Dancing in the Palm of His Hand (6 page)

The Prince-Bishop waved a hand dismissively. “Increase the wine tax.”

“We've considered that,” said Judge Steinbach. “But the harvests in the vineyards have been nearly as poor as those in the fields.”

“Mark my words,” said Lindner. The physician's voice was overly loud, his words slurred. “With soldiers travelling about, there'll be outbreaks of plague everywhere.”

Hampelmann studied the dark freckles sprinkled across Lindner's face and wondered if the drunken boor had been listening to anyone but himself. How could anyone take seriously the opinions of a man who had freckles, as if he worked in the fields like a common peasant?

“War. Famine. Plague. It's all punishment from God.” Father Streng's high-pitched lilt was ill-suited to the harshness of his pronouncement. The young Jesuit, who sat to the left of the Prince-Bishop and across from Hampelmann, was so slight, his fair skin so smooth, that he looked and sounded like a boy, though he was at least twenty-five. “To quote my fellow Jesuit, Martin Delrio,” continued the priest: “
The wrath of God grows ever fiercer and more dreadful. If this evil of witchcraft is not suppressed, the whole country can expect nothing more certain than the punishment and curse of God.
Witches are at the root of it all, gentlemen.”

Hampelmann nodded stiffly. He found Father Streng's habit of quoting authorities verbatim exceedingly tedious, but he rarely disagreed with the priest. He did, however, recognize his own sin of pride in the young man, pride in his nobility and his membership in the Upper City Council. And the Cathedral Chapter. Hampelmann suspected that Father Streng coveted the
Prince-Bishop's power and authority. With precious little subtlety, the Jesuit vied with Hampelmann to be His Grace's favoured advisor.

Father Herzeim absently rolled a silver goblet between his hands. “When I was a boy growing up in Nuremberg, bad weather and poor harvests, plagues and other misfortunes were blamed on nature or thought to be acts of God.” He gazed into the emptiness of the goblet, then set it upright. “Now it seems that everything is blamed on witches, or God's wrath at witches, or his wrath that we are not prosecuting witches. Why is that?”

Chancellor Brandt's lip curled. “You speak like a Lutheran, Father, not a Jesuit.”

Father Streng's grey eyes were huge behind his spectacles. “
Nein
, even that Devil's spawn Luther knew the evil of witches.
I would have no compassion on these witches
, he wrote,
I would burn them all
.” He plucked up an embroidered napkin and twisted it, as if wringing the neck of a goose. Hampelmann groaned inwardly and wished that Chancellor Brandt had not mentioned Lutherans. He sat back in his chair and readied himself for one of Father Streng's long-winded lectures.

The young Jesuit cleaned his spectacles with the napkin, then placed them back on his nose. “So you would question the wisdom of the authorities, Father Herzeim?” Without waiting for the older priest to answer, Father Streng drew back his narrow shoulders and launched his verbal salvo. “Ephesians,
chapter 6
:
Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in high places
.”

His left eyelid twitched, making the small mole above his pale eyebrow jump. “And to quote the great French lawyer, Jean Bodin:
If there is any means to appease the wrath of God, to gain his
blessing, and to punish the most detestable crimes of which the human mind can conceive, it is to punish with the utmost rigor the witches
.”

Father Herzeim considered the young man's flushed face. “I do not dispute the authorities, Father Streng, but I am persuaded that Jean Bodin and the others have given insufficient attention to the parable of the cockle in Saint Matthew.”

“How so?” Father Streng panted, as if he'd just run all the way up Marienberg Mountain to the Prince-Bishop's castle.

“
Chapter 13
:
The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field. But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way. And when the blade was sprung up and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. And the servants of the goodman of the house coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? Whence then hath it cockle? And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?”

One of the beeswax candles flickered, then burned out. A servant stepped forward to replace it. Hampelmann glanced from one Jesuit to the other. Father Streng's spectacles reflected the yellow candlelight, hiding his eyes, but his mouth was a tight pucker. Father Herzeim was not nearly so drunk as he ought to be.

Father Herzeim stared at his own reflection in the silver goblet. “
And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.”

“And just what is it you think the authorities have missed?” said Father Streng.

“We are the servants, not the reapers. Who are we to judge who is cockle and who is wheat? Might we not be uprooting the wheat with the cockle in this zealous hunt for witches?”

The Prince-Bishop placed both hands flat on the table. “So you would allow witches to destroy the Holy Church for fear of hurting an innocent?”

“The protection of the innocent must be utmost in our minds, and in our hearts,” said Father Herzeim.

“
Nein
,” shouted Father Streng. “It is the prosecution of witches that must be utmost in our minds.”

“We are doing God's work,” said Hampelmann. “He would never allow us to condemn an innocent.” He pulled at the scratchy white ruff encircling his neck and caught a whiff of
hexen gestank
on his sleeve. His fingers went to the ball of wax at his throat.

Father Herzeim turned to Hampelmann. “Surely you have not forgotten that not long ago Duke Maximilian himself ordered the execution of a witch judge in Bavaria for precisely that – condemning innocents.”

Judge Steinbach suddenly sat straight up, his lashless eyes blinking rapidly. He tugged at the little tuft of white beard on his bony chin. “What did he do?” His voice quavered.

Spineless, thought Hampelmann. The Judge of the Würzburg Court twitched all through the commission's hearings, and now the fool was fretting that he might be executed himself.

“Judge Sattler's legal errors were egregious,” said Hampelmann. “We are far more careful in our procedures.”

Judge Steinbach ran his tongue over his teeth, then spoke haltingly. “With all due respect, Your Grace, some of these recent accusations do trouble me. Frau Rosen and Herr Silberhans – they're not beggars. Frau Rosen is a baker's widow, Herr Silberhans a law student at the university.”

