The Witch's Trinity (25 page)

I cast my mind back to the circle in the forest. I had eaten of unknown flesh and had surely opened my body to someone who seemed of another world. The devil. I had had the devil in me. I granted myself the will to eternally say goodbye to what this village had become. I wanted the village of tens of years ago.

“I do.”

“Then you shall burn for your sins and they shall die with your corporeal body. You may come down now.”

The notary stopped writing and came to help me from my perch. I tried to see Alke and Matern, to perhaps wink to show them I was unafraid, but they were still curled up as if they slept. For a moment I feared the notary should usher me out into the church yard and instantly be doing the deed, but he brought me to sit, while he urged Irmeltrud to stand. The bench was warm from her body. Frau Kueper fell upon me sideways, beseeching without using her voice, but in a daze I bore her weight without remarking it. Irmeltrud ascended to the giant stool.

“And now we have before us Irmeltrud, wife of Jost and
Mutter
of Matern, accused of witchcraft. Will her accuser speak?”

Irmeltrud’s vision blazed onto me, but I had not accused her. My skin prickled as I waited to hear which villager’s voice would pipe up in hatred. Moments passed. The smell of the excrement oppressed me anew in the silence. Then, finally, I heard someone stand, rustling out her skirts. “It is I who accuses Irmeltrud,” said Frau Zweig.

My heart plummeted down to my feet and into the sanctified ground below.

Of course.

Of course her.

For she loved children and could have none of her own. And Irmeltrud’s children found her playful and charming, and she would have none of the trouble of a bawling babe; she’d begin at the good time of life, with a girl who could spin and thresh and make merry, and a boy who laughed like a cricket in full summer and minded his elders.

I heard Irmeltrud moan even as I did, our throats in twin.

Frau Zweig walked to the front to stand before the friar. The children sat up and with great dread in their faces. Herr Zweig made no motion to comfort them.

“I accuse her, for she has spoken in serpent tongue and her incantations have plagued my nightmares. In the deepest night of my cottage, my husband and I hear her voice, trilling through the walls like a wind,” said Frau Zweig.

“And the incantations had purpose?” asked the friar.

“Yes, sir. For when I woke in the morning, I found that a barrel of wine had been much changed.”

All but the friar stiffened to hear that she had wine yet in her household.

“How was it changed?”

“In the stead of wine, we had urine, foul and stenchful. She magicked it, sir, to keep us from drinking it.”

“This was resulting from the incantations you and your husband heard?”

“Yes.”

I looked at Herr Zweig. He was frowning.

The friar nodded gravely. “And have you seen her odd about the mouth after any church service?”

“Odd about the mouth?” Frau Zweig looked confused.

“As if she had something inside, kept upon her tongue.”

There was silence as Frau Zweig considered. “Now that you have asked me, I do recollect how last Sunday I spake to her after the Mass and she answered me with slurred tongue, as if she had been drinking.”

“Not drinking, Frau. Certainly not. For we said Mass last Sunday and she surely kept the wine and host of Christ within her mouth, to not ingest the Holy Spirit. We might have seen her later, had we followed closely, spew the Eucharist into her slop bucket to besmirch it. This is a particular bliss to the witches, an affront to the very Lamb of God himself.”

Frau Zweig’s eyes opened wide. “Yes. Yes. She spake as if a wafer and wine still sat upon her tongue. And I do recall a dribble from her mouth after she spake in such a tight-lipped way…it was the sweet wine of our sweet Lord.”

“And now you may understand further what has happened to your wine barrel. The incantations spoken in your home, as if by the wind, were Irmeltrud’s speaking of the Mass backward, and she turned the wine into urine to show an abomination to God. Had you bread in the house, it would surely have become as the fetid issue of our bodies.”

Frau Zweig’s hand went to her cheek in horror. “To think of her voice in our home, making a mockery of everything we hold sacred!”

