The Witch's Trinity (5 page)

The cat leaped down, brushing my skirts as it dashed inside. The window cloth flew back down to cover the light from outside.

The cat knew just where to go and jumped onto the hearth. It curled its tail around its body and tucked it under its chin. The marvelous eyes closed. It would sleep, as slumberous as me in my straw.

I sat on the edge of my chair and looked all along its length. Pleasing stripes, and the flesh padded firmly against the bones. This beast looked as though it ate better than Jost’s family.

Leaning to pick up the needle, I ran my finger along it to rid it of its blood and then wiped my finger on the pot cloth. The cat dozed, no companion but for the rising of its skin with each breath. I picked up Alke’s nightgown again to finish my task.

When I awoke, the shadows were different. Alke’s gown had slid to the ground and I picked it up, snapping it in the air to rid it of dust. At this, the cat awoke. The eyes were once again slits, and I dragged in a quick breath of alarm.

It stood and pressed its back up to the ceiling, as coiled as the snake Eve had trusted. I stepped to the back of my chair, thinking to keep the wood between us.

Then the cat’s body sank while the hind parts remained in air, and I saw this posture for what it was: a stretch upon waking. I had seen Jost do the same to prepare for a hard day grooving the millstones. It jumped down from the hearth and came to my skirts, stepping lightly. It pressed against my legs, making a buzzing sound like a muffled bee that instantly brought me back to Künne’s cottage as a girl, playing with Flüstern to get a purr. Without thinking, I crouched down and touched the cat’s head, between the ears.

I groaned in a faltering sort of joy and tears came to my eyes.

Not since Hensel died had I felt such a thing under my hands. Warmth, softness,
life.
Matern and Alke gave swift hugs, but to linger with my hands reveling in such warmth…

Soon I was heaving with my weep, both hands passing over the cat’s fur, plunging into the thicker pelt at the neck and smoothing down across the ribs. Underneath, the belly pelt was the softest of all, and the cat cared not that my tears landed on it. My hands became clogged with its fur, for it came out with my pressuring, and I scattered the hairs on the ground, continuing the stroking that was bringing such pleasure to both of us. The cat began a sort of prance under my hands, with only its front paws dancing.

I leaned back a bit and looked at its motion. It stepped on, a single-minded look in its eye. I laughed in surprised amaze. “Why, ’tis like you’re kneading your own bread,” I said.

Had its paws been hands, the resemblance would have been uncanny. Its muscular arms pressed down into the ground, as women drive themselves into dough, then picked up quickly to renew the force pressing down. “If only our granary had the flour for you,” I said, “You’d make a fine dough to rise, I see that.”

It gazed up at me, the eyes again rounded like black fruit. “Why do you ever have the slits?” I asked it. “It makes the folk affrighted. You’d fare better were your eyes always innocent.”

It lifted its chin in response, and I scraped my fingernails along the fineness of the jawbone, while it stamped out its delight.

“O cat,” said I in satisfaction, “I wish that—”

I heard the latch lift and felt the cold air blustering into the cottage. “Güde!” screamed Irmeltrud. “What are you doing? What are you
doing
?”

The cat darted out almost before my hands knew it was gone, running outside. Irmeltrud screamed a curse after it, and the children came into the cottage, looking frightened.

“Güde, you fool, why were you tarrying with the devil’s handmaiden?” Irmeltrud grasped my hands and pulled on them to get me to rise. She got a good look at me and screamed again. “The blood upon your forehead!” she said, her mouth remaining open in a horrified gape after she spake.

“I’m not hurt,” I said. “I pricked myself with the needle.”

“’Tis the sign the devil leaves to mark his own,” she whispered. She used her skirts to shoo Alke and Matern into the corner, away from me. “You wend your way to hellfire, Güde.”

I stared at her, frightened at the fear she showed. “’Twas not a black cat, only a gray striped one. I was mending Alke’s nightgown and the needle slipped on me. I pricked myself.”

Irmeltrud grabbed the nightgown from the chair and threw it into the fire. Alke began to cry. “It burns blue,” Irmeltrud said. “Devilment!”

Then she picked up the pot cloth. “What be this?”

“The blood from my head,” I said.

“And the blood of others?”

“No!”

“What did the cat bring you?”

“Naught! It is only a cat, like those that run the granary clean of rats. Irmeltrud, I beseech you, cease this! I am no more a lover of the devil than—”

“Children, see you the blood here?” She held up the pot cloth and in the corner the children silently nodded. “I shall burn it, but the children shall remember, Güde, should we ever be asked what we have seen.”

She cast it into the fire and again watched the color of the blaze.

“You must be careful,” she said, folding her arms and staring at me, more unnerving than when the cat had done so on the sill. “Künne faces the inquisitors tomorrow. She may name you.”

“How have you become so cruel?” I asked. “You know I am nothing but an old woman.”

She turned her back on me and went to the door, opening it to pick up a bundle she had dropped at the sight of the cat. “We traded today with Herr Hahn,” she said. “While you stroked the devil’s beast, we dragged a week’s worth of wood to his door in return for a ham hock. It’s not large. Were there only four of us eating, it should suffice. But with a fifth, we shall all still be hungered.”

I turned and looked at the children. Had they understood what she had said, and what was lying underneath, like a snake coiled in a rock’s shadow?

