The Witch's Trinity (21 page)

I understood now. Irmeltrud was also accused. A slow pleasure began within me. The fate she created for me was now hers too. How wondrous fair.

“No one’s watching the children! If they fall upon knives or into the fire, who will help them? And you know they’re scared of thunder! But you have not a care for them, only hatred of me!” she said.

“I said nothing to accuse you, Irmeltrud. But well I might have wished to—you betrayed me first!”

“Oh, you said something all right, you slot of a pig’s prick-hole!” She slapped me and flew to my tick, kicking and tearing it until the straw burst out and she was surrounded by a blond rain. She screamed as she kicked, “This place stinks of the piss and slops of an old woman!” Then she laughed bitterly. “Do you know what you’ve done, Güde? You’ve made orphans of your grandchildren.”

“No,” I said. “Jost will return.”

She sneered. “The hunting party’s been gone so long now, even if they turned around and came home this instant, they’d die in their steps from hunger and cold. It’s been over a week.”

“You assume they found no game,” I said. “Maybe they are strengthened anew and walking quickly back to us.”

“Alke and Matern will be orphans,” she said firmly, exhausted. “The children will eat on donated scraps, if there are any to be had.”

I leaned against the wall, thinking about the two scared children by themselves. Now that the tick was destroyed there was nowhere to sit.

“Someone will take them,” I said. “Tomorrow, as soon as the word is given that you’ve been accused.”

“Who? No one will take on two extra mouths to feed.”

“They will be cared for, not abandoned. This village…” I trailed off and my heart lurched in horror. The kindness I was about to speak of didn’t exist anymore. The only man with food to spare also had a device of torture he carried with him. Who
would
take the children?

“You have condemned them to a slow death. I hope they burn you first, Güde, so I can watch and laugh!”

I grasped onto her insult. It was easier to fight her than to think of woeful Alke and Matern trying to keep the fire going and begging food from neighbors. “I hope they
do
burn me first,” I said, “for smelling the stink of your blackened heart afire would kill me five times over! You never believed me a witch! You accused me to remove one mouth from the table!”

She gasped. “Oh, I know you to be a witch! Petting the devil’s own beast, suffering pricks from his marking on your forehead, all your wandering in the wood—”

“The mark on my head was from
your
sewing needle. Are you the devil?”

She tugged off her shoe to throw it at me. It landed with a dusty puff against my chest. “The crazy things you’ve said, Güde! Returning from the woods with a rotted basket and inviting us to eat from it!”

I had no reply.

“Admit that you consort with witches, Güde! You and Künne gave your souls to the devil!”

“No,” I said.

“Where’s the conviction in your voice?”

It was all too confusing. Was I a witch? Did Irmeltrud truly think I was, or had she accused me for Alke and Matern’s sake? And who had accused her? The friar had asked me if Irmeltrud had been in the woods with the witches, but I’d denied it. “He has a pear, Irmeltrud, that he puts in your woman’s channel and its spiked leaves will ruin that part of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s an instrument of torture to make you confess.”

“I’ll not undergo that,” she said. She put both hands against the wall, propping up her weight, and thought. “I am an influential woman in this village,” she said slowly. “I will speak privately with the friar and he will let me go. I was, after all, the one who arranged for Künne’s wood,” she said. There was a note of hope in her voice and I was jealous to hear it.

“You live with a witch and someone has accused you,” I said.

“Someone? Very clearly you!”

“Not I,” I said, and something in my voice registered with her.

“Not you?”

“No.”

“Then who?” She began gathering up the spilled straw, something to do with her hands while her mind worked. She shaped it back into the rough outlines of a bed. “Who would see me undone? No one hates me.”

I went to the fire and added more branches. We were both as industrious as we could be in our tiny, dank tower.

“Maybe it’s someone who doesn’t hate me but envies what I have. Remember how Enede Fett was so in love with Jost? Maybe she has bided her time until she can have him?”

“Then you think Jost
will
return,” I said.

“I have no idea! When he kissed me, it felt like he was saying goodbye forever. And these woods are so vast. What if they travel in circles without knowing the way home?” she glared at me. “It must be Enede. Who else? Jost was so handsome back when he picked me, remember?”

“I remember,” I said.

“That spinster biddy!”

I smiled. “Enede was very comely. I don’t know why Jost didn’t pick her. I’m sure he regretted the selection he did make.”

Irmeltrud sat on the newly regathered straw, put her fists on her knees, and screamed until she ran out of breath. I held my breath with her. How I hated what she had done to me, but I understood that scream. I relished it. She screamed again, and I sank onto the icy dirt floor, letting the sound enter me thoroughly. I would not share the straw with her.

“What did you tell the friar?” she asked at length.

“I hardly know,” I said.

She expelled air from her nose in a quick, scornful burst.

“I confessed to him that I had seen witching in the woods, with a hoofed beast bearing Hensel’s face. But I also confessed that I did not know if I could rely on what my eyes told me.”

