The Witch's Trinity (7 page)

“The third stone, Frau Himmelmann?” asked the friar.

She blew upon her arm as if it were a hot spoon about to go into her mouth, and waved it around with a cringe that made me gather up my skirts tight in both hands. I wanted to run to her and usher her to her own pots of salve, waiting in her cottage.

She bit her lip so hard her entire jaw went white, and held her hand over the kettle. Even the steam hurt her, I saw. And then she tried. She darted in but didn’t go far before she screamed and pulled it out again. She shook her arm wildly, gasping and shrieking, droplets of water spraying around her. And then her hand went in again, as if she tried to trick it, like a boy might jump into the river before giving himself time to be afraid.

She could not conquer the boiling water. She looked at all around her in despair, her eyes piteous. And then she fastened her gaze again upon the kettle. “My skin is burning,” she said simply. “I have already failed.”

She had not said her prayer before making the test.

On the way home, I stepped into the large snowdrifts, wanting to suffer. My leathern boots were soon wet and ice panged its way into my feet. Jost walked quickest of all of us and soon disappeared.

They had wrapped Künne’s hand in bandages, and would unwrap it at the end of three days to see if it had been spared. In the meantime, she would wait in the stone tower that had always been the prison but now was coming to be called the Witch’s Tower.

Frau Töpfer scurried to catch up with Irmeltrud, nearly knocking me over as she flew by.

“What think you of the day’s events?” she asked excitedly.

“That didn’t put soup in my mouth, but it filled me somehow,” said Irmeltrud.

I watched their stolid backs, not believing what I’d heard. It filled her somehow? Künne’s suffering was soup in her mouth? I ceased walking and remained frozen. They walked on, a babble of bright spite. “I knew it of her, old hag. Jealous of our hen. She’ll be clucking soon enough, with fire at the hem of her gown!”

“That one is fearful for her,” said Irmeltrud, nodding back at me.

“Fearful she’ll get the evil eye too?”

“No. Not fearful
of
her, but
for
her. Because they are friends.”

“Then she had best stay off my stone!” laughed Frau Töpfer. She reached out and patted it, for they were now nearing her dooryard. “Keep in good health, then,” she said to Irmeltrud and the children, then walked to her own door.

I finally roused myself to walk again. As I approached the Töpfer yard, Frau Töpfer came outside again, hatred in her eyes. “My bread has fallen,” she said. “The first we’ve had in weeks, and it’s flat as a leaf.”

I stared at her, thinking of the cat kneading, its paws working in replica of a woman’s dough-pressing hands.

“You had better not be part of this,” she said.

5

An example was brought to our notice as Inquisitors…a certain buried woman was gradually eating the shroud in which she had been buried.

—M
ALLEUS
M
ALEFICARUM

W
e had no dinner that night.

The children went and sat at the table at the proper hour. “Mutter, I’m hungry,” said Matern.

“I have nothing for you,
Lieblinge,”
said Irmeltrud. She went outside with two bowls and filled them with snow. She set them in front of the children. “It’s the fairies’ food,” she said. “Light as air.”

Alke began to cry.

Jost had not looked at me all afternoon, consumed with building up the fire so that we would at least all be warm, then sharpening his knife. “I’ll go milk Künne’s goat for her,” he said. He took the bucket and a knife with him.

“Alke, I’ll mend your nightgown for you,” I said. “Even if you’re hungry, you can sleep well with tight stitches in your garment.”

Alke let snow fall out of her hand onto her lap, and all heads twitched to look at me.

“Can I not do such a simple task to please you?” I asked.

“You’re dazed, Güde,” said Irmeltrud. “The gown is naught but ashes today.”

“How is this so?” I asked.

“I threw it in the fire yesterday, and the pot cloth too, for the animal here with you had brought blood to them both.”

I remembered somewhat, then truly remembered. I had been petting the cat that had rested on the sill to stare in at me. I touched the mark upon my forehead.

“Well might you touch it,” said Irmeltrud. “That cat has transfixed your mind, be it black or yellow or gray or striped.”

But she knew my mind had been similarly vexed even before the cat came. In recent years, I had forgotten the most basic things, such as Jost’s name—and one time, a horrible day in the forest, who he was. He was a stranger, holding a pheasant by its neck, and I struggled with the thought that perhaps I ought to know him. After he removed his hat and spake some words with me, I fixed my head and did. “What shall I sew, then?” I asked simply.

Irmeltrud shook her head and put branches onto the fire, then went to sit with the children. I took the iron fire prod and poked through the ashes, wondering which of them was the nightgown Alke used to dream in.

I hoped Künne’s dreams in the Witch’s Tower were of May and brilliantly colored flowers.

When Jost returned, he had meat. His face was grim and to my look of wonderment he answered, “Künne’s goat.”

Irmeltrud readied a pot for the chunks of hindquarter, and the children ran deliriously around her skirts. It was frightening to see how excitedly they danced, because it showed how desperately hungry they were.

“But Jost, this is surely not even a tenth of what that goat had to give,” said Irmeltrud. “Did you leave the carcass at her barn?”

“I was not the only one with the idea of killing it,” he said. “Many men were at Künne’s tonight, sifting through her larder and casting a murderous eye on the goat.”

I let out a cry of alarm. “Do they not think these things still belong to her?”

“She’ll not return for them,” grunted Irmeltrud.