“It was more than her voice. The witches move so fast, Frau Zweig, that it is possible for them to open and close a door in such a fast time that our eyes cannot catch the movement. Possibly she passed by you and your awakened husband and glared at you before bespoiling the bucket.”

“While we lay innocent in bed?” she asked, her eyes wide. I turned my head and watched everyone shift uncomfortably, thinking of the unholy speed of the witches.

“Yes.”

“I shall never sleep solid again,” said she. She picked up a corner of her apron and used it to press at her eyes. She sniffled too and I watched her squint as if about to cry.

I tried to imagine her and her husband in their cottage, appalled as they knelt and looked into their wine barrel, turning their heads away from the stench, and the look of wonderment that must have passed their visages as they considered that none had entered and therefore magic had. But I knew this to be a false scene. Frau Zweig had not had a barrel of urine but a heart of covetousness. She had empty arms curved, ready for childish embraces.

I looked over to Herr Zweig to see if he too wore a deceptive face, but I was startled to see that he looked shocked. His mouth hung open and his eyebrows lowered closer to his eyes in an anxious frown. Beside him, Matern was curled up like a babe and pulsing with his silent sobbing, but Alke was watching. Under her cap dangled tight, tight braids; other fingers than Irmeltrud’s had plaited her locks.

I gasped at the look on her face: wild outrage. The sound was louder than I realized, for the friar took it to mean I tried to speak.

“Güde, keep your wicked lips closed,” said the friar. “You have had your time to speak.”

“I never did any such thing to the Zweig family,” began Irmeltrud in a low, low voice. “I know not where they keep their wine, or even that they had any, when the rest of our village only drinks it at Mass. And if I were to find it, would I not drink it rather than—”

“Silence!” screamed the friar, in a voice as suddenly high as hers was low.

“Mutter!” cried Alke. I jerked my head back in time to see her plunge to the ground, lost to view behind the people standing in front of her, then heard the scurry of her pushing across Herr Zweig, and then into the pathway between bodies.

“Sit down, daughter!” cried Irmeltrud in desperation at the same time that I cried, “No!”

She flew to the friar’s robes. Her tiny fingers were so pale against the vast black fabric that I was entranced momentarily by the contrast of colors.

“Go sit down, daughter!” commanded Irmeltrud.

“Sweeting, go back to Vater,” said Frau Zweig, and I tore my gaze from Alke’s fingers to her face. Vater? Vater was Jost, stepping in the snow with slow foot, with the flesh diminishing from his bones and his exhale fading in the cold air. But she meant Herr Zweig. She had already instructed the children to call him Vater.

Said Alke, “My
Mutter
is good and does all she ought. She swallows the host, sir! She sips the wine and it does not stay in her mouth. She swallows!” She clutched at his robes and I bit my lip, for she grabbed where a girl should not touch until her wedding day. I stood up and ran to Alke just at the same time Frau Zweig grabbed for her. “Go sit!” we both hissed.

“The young one is a witch too,” said Herr Kueper.

Up on her enormous chair, Irmeltrud began sobbing loudly.

I pulled Alke away from the friar and a powerful smell of incense came from the released robes. I pushed her back through the throng to Herr Zweig and to Matern, who was openly and loudly bawling now, but his face still hidden. “Take her!” I cried wildly to Herr Zweig. “Hold on to her and keep her here!” He did nothing, his face still appalled and uncomprehending.

“I fucked that one,” said Herr Kueper, calling from the front. “All the Müller women are witches and I fucked every one of them. The young one speaks the Mass backward like her
Mutter.
I’ll tell who else is in the witches’ circle if you hear my confession and free me. I am not a witch, only a man. I cannot be blamed for the spell they have cast upon me. They bewitched me, but I was there only for the rut and not for the devil. I am only a weak man, no more.”

Frau Kueper called out, “What man here has not rutted with one not his wife? Shall they all be burned?”

I pushed Alke’s body down, not onto the bench near Matern but onto the ground, so she was entirely hidden from the friar. “Stay here,” I said roughly. “It is your life if you don’t. Stay silent.” I pressed my hand onto Matern’s head to comfort him, a gesture as powerless as I felt, and turned to go back to the front. Yet as I turned I ran right into the friar, who had followed me.

