‘We could go out, Isolde.’

‘You know I cannot.’

‘We could go out in secret,’ the other replied. ‘At night, through the little postern gate. We could just walk in the woods in the starlight. If you long for the outside, we don’t have to be prisoners here.’

‘You know that I took vows that I would never leave here . . .’

‘When so many vows are being broken?’ the other urged. ‘When we have turned the abbey upside down and brought hell in here with us? What would one more sin matter? How does it matter what we do now?’

The gaze that Isolde turned on her friend was dark with guilt. ‘I can’t give up,’ she whispered. ‘Whatever people think I have done or say I have done, whatever I have done – I won’t give up on myself. I’ll keep my word.’

The three men attended Compline, the last service before the nuns went to bed for the night. Freize looked longingly at the Lady Almoner’s stores as the three men walked out of the cloister and separated to go to their rooms. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a glass of sweet wine as a nightcap,’ he said. ‘Or two. Or three.’