I looked at Jost. “No, no. She may pass the test.”

“I think she will not return,” said Jost to me, in as gentle a tone as possible. “So many spake against her, and her arm was red with boils already before they wrapped it.”

“So how was the goat divvied?” asked Irmeltrud angrily, now that she had a better look at what he had brought home. “We are the closest neighbors and ought to have the largest share. This is lacking, Jost!”

“I was lucky to get what I got,” said Jost. “There were many men there. The entire village is as hungry as we are.”

“The Töpfers had bread to bake today,” said Irmeltrud bitterly.

“But you went only to milk the goat,” I said. “How did it happen that the goat was killed?”

“Ah, God, your mind gone and your eyes too!” said Irmeltrud. “He took a knife with him, clattering in the bucket.”

I was ashamed for him, until I remembered that he had spoken up for Künne in front of the friar.

“So the bucket is empty, I see,” said Irmeltrud.

“They drank straight from her udder before gashing her throat,” said Jost.

“And was there anything in the larder for the taking? Where’s our share of that?”

“Gone too quickly,” said Jost.

“And why didn’t you press the men to give you what was rightly yours? You let them leave with hands full?”

“Curb your tongue, woman. There were wild eyes there and knives still wet. Enjoy what we have and be silent,” he said.

“And why weren’t your eyes wild then as well? Your children sat down to eat snow tonight!”

“You would have been frighted at the scene, wife. Had Künne herself showed up, she would have been torn limb from limb. Things were broken and thrown across the room, her bedding savaged to see if coins were buried there. I’d not be surprised if they hack the walls down to feed their fires.”

An aroma drifted from the cooking goat meat, and Irmeltrud fell silent to inhale. Tears sprang to her eyes. “We lived through the plague, a time when you saw someone and thought,
I may never look upon you again, so good tidings.
We lived through it and bore children and to what end? To starve in our homes?”

“God will provide for us. All we need is a good spring to plant again,” said Jost.

Irmeltrud gave a low laugh and I knew what she thought of the idea of a good spring. Did such a thing even exist anymore?

“Step back, children,” said Jost, for Alke and Matern were so near to the meat that they could easily fall in the fire.

We all sat and waited as the meat cooked. Then finally Irmeltrud pulled the pot from the shelf and we all hastened to the table. She distributed the chunks by size: the largest to Jost and herself, then middling-sized to the children, and a tiny piece to me. It scorched my mouth, as it did all of us, but we were too famished to care and ate through our tongues’ pain. The meat was tough since the goat was stringy and as ill-fed as the rest of the village. Nevertheless, red juice oozed from it and my teeth joyfully mashed the fibers as I tasted the salt of it. I reached for Alke’s bowl of snow, now melted into water, and drank it.

Afterward, we all sat looking at the empty board, shocked that the feast had ended so soon. Irmeltrud brought over the cooled pot and we ran our fingers in the grease and licked them.

And then the cat jumped onto the table and tried to oil its paw as well.

“Fie!” screamed Irmeltrud. She sprang to her feet, upsetting the trencher, which smashed to the ground. The cat yowled and dashed into the shadows at the other end of the room.

“Are you keeping it, Güde?” she asked.

“May it please God, I never opened the door to it!” I protested. My heart was beating rapidly from the clash, and I wondered how many more pulses it had left before ceasing its work.

“Did it not spring onto the table from your pallet?” she demanded.

“When did I have a chance to bring in the beast?”

“It must have come in as I did,” said Jost. “And tame yourself. ’Tis easy to rid ourselves of a cat.” He stood and walked to the corner.

“Cross yourself, Jost! Perhaps ’tis Künne here to visit Güde. Look at the animal’s leg. Is it red and sore?”

“Be silent,” said Jost. “It is no more Künne than the fat in the pan.”

“I wager the jail keeper sees her no longer in the tower. She made herself invisible and slipped through the door, then cast herself as a cat so that she may visit Güde—”

“Silence!” roared Jost.

Matern, predictably, began to cry. His sister simply looked on with alarmed eyes. Irmeltrud pressed her lips together and stared at me. As angry as she was at Jost for bellowing, she blamed me.

“Künne is a good woman who bound herbs to ease us all,” said Jost. “We have her to thank for the good health of these two, and I don’t remember you thinking ill of her when you were straining in childbirth! She’s dear to Mutter, and thereby dear to me. If we see her burned at the stake for the foolishness of that woman who is barren and can’t believe it, it’ll be a sorry day for our village.”

Jost leaned over and easily picked up the cat. Carrying it to the door, his face bent into its fur, he pressed the latch, opened the door, and silently tossed the cat into the snow.

“Won’t it be cold?” asked Alke.

“It can shelter in the granary,” said Jost. “And it’s wearing its own coat, as thick as the pelt we’re drying for you.” He pointed to the rabbit hide hanging above the fire.

“Vater, was that Künne?” asked Matern.

“It was a cat only,” said Jost firmly. “Poor Künne is less comfortable tonight than that cat could ever be. Now let’s get ourselves to bed so that we may be ready for what befalls us tomorrow.”

“I don’t have a nightgown, and there wasn’t enough dinner,” said Alke.

“You’ll sleep in your shift, as you have been,” said Irmeltrud.

“What happened to her gown?” asked Jost.

“It had blood on it from the devil that marked your mother. I burned it.”