He slapped me.

“How twisted is the web of evil in this town,” he said. “I had hoped to pull the spider, fat with blood, from the web and thus destroy all wickedness. But Künne Himmelmann’s threads were spun so vast in this town that I wonder if we shall ever uncover all the sticky places she fastened to.”

Every parcel of will I had went into arranging myself to look as truthful as possible. This speech was the most important one I would ever make—and monks illuminating their manuscripts in cells far away should pause in their labors to hear the ring of truth in what I said. The river should cease troubling the small rocks clattering on the riverbed, and the wind should stop worrying the pennants across Germany. “Künne Himmelmann was a wicked woman, as low as you are exalted. And she did pull us all into her web: myself, Irmeltrud, Herr Kueper.” I spake slowly, as honey pulling from the comb. “But she never pulled children into her influence. Never. Alke here is as faultless as a babe. See her tremble on the floor. She is a
child.”

“Does a child open her legs to men in the forest?” called Herr Kueper, clearly enjoying his revenge.

“Künne’s evil was in threes, sir. A mockery of the Trinity. So it is my daughter-in-law, Herr Kueper, and myself. No others.” I was amazed at the inventiveness of my thinking. Why, sometimes I was as dulled as the whetstone, but now I was the knife it sharpens.

“Then why does Herr Kueper accuse her?” he asked.

“Because he has the blackest heart that can be conceived of.” This came in a hiss from Irmeltrud. She had pulled herself down from the tall chair and come to join us at the back of the hall. She thrust out an arm and pulled me to her. “Güde was my instructor in evil deeds, and I then pulled Herr Kueper into our unholy trinity. Güde was meant to represent our Father, I was the Son, and Herr Kueper…”

We hugged each other in an insane, desperate hug. She saw how deep the trouble was now. She could not plead for herself. Only for Alke.

“Herr Kueper…,” she faltered. “He was the Dove.”

I nodded and nodded, like a dog watching the flight of a bee. “Yes,” I said. “Yes. Only us three.”

Suddenly Frau Zweig was there too, serious-faced. “I kept the child sleeping at my feet to protect her all night. She was never gone from my sight. She is innocence itself. Never has she joined the witches in the forest.”

“Why do you all leave your places?” thundered the friar. “You, Irmeltrud. I never released you from the chair of inquisition. Güde, you are to sit in the front. And Frau Zweig, you must face this congregation and make your accusations. All must return.”

We scattered with quickened feet.

“I did not leave my place,” called Herr Kueper. “That is because I know myself to be innocent. I am no part of some unbent trinity. I am only a man whose rod was hardened by the conniving of women.”

Irmeltrud clambered back up onto the chair. I moved as quickly as my bones would allow. I heard the friar’s thud behind us as he followed. I sat next to Frau Kueper, whose fingernails scraped down my arm, making me shiver with her intensity. She said not a word, though. She knew even a whisper to me would draw attention to herself. She was already on the front bench, dangerous enough, because she had tried to run with her husband. But she had not been accused.

“Frau Zweig, do you wish to add more to your testimony against Irmeltrud Müller?”

“No, sir. It is completed now.”

“Go then.”

She went back quickly and collapsed against Herr Zweig, who offered not a comforting arm to enfold her. His expression changed in no way. He was still shocked by his wife’s cruel deception. He knew there had never been wine turned to piss. Alke was still hidden beneath the bench and Matern a barely recognizable mass on it.

“Are there any others to tell of Irmeltrud’s witchcraft?” asked the friar.

“I should like to speak,” said Herr Kueper. His wife scraped my arm again, harder.

“Stand, then.”

He stood and I looked at my arm with its thin dots of blood following the red tracks scratched in my skin.

“She is a witch of such terror that I cannot fully describe it,” said Herr Kueper. “It is…” His voice trailed off.

“Yes?”