“You spake of the cat?”

“I know not.” I paused. “You see my gray hair and the lines across my face like cracked ice over the river?”

“I have for years,” she said coldly.

“The aging is not only in my body but also in my head. Many times I’m unsure if I have seen the things I thought I saw. Or what I said, or how old I am. My mind is wiry and gray, like my hair.”

She stared at me.

“And it will happen to you too, Irmeltrud, should you live past this. And then you will regret your cruelty and what you said to the friar about me.”

“I had to protect the children,” she said.

“So you
do
admit it! You accused me so the children could eat my share!”

“No,” she said. “I had to protect them from your
witchcraft.
”

“I have no idea what to believe!” I wailed. “I want it all back the way it was. Food! Food for everyone. And Jost here milling everyone’s grain, and you still respectful of me since I am his
Mutter.
And no one in robes! I want our old world back.”

“There is a reason God is punishing us,” she said. “He sent the plague as a warning and now he has despoiled the land of any food.”

“And what is that reason?” I called, at the very heights of my voice’s ability. I hoped somewhere the friar would hear and come to answer. He knew God and his reasoning better than any of us.

“I don’t know God’s plan, Güde. Did you think a simple countrywoman would?”

“Is there a plan?” I cried in despair.

She hissed and made the sign of the cross three times over. “How dare you question that?”

“Because I don’t see why we are being punished! We were never bad folk. We didn’t murder or thieve or covet. We only danced and ate and rutted and greeted each day with gratitude!”

“We don’t know what people did when the doors closed between us.”

“I know what we did, and we deserve our daily bread. The prayer asks for it, but we shouldn’t have to ask.”

“You are blaspheming!” she said. “The fire will cure you, please God.”

I looked at the terror on her face and was glad I felt only emptiness. “The fire will end all this, please God,” I echoed.

Not long after the storm passed the friar came to Irmeltrud. He stood just inside the door, no chair or notary.

“Tomorrow Güde will make her public confession. And you will join her.”

“But sir—” Irmeltrud ran to him and knelt, pulling his robes to her lips and kissing them. “I do not plan to confess! I was untainted by her devious craft. My children and I are pure, sir, and embrace as always the mercy and goodness of Christ!”

He pulled away coldly and detached his robe from her fingers.

“Your Grace,” I said, “you were to think on my question, of whether my old eyes have tricked me into seeing things that were not there.”

“It is all the devil’s work,” he said firmly. “If you have seen witchcraft or only thought that you saw it, it is all the devil’s work.”

“Am I to blame for the devil fooling me with my own eyes?”

“You allowed him into your life.”

“What of me?” asked Irmeltrud. “I have not seen anything. My eyes still belong to Christ.”

“You have been accused of several deliberate acts of witchcraft and must face your accuser tomorrow,” he said.

“Who is it?” She pulled at his robes and he took a step backward, his eyes furious.

“Do not befoul my garments, woman.”

“I beg your pardon. I am only desperate with fear! Do you not recall how I assisted you, in humble servitude? I gathered wood to help in the burning ceremony, I came to you when I knew of witchcraft in my own home, so that Güde’s wickedness would
not
spread to me or my children!”

“But you have been guilty of your own wickedness.”

“Who
says
so?” she shrieked.

“You will face your accuser tomorrow. If I were to tell you who it was, you could work malefaction on that person tonight.”

She wailed; the friar spake as if she were guilty. There was no question in his voice.

I tried again my prior argument. “Sir, if we were truly witches and capable of performing malefaction, could we not tumble the stones of this tower and walk into the woods as free women?” I asked.

“The devil has his own rules,” said the friar. “And Christ has his. If the sacrosanct walls of this tower keep you imprisoned, with the devil pacing outside in frustration, that is as it should be.”

“I am not a witch!” cried Irmeltrud. “Don’t you see? I accused Güde. Why would I accuse her if I were myself a witch?”

“I do not guess at the choices women make,” he said. “We will listen to testimony tomorrow. I believe you will both confess.” With that, he turned and went out the door.

Irmeltrud, who was still on her knees, fell forward onto the door sobbing. She hammered on it, and a small, mean part of me thought that this was retribution for the night I hammered on the door she locked against me.

“I don’t understand,” she raved. “I was only seized this evening and upon the sunrise I must stand trial? Künne was kept here many days; you’ve been here nearly as long. Am I not to have time to reflect upon my accusation?”

“He didn’t threaten you with torture.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I know why.” Her palms stilled on the door. “I heard he was to move on to Flußstadt. We have heard reports of witchery there. He’s trying both of us on the same day so he can be freed to pack up and leave.” She dug her fingernails into the wood. “Güde, do you know what this means? There will be no three days of wait like Künne had after her water test. They will rule on us together, tomorrow. And he believes both of us to be guilty.”

She gouged her way into the wood, her face a twisted mask. “We will be put to death,” she said in a rasping whisper.