“The end-time is near, Judge Steinbach,” said the Prince-Bishop. “Witches are becoming ever more numerous. And more and more clever at disguising themselves in the world.”

“In these dangerous times it is quite proper to take the
strongest measures to root out evil,” said Father Streng. “Let the trials hit who they may.”

“Even the nobles?” said Father Herzeim.

Father Streng pounded a small fist on the table. “Even the nobles! Because if we are negligent, God will punish us all.”

“All right,” said Father Herzeim, “investigate. But must they die?”

“That is what God demands of us,” said Father Streng. “It is God's will that they die. And as Jesuits, we are but instruments in the hands of God.” He dabbed the sweat on his forehead with a napkin. “You would remind us that a judge was executed for condemning innocents. I would remind you of the words of Martin Delrio:
Judges are bound under pain of mortal sin to condemn witches to death; anyone who pronounces against the death sentence is reasonably suspected of secret complicity; nay, it is an
indicium
of witchcraft to defend witches
. Would you be a defender of witches, Father Herzeim?”

“I am a defender of the faith. Remember our way of proceeding, Father Streng,
noster modus procedenti
. We are here to console, not to condemn.”

The Prince-Bishop crossed his arms over his velvet robes. “It is a mercy to kill them.”

Father Streng nodded vigorously. “Indeed, Cardinal Bellarmine has written:
It benefits obstinate heretics that they be cut off from this life; for the longer they live, thinking their various errors, the more people they pervert, and the greater the damnation they lay up for themselves.
We are saving their eternal souls by ending their earthly lives.”

Father Herzeim fixed his dark eyes on the ceiling. “Might I raise a small point of practicality? If the commission requires, under pain of torture, that condemned witches name others, then proceeds to arrest those so named on the basis of those accusations, simple mathematics predicts that the trials shall
become more and more numerous. Is it not inevitable that eventually the accusations will encompass all of us? That we, too, will be burned?”

He smiled crookedly into the Prince-Bishop's scowl. “But then, who will be left to light the fires?”

Eva huddled on the thin layer of straw. She'd been awake all night, her thoughts wild and confused, and now she waited for the dawn, hoping that in the light of day she could begin to tease apart the dense and terrifying tangle, find one thread she could follow to a reason.

Why was she here? Who had accused her?

She watched the grey stone wall emerge from the murky dark. A shaft of pale light crept in through the high narrow window and caressed her face, but it brought with it no warmth, no understanding, no reasons.

She heard a thump, then scraping on the low wood ceiling. Someone was imprisoned above her.

The cathedral bells rang out. Eva made the sign of the cross. “
In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti
.” Placing her palms together, she saw the dried blood crusted on her sleeves. Her eyes followed the heavy iron links from the cuffs encircling her wrists to the metal plate where the chains were bolted to the wall.

She bowed her head and tried to pray, but all that came to mind was the look of revulsion – and fear – on the bailiff's face when his gloved hands grasped her arms and bound them in front of her. Her protests and screams had echoed as if they came from a place far away, from some other woman. She heard again Katharina's whimpers, “Mama, Mama.” Eva had not been able to protect her daughter. And no one would help them; no one would even answer her questions. The men only crossed themselves and muttered “
hexe, hexe
” as they pulled her behind
their horses, so that she had to run to keep from falling forward and being dragged. Her heart had beat fiercely from exertion and terror. And humiliation. At the Prisoners' Tower, the men used a birch rod to prod her up a narrow spiral staircase and into this dimly lit cell hardly more than two body lengths across. Gloved hands clamped her wrists into the metal cuffs, as if she were dangerous. And there she'd sat, until the cell grew dark, then light again. A day and a night. Already, it felt like forever.

Eva groped for the rosary that hung from a loop inside the waist of her gown. She fingered the wooden beads and prayed, “Dear Mother of God, help me in my hour of need, and please protect my child.” She felt tears gathering. She did not know where they'd taken Katharina or what they'd done to her. She blinked back the tears. She would be strong. She would not weep. Her throat ached with the effort. A single tear escaped and made a cold trail down her cheek to her chin.

A key rasped in the lock, metal scraping metal. Eva turned, but could see nothing but grey stone through the door's small barred window. The heavy door creaked open, and an old woman shuffled in, her scrawny back bowed, as if she carried a heavy load of hay or kindling. A large ring of keys hung from the belt at her waist. She held a wooden bowl in her left hand. With her right, she made the sign of the cross.

Eva shifted on the straw, away from the place where she'd relieved herself during the night. There was a wooden pail in the cell, but her shackles had not allowed her to reach it.

Keeping a wary eye on Eva, the woman held out the bowl. Eva put out her hands, but when she smelled the rancid broth, she gagged, and the bowl slipped from her grasp. The stinking grey broth splashed on the woman's apron, then soaked into the straw.

“A few days, and you'll be wanting it bad enough,” the woman lisped through missing teeth.

“Who are you?”

“The one who brings your food and cleans up your messes.”

“Where is my daughter? Where is Katharina?”

“If you mean the little girl, the one with the golden hair, she's here.”

“Can you bring her to me? Please.”

The woman shook her kerchiefed head. “
Nein.
The commissioners want the witches kept apart, so's they can't conspire.”

“But I'm not a witch. And neither is Katharina.”

“You've been arrested, haven't you?”

“Please. She must be terrified.”

The woman fingered the dark mole on her cheek. “It could be done. For a price.”

“Price?”

The woman licked her chapped lips. “Two
gulden
.”

“Two
gulden
! Where can I get two
gulden
in here?” Eva touched the small silver cross at her throat. “I can give you this. It's worth far more than two
gulden
.”