The Witch's Trinity (9 page)

Upon my foot, I noticed a tiny pressing, side to side. I did not have to look to know that it was the cat, kneading bread there.

I was overcome by his kisses and his hands and his gusts of breath and, surrounding us, the cries of pleasure between the trees, everyone clasping someone in the darkness, everyone slaking themselves, a carnal passion that made the snow heated.

To my left, forehead against the tree, I saw the dark dog shapes return to their upset lamps and sit patiently in the snow. I couldn’t count the incredible number of shadows I saw from the corners of my eyes, embracing and bending. It was like a wind shook all the trees and we were boughs, swaying and tossing with its power.

“Ah, God!” I cried, and then I timed my breath to the grunt from behind and he and I strove together at this act, and I thought of nothing but the hot slide of him in me.

The dogs howled for the wonder of it, and the crows made a mockery of the sky, and I thought my body would burst for all the pleasure it had had. I ran my hand down Hensel’s thigh and wept, but without caring, when I found his leg ended in a hoof.

And then I was alone.

And the snow was untouched but for my own footprints, staggered as they were.

The cat led me home, always a gray shape delicately lifting its paws a few steps ahead of me. The door was locked and so I sank against it, while the beast meowed on the windowsill for Jost to awake.

I woke to the sound of Alke and Matern playing a hand-slapping game. I opened my eyes to see their hands in the air, their faces in concentration. The sound of skin on skin, the slap of the game, was rhythmic and brought me back to the nighttime forest and the layers of hushed voices.

I was in my bed. The straw beneath me was warm enough for me to have lain there for hours. The fire was already built and Jost gone. I ran a hand down my stomach. My nightgown was dry. I wiggled to the edge of the bed, feeling the dizzy tilt of sitting up too quickly from a deep sleep.

As I stood, I lifted my skirts to see if there were marks on my skin.

“Please spare us the sight of those old shanks,” remarked Irmeltrud. “My stomach is already off from the lack of breakfast.”

I dropped my skirts. She was right. I hated to see my legs myself: angular, crossed with knobbed veins. When I was younger, a fine layer of muscle had sat beneath the skin, showing itself with my every move, as plump and firm as sausages.

“Good morning, Großmutter,” the children chorused, timing it with their slaps.

I smiled feebly and hovered over them, nodding at their game in encouragement.

“It stings,” said Alke. “You can hit less hard.”

“If you play with a boy, you should expect stings,” said Matern.

She smiled an older sister’s smile at him. He mirrored her, and there they sat, heads gamboled like quizzical chickens’.

It would seem the night had never happened. I had thought all the ardor of my husband’s kisses would surely have roughened my skin, but looking at my arms and legs, I saw that I was pale and untouched as ever. I went to the pan on the hearthstone and washed my face and hands with its warmed water. My skin smelled as always. It was a dream I’d had, that Hensel returned. I pulled at the skin of my forearm and saw the true outline of my bone as clearly defined as any saint’s relic. I should already be buried in the churchyard.

7

He who chops wood is the cause of the actual fire.

—M
ALLEUS
M
ALEFICARUM

H
ensel and I had wed in the year of the mute wolf, on a June day. He milled in the morning, but the men all converged upon him at once and dumped their grain upon his head for merriment, and so as I stood next to him for the trothing I smelled the wheaty odor. He winked at me throughout the ceremony, so much so that I giggled and earned a frown from the priest. I had remained a virgin for him, although Künne had told me I was foolish to wait so long since I already had his promise. The night I made love for the first time was the first night I’d spent in this cottage; our marriage bed was the one now used by Jost, Irmeltrud, and the two children.

All the wedding party gathered at the window, pushing each other aside to lift the cloth and peer inside. They jostled for space, shouting lewdly, “Open your legs wide then, Güde!” and “You’ll have to press through the briars to find the cuckoo’s nest, Hensel!”

Künne’s face appeared. She made no call but simply grinned and winked in at me.

“Can we not pin down the cloth?” I pleaded.

“Aw, give them their pleasure too,” said Hensel, smiling gently. “It’s summertime! We are all lovers now.” He positioned his body so his head blocked the view of the window for me. Such a handsome face! The eyes that wrestled with a gentian for the best kind of blue, and the strong jaw with soft whiskers. Hensel’s eyelashes were longer than a broom’s straw and I sank into his kiss until I didn’t care who saw my legs wrapped around him, and eventually giggled at the thought of his arse pumping away to their amusement.

