The Witch's Trinity (28 page)

“I saw that moon with you,” I mumbled. “You howled for it.”

Irmeltrud pinched my thigh and hissed at me.

“And as I lay there upon my back, the snow beside me opened up and a woman’s head came up out of it, staring at me with wild eyes and black hair. Only her bare head and shoulders appeared from the snow, as if her feet touched the ground far, far below. Or hovered.”

“It was a witch,” I heard the whisper.

“A witch, a black-haired witch came out of the snow,” came more whispers. “What a fright, the moon gleaming on the snow and her hair dark against it, a witch, a witch.”

“I bethought myself it was only a dream,” said Jost. “For instantly she was not there and the snow was not marred.”

“It was a witch,” continued the whispers. “No dream at all.”

“In the morning, I told Ramwold of my dream and he cast the runes to see if we were in danger from the spirits of the woods,” said Jost.

I could easily see it, for I had seen it so many times: Ramwold pulling the calfskin bag from his belt and scattering onto the white cloth, barely visible against the snow, the many sticks, each with a rune carved into it. I remember, years ago, watching Ramwold cut the letters into the sticks, the rough slashes of his knife. He was a young man, then, making his own set since his father had died and the runes were to be buried with him. As he carved, tears had flowed down his cheek into his beard, but he ceased not his toil.

I pictured the men of the hunting party in a circle around Ramwold, dread-filled from the telling of Jost’s dream. Ramwold said the prayer and then, with his eyes cast heavenward, crouched and picked up three of the sticks without looking at them. The vision reminded me of Künne’s hand casting about in the water for three pebbles.

His hands would have gathered the twigs, as spindly-seeming as his very arm itself after age and the never-harvest had worked upon him. And then once he had them, he could lower his glance and look at the markings.

“Tell what they were,” said Jost now, “for I have not the skill.”

Across the room, Ramwold stood. As always, the bag of runes dangled from his belt, with the odd ends of the sticks poking the sides. He smiled.

“Two of the three sticks were merkstave,” he said.

I nodded, though few others did; it seemed the rune lore was becoming lost to Jost and those of his age. When a rune was merkstave it meant that it lay in opposition to its meaning: either the marking upon it was facedown or upside down. It was usually a dark sign.

“The first rune was Isa, the ice,” said Ramwold. “When naturally positioned, this is a sign of frozen motion, stillness—something each soul comes across in the course of life. But in this merkstave position, it means that there has been a plot, a cunning and guileful plot, to cause the slowness.”

Not a whisper purged the air. We all knew what the slowness was: the fields unwilling to do their task. So who would plot this for us?

“The second was Jera, the year of good harvest.”

Still no sound.

“In the merkstave position. Meaning a bad time, harsh change. Famine.”

I looked at Jost. He watched Ramwold as carefully and respectfully as a child would a father. He had never had the chance to listen so to Hensel. Maybe the old rune reader had taken up such a position in Jost’s life.

“The third stick, which lay straight and centered as the trunk of a tree itself, was Perthro, the woman’s sign. A secretive and mystery-filled rune, this one is like a woman with her thoughts raging beneath her cap. And so said the runes,” said Ramwold.

“And so do we listen,” we all responded in unison.

“Ramwold spake to us of what he understood from the runes,” continued Jost. “Our bad fortune was not a punishment from God but a trick from one with feminine qualities or a female.”

“The one in the cage!” screamed someone, and there was hubbub suddenly. Benches were scraping back and mugs were smacking down upon the board, accompanied by scolds and angry words.

“Wait!” cried Jost. “Allow me to finish my tale.”

I watched the company settle with a sick feeling in my stomach.

