‘Imagine,’ Frederick says. ‘At one time all you needed to assure your soul’s passage to the heavenly plains was to kill a dozen Saracens in the Maker’s name. Now we must all live a good and dutiful life or join Eve in eternal torment.’

‘Not all of us,’ comes Jane’s voice. ‘Where I’m from folk don’t believe in Eve.’

‘Ah, there’s a question for the Makermen!’ laughs Frederick. ‘Do sinless heathens go to Eve? What about the goodliest pagan grandmamas? The sweetest of heretic babes?’ Frederick tickles Jane’s eldest. ‘Surely their souls are not forfeit. Tell us, Jane, what do your folk believe happens when we pass on to the ghostly realm?’

‘I was sold young,’ says Jane back. ‘But I remember an altar in my home for kin who had passed on. For the grandpapas and grandmamas and the ones before them.’

At the edge of the field I feel a right fool. There isn’t going to be one tent. There’s going to be at least four, each as big as a house. No, two houses. One of the tents is already raised, but the others are just being laid out.

A richly dressed man oversees the folk already at work. A clerk stands beside him holding open a large scroll with drawings and figures on it. They venture a glance towards me, and I see them stiffen. Frederick’s approach pulls their attention away.

Frederick bows to the overseer and clerk. I can’t hear them talk, but Frederick points back to Jane and Paul. The men look askance at Paul’s rags and Jane’s stranger face. Frederick’s arm gestures get bigger. A few moments later he comes back. ‘They’ll take us all on. Paul, I told him we were rakers by trade and that you had been badly burned as an apprentice. It seemed ill-advised to spell out our association with the play performing tomorrow as they seemed rather pious.’ Frederick looks to Jane. ‘The painters are working on the adjacent tent, my love. Makerspeed.’

Jane and her children disappear behind the bulk of the one raised tent. Frederick and Paul join several men working at raising another. The centre tentpole is as tall as a two-storey house and topped with a big, wooden bird. It’s meant to be a crowned falcon, like from Queen Bethany’s badge, I think. The men pull the pole to standing using three long ropes.

While they work, I notice that the canvas for the tent roof is still on the ground. Canvas is as heavy as velvet, and the roof canvas as wide as a Makerhall. Just by looking you can see it’s far too heavy for Frederick, Paul, and the others to lift. I don’t know how they’ll get it up to the roof. And then the sorcery begins.