Dancing in the Palm of His Hand (19 page)

He turned away from the woman and her monstrous mask, and her equally revolting crime, and gazed upon what he'd come so far to see: the magnificent Mary's Chapel with its tall arched windows and the stone figures of Christ's apostles adorning its outer walls. It had been built upon the site of a former Jewish synagogue. Hampelmann crossed himself. A triumph of the true faith. The chapel's beauty and grace delighted his weary eyes. He studied the intricately carved sandstone figures of Adam and Eve flanking the chapel's south portal. Eve, naked and alluring, yet seemingly innocent, even as she held the apple at her waist, just below her girlishly rounded breast, and the serpent twined up her leg. Just like Eva, thought Hampelmann. Eva, who was still seductive, even when shaved of her chestnut hair and dressed in a
shapeless linen shift. Even her name suggested witchcraft: Eva, Eve. The Devil's accomplice, the primordial temptress leading men into sin. The words of
Der Hexenhammer
sprang to his mind.
For though the Devil tempted Eve to sin, yet Eve seduced Adam. And as the sin of Eve would not have brought death to our soul and body unless the sin had afterwards passed onto Adam, to
which
he was tempted by Eve, not by the Devil; therefore she is more bitter than death...More bitter than death, again, because bodily death is an open and terrible enemy, but woman is a wheedling and secret enemy.

A secret enemy
. Years ago Eva had seduced him into promising her marriage. She allowed his kisses, but rebuffed anything more. So he offered to marry her, and in the daze of lust, almost believed the promise himself. Eva, so accomplished at deception, was not fooled. Hampelmann ground his teeth as he recalled her stance – imperious, hands on hips, as if she were a lady of noble birth – when she reminded him that he was still subject to his father's will and that Herr Doktor Hampelmann would never allow his son to marry a woman of such low birth, a maidservant with no dowry. She did not believe, she said, that he could summon the courage to defy his father and risk his inheritance.

Infuriated by her impertinence and inflamed with desire, he'd pressed himself against her, forcing his mouth on hers, his hands groping. The memory of his own base lust made him wince, but his shame dissipated when he recalled Eva's coy affectation of horror, as if she'd not invited his advances in the first place, as if she were innocent.

Hampelmann spat into the street. Innocence. Feigned innocence. All women were guilty, even the purest, of leading men into sin and ruin. It was as Saint Jerome had written:
woman is the gate of the Devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent.
And Ecclesiasticus
: For many have perished by the beauty of a woman, and hereby lust is enkindled as a fire
.

The evening breeze off the Main lifted the brim of
Hampelmann's hat and brought to his nose the river's fulsome odour. It was a fine spring evening, yet everything smelled foul: the river, the piles of garbage in the marketplace, the refuse outside the butcher shops, the unwashed bodies passing by. The stench nearly made him gag. He brought his pomander to his nose.

He really should warn Lutz about Eva's seductiveness, let him know just how skilled she was at pretending innocence. Hampelmann turned away from Mary's Chapel and began walking toward his home on
Hofstrasse
. But then he'd have to admit that he'd known Eva, known her quite well, in fact.

Eva's real nature, the lustful eagerness he'd discerned, showed itself soon after his father announced his betrothal to Helena. Within days, Eva went out and seduced a master baker, a vulgar old widower eager to marry. Sinned with him – before they were hastily wed. She'd even admitted as much today, conceding that her daughter's crippled foot was the result of her sin.

A few paces ahead, Hampelmann saw a skinny dog sniffing around the doorway of a closed butcher shop. He was tempted to kick the mangy cur out of his way, a bitch nursing pups by the look of her drooping teats, but he knew she might whirl around and bite him. He gave her a wide berth.

The sun was low in the sky, gilding splendour and squalor alike with its golden glow. He quickened his pace. Helena would have ordered supper to be ready soon, and she pouted when he didn't return home on time. It was a pretty pout, but annoying all the same. She simply didn't understand the importance of his work. She'd ask a question or two, but when he tried to answer, her lovely ivory face would crumple in bewilderment, law being far too complex for even the intelligent female mind.

