It was so good to be held again, simply held, and spoken to with kindness. You’d been so busy fighting for our lives, driving the horses forward and planning our next move, that you had no time to spend on calming my emotions. I didn’t blame you, but I missed your kinder attentions. Brother Heinrich stroked my hair, just as he’d done with Brandeis, and he put me into his own bed. He covered me with blankets and told me exactly what I needed to hear: that everything was going to be all right.

A few days passed and we had no choice but to stay right where we were. I hoped that we might have somehow thrown the trackers off, but you assured me that we most definitely had not. You said with absolute certainty that, with one of the trackers now dead, the others were regrouping and trying to figure out what resources we had at our disposal.

We had been cleaning Brandeis’ wound diligently and hoping it would heal, but we were hoping for too much. It became infected and he fell into a terrible fever, becoming delirious. You had seen this before, on the battlefield, and you knew what you had to do. Brother Heinrich held Brandeis’ shoulders and I held his legs, while you used a hunting knife to carve away part of your friend’s thigh. When we finished, our clothes were covered in blood and there was a chunk of flesh in a bucket. When I looked at the damage to Brandeis’ thigh, I primarily felt two emotions: shame at my fear that the wound might somehow infect me and harm the baby, and guilt because the injury existed at all. If I had not hesitated at the inn’s window, Brandeis would have been able to escape ahead of the ax.

It was Brother Heinrich who first noticed the two men on horses. They remained a safe distance from the house, past the ridge that I used to play on as a child, but there was no doubt that they were watching us. They were trackers, of course. When I asked why they didn’t come for us, you said, “They know that we have crossbows and that we can use them, so they’ve sent for reinforcements.”

It was unlikely that they’d figured out your identity yet, as they hadn’t caught a good look at you. Even if they had, they might not have recognized you-not only had you been burned, but also they might not have joined the condotta until after you left it. They couldn’t have known who I was, no matter how long they had been in the troop, but they must have guessed there was a reason we’d stopped running. Did they know about Brandeis’ wounds? Most likely, as they would have seen the bloody snow at the side of the Nürnberg road. Had they guessed at the pregnancy under my winter cloak? Probably not. But for all the questions they must have had about us, I had a bigger question about them: what would happen when the other mercenaries arrived?

We had huge arguments. Brother Heinrich thought he should go out as a man of God in an effort to reason with them. You laughed at this suggestion. Brandeis, in a moment of lucidity, argued that he should face his fate like a man, as this was the only chance they might spare the rest of us. We should flee to reclaim our lives, he argued, while he distracted them by riding in the opposite direction. But of course we couldn’t allow him to commit suicide like that. You wanted to stand and fight, right then and there, but who could fight beside you? Not the pregnant ex-nun. Not Brandeis, in his delirium. Not Heinrich, an old man. So what you really meant was that you should take them on alone. Your reasoning was that if you were able to slay these two soldiers, at least Heinrich and I could escape before the rest arrived. You’d take Brandeis in the opposite direction, whether he was ready or not. This, you stated, was by far the best option. We couldn’t stay and wait for certain death to come to us.

In the end, none of the arguments mattered. When the rest of us were asleep and you were supposed to be keeping watch, you took your crossbow and crept out into the night. We didn’t even know that you had gone until you returned and awoke us.

“They’re dead,” you said. “Dawn is coming and others will arrive soon, so we must be quick.”

I could not contain my shock that you’d killed, any more than I’d been able to when we were fleeing Nürnberg. This time, however, my naivety angered you. “Don’t you understand what will happen if they catch us? They’ll kill Brandeis and me, but they’ll use you as a plaything until you wish that you were dead. Your pregnancy won’t make any difference. They’ll rape you, and if you’re lucky, your life will bleed out before your spirit does. So don’t stand there judging me, thinking I have no regard for life. I’m doing everything I can to preserve ours.”

Finally I accepted that I could no longer both stay with you and protect our child. Our parting was inevitable. I would return to Mainz and hide myself in a beguinage until you returned. You’d take Brandeis in the opposite direction; with the best trackers already dead, perhaps the two of you had a chance.

Brother Heinrich would go to Engelthal, for it was certain that the monastery would accept him if he came without me. I thanked him with all my heart, kissed him on the forehead, and said that I would pray the mercenaries did not destroy his home when they arrived.

“Do not waste your prayers on such a silly thing, Sister Marianne,” he said. “It’s only a building. I live in the House of the Lord.”

“Our child,” I said, “will owe its life to you. If it is a boy, we will name him Heinrich.”

“You would honor me more,” the old priest said, “if you named him Friedrich.”

I promised that I would. The weather was changing, so maybe luck was finally turning in our favor: ever since we’d left Mainz, we’d been praying for a storm to erase our tracks. Brother Heinrich pulled tight his winter coat and slipped Father Sunder’s pluviale over it, as an extra layer to protect against the storm. He sank into the snow as he walked away from us, his step unsteady, and in a few minutes he was gone. The last I saw of him was the image on the back of Father Sunder’s pluviale, of Michael and the angels fighting the dragon in Revelation, being swallowed up into the white.

Brandeis’ crossbow was useless to him, so you thrust it into my hands even though I protested that I didn’t want it. You told me that I didn’t have to fire it but I had to take it, just in case, and you wouldn’t allow me to leave without it. I agreed only because you were so adamant.

You gave me a quick lesson in loading the bolt and setting the catch. “You brace the instrument against your shoulder, like this, and here’s how you sight the target. You steady the weapon by slowing your breathing. In, out, in, out. Steady. Aim. Trust the arrow. Breathe. Release.”

You placed the crossbow into the holster across my horse’s flank and opened my winter coat to let one hand rest upon my bulging stomach. You used the other hand to slip your arrowhead necklace over my head. “It is for protection, and you need it more than I. You can return it when we meet again, because I promise that our love will not end like this.”

Then you slapped my horse into action. I looked over my shoulder once, at you watching me ride away, before addressing all my attention to the trail that would take me and our unborn child away from danger.

The snow swirled in front of me. I tried to imagine what would happen to you next. How many mercenaries would come? A dozen? Two dozen? I supposed it depended upon whether they were currently fighting on behalf of some lord, somewhere. Or would Kuonrat bring all his soldiers, so they would see what happened to deserters? I wondered what chance you really had of escaping with your life. I had seen your skill with the crossbow, but the sheer numbers…How could you escape a past that was so determined to make you pay? The wind picked up, and the whiteness of the storm was blinding. The cold cut through my clothing and into my bones.