He took out some apis that a patient had given to him in lieu of payment, a mixture made from honeybees and alcohol with the venom of the bee extracted. He placed a few drops under Lea’s tongue. Perhaps it was an old wives’ tale to battle a disease with a measure of that illness, but he’d seen it help before. There was truth in the locals’ homeopathic remedies, ones they had used for generations, and this girl needed all the help she could get. Lea slipped back into a deep dark sleep, and Girard was pleased that her pulse was now stronger. He had noticed the covering of clay and honey on the girl; the poison had been stopped and therefore had not reached her heart, or kidneys, or lungs, but had stayed pooled beneath her skin.

“You acted wisely,” he told Ava. “Your daughter’s alive because of it.”

Ava didn’t bother to correct him. Her hands still burned from taking hold of Azriel’s coat. It was her fault; she had done what was forbidden. She had left the girl and thought of her own needs. “She’s too pale,” Ava told the doctor, her voice unsteady. “Her breathing isn’t right.”

“She’ll be more stable in the morning,” the doctor promised. “Rest is the best medicine.”

He’d noticed letters on the woman’s arm that he recognized to be Hebrew. When she caught him staring, Ava quickly pulled down her sleeve. Still, it was in his nature, as it is in every doctor’s nature, to be curious. He had not asked many questions about who they were. He assumed they were Jews from Berlin, for in her delirium Lea had murmured Wo ist meine Mutter?

Where is my mother?

Later that evening Girard took a Hebrew book that had belonged to Sarah from the volumes he had hidden in his filing cabinet, for any books relating to Jews were no longer legal to own. He thumbed through the alphabet, writing down the letters he’d seen. They spelled out truth. He sat at his desk, pleased.

He could not imagine a more beautiful word for a woman to carry.

That evening, Girard offered Ava his room, but she declined, insisting she would prefer to keep vigil from the bedroom chair. She wasn’t about to let the girl out of her sight, especially after the doctor said there was another guest in the barn.