Yet her questions lingered, dark wrinkles in the smooth white sheets of his logic, and he'd wake in the middle of the night, plagued with doubts, his skin cold and clammy. Was it possible
that he and the other commissioners were condemning innocent women? Or was the Devil using Helena to plant these very doubts in his heart? To bolster his resolve, Hampelmann would go to his library to re-read
Der Hexenhammer
and books by Jean Bodin, Peter Binsfeld, Henri Boguet, and Martin Delrio. Sitting within the warm glow of candlelight, he'd remind himself that the popes had blessed and encouraged these very writings. And then there was Father Streng, a Jesuit of formidable intelligence – and absolute certainty about what he knew to be true. His habit of quoting authorities grated, but it also reassured. How could such a brilliant man, quoting other brilliant men, be wrong? Calmed, Hampelmann would return to his bed to sleep a few more hours.

Arriving at the gates of his house, Hampelmann paused a moment to consider the solidity of the stone, a bulwark against the world, a refuge protecting his wife and daughter, who had little comprehension of just how evil the world could be. A docile shepherd trotted close and sat just beyond the gates. The dog neither moved nor made a sound until Hampelmann stepped through and stroked her head. “Good girl, Wache.” Such a pleasing and obedient temperament, he thought. So unlike the mongrels that roamed the streets. Perhaps at the next Lower City Council meeting he'd propose that stray dogs be rounded up and killed rather than allowed to roam free to breed more starving curs to harass the citizens of Würzburg and to entertain the beggars with their lascivious behaviour.

He went into the house, the shepherd following close behind. He handed his hat to a doughy-faced maidservant. “Wine, the Stein Silvaner, in the library,” he said, trying to hide his disdain for her ugliness. He'd deliberately asked Helena to hire homely maidservants. He wanted no man who entered his household, including himself, ever to be tempted.

Hampelmann walked toward the back of the house, toward the library, Wache at his heels, and pushed open the heavy
wooden door. Anna lifted her sweet face from the book in her lap. Now there was beauty: a heart-shaped face, creamy alabaster skin, a delicate, but noble profile.

“Hello, Papa.”

He laid the ledger on his desk, then stepped close to her chair. “What are you reading,
Leibchen
?” He stroked her silky hair, which was so pale it was nearly white, the same colour as his own. It was tied back by a blue satin ribbon. A blue satin flower bloomed over one ear. A strand of hair caught between his fingers and came away in his hand. He tucked it into a pocket in the lining of his breeches.

“A book of poetry Mama picked out. Martin Opitz. I don't like it very much.” She thrust out her lip petulantly, then quickly pulled it back and looked down into her lap.

“Where is your mother?”

“Out in the garden, trimming dead blooms. I was helping her, but she sent me in here to be out of the sun.”

If Helena was still in the garden, thought Hampelmann, supper was not yet ready. There was time for some reading. The maidservant slipped quietly into the room and set a goblet on the desk.

“What did you do today, Papa?”

“Legal business,
Leibchen
. It's complicated, and not for the ears of little girls. Read a bit longer, then we'll have supper.”

Pouting prettily, just like her mother, Anna bent her head over the book.

Hampelmann slid a thick leather-bound volume from the shelves and sat down at his desk. Wache lay on the floor beside him. Opening the tabs on
Discours des sorciers
by Henri Boguet, a French lawyer and judge, Hampelmann turned to the worn pages he'd read again and again:
I would yet have it plainly known that I am a sworn enemy to witches, and that I shall never spare them for their execrable abominations and for the countless numbers of them
which are seen to increase every day so that it seems that we are now in the time of the Antichrist, since among the signs that are given of his arrival, this is one of the chief, namely, that witchcraft shall be rife throughout the world
.

Hampelmann nodded. Yes, he should not let his concern for protecting the innocent get in the way of extirpating witches. The world was nearing the end-time, and the righteous were at war with evil. This was not the time to be cautious.