4

It is probable that the devil favours the number three more than any other, for it represents an effective denial of the Holy Trinity.

—M
ALLEUS
M
ALEFICARUM

T
he next morning, I woke with a dread heart. It was the day Künne must defend herself. Irmeltrud was in a rare, high mood, laughing as she dressed the children. Jost was more sober, for he knew Künne as a kindly woman who had oft supped with us when he was young. We walked to the church, feet crunching in the heavy snow. The air was yet dim as we walked, and I heard the scant birds of winter make their morning calls. We walked in a single line, I in the rear, stepping in the large footprints Jost made at the front of the line.

The hall was cold, even with the bodies gathered to hear Künne’s trial. Two tile stoves, one at each side of the hall, worked to dispel the chill. They were the pride of our village, given to the church when the first of our lord’s lineage became a Christian. We all kept on the clothing we had worn in the snow; perhaps we’d shed it if the room warmed. Jost guided us close to one of the stoves, knowing the wee ones felt the cold most. There were only a few benches here. We sat on one and the rest of the people stood.

Künne sat at the front of the room, on a high stool evidently built for this purpose. She hovered above all of us, even those standing. She seemed witchly in her height. The stool was unfair; it made a natural woman look unnatural. Künne had watched everyone file in, and when she saw me, her face twisted into a sort of a smile, what little she could offer on such a grim day. I looked at her gray knotted hair slipping from her cap and fingers like crow’s claws resting on her thin thighs, thinking of who Künne once had been, fleet on her feet, beating even the boys at the races in May, hair shiny and cheeks ruddy like a trout’s breast. When I could bear her face no longer, I looked down.

And saw my own hands on my thighs, as clawlike as hers.

Friar Fuchs, in his magnificent robes, stood up and by raising his hands brought silence into the church. “Good people of Tierkinddorf, I travel our land charged with the duty of ending the devil’s work begun in the hearts and souls of womenfolk. They are doing his bidding, as chilling an army as ever fought behind shield and armor. I have been instructed how to descry these women and test them. My purpose is to find such a woman here in your village and administer the punishment that will release you all from paying for her crimes. For who would want to pay another’s debt? If one among us here today is a
Hexe,
we shall find her out and punish her.”

There. He had said it. The word I feared:
Hexe.
Witch.

He held a book up. It was thick, a solemn black with golden lettering. “This is the
Malleus Maleficarum,
written by the great Heinrich Kramer and his apprentice Jakob Sprenger. I had the honor of traveling throughout southern Germany with this most dedicated of inquisitors, learning from his fine example to ferret out the worst in women, to steadfastly question them and deliver them into the vengeful hands of God. A man must have a strong spine to face the devil’s servants.

“No one in this village knows Latin,” he continued, “which is the language of God’s messengers, the holy men of the church. The name of the book, translated for you, is
The Witches’ Hammer.
And this device—seemingly only paper and ink—is a hammer. With it I will hammer the
Hexe
out of this woman. Think of the smith who stands by the forge all day, hammering the bend from iron, straightening it to its proper use. If this woman should be found guilty of witchcraft, I will straighten her to her proper use.”

He lowered the book down and held it by his side.

“Let us pray,” said the friar.

I stared wildly around the sanctuary, seeing all heads bowed to that litany of monstrous requests to God, even Künne’s. Did they not see? She was already tried in the friar’s mind—tried and condemned.

“Who shall provide the first testimony against this woman?” the friar asked.

Frau Zweig stepped forward. I knew her to be a troubled young woman. Though she and her husband had both survived the Black Death, she had never been able to bear a child. She questioned why they had been spared, if their sparing had no further utility.

“I want to speak against this woman,” said Frau Zweig. “She has kept my womb empty although three times I have felt a child quicken there.”

“How has she done this?”

“I sought her for advice to keep the child safe—the first time. She told me I was wrong, that there was no child. I should have known then, when I saw her wicked smile, that she was working magic to destroy the life inside me.”

“How do you know she worked this magic?”

“It was all in her face. She gave the evil eye to that child, and it left my womb as snow melts on hot skin.”

The friar nodded. I saw Künne look over at Herr Zweig—his head was bowed still from the prayer.

“It took some years to again bear fruit. I asked Frau Vogler for an herbal poultice to help me get with child.”

The friar frowned. “An herbal poultice? Why did you not seek help through prayer?”

“I cannot say,” she faltered. “This has always been the village custom. The very day I applied the poultice I felt the heartbeat in me. I listened to the beating, so fast, so beautiful!” Here she paused and looked up at Künne. All of a sudden she gasped. “And here she now continues her devilment, casting her eye upon my husband! You wicked animal! You lost your husband to the plague and now you covet mine! Do you not see, Friar? She is covetous of all I have and that is why she tortures me!”

The friar looked sternly at Künne, whose face was the truest picture of bafflement I have ever seen.

“Cover her eyes so that she may do no harm,” instructed the friar. “I wear a sachet of consecrated salt around my neck for protection. The
Malleus Maleficarum
instructs that a witch is powerless to harm those who seek justice against her. But cover them nonetheless.”

Our priest, Father Luft, took a scarf from a woman in front and used it to cover Künne’s eyes. I began to cry, silent tears running down my face. I imagined the same was happening, hidden, behind the scarf.