“No sooner did Ramwold collect up the runes and refasten the bag to his belt than a woman stepped out of the trees to speak with us. She was shaking with the cold and as hungry-looking as any of us. She had not exactly the face I had seen in my dream, but because her hair was dark, I knew it was she. She begged us for food, and I laughed heartily. ‘It is your doing that we suffer so,’ I told her. ‘The runes have told us, and here you are upon the instant. If you ask us for food, it is a bitter contrary wish, for you did indeed cause the lack of it.’ This she denied most strongly, but her hair was like a raven’s wing upon the blankness of the snow around us. It had been marked by Satan’s dark fingers as he clenched her locks in passion.”

I knew it had to be she, the one who had pressed my soul into an owl’s body, who had brought me to the place where the devil presented his book to me.

“We made for her a cage and put it upon a sled. She ranted at us and stretched her arms through the gaps such that we feared even to come near. Ramwold made a charm and put it upon the snow at the east side of the cage to weaken her power. For one entire night we listened to her fume and shriek. The dream did not return to me, although all night I thought of her slipping through the wooden bars, sinking into the snow, and silently tunneling her way to my side. The next day, as we moved ourselves and the sled farther on our journey, we saw our first elk. It fell to our spearing and we ate of it and found then more elk, its brethren, and many rabbits and squirrels and other beasts. And we filled our sleds with the goodness, always taking care to keep the charm on the snow before her, and prepared to return home.”

I could only think: had they given this poor woman of the elk or rabbit or squirrel meat?

“We have brought her back with us for justice to be meted out,” said Jost. The clamor began again but he raised his voice and again gained the village’s attention. “I have heard dire news of my wife and my
Mutter
being accused of witchcraft during my absence. I am ashamed for the thought of it, and to see my
Mutter
in such a state. But I do understand that you did not know what we men in the woods knew, that there was one source for all this mischief. And now that we have delivered her up for punishment, I want no more talk of Güde or Irmeltrud.”

There was a roar of approval, and then the hall did empty out, for all to run to the sled and taunt the one who huddled there. For that had been what I saw from the side of my gaze and tried to discard: a woman kept like a beast in a cage.

Outside, the crowd circled the little cage. I could not see above all the shoulders nor through the bodies, so I followed the young boys’ example and climbed up onto one of the meat sleds now emptied of its rabbits. The wood grated against my shins through my thin, borrowed garments, and my arms were barely strong enough to hoist me up, but young Fritz Plattler helped pull me up. I could now see that the villagers stood an arm’s distance away from the cage. The charm still lay on the snow on the eastern side, butting up against Frau Winkel’s shoe. Inside the cage, Fronika sat curled in the corner with her dark hair tangling from her cap to mass around her thin, frightened face. “May I have some food?” she called out in a hoarse voice. “I smell the rabbits you boiled and I am starved, for I have not eaten for many days!”

“We have been starved far longer, for your doings with the devil!” cried someone.

“No! No!” said Fronika, but her voice was so hoarse that it carried no conviction. It was as if she refused a glass of ale in better times, rather than refused that she had brought famine down upon a village. “Why do you blame me? I have had naught to do with the devil.”

“I remember her from Whitsuntide and other fests,” said one of the older women. “Yes, Michaelmas too! She would come for the food, for she and her sister were sore beset to fend for themselves. And look at her now, ruining all of us. For shame! We fed you!”

Fronika bent her head and began to cry at the mention of her sister. This surely was not the same woman who’d visited me with fury in her very skin! She was weeping for her sister, rather than avenging her death. My vision went hazy. Fronika blurred in her cage as did the jeering villagers. Were this woman’s words true? Fronika had come for our fests because she was starving, even while we then lived in plenty? I tried to call back a memory of her, skulking around the madly dancing couples, her drawn face, her hands holding bread and sausage against her skirts as if to hide them from view….

And I had understood this? That she was then hungry?

So…perhaps…I had thought of her when I myself became hungry?

This wasn’t the Fronika of the nighttime rides. She had no ardor to her. She had the soul of a dog limping from a years-old kick.

“Well you may cry, Frau! For we have found you out and you will serve your punishment!” cried someone.

