The Witch's Trinity (4 page)

I cared not what the book said.

It was not as real as the taste of pig in my mouth.

I had been wrong thinking that my life would end that night, by design of wind or beast. I walked hardly a child’s tread before I emerged back into the meadow. I climbed again the hill, saw the drowsing lights of my village, and descended to my home.

The door was open a crack and Jost ran to me in alarm when I pushed it further.

“Mutter! You’re frozen to the core!” He dragged me to the fire and saw for the first time my basket. “Drop that,” he commanded, and rubbed my hands to warm them. I looked across the room and saw that everyone was in bed. Irmeltrud had her back to me although I believed she was yet awake.

“You can eat of it, Jost,” I said. “I kept some for you.”

I smiled and pointed to the basket.

His face had the expression I’ve seen only in the last few years—the one that says I’ve said something odd, or called Matern by Jost’s name or forgotten my own.

“’Twill spark the fire a moment only,” he said. “But I cannot eat of it.”

It was a decayed bit of basketry, splotched with weather and missing several reeds.

There was no meat in it.

3

It is useless to argue that any result of witchcraft may be a phantasy and unreal, because such a phantasy cannot be procured without resort to the power of the devil.

—M
ALLEUS
M
ALEFICARUM

J
ost unwound the scarf from my head, spreading it to dry. Then he fetched my blanket from my straw pallet and put it over my shoulders. As my shivering ceased, I became aware of a new smell. Although Jost’s departure had brought disaster for me, it had brought a filling dinner for the family. Walking his traps, he had found a rabbit, which Irmeltrud stewed. Only a bit remained for me, and Jost ladled it into the bowl that earlier had held only carrot broth.

“It was such a sight, Mutter,” said he. “A pure white rabbit I never would have seen against the snow, but for one black stripe against its pelt as if a fire had scorched it. It was passing strange.”

“He tastes well enough,” I said, my fingers pushing the soft flesh off the bone. His previous bones, sucked and cleaned, were piled on the hearth.

A rare smile lit Jost’s face. “Alke is tanning it for a wrap. It will fit around her neck.” He pointed to it hanging from the rafter, salt rubbed into its nether side. The pelt was lovely, even with the ghostly holes where the bright eyes had been. The rabbit had a host of soft bristles in a measure, while a lesser-nourished creature might have had scant. It would toast Alke’s neck through the coldest of winds.

“Thank you for your flesh, beast of the wood,” I said. I made the ancient sign of the meat blessing, four fingers downcast to mirror the legs of the still-living beast, and then upturned them to show its felling, and finally pressed them to my lips to prove I honored the eating. I then made the sign of the cross. I put the final bone into my mouth and pursed my lips around it, like Hensel with his pipe of yore. Then I placed it with the others in the cock.

Jost spake in a whisper. “Why did you go out in such weather, Mutter?”

I looked into his kind face, where I saw evidence of my own gray eyes and cheekbones. “She said I chose it?”

“I searched for you,” he said. “I called and called your name. There were no footprints in the snow.”

“Jost, I did not choose it!” I knew full well the tale that had been told. Old Güde, who has no mind anymore, who forgets her own name, had flung herself into the storm.
We tried to stop her, but she would listen to naught,
Irmeltrud likely had told him.

“I’m no fool to cast myself away from the warmth of the hearth in the dark of night. The snow was falling fast! I could not see my hand though it be a spoon’s length from my face! Do you think I wished this? She pushed me out.”

He blinked. Then Jost lowered his voice even further. “You are getting older, Mutter. Sometimes the things you do seem…out of sense.”

I whispered my next words also, for I saw that Irmeltrud’s back was too rigid for her mind to be relaxed and dreaming. “Have you not seen the hatred in her, Jost? I have been kindly to her all these years, and yet she hates me. She cast me out and then barred the door. I pounded and cried such that Matern cried out as well, but her heart was a thorn!”

He looked at the basket I had brought home with me.

“Jost!” I hissed. “Do not judge me by that folly.”

“You said it had meat in it and it had none.”

“Ask the children about her barring the door! The door that Hensel made!” I stood up in a fury and moved to the bed where Irmeltrud and the children lay.

“Mutter! Thank God you are back!” Irmeltrud sat up and encased me in a hug so seemingly true that I was confused. “Have you known how many hours Jost plogged the wood for you? We went to bed sore affrighted.” She pressed a fervent kiss upon my cheek and I struggled not to wrap my arms about her, I was so needy for such a touch. “Alke! Matern!” I said their names loudly to rouse them. Blushed with sleep they were, and glad for me. Alke buried her face into my chest while Matern snaked his arm to my waist.

“Großmutter, I dreamed you were back, and you are!” said Matern.

“Tell your father in what manner I left,” I commanded.

“Mutter asked you to get food,” said the boy. “And we waited and waited for you to come, but it was Vater who came with the rabbit.”

“Tell him how I pounded at the door to be let in, how I did not wish to go. She kept the door closed to me,” I said.

