Dancing in the Palm of His Hand (5 page)

Lutz chuckled uneasily. “Ach, they're always complaining about something.”

“But you cannot deny that Herr Kaiser became seriously ill after he registered his complaint. So ill that he nearly died.”

Father Herzeim stepped toward Hampelmann. “There is nothing in what you say to indicate witchcraft.”

Clenching his fists, Hampelmann willed himself to be patient with the priest. He would not yield to Saint Thomas' sixth deadly sin: anger.

“Your Grace,” said Father Herzeim, turning away from Hampelmann, “Frau Basser pleaded with me that those whom she'd accused not be arrested. I pray that you will show mercy.”

“Do I not order that witches who confess and repent be
strangled or beheaded before they're burned? But just as the surgeon is cruel in cauterizing a wound, so must we be cruel in burning away bad flesh from good. If it became known that condemned witches could retract their accusations of others, all of them would do so. Why would they not want their accomplices to go free?” The Prince-Bishop's face hardened. “Frau Rosen – along with all the others – shall be brought in for investigation. As the law requires.”

The Prince-Bishop considered the broad tapestry covering one wall. Hampelmann could not see the scene clearly, but he knew it depicted the martyrdom of Saint Kilian, who'd brought Christianity to Würzburg more than 600 years ago, then been murdered by Turkish infidels right there in Marienberg.

“We must be as dedicated to the true faith as Saint Kilian,” said the Prince-Bishop. “And just as courageous.”

Father Herzeim reached out to touch the gold cross on the reliquary. “Saint Kilian converted by words, not the sword. These women need religious instruction, not death.”

“Saint Kilian died by the sword,” said Hampelmann, “murdered by those who would not be converted by words. Witches will do the same to us if we allow them to live.”

Eva had roused the journeymen hours before dawn. Talking quietly to each other, the two men worked at long wooden tables worn smooth and shiny by years of kneaded dough. With floured hands, Eva shaped sweet buns, the only bread the bakers' trade corporation allowed her to mix and bake.

There had been four journeymen before Jacob died, but two had left, taunted into quitting “a workshop run by a woman.” Eva was glad they were gone. Barley and rye had become so dear she could not have paid wages to four men.

She suspected the other two stayed only because each yet hoped to marry her, Herr Rosen's widow, and thereby gain the position of master baker. Both were hard steady workers, and Herr Stolz, with his sandy hair and strong teeth, could even be considered handsome. Watching his muscled arms and shoulders lifting heavy trays from the ovens, she'd been tempted, more than once, to invite him to her bed. She had little doubt he'd accept the invitation. But Eva knew how men changed when they got what they wanted. Before their marriage, Jacob, a childless widower, had been kind and attentive whenever she came in his bakery to buy bread. After they wed, he was gentle at first, and appreciative that she knew her numbers and could keep the accounts. He was delighted when Eva conceived so soon, but when she gave him only Katharina, his disposition hardened. He cared little that his daughter was born early, so small and scrawny the midwife predicted she would not survive. Jacob cared only that Katharina was not a son, and that her foot was misshapen. Later, Katharina's
limp would sometimes provoke him to rage.

In the succeeding years, Jacob worked as diligently as an old man could to achieve an heir, and when he could not manage a husband's duties, he blamed Eva, wondering aloud about midwives' potions and witches' spells. It had been nearly three years since Jacob's death, but Eva could still recall the blows of the birch rod on her back and, even more painfully, the thud it made striking Katharina.

Eva slapped a sweet bun onto the greased tray. Her reluctance to remarry had cost her a few customers,
hausfrauen
who now went to other bakeries. The women who remained sometimes studied Eva from the corners of their eyes. They might as well speak their suspicions aloud, Eva thought, and simply ask whose husband warmed her bed. A flush rose from her neck to her cheeks, and she again felt the anger, and the shame, she'd known the day she dared to wear a blue gown instead of her widow's weeds. She'd felt the women's sharp measuring looks, and less than an hour after the bakery opened, she went upstairs to change back to her black gown, though it reeked of stale sweat and wood smoke.

Eva dusted her hands on her apron and set the sweet buns to rise. She walked to the window that looked out on
Domstrasse
. The sky was beginning to grow light. She cracked open the window and heard the clang of hammering from a nearby smithy, then the distant bellowing of cattle being driven through the streets and out the gates to graze in the meadows beyond the city walls. A skeletal bright-eyed mongrel circled a heap of refuse, snarling at a scrawny pig rooting through the garbage. When the dog dashed in to snatch a bone, the pig squealed and trotted away.

