‘They are not yours,’ says Nethe. Blood is dripping from her brow but she does not wipe it away. ‘You do not believe it, truly. This place proves it.’ She gestures at the tree, the ribbons.

‘It is not the same,’ says Lisbet, with a wild burst of fear. ‘It is a sin, of the worst kind.’

‘You do not think we know that?’ says Nethe, and she breaks from the hold of her stillness and laughs, a hysterical sound, more fury than mirth. ‘By the Church’s measure, we are all lost. Me and Ida, you and your babies—’

‘Nethe!’ cries Ida, but Nethe rushes on.

‘Why do you think those women dance? Because there is no earthly way to be saved. You and Mutter have told me enough times – Strasbourg is sliding Hellwards. And we women, we bear the brunt. We are bred or banished, and always, always damned. Prayers cannot help us, the priests will not help us. Your babies were never blessed, so they were damned. It is not right, that is the unnatural act, not this.’ She thumps her chest, where her heart is. ‘Is this not why you come to your doom tree? To reach at a place where you can be comforted, where you can find some semblance of peace? Because you have none, do you, Lisbet?’

Lisbet cannot deny it. Though her pulse gallops at the deceit, at what she is learning, still she feels the effect of the tree upon her blood, cooling, calming as a mother’s touch.

‘And nor do I,’ says Nethe, breathing so hard spit flecks her lips. ‘I did not find it in church as a child, nor at my chores. I did not find it searching my soul in silence at that abbey, beating my back until I bled. Not in the cathedral where my penance was meant to be at an end. I prayed harder than ever, there, to find it – the settling of my heart. Peace. Safety. But it is nowhere, except with this woman.’

‘Nethe,’ says Ida desperately. ‘Please, it is too much.’

‘She wants to know, so let her know,’ says Nethe, pacing like a caged bear. ‘We have loved each other since childhood. It is no simple lust, no strangeness. It is a love as deep and natural as the roots we walk on. We planned our lives around it, this love. Planned for Ida to marry Henne, for me to marry Alef Plater and all of us to live together.’

‘You could not have thought that would work? To live your whole lives deceitful?’

‘It was better than living without each other,’ says Ida in a small voice. ‘I did not love Henne, Bet. You shouldn’t be jealous.’

Lisbet snorts, because she is not jealous. She is simply adrift, aghast that they thought such foolishness any sort of life.

‘But Plater discovered us,’ says Nethe. ‘Seven years ago, here in the forest. He and Henne found us.’

‘Henne?’ Lisbet steadies herself. ‘He knows?’