Irmeltrud gasped and her blue, blue eyes opened wide. “Oh, Mutter! Mutter…Jost, surely you know I have no heartless way like this! Güde was pounding at the door but as a game for the children. They rapped back and laughed, and she laughed too!”

“If cries be laughter, then betides the bee will kiss us next spring rather than sting,” I said bitterly.

“Großmutter, were you not playing?” asked Alke.

“No! She asked me to get food, Matern said. Would a daughter-in-law ask that of such a time-tried old woman? At that hour? She cast me out!” I cried.

Above Alke’s golden head, Irmeltrud exchanged a look with Jost. I felt like a child; I held no sway. She had convinced the children it was a playful jest as I begged for my life on the cold side of the door. And now Jost was persuaded too. Any protestation would only mire me further. “I want to sleep now,” I said, pushing Alke and Matern from me. I rose, tired past belief suddenly, my body remembering the ordeal it had been through. I accepted a kiss from Jost without looking at him. I trundled to my cold straw and curled up on it.

I looked across the room with its solitary table and benches at the remains of the fire. In the corner of my vision I saw the shadow of Jost as he pulled back the bedclothes and moved his big body into them. I prayed he would not rut with Irmeltrud this night; I could not bear the sounds of that further betrayal.

From the height of the rafter, the little rabbit stared down at me through the blank holes of its pelt. One solid black stripe where the devil raked his finger.

The next morn when Jost opened the door, a cloud of snow fell into the room. He had to dig for nigh onto an hour to free the door of its wall of snow. Then he set out again, whistling, to see what else might have wedged a paw in his traps.

We had nothing for breakfast but water, and Irmeltrud and the children left to gather branches for our fire, moving outside through the tunnel Jost had prepared. As I closed the door behind them, I saw the rich fold of whiteness that blanketed everything, white as ever Mary’s soul was. I sat by the fire, mending Alke’s nightgown. Irmeltrud had already threaded the needle for my shaky hands with a piece of thread unraveled from a burned pot cloth. The room seemed very dim compared with the brilliance outside. The needle flashed its own small light, yet I had to bring the gown close to my face to see my uneven stitches. Alke tended to toss in her sleeping, and the weight of her own hip had wrenched the fabric. I heard a scratching at the door and straightened a bit to listen. ’Twas a small sound. It came again and I rose to open the door. A cat was there, its paw still raised in the motion of grinding its claws against our wood.

“Feh! Shoo!” I shouted, and slammed the door.

It wasn’t a black cat, which the Pope had warned against, but any cat is known to be trafficking with the powers of evil. I made the sign of the cross, accidentally dragging the sharp needle along my forehead as I did so. I cried out in pain, and brought my other hand up to the wound. My fingers came back red. At the fire, I pressed the burned pot cloth to my head. It made no difference if it was spoiled. The cat scratched again.

And again.

And again.

Then the thick wool that covered the window moved. The beast was batting the cloth from the other side, sitting on the small sill. “Pursue me not,” I whispered, dropping the needle and pot cloth. I watched one paw make its way through. The cat clawed at the edge of the wool until it was able to push it to the side and stare in at me. A gust of cold wind came with it.

It was a gray tabby, with stripes like the shadows trees throw on the ground. Its eyes were green, I could tell even from across the room. Its mouth opened and it gave a distant meow, its tiny, sharp teeth grimacing at me.

“I did not sign,” I said. “And if the book signed for me, I am not beholden to it.”

The cat sat down on its back legs, its shoulder still pressing the window cloth to the side. My heart was pounding. I made the sign of the cross again, and then, beginning to feel the sweat pressing out all over my body, walked to pick up the broom from the corner. I was terrified the beast would leave the sill and leap into the room. But did I have the daring to swat it with the broom, to push it backward into the snow?

“Be gone, you devil!” I said.

I took two steps forward, the broom braced in front of me. So close now to the animal, I saw that the eyes were golden-flecked, and that a black slit ran up them vertically. Like the stripe on the rabbit pelt. Whose eyes were these?

Our eyes fixed. The slits in the cat’s widened until there were two black pools in the middle of the green. ’Twas a transformation. It took the evil from the cat and made it the soft thing women kept in their laps years ago, gamboling after thread. Once these were not hated but loved. They spake their mews sweetly and drank the stream that issued from the cow, sitting there by the bucket, milk dripping from their whiskers. And making all laugh from the furiousness of the pounce on a poor mouse. Of course, in the granary we had to have cats to keep down the rats. But Künne’s family had had one that would come into the house, to sit by the fire with the family; this was how I knew the feel of the fur. They even named it, calling it Flüstern, since its soft step in the cottage was like a secret whisper between hushed voices.

The cat stayed on the sill until my eyes went blind from the blaze of white behind it.

“Is your fur soft?” I asked it.

The eyes remained round bowls for me, and it was this that caused my ease. “You are naught but a beast of the barn,” I told it. “Go there now to warm yourself.”

Its back haunches sat in the layer of snow left on our windowsill. As the animal rose again to standing, I heard the smush of snow pressing under its weight. It issued another meow, so like to the tender mewling of a babe that I repeated it in my own quaver.