‘It is hot every night and every day,’ says Nethe, swigging again from the flask. ‘Water will not touch the sides.’

‘Still,’ says Ida. ‘I must go to the river.’

Nethe rolls her eyes, and hauls Ida once more to her feet. ‘You were ever a whelp.’

‘Take the flask,’ says Lisbet. ‘I would be grateful of some water too.’

‘You are not coming?’ asks Ida, looking from Lisbet to Eren. Lisbet feels her face flush.

‘I shall sit further off,’ says Eren, ‘and not move until your return.’

Still Ida hesitates, and Lisbet knows how it looks. Eren is not only a man: he is a Turk, a stranger, a travelling musician. He is every bad thing in every bad tale they were ever told. But thirst wins out and Ida allows herself to be led away by Nethe, the flask in her hand.

Lisbet has been alone with Eren before, but it is different tonight, in this place she never thought to share with a soul. Her boldness vanishes, and she keeps her eyes trained on the sky, held up by the cross-hatched branches. Eren seems content in their silence, and picks up his lute again.

This time he plays something lovely and low, more mournful than what he lulled the bees with. It is a keen with the edges smoothed, an unmistakeable lament. Lisbet closes her eyes again, and leans back against the trunk.

She lets herself drift, lets her thoughts wander, and it makes her remember. She remembers the first child she carried, and the second. They come to her, each of her children, spooling from the music like spirits: bodies of light, souls of gold. She has always thought it was not true, what Pater Hansen preached in church, that any child not anointed by his hand before death is damned. But here, she feels it too, knows it cannot be so. They are each of them remembered, each of them counted. They are all of them saved.

When Eren stops playing, she makes herself look at him. He is looking back. He knows what she feels, and it is a sensation of such power, it takes her breath. She bends towards him like a reed to water, eyes already closing, lips parted.

‘Lisbet . . .’

Instead of his lips on hers, a hand on her shoulder. Instead of an embrace, gentle pressure pushing her away. Heat floods her cheeks. She cannot look him in the eye.

She stumbles to her feet. ‘I have to – I must . . .’

She ignores his soft call and descends the ladder, belly bumping the rungs, and when she hears him begin to play again she knows he is not following. She calls herself every bad name she can think of, embarrassment and shame thumping in her head like a drum.

She tells herself it was a moment of madness, though she knows it is a lie. If he had kissed her back – she shakes her head to rid it of the thought. Of course he would not. She is married, and old, and has another man’s child inside her.