The water coach reaches Haarlem at three and the passengers clamber out, stretching their stiff limbs, sucking mouthfuls of clean air. The grizzling infant, asleep at last, lolls against his mother’s chest, arms and legs escaping the confines of the rough blanket. The woman grunts as she heaves him up, and turns her back pointedly when she catches Anna looking. Anna bids farewell to the daughter. She watches them trundle off towards the city, Amandel trotting along at the child’s heels.

There is no connecting service between Haarlem and Leiden, so she takes a barge downstream, stowing her bundle safely in her lap where the swirling bilge water cannot reach it. The bundle contains the few items she could not part with – her least-stained petticoat, two white caps, the purse containing the last of her stuivers. Buried at the bottom is her mother’s silk dress. Anna felt like a thief removing it from the drawer, in plain sight of the bed on which Lijsbeth had drawn her last breath. The brightness of silk in that dull room was like the heavens parting after a storm, like a dazzling sunset splashed across a grey sea. Anna wanted to lose herself in the richness of the cloth and puzzle out the names of the fruits and flowers sewn into the surface. She wanted to keep on staring until the desire to wear the dress became an unbearable weight – and then drag her fingers through the laces until they were loose enough for her to slip the gown over her head, the silk softer than the touch of a hand. She imagined the folds falling around her legs, the texture so sleek it required no bleaching or soaking to massage rough fibres. It would be like wearing nothing. This thought made her blush even as a wellspring of longing sent a stream of possibilities racing through her bloodstream. She saw herself remade, no longer a poor laundress but a woman with means. Perhaps one day, if she proved herself a good manager, she could find a role as a housekeeper. Or perhaps Crispijn and Catharina would keep her on at Sterrenwijck indefinitely. She will have to make herself indispensable. She will have to keep the curse buried, smothered by her devotion to God, protected by the purity and goodness of her mother’s silk dress.

In the end, she didn’t try on the dress. Instead, she parcelled it up in a cotton bedsheet, ready for the journey south. She will keep it close to her – a talisman. Lijsbeth will forgive her for not burying it with her. Her sister will understand.