The Witch's Trinity (23 page)

As I passed through the door of the stone tower for the second and final time, I inhaled the fresh smell of the snow that settled around us. We followed the notary in a line like geese on the riverbank. I studied Irmeltrud’s back as we went: strong and sturdy once, now it was simply a panel of bone barely covered by skin and the thin threads of her garment. As we passed by trees, her bodice was speckled with shadow; as we came into full sun I could see the dust and dirt ground into the weave. Below her cap, both of her braids had a tiny curl at the end, as if that tiny bit of exuberance could not be crushed out of her.

I was aware to be thankful, continuing the prayer and adding to it. I wanted to thank these things carefully, for I would never see them again.
Thank you, snow. Thank you for the water you send to the rivers and the beauty of your mantle. I honor the crispness I hear and feel underfoot. Thank you, evergreens, for the wood you have given us and the song of the wind through your needles. Thank you for your fragrance, which we sew into bundles. Thank you most for the sight of you against a gray sky, the green so thick and dark it makes the eyes ache, and for your shape like the towers of a church.
As Irmeltrud walked, her arms swung naturally, but at the end of them her hands were in fists. I couldn’t see the notary past her.
Thank you, gentians and buttercups that I know sleep under the snow. Your colors have brightened brides’ girdles and girls’ hair. Thank you for your other uses, which Künne and her mother knew.
On we walked until we reached the church. Ribbons of smoke poured from the chimneys. It would be warm inside.

Thank you, fire and smoke. Thank you.

I bit my lip.
It is not your fault what men use you for.

The notary opened the door and I glimpsed the faces of the villagers as they all craned to look. Irmeltrud began to step in, but the notary intervened and turned her around. I took one last moment to turn also and look behind me.

There were the houses in the distance. The plot of earth that Künne was buried in. Deep under the snow, the hole we rooted the maypole in at springtide. A good bit behind me, at the end of the trail of scuffled snow, were the stone tower and the tall evergreen that grew up against the open window slots. They were so thin from this distance; how had I ever fit through them?

Beyond that, the hills were barren and snow-covered. And behind them lay the beginnings of the forest. The path that led into the forest. And no, as much as I peered and wished to see my son stepping out of the woods on that path, there was no movement there. No stirring. Not even a bird to wheel and circle. I felt the notary’s hands on my shoulders pulling me back strongly, and I nearly fell. “For our sakes,” he mumbled, “for protection.”

I walked into the church backward, as Irmeltrud had done before me, as no doubt Künne had also done.

I stumbled toward the heat of the stoves and my neighbors’ desperation. They did not have two of the enormous stools, so I went first. I had no strength to pull myself up, so two men helped, one of them the friar’s notary.

“Güde,
Mutter
of Jost,
Großmutter
of Matern, you are before us under accusation of witchcraft,” said the friar.

Once again I was amazed at the profusion of his robes. Three women’s skirts could have been cut from that cloth. Although he spake to me, he addressed his words to the congregation. Most everyone I saw was female, for those that were able-bodied men were with the hunters’ party, and they all stared up at me, looking shocked. Had my face worsened so much during my sojourn in the tower?

“Yes,” I said.

I looked for, and found, the small, scared faces of Alke and Matern. They were seated on a bench in the back next to Frau Zweig. Matern was crying and now and then lurching with a suppressed sob. He was frightened enough to know he had to cry silently. Neither child was looking at me. They both had their eyes on Irmeltrud.

“And are you prepared to hear evidence against you and speak truthfully to your guilt?”

“Yes.”

“We have asked who in this village shall serve as your advocate, but none will. It was the same with your sister in heresy, Künne Himmelmann.”

I looked out at the gathering of my townspeople. They looked back at me shamelessly.

“This is a danger when one embarks on a voyage with Satan, Frau Müller,” the friar continued. “If a man unduly defends a witch, the
Malleus Maleficarum
tells us, he himself becomes a patron of that heresy. And what man would place himself under such suspicion? But witches never think of this when they begin their diabolical tricks. They never think forward to this day, to the tribunal where no man will defend them.”

I wondered in what manner the friar had asked the few remaining village men to act as my advocate. Had he knocked upon their doors in the evening? Had he sent his notary to inquire? Never had anyone asked Jost to defend Künne, and I am sure he would have.

“After Frau Himmelmann’s trial, your lord took me aside and asked after the legality of the proceeding. Due to his status and ability to travel, he had heard that other trials elsewhere had been conducted differently.” The friar took a moment to smooth the hair of his tonsure with both hands. “When one can only lead a small village, one must puff up one’s importance. Your lord was duly shamed by his outrageous and ill-bred accusations. He fled with the hunters’ party and this was a relief to both of us.”

Inside me, a deep well of horror overfilled its limits.
Künne’s trial was not like other people’s trials?

“The inquisition is a delicate and fine-tuned instrument,” continued the friar. “Through a series of established procedures, we lead a witch through her questioning. The advocate would point out particular enemies of the witch, and do his best to influence the court that those witnesses should not be heard, as they would only wish her ill. We would consider the use of torture in the proper time, and examine the witch several times before pronouncing a sentence.

“The
Malleus Maleficarum
provides the language of our speeches: what the witch shall say to the tribunal, and the tribunal’s answers. It is all of a method, according to the particulars of a witch’s circumstances. But when an inquisitor sees before him a rude and rough congregation, where no man is willing to step forward to act as advocate, and time has become short for the proceedings, he may speed the course of justice.”

“Speed the course, then!” a woman shouted. I did not recognize her voice.

He was speaking so quickly, and each sentence bore examining. Had our lord been right? Were we at the mercy of a friar who did not follow proper procedures? An advocate could ask that certain witnesses’ testimony not be heard if they were enemies of the accused. What difference could this have made for Künne? And if a man of this village had agreed to counsel me, would I be whispering in his ear that Irmeltrud hated me?

