Dancing in the Palm of His Hand (18 page)

The chancellor and the priest exchanged puzzled glances. Eva, too, was bewildered. Why had Wilhelm stopped her from telling them she'd worked in his father's household?

“False accusations have been made against me,” she said.

Hampelmann persisted. “How did you know Fraulein Stolzberger, Frau Imhof, and Frau Basser?” His voice was cold, as if he were angry, or didn't know who she was.

Eva tried to imagine her Bible in her hands, the image of the Holy Mother before her. She must be like Job, always faithful, always truthful. “I did not know them,” she said. “Frau Basser came to my bakery now and again. But that is all. I hardly even spoke to her.”

“You did not know them, yet all of them made accusations against you?” said Chancellor Brandt. “Do not forget, Frau Rosen, that you have sworn to tell the truth.”

“That is the truth, sir.”

Hampelmann studied his ledger. “How do you explain Herr Kaiser's becoming ill just after he registered a complaint against you with the Lower City Council?”

“I don't even know Herr Kaiser.”

“But you knew of the complaint,” said Hampelmann.

“I was informed.”

“He nearly died, Frau Rosen,” said the physician. His prominent red nose reminded Eva of a pig's snout.

“I know nothing about that,” she said.

“And your husband did die,” said Hampelmann. “Suddenly, and quite mysteriously. How do you explain that?”

“I do not know why Jacob died. No one, not even the
physician, could explain it. He was old. Nearly sixty.” Eva lifted her bound hands. “And never did I wish it so. That is the truth. I swear it.”

“When a patient's illness is very hard to diagnose,” said the physician, “so that the physician himself is in doubt, then witchcraft can be presumed.”

“Just because people become ill or die mysteriously, even if it is due to witchcraft, that hardly proves that Frau Rosen is responsible,” said Lutz. “All of it could be the work of someone else...one of the witches who was just executed, for example.”

Father Streng pointed his quill at Lutz. “Motive, Herr Lutz, motive. Who else would have wanted Herr Kaiser or Herr Rosen dead?”

“I never wished my husband dead!”

Freude poked Eva with the birch rod. “You are not to speak except to answer questions.”

“How long were you married, Frau Rosen?” said Father Streng.

“Nine years.”

“Nine years and only one child? Were you a good and obedient wife to your husband?”

“
Ja
.”

“Did you make charms and wear them to prevent conceiving?” said the physician, his pig's snout snuffling. “Or to make your husband unable to perform his husbandly duties.”

“
Nein
!”

“Did you take herbs or go to a midwife to do away with a child already conceived?” said Hampelmann.

“
Nein
. It was God's will that I should bear no more children.” Eva tried to meet Wilhelm's eyes, but he stared at his ledger. Why was he asking these questions, as if he thought she might actually be guilty of such crimes?

“Why have you not remarried?” said Hampelmann. He
looked at her then, his face hard. “There must be some man who wants you.”

“There is no man I have wanted.”

“No man you have wanted?” Hampelmann tilted his head back and looked down his nose at her. “Why have you not followed the orders of the Lower City Council and chosen a guardian to manage the Rosen Bakery?”

“The nuns taught me my numbers. I can manage my own financial affairs.”

“But that means you, a woman, are telling your journeymen what to do,” said Father Streng. “A violation of God's ordained order.”

“What about the other evidence, Frau Rosen?” said Chancellor Brandt. “The strange rocks and white feathers.”

“Those are my daughter's, a few things she's collected.”

“These items belong to your daughter?” said the chancellor.

“A child's play things,” said Lutz. “They're harmless.”

“Don't be so sure,” said Father Streng. “The daughter herself is suspicious.” He squinted at Eva from behind his spectacles. “Doesn't the girl have a defect?”

“Her left foot is misshapen.”

“That's either a
stigma diaboli
. Or a sign of the sinfulness of the mother. Which is it, Frau Rosen?”

Eva had to look away from the priest's pale eyes, which appeared huge, and floating, behind the circles of glass. “Katharina is innocent. Her foot is not a Devil's mark. My daughter bears the mark of my sin. I allowed myself to be seduced before I was married.”

“To be seduced?” said Hampelmann. “Or did the seducing yourself?”

