, across, through and through, to mimic the weave of the fabric. Her fingers remember and act of their own accord, much as his do, both of them playing well-worn rhythms. She double knots in reverse, so the seam will lie close to his skin and not trouble him.

‘That was fast,’ he says, when she holds out the mended shirt. ‘You are skilled, Frau Wiler.’

‘Lisbet,’ she says.

‘Thank you.’ He takes it, holds the work to the candlelight so the stitches show through like veins. ‘It is better than new.’

She bows her head against the compliment, winding the thread back onto the spindle, thinking how Sophey will notice it gone and likely ask after it. What will Lisbet tell her? That she sat with the Turk and ate Mathias’ gift, and he gave her the shirt still warm from his back?

‘Does he threaten you?’ He is watching her closely. ‘Plater?’

‘He threatens all.’ Eren frowns and she gestures around them, at the house, the yard. ‘The farm, the bees. We borrowed from the church in the bad years, as most of Alsace did. We have paid it back but they want it ten-fold, and skeps besides.’

He nods slowly. ‘It was so for us.’

‘Your family?’

‘Me and my wife, yes.’

She waits but he doesn’t offer anything further.

‘If Plater gives you trouble, I think I could scare him if you wished.’

‘You?’ Lisbet cannot hold her laugh.

‘Oh yes.’ Eren affects a deeper tone. ‘Don’t you know we Turks are demons, black-hearted as our skin.’

She laughs again, tighter, the needle warm in her hand. He has drawn his brow low over his eyes, made his lips a tight line, the candlelight finding new funnels of darkness in his face. Then he sits back, wipes his slim fingers over his eyes as though to smooth away the expression.

‘You do not believe it?’ he asks, himself again.