Lisbet shakes her head, drops the needle into the box, rises to put it away.

‘You are alone in Strasbourg,’ says Eren. He lifts his thick hair where it curls about his ear. The skin there is red and scraped.

‘Someone hit you?’

He waves his hand. ‘Glancingly. But you are not afraid of me?’

‘My father had labourers.’

‘Slaves?’ asks Eren.

‘Labourers. They were like you.’

‘Musicians?’ There is something taut in his voice.

‘No, Turks.’

He takes a swallow of beer. The silence becomes sharper, but then he sets his cup gently down. ‘Will you have to give Plater what he asks?’

‘This is merry.’

The door has been pushed open and she had not noticed. Frederich stands yawning on the threshold, the recovered drum at his hip, and behind him the moon sits large and white as a peeled onion. She has sat with Eren deep into the night and not noticed that, either.

‘Something smells good,’ says Frederich, stepping towards the resealed pot and rocking back slightly on his heels.

‘You are drunk,’ says Eren lightly. ‘To bed.’

‘In my cups, dear friend,’ says Frederich, a little too loud, and Lisbet shushes him.

‘He is playing the fool,’ says Eren, and lifts a chair softly, places it behind Frederich’s calves. The drummer sits with a huff, and the chair creaks like old bones.

Frederich holds his finger to his lips, his bony shoulders raised so he has the manner of a naughty child. He reaches for the pot, and Eren playfully slaps his hand, places bread into it instead. Frederich chews obediently, reaching into his pocket and showing a crumpled, sealed letter to Lisbet.

‘For you,’ he says, spraying crumbs. It puts her in mind of the edict Herr Plater delivered, and she is loath to take it until she recognises Henne’s blunt, cramped hand.

Her husband holds a quill like a child at his letters, pink tongue precise between his teeth, a frown creasing the sun-branded lines of his forehead. It always makes her queasy, this habit of concentration. Even at the point of his release, as he is dark and huge above her in bed, there is always the glint of his wet mouth, his tongue poked out like a worm winkled from the fresh-turned earth of a grave.

‘This is from your husband,’ says Frederich, his voice too loud again. ‘The miller gave it me.’

Eren rests his hand on his friend’s arm, dark fingers slim and encasing Frederich’s shoulder. Frederich snorts, and repeats his announcement, in a mock whisper.

Frederich stretches his arm out, but before she can take hold of it, before she can do anything but feel the brittle, yellow quality of the parchment, he lifts it away. He is trying to make a game of it, and Lisbet feels her cheeks colour.

Eren plucks the letter from Frederich’s hand and passes it to her. The parchment is skin warm from being pressed in Frederich’s tunic, and she runs her fingers over its fold. The quality is bad, still bearing score marks from its flensing. She stares dumbly down at the shapes she knows are words, but she cannot read so much as her name. She only knows Henne’s.