But the biggest shock was the Mass. Reynevan didn’t participate in it. The atmosphere of White Church made him feel safe, so he had no intention of hiding the fact that as a Calixtine and Utraquist he didn’t recognise either the papist Mass or Communion.

Once, however, he felt the need and went to Mass, having decided after some thought that it was doubtful whether God had the time or desire to be bothered by liturgical minutiae. He went to the church and received a shock. The Mass was being celebrated by the abbess.

A woman.

After a few days, the abbess unexpectedly asked Reynevan to see her. As he went, he was aware both of the honour and of the fact that he was about to be interrogated. Which he had been expecting for some time.

As he entered, she was reading an incunable lying open on a lectern. Reynevan, as a bibliophile and bibliomaniac, immediately recognised Joachim of Fiore’s Psalterium Decem Cordarum by its illuminations and engravings. Other works that were lying in eyeshot were: Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Divinorum Operum, Saint Bernard’s De amore Dei, Hesiod’s Theogony, and Nicholas of Clémanges’ De ruina ecclesiae. He didn’t know why, but the sight of a well-thumbed copy of Necronomicon among the books didn’t surprise him in the least.

The abbess looked at him for some time over the polished lenses of her spectacles, as though challenging him to endure her gaze.

“An unprecedented thing,” she finally said, and the expression on her face might have been a smile or a sneer. “An unprecedented thing. Not only am I treating a Hussite in my convent. Not only am I protecting a heretic. Not only have I allowed in a sorcerer—and a necromancer at that. Not only do I tolerate and nurse him, why, I even permit him to indulge in amorous pleasure with a converse entrusted into my care. A converse from a noble family, for whom I am responsible.”

“We are in—” he began.

She didn’t let him finish. “Indeed. In the throes of passion, I’d say. And I wonder whether you’ve thought about the possible consequences? For even a moment?”

“I am a doctor—”

“Firstly, do not forget that. Secondly, I was by no means only thinking about the possibility of pregnancy.”

She said nothing for some time and played with the linen cord girdling her habit, with the four knots in it symbolising the four vows of Saint Clare, the patron and founder of the Order of Poor Ladies.

“I meant the future.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “Something that is most uncertain in today’s hard times. I want to know whether you and Jutta think about the future. Whether you, Reynevan, think about the future. No, no, not the details. The simple fact of it.”

“I do, Reverend Mother.”