She made no reaction. The Fronika of my nighttime visits would have raised her eyes, gleaming with intensity and hatred, to spew a reply. And she would have wrenched at the bars until they split. Or gnawed at them.

This was a woman who had no courage to her.

Someone pulled at my skirts. It was Irmeltrud. She wanted me to reach out a hand to pull her up onto the sled, but I had no strength. Fritz Plattler pulled her up and she gave both of us a careful smile. Then she turned to the woman in the cage below her and called out stridently, “Mistress of the woods! Do you see me and my husband’s
Mutter
standing here next to me?”

She lifted her head, showing her red, tearstained face. I watched her eyes very closely. There was not a whisker of recognition. She nodded tremulously.

“In yonder yard there are two stacks of wood. One to burn me and one for Güde,” said Irmeltrud. “I was about to die for your malefaction. A pure, innocent soul tortured by flames because of you. You!”

“I don’t know you, Frau. I have done no mischief!”

Irmeltrud laughed, a ripe, rippling sound that seemed to go on long after she stopped. “Done no mischief? We are nothing but bones and the hope of skin here, Frau! And the village came to blame my husband’s
Mutter
and then me for all the trouble: milk souring and chickens removed of their eggs. We were about to
burn
for your deeds, do you understand?”

A flicker of fear crossed her vacant, sad face. She used her long hair to dry her tears. And then she pitched herself forward until she was on her hands and knees. The villagers shouted and backed up. The cage was not tall enough for her to stand up in, so she crawled its length until she was as close to Irmeltrud and me as possible. “I’m sorry you were blamed if there was something you did not do,” said the woman nearly in a whisper. “But perhaps then you can understand that I am too in that position: blamed for something I did not do. This village has been kind to me. I have eaten here in the past on feast days and no one ever asked why I brought nothing to the table I supped at. My sister and I had to manage for ourselves in the woods, eating what we found only. Always we were hungry. She was shy unto fear of death of others. I was the only one she trusted. I came here and filled my pockets for my sister. I was
grateful
to your village. Grateful!
Grateful!
Never would I raise my finger to do ill to any of you.”

“I am the one possessed,” I mumbled to myself. “For this woman never transported me upon her hair, never did she.”

“A fine speech,” said Irmeltrud. “But I have heard tell that even demons get soft voices and hide their horns.”

“
Ja!
Don’t be tricked!” yelled Ramwold. He and Jost were at the other end of the circle, and Fronika turned her head to look at them. If Jost had indeed killed her sister in rabbit form, would not she then quake to see him and cast her ire his way? But she slowly turned her head back to us for the remainder of Ramwold’s speech. “She traveled as far as our hunters’ party did! How did a mere woman come so far in the snow if not assisted by devils? The runes told us of her deceit.”

“I don’t care what you do to me,” she said dully, “so long as you give me some food.”

It was then that I saw the flash of black and white at the edge of the crowd, and fast I pulled myself down off the sled. My heart began a hasty race in my bosom, like a rat bolting across the floor. Irmeltrud remained up there; her face was calm and level.

“What be the meaning of this?” called the friar.

“Come and see for yourself,” said someone, and I heard the steps in the snow as people moved to make room for him.

“Who are you?” I heard him ask. The intimate privacy of his voice made me shudder. Someone in front of me stepped to the side to pick up her child, and thus I had a full view of him while mostly hidden myself.

“I am Fronika of Steindorf,” she said.

“And why are you pressed into such device like a blackbird?”

“They blame me for this village’s troubles. And I am nothing but hungry!”

“Feed her!” he commanded.

“No!” said Frau Schmidt. “Why give her the precious food she denied us?”

“
Feed
her!” rumbled the friar. “Even our tower’s prisoners were fed.”

I, who knew the friar, understood that the kindness was not true. He was like a hunter who releases an animal from a trap, only to kneel in the snow and cleave its throat. It was my own grandson, Matern, who raced into the alehouse to fetch meat for Fronika.