The Witch's Trinity (6 page)

“Pray continue with your testimony,” said the friar.

“I listened to the beating of my babe’s heart. But as I smelled the reek of the poultice, the beats began to slow; soon there was immense space between them, and then they stopped altogether.”

“Are you accusing Frau Vogler, who gave you the poultice?” asked the Friar.

“No. I accuse Künne Himmelmann, who gave the herbs to Frau Vogler.”

“Frau Vogler, do you confirm this to be true?”

Frau Vogler, in the center of the congregation, nodded vigorously. Irmeltrud leaned across Alke and Matern to look at me.

“You have a third instance of this woman bewitching you?” said the friar.

“Yes. This time I hid the news of the quickening from all, even my husband, because I knew Künne wished me wrong. Yet somehow she knew. I saw her pick a berry from a bush and gnash it in her teeth, looking straight at me. It was like her teeth seized on my babe. That instant, my stomach spasmed and the life in me ceased.”

“We have duly noted your testimony,” said the friar. He pointed to a man scribbling furiously in the corner. “My notary transcribes each interrogation so that there may later be no question that we carefully sought justice.”

“And God willing, may that justice come down upon her head,” said Frau Zweig. “Maybe then I shall see issue from my marriage.” She walked to her husband.

“May we hear from others who accuse this woman?” asked the friar.

Jost stood. “May I come to speak?”

“You may.”

My body froze. Not Jost! I watched, disbelieving, as he walked to the front. He moved slowly, and with each step I bit my tongue to keep from calling him back. I was aware what peril I was in; all here knew me to be a friend to Künne.

“Künne Himmelmann is no more a witch than I am,” said Jost. “And we all know that men cannot be such.”

I clenched Alke’s hand in pure sudden joy. Irmeltrud rustled her skirts.

“You are wrong on that account,” said the friar. “Although the seductive nature of women, harking back even to Eve, leads them more frequently into the devil’s path, there are men I have seen burned to death for the same crime.”

Jost swallowed. “I had heard that only women were witches.”

“Since your logic fails, perhaps you ought to sit down.”

“There is more I wish to say,” Jost pressed on. I saw the fear in his eyes. He had not thought that speaking on Künne’s behalf could bring him under suspicion.

“You may say it.”

“Everyone knows that Künne is no witch. All but one, a vindictive woman who needs someone to blame for her own barren womb. The rest of us know Künne as the one who has cured our fevers, given us poultices and drinks that brought relief to us when we were sick. She alone in our village possesses the herb knowledge, and she freely shares its avails with us. She is a healer.”

“Who is she, a common peasant, to heal sickness?” the friar replied. “That is for learned men.”

“Learned or not, she has healed us. I ask of you in this room, whoever has found release from pain due to Künne’s kindness, step forward and be counted, that we may in turn release her from this horrible accusation.”

I stamped my feet on the ground, ready to stand and straighten my knees for Künne. I pressed my hand, the one not holding Alke’s, onto the wooden bench to help me rise. But when I was halfway, I realized I was the only one doing so. Everyone else was standing in place, staring at the friar’s face. And when I looked too, I subsided onto the bench. There was danger in the room; had Jost been facing the friar rather than us as he spake, he would have said something different indeed.

This man was here to build a fire. And he cared not who burned in it.

Jost walked over to Künne and kissed her hand. “No one moved,” he told her softly, since she had not been able to see.

She gave a single sob.

That was too much. “I do,” I said. I faltered up to standing. “She is my friend. She is kind and full of goodness. She does not care whether you bear a child or not, Frau Zweig!”

“Write down the names of these two,” commanded the friar. The notary looked confused; he was not from our village and didn’t know our names.

“I am Jost Müller of the granary. The one who stood was Güde, my
Mutter
.” With that, Jost came back to our bench and sat down. His hands were shaking.

“We find this in the villages,” said the friar. “Petty jealousies. Arguments that have continued between families for many decades. To ensure that we are properly accusing this woman, are there any others who wish to speak?”

I held my breath. I was squeezing Alke’s hand so hard she let out a little whimper, and I released it. Künne sat as still as the stone the Töpfer family had said she sat upon to curse their hen. I craned my neck to see where they were. Would they speak or yet stay silent?

“I have a report of witchery,” said the familiar voice of Herr Töpfer. He stood directly behind me. I felt Jost’s shoulders sag beside me.

“Approach,” said the friar.

“We have a hen,” said Herr Töpfer. “Each day for years we collected her eggs. We ate of them and bartered them for other goods. We relied on the eggs. One day we noticed Frau Himmelmann come to sit and rest on a stone near our door. We thought nothing of it, as she is old and needed to rest before continuing on. But after that day, the hen lay no more.”

“Ah,” said the friar. “Christ permits me to see a symbolic link between the two accusations. Künne Himmelmann wreaks havoc with fertility. As one who can no longer partake in the cycle of birth, she takes vengeance on those who can, even so slight a creature as a hen.”

