‘He knows, and he watched as Alef beat me,’ says Nethe, and now there is not simple passion in her voice. There is also astonishment, that her brother could have acted so. The sadness. ‘He let him beat me almost to death. He watched—’

‘No,’ says Ida. ‘She does not need to know all.’

‘She does,’ says Nethe. ‘Let her know what she married.’

The women stare each other out, and Lisbet can feel Nethe relenting. But she doesn’t want to be spared. ‘I want to know.’

Nethe takes a deep breath. ‘Henne watched. He didn’t make any move to stop him, not even when Alef knocked me unconscious. Perhaps he stopped Alef doing worse, but I will not absolve him of his inaction. And then he let Alef give me a choice. Alef said I could marry him, or be sent to the mountains. He was early in the employ of the Twenty-One, then, already their power was hardening his heart.’

‘He gave me a choice, too,’ says Ida, her voice very small. ‘The same banishment, to a different abbey, after Nethe chose to leave. This is what we fought about, Bet. I chose the coward’s way. I chose to stay.’

‘I was wrong to call you a coward,’ says Nethe thickly. ‘You are the bravest of us all, to bear such a marriage.’ She turns her attention to Lisbet. ‘Plater took what I loved most and bound it to him. He knew that would hurt worse than any blow, any banishment. And Ida stayed for her father, I see that now. Plater would have let Mathias fall to the mercy of the Twenty-One and their taxes. Ida took a loveless, brutal marriage for her father.’

‘It was not all loveless,’ says Ida. ‘Not with my children born safe. Not with you as my friend, Bet.’

Lisbet feels herself sinking further away from reality, into the shadows, into the pit of what she’s discovered. Ida was married as punishment. Every child, penance. And Lisbet thought her so blessed.

Nethe’s face shines with defiance. She seems to have forgotten Eren stands at the clearing’s edge, seems to have forgotten every word she says damns her deeper. ‘And every moment of those years I have spent trying to slough her from my skin, unmake myself so I can forget all the parts she helped build. Bled myself to rid her, like a sickness. Believed that it is a sin, to love her. I thought I had managed. But from the moment of my return I have felt her goodness in everything, from the bread of my first meal to her attentions at church. I could not forget her any more than I can forget myself, Lisbet. And so, I stopped trying.’

She looks taller than ever, seeming to spread out over the clearing like another tree, rooted just as strong. ‘If that makes us sinners, so be it. But I think you know there is more in this world than simple sin. That is why you came here, to this pagan place, a place the Church would condemn, and made it holy. I think that is why you walk with a Turk, a sign and symptom of Christendom’s worst enemy.’