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not make a good husband. She filled a mug with beer. As she brought the food to Katharina, the morning bells began. A faint far-off tinkling at first, then a growing cacophony of pealing, clanging, booming, and jangling as other bells chimed in. She tried to identify each of the city’s cathedrals and chapels by the distinctive pitch of its bells: Saint Kilian’s, Neumunster, Saint Burkard’s, Mary’s Chapel, Saint Augustine’s, Neubau. Eva loved this time of day, the soft light of dawn, the bells ringing, the fragrant golden loaves ready to sell.
    While Katharina ate, Eva roamed the workshop, extinguishing as many of the tallow candles as she could. She paused by the painting of the Holy Mother and Child. The candlelight made the faces glow as if lit from within. The oil paint had begun to crack and peel, but Eva thought the web of lines only made Mary’s face more lovely, wrinkled softly, like a kindly grandmother’s. She crossed herself, then ran her fingers over the leather-bound Bible she kept on a small table beneath the painting. It had cost so much that Jacob had refused to buy it at first. Why have a Bible, he reasoned, when neither of them could read? Eva begged, then persuaded him that a Bible would bring good fortune upon the bakery, that it would protect them from loss and harm. He finally relented. She was careful then not to let him discover that the nuns at the Unterzell Convent, where she’d lived for six years after her parents died, had taught her not only numbers but letters as well.
    Eva flipped open the pages and read a favourite passage from Psalms.
Give glory to the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever
.
    She hardly heard, above the bells, the clip-clop of horses on the stone street. There was the squeaking complaint of leather, then a loud pounding on the door. Eva smoothed her apron and straightened her widow’s cap, but before she could step to the door, it was pushed open from the other side. A man in a broad-brimmed hat with long grey and white plumes ducked through the narrow doorway. He carried a lance. An ornate red scabbard hung from his broad leather belt, and a chain of iron links spanned his chest. The Prince-Bishop’s bailiff.
    Eva gasped and put her shaking hands to her mouth.
    Slowly, deliberately, the man unrolled a scroll. “On the authority of Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg,” he read, “Frau Eva Rosen is placed under arrest until such time as an inquiry can be made into the charges of witchcraft against her. She has been accused of turning from God and the Holy Roman Church and making a pact with the Devil.”
    Her heart in her throat, Eva was nearly unable to speak. “Who has accused me? Never have I turned from God.”
    The bailiff called over his shoulder, to the men pushing through the door behind him. “We are to bring the girl as well. Attend to them both while I search the premises. Herr Baunach, you question the journeymen.”

6
15 April 1626
    The canaries flitted to the porcelain cup filled with bread crumbs. Hampelmann, who sat to the right of the Prince-Bishop, was disgusted by their insipid chittering and the bits of dark excrement that fell from amidst their glossy yellow feathers.
    The Prince-Bishop pushed back his chair and folded his hands over his velvet robes. His eyelids drooped, blinked open at the canaries’ piping, then drooped again.
    Hampelmann’s stomach was full, but not excessively so, and he congratulated himself on his restraint. He’d eaten only sparingly of the lavish banquet for the Commission of Inquisition for the Würzburg Court, taking only small portions of the roast pork, partridge and swan, the poached trout in cream sauce, the baked goose stuffed with chestnuts, the white and yellow cheeses and dark rye bread, the dried African figs, currants and hazelnuts. He was vastly pleased that the meal had ended with apricot pastries flavoured