“Frau Himmelmann passed by me one day without offering me a greeting and as her shadow fell across my face the image arose in my mind of my dead
Mutter,”
cried another woman across the room.

“Yes,” said the friar. “She purposely reminds you of the sorrow of your interrupted lineage.”

“We want our hen to lay again,” said Herr Töpfer.

“And so it shall,” said the friar. “And so it shall.”

On May Day, years past, we had donned our gowns of white and put on the bright girdle at our waists to show we were ready for marriage, should any village lad be thinking of taking a wife. Künne had been a beauty, braids thicker than any other girl’s. “Güde, will you kiss a lad today?” she asked me, her eyes shining. I plucked up her braid and weighed its mass in my palm before answering.

“I may,” I said.

“And will you let him touch you?”

“I may,” I laughed.

“And show to him your rosy, rosy skin?”

“No!” I yelled, and spun away from her in a delirium of laughter, running the length of the hill beyond her
Hütte,
my girdle spinning out behind me until it dropped from my waist. She plunged to get it before I could.

“You will become betrothed!” she said. “You will give all of yourself. Güde, we are almost women!”

I grabbed the loose end of the girdle and pulled. Standing a-kilter on the hill as she was, she was knocked off balance and fell into the tall, sweet-smelling grass. I sat down next to her and tickled her fine neck with a long grass frond. “Almost women,” I repeated.

“Promise me we will still race,” she commanded.

“Only girls race,” I laughed. “We’ll be stooped from serving our husbands and our feet will hardly hasten.”

“I wish I could roll this day into a ball and keep it in my hand forever. The sun, the smell of this grass…”

“The fact you are faster than anyone,” I teased.

“My legs carrying me so fast, yes, I want to keep that too.” She wriggled her body over until she could lay her head in my lap. She plucked a tiny flower at her side and held it up to me. “Do you know this flower?”

“No.”

“It’s the five-fingers blossom. Mutter tells me it takes away fever.”

“Will she tell you all the flower lore?”

“Yes, as soon as I am a woman. Then it will be
me
people come to when they are ill.”

Although the testimony was very damning, the friar told us the inquisition would allow a final test of innocence. He ordered a large kettle of water to be boiled on the stove at the end of the hall where I sat. No one spake as the water heated. When I heard the bubbles violently moving the kettle on the stove, I shuddered.

The friar took off Künne’s blindfold and helped her down from her perch. Though he clearly believed her to be in concert with the devil, he offered her the bracing arm any man might give to an old woman. Taking a box in the shape of the cross that the notary gave him, he walked her to the side of the room, slowly and with pomp. They stopped in front of the boiling kettle. He opened the box and took out three pebbles.

“This is for the Father,” he said, dropping one into the boiling water. “And this is for the Son, and this for the Holy Ghost.” All three stones sank into the hissing water.

“Künne Himmelmann, if you are able to retrieve these three pebbles and the holiness of the Trinity keeps your skin from burning, you shall be released from the accusations facing you today,” he said.

My own hands clenched in prayer. I believed strongly in the goodness of the Father who sent his Son to earth, and in the sanctity of the Son whose very soul was a dove beating its wings inside his skin, but I had never seen a woman fight boiling water and win.

Künne’s hand hovered over the water. The water danced up to meet it, spitting playfully. She withdrew her hand. “Before I do such a deed, I beg the Father to assist me. May I pray?”

The friar tightened his lips. “We shall soon find out if your plea is heard. Go on.”

Künne looked around wildly. “I hardly have words in front of all these eyes.”

“It can be difficult to perform a righteous act that one has mocked.”

Künne reached out and touched the friar. I winced as she did it. Künne was always one to put the kisses on any cheek, to reach out intimately to a traveler who only asked the road. “I have never, Friar, never mocked the act of prayer. In the dark times, I beseeched our Father. When the Black Death was upon us, my lips were always moving in an endless prayer. And though the prayers did not keep my husband on this earth, nor my children, nor the loved ones of any of us in this room, I still believe in the goodness of our God. I trust that we must endure travails on earth to earn a place in paradise.”

The friar examined the place on his arm that she had touched.

“Will you not extend mercy to me, Friar?” she asked. Since he did not look at her, she put a hand to his cheek, and he jerked back as if her hand was a leper’s.

“You are bold,” said the friar in a low tone. “Sinfully bold. I know what the water will tell us.
Go then!
” He yelled the last part and seized her hand, pushing it into the kettle.

She screamed and pulled it out instantly.

“Have you the pebbles?” he asked.

“You know I have not!”

“They would have sprung to your hand if you were innocent!”

Künne made a keening sound, then plunged her hand in again. She threw her head back and the sound became a scream, her face a horrible rictus of pain as her hand plumbed the depths of the tall kettle, seeking for the stones. She came up with two and threw them at the friar. Her hand and arm, up to nearly her elbow, were an angry red. “You will find me guilty even if Jesus Christ should stand here at my shoulder and sing praise of me!”