“This is not a pageant enacted upon a roadside cart,” the friar said, “where you may shout out your wishes to the players.”

Irmeltrud was right—he was on his way to Flußstadt.

“We shall follow Rome’s holy dictates for these proceedings, in the spirit of the law if not the letter, as Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians instructs.” The friar turned to look at me and I was lost in the calmness of his face. This man would condemn me to die, but his face was as bland as a weaver’s running the shuttle through the warp.

“Let us pray.” He led us in a prayer that I heeded not. I looked at all the downturned crowns and marveled that all but me obeyed. The words lulled my ears and I wished, keenly and only, for Jost to return. Jost, who had been brave enough to ask the friar to let me speak my goodbyes to Künne. Who would have served as her advocate, and mine. Who knew what was right and just. While all prayed for me to confess my evil, I prayed instead, solitarily, for Jost to come. Despite the leagues of snow between us, despite the gauntness of his frame and the heaviness of his spirit, to
come, come, come, come for me and your wife.
I felt the heat of the wish exploding through the top of my head, like a beam of sunlight, only going back to the sun, not from it, and that beam tunneled through the roof of the church and into the gray, sodden air above, and to a sturdy cloud, and further up, up, so it could be seen for miles. My bright, golden wish like a pillar of fire. Could he see it through the shade of the forest?

The prayer finished, and the air resounded with the finality of the amen.

“Are there any here to speak evidence of this woman’s sorcery?” asked the friar.

I waited for Irmeltrud to speak, but she did not. Someone else did: Herr Kueper, our village’s cooper. His arms were thick and muscled from bending iron into the hoops around the barrels. I wondered, given his strength, why he had not gone with the hunters’ party. He was a man whose body bore many dark spots, almost like freckles but black as beetles. His hair was peppered black and white and his very beard straggled.

“Of an evening, Frau Müller passed by my open door. She did not look inside to greet me, but only passed by quietly. In stealth. But I noted her, and I noted that after her passage my cow’s milk went sour,” he said.

“The cow gives sour milk from her teats?” the friar questioned.

“No. Only the bucket upon the floor turned sour.”

“Each time you fill the bucket?”

“No. Only the one time she passed.”

“And does Frau Müller bear any ill will to you?”

He looked up at me for the first time. In confusion, I smiled at him. Was that not what one did, when a neighbor looked upon you? And equally surprised, he smiled back. Then each of us quickly rearranged our faces. We were not to smile at each other. He was condemning me to die.

“I know of no ill will between us. I only know that witches enjoy inflicting pain upon others.”

“Indeed. Is there more to your testimony?”

“No.”

“That shall suffice. Has it been recorded?” the friar asked his notary. The notary continued to write a few moments more in silence, then looked up to nod.

“Are there any others of this village that should wish to make known evidence against this woman?” the friar asked.

We waited.

I imagined Jost’s feet pressing forward into the snow. Step. Step. The crunch of his weight delving into the snow and then the perfect marking of his foot left behind. Crisp step. Crisp step. Coming to me, to the beam of light radiating from my head. The friar looked right at Irmeltrud standing in the front and nodded very slightly. She folded her hands in front of her. They were blackened and foul, as if she had spent her days sorting charred wood.

Like Herr Kueper, she would not immediately look at me. The rest of the women, however, eagerly did. Their eyes were wide. I looked again at Alke and Matern. Frau Zweig was whispering something to them. I hoped she whispered calming words. But how could they be?

“I have seen proof of witchcraft in my husband’s
Mutter
’s deeds,” said Irmeltrud. Her voice sounded like the voice she used to scold Alke when she grew too wild.

“Give forth, Frau.”

“She has been visited by an animal the Holy Church deems demonic, sir. A cat, whose manner of entry and leaving was always blocked, yet somehow it manifested within the walls of our cottage.”

“A black cat?” the friar asked.

“No, sir, though one with black in it. It was striped, with gray and black.”

“And did this beast speak within the house or cause harm?”

“I did not hear it speak, though it nestled with Güde within her bedclothes and may have spoken to her.”

“Did she speak to it?”

“Lulling words, sir, such as a
Mutter
murmurs to her child.”

The congregation shuddered, and I imagined what they envisioned: me suckling the cat at my breast, a foul, distorted picture of motherhood. The friar gave the notary time to catch up, then continued the interrogation. “And did the cat cause harm?”

Irmeltrud hesitated. “It put our house into an uproar,” she said. “Güde awoke one night in great terror, screaming and throwing the bedclothes from her, to say its eyes had been gleaming at her.”

“A true account of demonic activity,” said the friar. “We are instructed that the eyes of those touched by hellish influences are made to glow even in the darkest spaces.”

The villagers rustled again, chilled at the idea of the eyes in the darkness watching them sleep.

“Jost threw the cat out into the night and we went back to sleeping. But I believe Güde is in consort with the cat, and…” Irmeltrud’s voice trailed off.

“And?”

“I know not, sir. They are in consort, but I know not what they planned.”

“Did you see results of malefaction?”

“Not truly. Other than, of course, the famine we all suffer.”

A woman in the back yelled, “Is it she who keeps us hungry?” I watched all the faces in the hall change from intense and solemn interest to pure fury.

“She? We are starving, barely able to rise each day, because of
her
?”

“It wasn’t Künne—it was
her
! Or both of them together.”

A clod of dung hit my face. I used my arm, covered by the thin sleeve, rather than my hand, to brush it off. Then dozens of clods were flying through the air at me. In the past, people had thrown rotten vegetables at thieves in the pillory, but now every vegetable was eaten. All they had to throw was what issued from their very bodies. I watched them pull out rags balled up with excrement—they had forethought to bring them.