The Witch's Trinity (18 page)

It had made it down somehow, whether with wings or with claws digging into stone or a giant’s leap, I knew not. But there it was, purring and pressing against me.

“How did you conjure yourself here?” I asked. I raised my hand halfway into the air, and as eager as a lusty boy, it rubbed itself against my arm, lifting its lip in pleasure to show me its teeth. I ran my hand over and over that fur, thinking of how animals had such a gift that they kept from human hands, the deer in the forest with its tawny hide, the boar with its bristles. I pressed my ear to its flank to hear the clamor inside, a steady rhythm as the beast breathed. I petted until it tired and paced to the end of the straw, then came back, revived for more, the way Hensel had once dozed and then turned to me for more rut.

It settled into the curve of my arm and then sprawled sideways as I touched the belly. Dogs will tease one another until one gives up in this way, displaying its stomach as a surrender. So the cat had surrendered to me. Alone and hungry in my dirty tower, I was victor over something.

I slept.

She crouched on the sill, her toes curled around the frost-covered stone. “Güde,” she called to wake me. “Güde, Güde!”

I sat up with a shriek. Her black hair dangled past her feet.

“What will you say when they ask if you are a witch?” she asked.

I pressed my hands around me to feel for the cat, which made her laugh.

“Don’t you know I am the cat?” she asked. “And since you have signed the book, you can take a form as well. What do you wish, Güde? An owl? Shall we sail into the night together?”

I voided into the straw, and the pungent smell of urine flared into my nose.

“Or perhaps a worm? You are so old and slow now, Güde; perhaps the worm is most like you.”

I put my hands to my eyes, desperate to block out the sight.

“What would you have said to me, Güde, if you had found me the day you wandered to Steindorf? I saw you feeding Künne Himmelmann and I spake not a word to betray you. Perhaps you came to ask for my silence? I freely give it. A sister does not betray a sister.”

I heard the squeak of the straw as she sat down next to me. She uttered a word of a tongue I knew not, and suddenly I was sitting on wetness no longer and the stink of urine was gone. “Open your eyes, Güde. You are my sister.”

“I didn’t sign,” I moaned behind my hands.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

I wasn’t. I pictured again the book, how the writing had magically scrawled across the page while my fingers were idle. And more than the book, I remembered the pig meat, the sizzle of it against my fingers. “Do you have any food?” I whispered.

“Of course I have food,” she whispered back. I withdrew my hands from my eyes and looked at her. Her face was so intense and dead pale that my heart leaped.

“I have food for those who have signed,” she said. And instantly in her lap she held a cooked pig’s head with its eyes closed and its ears singed. She tipped it a bit, so I could see the neck bone and the flesh that encircled it. “Dig your fingers in,” she encouraged.

“Even if I have not signed?” I faltered.

“But you have, Güde.”

My fingers weaseled over and dug into the pig’s neck, pulling out a large hunk. As the meat went into my mouth, the pig’s eyes opened and it looked at me with all the wisdom and recognition of Jost. The morsel fell from my mouth. “Whom do I eat?” I asked, horrified.

“The witches confused you with their talk of babes. It is untrue, Güde. As one who lives in the forest, I know how to find the animals. It is only a pig.”

“But it looked at me!”

“Have you seen the chicken quiver and run, even without its head? This is the body giving up its spirit reluctantly.”

“But it’s already cooked!” I stood up and ran to the other side of the small circular room. Her body’s shadow hid the pig’s face. “Leave me!”

“Jost would want you to eat,” she said. “You will need to be strong for what will come next.”

“Why do you speak of him? What do you know?”

“I know all,” she said simply.

“Will Jost return to me?” I asked. The shape on her lap jerked and she laughed.

“I will only tell if you admit you signed the book.”

I pressed back against the cold stones as best I could. She was no friend. She was evil. “You want my soul,” I quavered. “You are no sister to me.”

She laughed, a low sound to raise each hair on my body. “They’ll burn you whichever way you answer, Güde. You saw what happened to Künne. You might as well agree and eat your fill tonight.”

“Leave me!”

“What will you answer when they ask, Güde? But it doesn’t really matter what you say, does it?”

“Go and never return,” I said. My stomach was ice cold, and my legs trembled under me. I wished I might swoon or even die.

“What you’ve hidden in your skirts, Güde—who will bring it to your mouth? Künne had you, but whom do you have?” She pointed to the hem, and I fell to my knees.

“Leave me!”
I screeched with every morsel of breath I had, so loud that I myself cringed. The scream made its sound twice, as if I were in a cave. With my knees digging into the cold earth, I raised my hand and made the sign of the cross. Instantly, she vanished.

I fumbled at the sewn-up patch with the shape of the
Pillen
underneath. Why did she make me worry for that? It would be a matter of an instant to tear the rough stitches out; I could easily do it in my cell once I knew I had been sentenced to die. I sobbed until I fell asleep. The last thing I remembered before I closed my eyes was the feel of wet, cold dirt against my cheek.

13

The next step of the Judge should be that, if after being fittingly tortured she refuses to confess the truth, he should have other engines of torture brought before her, and tell her that she will have to endure these if she does not confess.

