Turn 5 of 7

Go to the tree and check Ilde's grafts on the south bough

You do not answer her. You open the garden door and step through, and the cold morning air hits your face like water. Ilde follows you across the wet grass without being asked, her footsteps heavy and deliberate behind yours. The tree stands in the centre of the garden, its branches dark against a sky that is turning the colour of ash, and the three empty stems on the oldest bough catch the first light like small pale fingers pointing upward.

You circle to the south side. The third branch from the trunk is chest-high, and you can see the grafts immediately — three of them, set at intervals along the bough where Ilde joined new wood to old in March. The bindings are there, the waxed cord she always uses, and you lean close. Ilde is right about one thing: the grafts are failing. The bark around the uppermost join has begun to curl inward, and the cambium beneath is dull where it should be bright green. But the bindings have been loosened — each one carefully unwound by a half-turn, enough to ease the pressure without disturbing the join. This is patient, skilled work, the kind that takes years to learn.

"You see?" Ilde says behind you. She has stopped at the edge of the grass, her arms folded across her chest.

"I told you. The grafts are failing, but I loosened them. That is what I was doing."

You touch the lowest binding and feel the cord give slightly under your finger. It is warm from the morning sun, and the wax is still tacky — this was done recently, within the last few days. Then you look down at the base of the trunk, where Ilde says she left her knife, and you crouch to examine the ground. The earth is bare and damp, and you can see the impression of the knife handle — a shallow rectangular mark pressed into the soil, already softening at the edges with the morning dew.

"I left it right here," Ilde says, and her voice has dropped, as though she is speaking to the tree rather than to you. "Leaning against the trunk, blade folded. I was tired. I had been working for an hour, and my hands were cold, and I set it down to rest my grip."

You study the impression. It is consistent with the knife you know — the one Ilde has carried for twenty years, with the ash-wood handle and the curved hawkbill blade. The mark is clear enough to confirm the knife was there. But beside it, overlapping the heel of the print, there is another mark in the soil — smaller, narrower, the shape of a bare toe pressed lightly into the earth. Not a boot. Not Ilde's boot. Someone came here barefoot, or in stocking feet, and stood close enough to the trunk to reach the knife.

"Someone came here barefoot," Ilde says, and the surprise in her voice sounds genuine. She steps forward and crouches beside you, her habit pooling in the wet grass, and studies the mark with the focused attention she gives to a diseased branch.

"That is not mine. I wear my boots in the garden — always. You know that."

The mark is small — smaller than Ilde's feet, smaller than yours. It could belong to Ammet, or to Corrin, or to any of the other sisters slight enough to leave so narrow a print. It is not proof of anything more than presence, but it is something Ilde did not know about, and the fact that she is seeing it now for the first time, you think, is written plainly enough in her face.

"Who else knew you were here?" you ask. Ilde shakes her head slowly, her eyes still on the print.

"No one. I told no one. The garden was dark, and I came after the last lamp was out."

But Ammet knew. Ammet saw Ilde's shadow from the dormitory window, and Ammet was in the garden this morning before you, and Ammet did not raise the alarm. The bell rings for Prime, and somewhere behind you the chapel door opens and closes. You stand and look at the tree again. The three cut stems are above you on the oldest bough — not on the south side where Ilde was working, but on the north, where the fruit grows heaviest and the branches are thickest. Whoever took the knife went to the north side of the tree, climbed, and cut three stems with a blade they knew how to use. They did this after Ilde left her knife against the trunk, and they did it in the dark, and they left no other mark but a bare footprint in the soil.