The Witch's Trinity (27 page)

I was grateful for the sorrow in his eyes but kept stepping gingerly in the thick, crusted snow, my feet sinking fair much with each step. I needed to find Jost.

I was reminded with a wince of the witches’ orgy in the woods, for it was couple upon couple now, man and woman kissing and groaning into each other’s mouths. Children tugged upon their fathers’ legs, and were also moved into the fevered clinch.

Upon the edges of the square, I saw a sled piled high with rabbit bodies, gray and soft, with the ears all pointing toward the church. Another held an elk. They had made the trouble to keep his antlers, these starved men, so we might use the horns for our fertility dances. And then I saw that there was another sled of rabbits—they must have found tenfold warrens!—and another sled fashioned into a cagelike device.

I shuddered when I saw this last one and made no further effort to determine the beast trapped inside. I turned my head and saw another line of sleds piled with carcasses. Each man must have pulled his own. What bounty!

I scanned all this in a glance, still with the foremost intent to find my son. Just then, little Alke tore past me. I watched where she ran, knowing she had spotted him. I pushed past another couple to see.

And there he was.

Jost of the gray-blue eyes and the kind face. There he stood in his rags, but with his face agleam. He was swiveling his head around to seek among the crowd for us, his family, and I watched his neck straighten as Irmeltrud ran to him, having found him first. He kissed her full on the mouth, eyes squeezed shut in savage concentration. His hips made the movement of rut against hers, although her skirts and his clothes were thick between them. Alke and Matern hugged the legs of their father, eyes buried.

It took all I had to keep me stonelike in the snow. Finally I pressed forward and laid my hand upon Jost’s shoulder. He pulled back from Irmeltrud and the look in his eyes as he turned them upon me was enough to make me lose my breath.

His look was revulsion. He didn’t recognize me.

“Jost,” I sobbed. “It is me, your
Mutter.
”

I held out my arms for his embrace, shaking bitterly with the cold. “I saw you in the woods,” I said. “I perched upon your fingers.”

He ignored this and only stared at me. “Are you crazed?” he asked. “Why would you make yourself appear so?” He did not hug me, but instead took off his shirt and put it upon me, winding the extra cloth so it covered me twicefold, tucking it under my arm to hold it. Then he stretched his warm hand to my cheek gently.

I clamped my hands to his waist and tried to pull him to me. “I have spent these many days in the Witch’s Tower,” I said, “and today have stood trial for witchcraft, as has your wife.”

He whipped his head around to her. She was keening, her voice out of her control.

“What falsehoods has this town suffered under?” he cried. “We have found the only one who is to blame!”

“Jost, I crave you,” I said. “Do not put your own
Mutter
from you.”

He then submitted to my embrace, and feeling how filled with trembling the wind made me, he gasped. “Let us get you by the fire, Mutter,” he said. He saw for the first time that my feet were bare, and scooped me up like a child.

“Let us eat!” came the call. “Let us skin these rabbits and eat them on the instant!” The women moaned with relief and the men pulled their knives out, advancing upon the sleds.

Jost walked toward the church, but I stopped him with a cry. “No, Jost! I can bear that place no further! Take me home.”

He kissed me on my blood-matted forehead and obliged. His strong arms easily carried me, as if I were no more than a rabbit hanging from his belt. As I was carried, I watched the rest of the village prepare for the feast.

The men sat outside on stones covered with blankets the women brought, and opened the rabbits. They sat in a circle and threw the offal into the center, tossing the skins and beasts behind them so that the women could walk the outside of the circle and pick the rabbits up for boiling. I heard the shout that the alehouse offered its fires and all its kettles for our use, just as at feast time.

And in the distance, far from the merrymaking, I saw the friar talking with our priest, gesturing such that the fabric rolling from his arms made him look like a bird spreading its wings for the sun to dry them. I shuddered in Jost’s arms and whispered, “Hurry!” into his ear. The friar was insisting, perhaps, that the ceremony interrupted by the men’s return be taken up again.

Irmeltrud and the children followed us, Matern pulling at his father’s garments, for they dared not let Jost out of their sight, so hungry for him they were.

Jost brought me inside the cottage and put me down upon my straw tick. “Bring me some warm water,” he commanded Irmeltrud, but our kettle was cold. The fire had gone out, for Alke and Matern had been with Frau Zweig. The children sat on my straw and watched their father with wide eyes, motionless. He took a corner of my bedding and dipped it in the cold water, then used it to wipe the blood off my skin.

“Why did they shave and strip her and not you?” he asked Irmeltrud, turning his head. She stood over by the dark hearth with her back to us.

“I was next,” she said. “They were going to burn us, Jost, for witching. Our neighbors lied to the friar and told him we had soured the milk and pissed in the…Oh, God…” She broke down, unable to continue. She sank onto the hearth, putting her face into her hands.

I stared into Jost’s eyes as he did his delicate work, muscles visible in his strong arms. The bedding was now pink and streaked with my blood. The unspoken thing was like another person in the room. He rhythmically washed my face as I considered the tongue in my mouth. What would be the advantage to saying it, and what the advantage to keeping silent? Surely, by the way they had welcomed each other, the stronger bond was between the two of them.

I couldn’t say it: that Irmeltrud had accused me.

The bowl of water was now as red as if it had caught the throat-rush from a slaughtered goat. Jost rose to toss it out and refill it. Irmeltrud then took the chance to stand up and walk the few steps over to me. She leaned down and whispered, “What were the
Pillen
?”