“I was seduced,” Eva said firmly. “But I confessed that sin and was granted absolution. I have lived chastely since. Katharina's foot has nothing to do with witchcraft.”

“Frau Rosen,” said the physician, “did you have intercourse during your menses? That can cause deformities.”

“I did not choose to.”

Chancellor Brandt glanced at Freude. “Search her.”

Freude loosened the laces at Eva's neck, then untied her wrists and tugged at the shift. Eva pulled her arms into her chest, her hands gripping the linen. He grabbed the neck of the shift in both hands, ripped the thin cloth, and tore it from her body. Stunned, Eva tried to cover herself with her arms and hands. Her face burned. She could not breathe. Not even her husband had seen her completely naked. And Wilhelm was there, watching her humiliation, doing nothing to protect her.

Her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto the cold floor. Freude pulled a chair to the centre of the chamber, lifted her to her feet, and placed her hands on the back of the chair. Then he started touching her, his gloved hands moving over her skin, poking and prodding. She clenched her teeth to stop the screams in her throat. Unable to look into the men's faces, she watched the torchlight dance across the stone floor.

After what seemed an eternity, Freude said, “Herr Doktor Lindner, would you assist in the examination?”

The physician came toward her. “Where did you get this,” he said, peering at her thigh.

“An accident with the razor,” said Freude. “She fought me while I was shaving her.”

To Eva's horror, Freude forced her to bend over, then touched her where he'd shaved her, in the most private of places, the rod probing. She could hear her heart thudding, her own blood rushing in her ears. The light dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again. The contents of her stomach rose, too quickly. The vile broth splashed onto the stone floor.

With a disgusted frown at the putrid pool, Freude jerked her upright and handed her the torn shift, which she hastily wrapped
around herself. Lindner walked back to his chair. “I can find no blemish, no mark,” said the physician.

Freude flashed a knife blade in Eva's face, then cut a length of hemp from a long coil and tied it around her to keep the torn shift closed. Eva tried not to inhale his hateful greasy stink. “I do not think,” he said, pulling the rope so tight it cut into her waist, “that means the woman is innocent.” He bound her wrists.

“I agree,” said Father Streng. “We all know what Jean Bodin has written about the absence of the
stigma diaboli
. The Devil needs to mark only those accomplices whose loyalty he cannot trust. Frau Rosen may enjoy a special trust, such that she needs no mark.”

Lutz jumped up. “But didn't we just recommend release for Herr Silberhans because he had no mark?”

“True, Herr Silberhans had no mark,” said Hampelmann, “but there was no other evidence against him.”

“Frau Rosen, do you still deny the charges against you?” said Chancellor Brandt.

“I am innocent.”

“Show her the first instrument of torture.”

Freude lifted the thumbscrews from a shelf. He held them close to her face. Her vision blurred. Her bowels churned. The stink of her own vomit made her gag. From a great distance, she heard the chancellor say, “Repeat the questions.”

Hampelmann stepped toward her. “How did you know Frau Imhof, Frau Basser, and Fraulein Stolzberger?”

He regarded her coldly, as if she were a stranger, or even worse, a contemptible beggar. Was he still angry, after nearly twelve years?

“I did not know them.”

“Where and when did you attend the sabbath?”

“I have never been to a sabbath.”

“How did you make Herr Kaiser ill?”

“I had nothing to do with his illness.”

“How did you kill your husband?” Hampelmann gave a slight nod toward Freude, who lifted Eva's bound hands and laid them on the cold polished metal.

She gulped back a whimper. “I did not kill Jacob.”

“How do you use white feathers and coloured rocks in your rituals?” said Hampelmann.

“I have no rituals. I am not a witch. You know that.”

His eyes held the hard glint and impenetrable depth of blue ice, and Eva understood now that he would not help her, not now, not ever. Wilhelm hated her.

“Then why is your daughter crippled?” he said.

“My sin,” she whispered. “She suffers for my sin.”

“Record her as taciturn,” he said brusquely.

Chancellor Brandt brought his gold pomander to his nose. “Take her back to her cell, Herr Freude. If she's not more forthcoming when we question her again, we will be forced to bring in the child.”

