“Don’t,” she interrupted at once. “There’s no point. Forget her. And let her forget. It’s already been two years, my boy. I know this will hurt you, but I’ll say it: time has tremendous healing powers. Cupid’s arrow sometimes penetrates deep, but even those wounds heal in time, if you don’t pick at them. She’ll forget. Perhaps she already has. I’m not saying that to hurt you. On the contrary: to allay the pain. You’re fretting with thoughts of responsibility, of duty. Of your debt. You have no debts, Reinmar. You’re free of obligations. Perhaps I’ll be bluntly prosaic—why poeticise it? The fact that you slept together is a meaningless episode.”

Reynevan didn’t answer. She went close to him, very close.

“The encounter with you…” she whispered, gingerly touching his cheek. “The encounter with you was a pleasure. I shall remember it. But I wouldn’t want to meet you again. Or see you. Never and nowhere. Is that clear? Answer me.”

“It is.”

“Just in case fresh ideas occur to you, know this: Jutta isn’t at Schönau. She’s gone away. There’s no sense asking anybody at the castle or in the vicinity, for no one knows her whereabouts. Do you see?”

“I do.”

“Then farewell.”

Chapter Fifteen

In which Reynevan—thanks to a certain anarchist—finally meets his beloved.

The innkeeper’s wife passing by his table glanced at him enquiringly, her eyes indicating the empty mug. Reynevan shook his head. He’d drunk enough. Besides, the beer was nothing special. To be precise, it was lousy. Like the food. The fact that there were plenty of guests despite that could only be down to the lack of competition. Reynevan himself had stopped there, in Ciepłowody, on learning that the next inn was in Przerzeczyn, on the Wrocław road, but it was just over a mile to Przerzeczyn and dusk was falling.

I need some help, he thought.

He’d been analysing the situation for almost an hour and trying to work out a sensible plan of action. Each time, he came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t achieve much without help.

After parting from Agnes of Apolda, the Green Lady, and overcoming the dejection her words had caused him, he rode to Powojowice. What he found there disheartened him even more. The steward whom Duke Jan of Ziębice had appointed to Peterlin’s confiscated estate needed barely two years to utterly ruin the famous and prospering fulling mill. Nicodemus Verbruggen, the Flemish dyeing master, had uprooted, it turned out, to somewhere in Greater Poland, unable to endure the harassment. New payments kept being added to Duke Jan’s ledger. The time will come, thought Reynevan, grinding his teeth, when accounts will be settled, Your Grace. A time for accounting. And payments.