I shook my head, feeling how strange it was to have no hair tangling beneath me on the pillow. If I told her the
Pillen
were to diminish all pain, she would know I had not meant to share. We each had a secret to keep.

After he had cleaned me, she put upon me the chemise and kirtle that I had last worn when plugged bellyful with Jost, and lent to me a second skirt she had. There was no other bodice, so I pulled the blanket around me and donned the cloak I’d not had time to put on when the friar took me. I handed Jost’s shirt back to him, and he slipped inside it.

“Cover your head, Mutter,” he said, his eyes pained at the pitiful sight.

I pulled the blanket up over my head.

“There’ll be no more talk of you two as witches,” said Jost. “We found something other than food in the forest.”

“What do you mean?” asked Irmeltrud.

“You will see,” he said. “And no villager shall blink to look upon you. They were fools to put you up for trial. It never would have happened if the lord had stayed here to keep order.”

Jost’s confidence was so firm that I took a deep breath, suddenly released from fear. Of course I had known all along that Jost’s arrival would cure everything.

“Now,” he said, “are you hungry?”

We wrapped my bare feet in rags and walked back to the village square.

The smell was overwhelming. Meat! Everyone was smiling and laughing; our family was the only one yet somber. We went into the alehouse, where everyone was seated at the plank tables, singing and jesting. I looked for the friar but did not see him.

No one paid me any heed, which I could scarcely believe. Jost lightly swatted one of the men who had gone with the hunters’ party, and he moved over upon the bench so that we could sit. Alke and Matern sat opposite, their gazes trained on Jost with the utter trust God grants only to children. Soon enough, a huge trencher was placed in front of Jost by the alewife. “We’re told you killed the most rabbits, so you eat first,” she said. She winked as she added, “And trapped the one who caused all our woe. That’ll be a fire to warm my hands at.”

Her eyes shifted to the right, to focus on Irmeltrud and me.

“I see your look, alewife,” threatened Jost, “and it shall stop now. The village has fallen prey to utter foolishness in the menfolk’s absence and it shall stop. My wife and
Mutter
are no more witches than yonder rabbit on the trencher.”

“Such mischief was abroad, sir,” she said, “I feared for their lives, I did. There was no welcomer sound than the shout of the men returning.” She curtseyed and returned with huge mugs of water for Irmeltrud and me, her way of apologizing.

“Remember the finer days when this would be filled with ale?” asked Irmeltrud.

“Aye, well I remember!” laughed the alewife. “And Güde surely remembers too!”

They both peered at me, waiting for my senseless reply and laugh. But I could not give it. I saw that Irmeltrud was determined to resume her life as it had been before, but I could not forget what dim hours I had spent in the tower, and that I had stood, shaking and blood-covered, before the eyes of all this village. The alewife had looked too. Whether with compassion or not, she had looked.

“Drink, Großmutter,” she murmured to me.

Jost handed over a hunk of rabbit meat, greasy and pungent. I made the sign of the meat and saw it echoed all across the hall. Everyone
had
been paying heed to us.

I popped it into my mouth and nearly swooned. Tucked under its gray fur, which now lay with the others in a soft, loose pelt pile on the snow outside, the rabbit had kept a sturdy flesh, salty and gamy.
Thank you, rabbit, for your meat.
I chewed the piece and then gulped down the alewife’s water. I leaned across Irmeltrud’s body toward Jost, anxious for my next bit. He doled it out to all of us in turn: me, Irmeltrud, Matern, Alke. This was a different order than before.

“Vater, you should eat too!” said Matern, for he noticed his father skipped himself.

“We ate while we hunted, to keep our strength up,” he said. “I can wait to eat.”

When the rabbit meat was exhausted, the alewife brought another trencher. We ate that quickly too, and Jost finally had his first bites. Irmeltrud leaned her head against Jost and closed her eyes. “Is it a dream that you are back?” she asked.

“It is no dream.”

“And all can return to as it was,” she said.

I surveyed her with a wooden feeling. How could she forgive Frau Zweig for trying to steal her children by sentencing her to die? And how could I forgive her? How could I stand the memory of Jost hugging her to him more fastly than ever he had done me?

What would we say to the friar to satisfy him?

I looked all around me. He was not here. Nor were the Kuepers or the Zweigs. Rabbit bones formed a little pile in the midst of each table, sucked absolutely white and gristle-free. A table away, children still sat sucking the bones like they were
Mutters’
breasts.

“We are finally full,” said the lord, climbing up on a table to stand above everyone. “For a long time, we wandered the woods without success. We were in despair, thinking of our wives and children so far away, wishing for our return with hands full of food. And on we pulled ourselves through that thick snow, so thick that we sank to our necks sometimes.”

My hand went to my mouth. I smelled the rabbit grease still clinging to it.

“We continued on, for we had no choice. We would rather die in the snow than return with nothing to offer. And one day, Jost Müller came to me with an odd tale to tell.”

I looked at him, surprised. Irmeltrud lifted her head off his shoulder.

“Would you like to tell it?” asked the lord.

Jost stood. He raised his voice so it could carry through the alehouse, deep and comforting. “I will tell my tale,” he said. “I slept one night, hovering on the thin crust of snow with my blanket, aware of the deep, soft snow beneath, so deep that if I were to sink into it as I lay prone, I should surely suffocate and drown in it as one would the river. I lay there, trying not to move and break the thin rime that kept me safe. I looked above me and saw the moon beaming down. I prayed that God would keep its light cold, to keep the snow crisp.”