—M
ALLEUS
M
ALEFICARUM

H
e finally came, as I knew he would. His notary came behind him, with a carved chair and a small table. I recognized the chair, which had a heart and grouse carved into it, as the handiwork of Künne’s husband when he had yet lived. The notary placed both in the center of the room and then withdrew.

“There is a grave claim against you,” the friar told me as he sat.

I knew not whether to kneel before him or stand. “How shall I…?” I asked helplessly.

“Kneel,” he said. I did so.

“You are accused of witchcraft,” he said. “Do you deny the charge?”

To be asked this so soon!
How will you answer?
the woman had taunted me. I could not lie before a man of God, but I didn’t know what the truth was. I opened my mouth to speak, as I know he expected, but no words came.

“Your spirit is afflicted,” he observed. “You wish to give the lie of denial, but God is holding your tongue to keep you from blaspheming.”

I placed my hand on his knee, to beg a moment to gather myself, but he slapped it away. “You are a filthy trap in which sin has been caught,” he said. “There is more dirt on your face than in this floor. You smell worse than Frau Himmelmann did.”

I put the slapped hand back on the ground, to support my weight. Blood had dripped from the quill but I had not signed. If the devil tricked me into thinking I had done so, I would need to pull my mind together so that I could resist. My mind…I had once met Jost in the forest and not known him. My own son! My mind had wearied from all the thoughts of my long life; it didn’t work properly. Like my hair going gray, my mind had weakened and gone stray. I pressed my hands hard into the dirt as I considered for the first time that perhaps my mind had made all. Perhaps there had been no rutting in the forest, no cat kneading, no flying through the air supported by a woman’s black hair. No devil’s book to sign.

“You are still mute,” the Friar said. “The
Malleus Maleficarum
instructs on how to open the mouths of the cursed.” He nestled his hand into the folds of his robes and came out with a small, roundish object that he set on the table to his side. I stared at it. I had never seen such a thing. Made of iron, it resembled a pear. It was rounded in two ways, with one swell and a larger swell at the bottom. There were spikes at its tip.

“This is a pear,” he said. “After I show you its use, perhaps you will learn to speak.”

He let it lie there and admired it for long moments in silence.

“It is constructed in Münster and used to great effect by those who wish women to speak about the foul intercourse they have had with the devil. Can you guess, Güde?”

I was confused and wanted time to ponder the thought that still had me reeling, the idea that perhaps my mind had betrayed me.

“Regard its mechanism.” He picked up the pearlike object and twisted a pin at its bottom. As he twisted, the pear opened up, in strips of jagged iron. There was a slow beauty to this unfolding, like a flower blooming. A strange flower, one with petals made of knives. There was no softness to this bloom, only sharp tips. He continued to work the object, until finally it was nearly flat in his palm with the bladelike strips pointing outward.

“And now do you wish to speak?” he asked me.

I was sore confused. What was this?

“Touch it,” he commanded.

I lifted my hand and ran my fingertips around it. The points were not so sharp that they hurt my fingers, so I puzzled at what torture this might inflict.

“And then we wind it back up,” he continued. I kept my fingers on it to feel the petals pull back up into the body of the device. When it was closed up tight again, he released it and it sat in my palm like a heavy, heavy apple.

“Oppressively weighty, is it not?” he asked. “Can you guess its use?”

I wondered if I would be tied to a stake, while the villagers each armed themselves with one of these and hurled them at me. I dropped it and the thud rang out as if I had dropped it onto stone.

“Pick it up,” he said.

I gave it to him and he returned it to the table. “The
Malleus Maleficarum
suggests showing the instruments of torture and then giving the witch a night to think about whether she will confess. So I am showing it to you.”

I shook my head and tried to speak. How, how would this be used?

“Think about the part of your woman’s body, Güde, that is most sensitive. The place where temptation and lust reside.”

I dropped my eyes to the ground while a fierce blush blazed my cheeks.

“Yes. That place,” he said.

I still hadn’t completely understood. What would he do with this tool?

“It is easily pressed into that part of you, Güde, when it is closed up and solid. It is not much wider than a man’s prick and certainly far smaller than a babe’s body. We can push it up, up, until you think, you whore, that you are rutting again.”

My mouth fell open. I understood.

“Yes, yes, now you are seeing. It is only uncomfortable when closed up tight, but when I twist the pin at the bottom, Frau, you will feel these blades press against the walls of your woman’s chasm. And the walls shall resist, so far as they are able. And then, after a point, they will begin to tear. And I will continue to twist the pin. I will twist it until the device is completely flattened, as you held it in your hands a moment ago. Your whore’s passage will be in shreds.”

He picked it up and bounced it in his hand, as a man will dandle an apple he prepares to eat. He stood up and began to walk away.

“And then I will close it again, which I have been told is even more agonizing. And I will slide it out and present it to you, with the shreds of yourself clinging to it. So you will need to think about how to answer my question tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder. He knocked at the wooden door and it was instantly opened. He stepped outside.

The notary, with a flint of pity in his eyes, came to quickly grab the chair and table.

I had seen two kinds of evil in a short space of time. The one that had urged me to pledge my soul away had seemed far kinder.