Hampelmann stepped out from the darkness just as the Angelus bells started to ring. He blinked in the bright sunlight, then turned toward Saint Kilian's Cathedral and made the sign of the cross, grateful to be free, finally, of the dank chamber's chill and the sour stink of the executioner and the prisoners. His gratitude was tempered, however, by the fact that no carriage awaited him. A fortnight earlier his physician had held a cup of his urine to the light, swirled it, and pronounced that Hampelmann still had an excess of black bile. He'd then prescribed at least two miles of walking daily, in addition to hellebore in his pomander, and teas brewed from feverfew and St. John's wort gathered on a Friday in the hour of Jupiter, the herbs to be obtained only from a licensed apothecary, never a midwife. So now Hampelmann, weary though he was, would have to walk from the Prisoners' Tower to the marketplace before retiring to his home. Such a bother.

Placing his broad-brimmed hat firmly on his head and tucking his ledger under his arm, he began his trek, crossing
Neubaustrasse
to
Dommerschulstrasse
. He made a wide arc around the ragged beggars clustered near the arched gate of the university. Not wide enough. A hump-backed old woman limped toward him, her toothless gums mouthing pathetic entreaties. He tossed a
pfennig
at her so she wouldn't come close enough to touch him with her filthy clawing hand.

Beauty. His whole being craved beauty. He recalled a small, but charming courtyard along the route to the marketplace. He hurried toward it, striding quickly and resolutely past throngs of
beggars and stray dogs. Two of the curs were locked in flagrant coitus. A circle of grubby children had formed around them, pointing and laughing. Disgusted, Hampelmann averted his eyes.

When he finally arrived at the courtyard, he sighed with relief. He leaned against the stone fence and embraced the garden's beauty: the shiny yellow flowers, the fragrant white ones, and the bell-like blooms dangling from a gracefully arched stem. The unopened buds were pinkish, the open ones blue. Borage, that's what it was called. Maybe. He wasn't sure. Helena would know, just as she would know the names of the yellow flowers and the white ones, and the buds that had not yet opened. His wife would know the name of the handsome bird, with the rusty face and breast, that warbled from the cherry tree. Helena had time and leisure to learn the names of flowers and birds, to walk among them, to meditate on beauty. She could read poetry: Martin Opitz, and the lyrical couplets of Würzburg's own poet, Walter von der Vogelweide. Burdened by duty, Hampelmann had time only to visit the poet's grave in the Lusam Garden, and there, to meditate on his personal defects and to struggle to write his own mediocre couplets. Every hour of his day was devoted to his responsibilities to Würzburg and the Prince-Bishop, his responsibilities to God. He could not afford the time to contemplate what was serene and beautiful and good, but only what was sordid and despicable and ugly.

That hadn't always been so. He touched his fingertips to his mouth and recalled the sweetness of Eva's lips. She'd been beautiful. She was still beautiful. Thinner than he remembered, but then he'd never seen her naked. And she still had those alluring eyes that were brown one moment, green the next, with gold flecks that caught the light. There'd been a time when he could spend hours meditating on the beauty of those eyes, a time when he could believe that Eva was good as well as beautiful.

The nameless bird stopped singing. Hopping closer, it flicked
its tail. Excrement fell onto a yellow blossom. Hampelmann turned away and walked slowly toward the marketplace. Eva was like that bird, or one of the Prince-Bishop's canaries, beautiful and blameless on the outside, her voice sweet, but all the while dropping bits of filth all around her. She used her beauty to seduce men, to tempt them, then polluted them with her vile filth. All the men who came to his father's house had wanted her. Hampelmann had seen the yearning in the hungry eyes that followed her when she served the men wine. Throats cleared and words stuttered as their tongues flicked over bloodless lips.

Hampelmann continued on, passing peddlers and merchants closing up their stands for the day. The air was redolent with the stink of rancid pork and spoiled fish, last fall's rotting cabbage. He picked his way carefully around the piles of refuse.

In the middle of the marketplace, locked in the pillory, stood a plump woman in tattered clothes, her age indeterminate because she wore a brightly painted shame mask, so heavy it pulled her head forward. Blasphemy. That's what the sign posted above her said, which Hampelmann had already surmised from the mask's long red tongue.