‘Would you like to be left alone to read it, Frau Wiler?’ Eren is watching her. His dark eyes are large in the candlelight, and the smile is gone from his beard. She looks back, and wishes she were alone with him again. She shakes her head.

Frederich belches. ‘Begging your pardon.’

He pushes up, and with the skill of an expert drunk manoeuvres himself carefully around the table, and stoops through the door.

‘I hope it is good news,’ says Eren.

‘I cannot read it. Sophey has some letters.’

‘I can, if you would like.’ She looks up at him, surprised. Something in his face contracts. ‘We do read, where I am from.’

‘Forgive me, of course.’ Her cheeks are warm again, and she presses her clammy fingertips to them.

‘Nothing to forgive.’

‘Is it common? For musicians I mean.’

Eren shakes his head once, slowly, and says with affection, ‘Frederich has a skill for rhythm and not much else.’

‘Then why did Herr Metz give the letter to him?’

‘He would not give it to me,’ says Eren. Nothing in his voice invites pity. ‘I can be trusted with baeckeoffe, not confidences. If you would like me to read it, I will not tell Frederich, nor anyone else what is in it.’

She looks down at the parchment again, and places it onto the table between them.

‘Perhaps it is not proper?’

Lisbet bites the soft insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing. The thought that Henne has written her a love letter hadn’t crossed her mind.

‘I am sure it is proper. My mother-in-law would have had to read it to me.’

Eren breaks the dark wax seal. There is a mark across it from the ring Henne inherited from his father, and wears on his smallest finger. Eren places the seal’s two halves onto the table so it looks whole. She has never met a man as careful as him.

He unfurls the parchment with a cracking sound, and even from where she sits Lisbet can smell it, an animal tang rising in a plume and spreading through the room. She covers the bread as Eren begins to read.

‘Lisbet . . .’ She trains her gaze onto the covered loaf, cups her hands under her belly. Eren’s voice deepens as he reads, a burr she feels as much as hears. ‘I hope my letter finds the baby well. I hope Mutter and Agnethe are well also.

‘My journey to Heidelberg was without incident, the road recently repaired and with houses spread nearly along the whole length. There is a place of learning here, and I was not the only traveller heading north. I was in the company of traders and clergy, men of God. Also a great number of Moors, but there was no trouble.

‘Heidelberg is a bigger city than Strasbourg. But here there is some notoriety for our city. They say there is a dancing plague, and that the whole city is running mad. I hope you are keeping my boy away from it, and are never in the forest.