He flipped to another well-worn page. It had always puzzled him that witches craved fornication with the Devil, though they invariably described coitus as painful and without pleasure. As his finger trailed down the page, he recalled the lecherous mongrels.
The Devil uses them so because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations; moreover, there is nothing which makes a woman more subject and loyal to a man than that he should abuse her body
.

Hampelmann turned then to the real reason he'd selected that book from his collection: Boguet's arguments justifying the calling of children as witnesses against their parents. Hampelmann was uneasy that Chancellor Brandt intended to call Eva's daughter to testify against her. Calling children as witnesses, especially when they were required to testify against their own parents, was not permitted in any other kind of legal proceeding. But then again, Boguet argued, the crime of witchcraft was so secret that sometimes the only witnesses were the woman's own children. Boguet even went so far as to recommend the execution of children who confessed to joining their mothers in witchcraft, reasoning that once they were in Satan's clutches they seldom reformed. Hampelmann wasn't so sure. On the one hand, he preferred giving children the benefit of the doubt. If they failed to reform, they could always be executed later, before they'd done too much harm. On the other hand, if Boguet was correct in his
estimate that there were nearly two million witches in Europe,
multiplying upon the earth even as worms in a garden
, perhaps the commission should grasp the opportunity to execute them whenever it could, as early as possible.

It would be a mercy really, saving the children from eternal damnation.

Hampelmann studied Anna's profile, her lips moving as she read poetry to herself. So innocent. Could one so young, just ten years old, really be capable of witchcraft? Boguet thought so. And Hampelmann knew that children were conceived and born in sin; it was only the rite of baptism that exorcised the Devil from them. For some, that exorcism was incomplete. Their natures were flawed. Just as women's natures were flawed – even if they weren't witches. It was only after reading
Der Hexenhammer
that Hampelmann fully understood the true nature of women.

He went to the shelf and exchanged
Discours des sorciers
for the Dominicans' manual. He snapped open the tabs and flipped through the pages. Yes, there it was. He squinted to bring the print into focus.
And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives. And it is clear in the case of the first woman that she had little faith...And all this is indicated by the etymology of the word; for
Femina
comes from
Fe
and
Minus,
since she is ever weaker to hold and preserve the faith...Therefore a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft...And, indeed, just as through the first defect in their intelligence they are more prone to abjure the faith; so through their second defect of inordinate affections and passions they search for, brood over, and inflict various vengeances, either by witchcraft, or by some other means. Wherefore it is no wonder that so great a number of witches exist in this sex
.

Lifting the goblet, Hampelmann looked again at Anna. How could he keep her from growing up to be deceptive and lustful? He'd already noticed hints of a coy seductiveness and a bold outspokenness – and had moved at once to quash these tendencies. He disciplined his daughter severely whenever she spoke a sharp or defiant word, smiled flirtatiously, or flashed her pale blue eyes. He'd have no sharp-tongued harpy or seductress in his household. He held before his daughter the image of the Holy Mother, a genuinely pious woman, a silent woman. And his efforts seemed to be bearing fruit. Anna was learning to keep her eyes modestly down-turned, her smile demure, her voice soft, and to speak only when addressed.

Hampelmann was also reassured by the fact that there'd been no sin to taint Anna's birth. True, he was chagrined that she was born almost nine months to the day after he and Helena were married. Their lust made public. But there'd been no sin. He and Helena had waited. And now he struggled to keep his lust strictly in check, as did Helena. They loved chastely, in the way God intended, a model for Anna to follow.

Reaching down to stroke Wache's head, Hampelmann caught a thumbnail on his breeches. He took a small knife from the drawer and pared the ragged nail. There was no fire in the hearth, so he tucked the paring into the pocket that held Anna's strand of hair. With so many witches around, he was scrupulous about disposing of nail parings as well as hair and clippings from his beard. Anything that could possibly be used in a charm against him or his family went into the flames.