Eva smelled it then. Again. She'd closed the window and door tightly the day before, but the greasy stench of burning flesh had crept in. She was sure she'd seen grey wisps seeping in around the windowsill. Eva hated the stink. It made her skin prickle, and
she'd tried to wipe it from her face and neck with a damp cloth. When the Angelus bells rang out and the Rosen Bakery closed for the day, she'd hauled out the rags and pail, hiked up her black skirts, and gone down on her knees to scrub the floors with lye soap. Then, she'd washed the counter and walls. Even so, the odour lingered. It always did, underlying the fragrance of baking bread.

She heard a soft uneven tread on the stairs behind her. Eva turned and saw Katharina, still in her sleeping shift. In the candlelight, her long braid, twining over one shoulder looked white. Her eyes glittered like emeralds. Eva's throat tightened even as she tried to smile. Just the day before, those beautiful eyes had seen visions of orange flames and white-winged angels.

The girl's strangeness made Eva afraid for her, and she forbade her to speak to anyone of her dreams and visions. There was little danger of that, however, as Katharina avoided other children and rarely even spoke to anyone but her mother. She spent her days at the window, watching the street, or walking the riverbank, collecting coloured stones, plants and flowers, and white feathers. Angel wings, she called them. Once she'd returned home after dark, telling Eva that the
feurige mannlein
, the little glowing men, had helped her to find her way. Eva had put her trembling fingers to her daughter's lips and told her not to speak of such things. Ever.

Katharina looked like a wraith, her milky skin never darkening in the sun. Her limping gait only added to her oddness. Jacob had claimed the girl's misshapen foot was a sign that Eva had sinned.

Eva knew which of her sins had crippled her daughter. Her limp was a daily reproach.

Katharina yawned. “Some bread, Mama?”

“Of course,
Liebchen
.” Eva walked back to the ovens and picked up a fresh loaf of barley bread. Herr Stolz jerked his chin
at the shelf, at the day-old loaves. Ignoring his sidelong glance, Eva cut off a thick slice from the still-warm loaf.

The journeyman wiped a forearm across his sweating brow. “You spoil the child.”

Eva spread the coarse bread with a thin layer of cherry jam. No, he would 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.”

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 with ginger and cinnamon from the Levant, costly spices kept under lock and key. Hampelmann hadn't particularly enjoyed the sweets, a cloying indulgence to his abstemious palate. But serving pastries containing expensive spices was a sign that the Prince-Bishop approved of the commission's work – despite Father Herzeim's complaints.

Sitting to the right of Hampelmann, the Jesuit had eaten almost nothing, though he'd emptied his wine goblet again and again. His face was downcast, and he'd hardly contributed a word to the jovial banter during the meal. It was clear the priest's thoughts were far away from Marienberg Castle, and
Hampelmann wondered if they were still in the Prisoners' Tower with those whom the Prince-Bishop's bailiff had arrested early that morning. The final confessor for witches seemed far too concerned for the earthly welfare of the accused, too little concerned for the fate of their eternal souls.

The Prince-Bishop stood and bent toward the silver cage behind his ornately carved chair. Cooing to the birds, he slipped a brocade cloth over the cage. Herr Doktor Johann Brandt, the Prince-Bishop's chancellor, rolled his eyes, then carefully recomposed his face when his hooded gaze met Hampelmann's across the table. Hampelmann looked long at the chancellor, to be sure that Brandt understood that he had seen his indiscretion.

The Prince-Bishop sat down and picked at his front teeth with a long thumbnail. “Good news, gentlemen. I've heard that General Wallenstein has gathered an enormous army for the emperor. He'll put the Protestants to rout.”

“I've heard, though, that he's ruthless in requisitioning men and supplies,” said Herr Doktor Lindner, the ruddy-faced physician who'd served on the commission. His bulbous nose glowed red from too much wine. “Wallenstein simply takes what he wants. Let's hope he keeps the war in the north.”

“There's little enough in Würzburg to take,” sniffed Chancellor Brandt. “Plenty of extra men. He could requisition all the beggars. But there's no supplies to be had.”

Judge Steinbach, who sat beside Chancellor Brandt, raised a frail palsied hand. “Even so, there are the taxes the emperor is demanding. How can Würzburg possibly pay them? The council has been debating the question for days.”

Hampelmann dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin, then held it in place to hide his clenched jaw. Steinbach was Judge of the Würzburg Court and first burgomaster of the Upper City Council only because of his wealth and reputation in the city, not because the old man was competent – at anything. The Upper
City Council ended up debating nearly everything for days because the timid judge could not maintain order at the meetings. As second burgomaster, Hampelmann always had to intervene.