‘As well as he knows yours. Let me be clear with you,’ says Lisbet. ‘It was obvious to all that you were fakes. I could see it, and Eren, and Plater if he’d spied you. For all I know he did. Any fool could. You were two drunk women, spinning as though it were a dance, not a plague. It was idiocy at best, and blasphemy at worst.’

‘We do not need your judgement,’ says Nethe.

‘It seems your own is at fault,’ says Lisbet. ‘And why together? I thought your friendship broken. I saw you fighting, after almsgiving.’

‘It is long enough past,’ says Nethe, carefully. ‘And the dancers . . . they offer a chance.’

‘A chance at what?’

‘A new beginning, a salvation of sorts.’

Lisbet tilts her head back against the trunk, so Nethe cannot see the understanding in her eyes. ‘But you are playing at it. It is not a game.’

‘It’s true,’ says Eren, and all of the women turn their heads to where he stands, still at the edge of the clearing among the brambles. Lisbet had all but forgotten he was there. ‘Some of the women dance till they die, or until their feet swell with blood, or—’

He glances at Lisbet, who feels herself flicker, and grips tighter to Ida’s hand. She tries to anchor herself tighter to the present.

‘I am sorry,’ says Eren. ‘I only meant to impress upon you the danger of what you are doing, Fräulein Wiler.’

Nethe sniffs at his address. ‘I need no Turk’s counsel.’

‘Perhaps,’ says Eren. ‘But take a musician’s, who has seen the truth of this mania. Who has seen the counterfeiters hauled out, their feet burned with hot coals to punish them. There is talk of drowning them, if their numbers increase.’

‘I know something of punishment,’ says Nethe.

‘Plater was there,’ adds Lisbet, the man’s name as sour as the bile in her throat. ‘If he had seen you, what then? Henne’s journey to Heidelberg would be for naught. They would brand you, and seize the bees. You know they wait only for the slightest of excuses.’

Nethe is wilting. It is a visible change, her shoulders slumping. ‘We only wished to have somewhere safe, somewhere we could be lost.’

‘That crowd is no such place,’ says Eren, gentler than she deserves.

‘But why must you hide it?’ says Lisbet. ‘Surely Henne would be glad of your friendship.’

‘It is Henne who forbade it,’ says Nethe.

‘I cannot believe it,’ says Lisbet. ‘He cultivated ours.’ She squeezes Ida’s hand, but Ida pulls from her grip, and scoops her thin arms around her legs. Her eyes are full of tears.

‘I should not have allowed it,’ she says. ‘I see the cruelty now, Agnethe. But it was all I had, to be close. You see that?’

‘See what?’ says Lisbet. ‘You are speaking in riddles.’ She rounds on Agnethe. ‘The both of you. Tell me what is between you. Tell me why you were sent away.’