Tybald Raabe returned on the twelfth of December, the Friday before the third Sunday in Advent. He didn’t bring the information Horn was expecting, but rumours. Queen Sophia had given the King of Poland, Jogaila, a third son, christened Casimir, in Krakow on Saint Andrew’s Day. The Poles’ joy was somewhat marred by a horoscope created by the famous mage and astrologer Henryk of Brzeg, according to which Jogaila’s third son had been conceived and born under a foreboding astral conjunction. During his reign, the astrologer prophesied, misfortune and numerous disasters would befall the Kingdom of Poland. Reynevan rubbed his forehead and pondered. He knew Henryk of Brzeg and that he bought his horoscopes from Telesma at the House at the Archangel. And Telesma’s horoscopes always came true. In their entirety.

It was evident that Urban Horn was only mildly interested in the fate of the Jagiellonian Dynasty. He was waiting for other tidings. Tybald Raabe was sent out into the world again, before fully resting.

The first blizzards began after the third Sunday in Advent. In spite of that, Reynevan rode to White Church several times to rendezvous with Jutta of Apolda. Owing to the cold, they couldn’t meet in the forest, so their trysts occurred with the permission of the smiling abbess, quite openly, in the convent garden, under the interested gaze of the grey-habited Poor Clares. And naturally had to be limited to holding hands. The abbess pointedly pretended not to see anything, but the lovers didn’t dare to be any bolder.

The beguiler Malevolt, who arrived at the Silver Bell Inn on the seventeenth of December, had something to add to Reynevan’s growing knowledge of the convent. Like, for example, that the church with whitewashed walls, whose name Alba Ecclesia applied to the entire village beside it, had already stood for over a hundred and fifty years, and that the village belonged to the Lords of Byczeń. When that family died out, Duke Bolko I of Świdnica, the great-great-grandfather of Jan of Ziębice, gave the village to the Poor Clares of Strzelin and founded a convent and provostry in White Church.

“It’s not an ordinary nunnery or provostry,” Malevolt informed him with a strange grimace. “White Church, they say, is a place of punishment, a place of banishment for dissenting nuns. Meaning the kind who think too much, too often, too independently and too freely. It’s said a veritable elite of free-thinking nuns is gathered there.”

“What do you mean? And Jutta?”

“Your Jutta must have quite good connections.” The beguiler winked. “It’s the dream of most Silesian nuns and candidates to end up in White Church.”

“In a place of punishment and imprisonment?”