Afterward, I pulled my gown back down—clean white it was, embroidered with tiny bluebells by my steady hand—and we invited everyone in to sit at the table and eat with us. They crowded in, the entire village practically, except for Ottilie Shuster, who’d set her cap on Hensel and spent our wedding day crying in the forest. They were so many that they sat upon the bed—making great sport of avoiding the wet area where Hensel’s seed had leaked—and upon the ground and leaned against the wall…and there was so much food back then! We had nary a thought of not sharing what we had; there was so much. Hensel’s mill was going all the day to grind the meal and oft he had to tell the men to return the next day; he had all he could do to grind what he had. There was a flock of sheep on the hill that was his, and he traded for whatever else we needed. That day we offered our guests bread, and lard cakes, and lamp chops with fat sizzling around the edges of the meat, and a profusion of radishes. Everyone ate to satisfaction, making the sign of the meat, the women coming to kiss my belly for the life that might be in it already and the men pinching my cheeks to retain the redness Hensel’s romping had brought to them. I had thought the cottage would burst for all the life in it, for the merry songs that would end in laughter, the milky puddle that embarrassed me and still clung to my thighs, and the women calling out the names of the animals who assist fertility. And the gurgle of the tankards being filled, my own arm aching from the filling and refilling of the pitcher, but minding not, for I couldn’t stop smiling and every time I walked past Hensel he would grab my waist and pull me onto his lap to make everyone cheer, and how many times I was kissed that day! And how I too ate, my fingers darting like crows onto the trenchers to grab a bite here and there, thinking perhaps a child was inside me needing its first bite of lamb—and there
was
a child. It was Jost, hearing the cries of the villagers’ good time too, and the song about the alewife’s bosom.

They didn’t leave until the next morning, and the next time Hensel took himself inside me it was only us two. And thereafter, in bed, on the table, on the hillside, or on the granary floor as the mill ground the grain, it was only us two, no spies at the window. I loved what Hensel did, how he could push himself so deeply into me. I loved all the words he whispered to me, how he bit his lip in agony, how I was all the time pressing a cloth between my legs to catch the drippings as they came. There had been one more child, a little body sleeping in the cradle, but she was crafted of air and only stayed a moon’s cycle. Only Jost survived, the one who’d benefited from the neighbors hooting and whistling him into life.

When Hensel sickened from the plague, I never believed it could take him. He was so loud, so rough! What could ever defeat him? And yet his skin purpled and blackened and he writhed under the weight of those hideous bubbles. Künne and I used compresses upon his skin, and they did bring him easement and his moaning did abate. But they could not save that man whose soul was a very bear, grinning its way through all the honey and his large paws knocking away the bees. After we buried him, I remember thinking that I would never have a man inside me again.

“What are you dreaming on?” asked Irmeltrud.

“My wedding day with Hensel,” I replied.

“Oh. I wondered if you might be casting your mind to Künne,” she said. “Preparing your way to farewell.”

It took me a moment, blinking, to think of what she meant. My mind was now caught in the image of her wedding day. I had waited outside the cottage with the others, not hooting at the window, but nevertheless with a broad smile. Irmeltrud was sweet back then. She wanted to be the miller’s wife. And I thought too of how I’d given them the bed and let Jost prepare for me a mattress of clean hay in the corner, for I knew my days of producing children were long over. How Jost seemed to love the rut as much as his father, and brought Irmeltrud to the bed often. I tried not to hear but the cottage was tiny. And I remembered the first season when the grain had been ruined.
Künne…Preparing your way to farewell…
What gown would Alke wear for her husband on their wedding day? The fire had taken her nightgown. Who would embroider the tiny flowers when my fingers were so cramped and old? Were there flowers in the fire? My back was hot from sitting on the hearth. My skin prickled; my own gown was too close to the fire, might burst into flame.

Why would I need to say farewell to Künne?

I had given my body to someone who wasn’t Hensel. I had freely moaned with him and never fought him off. I had welcomed him as a bride. It wasn’t wrong if it was only a dream. The dogs had watched us. The lamps had plunged us into darkness, but I still felt the lamps at my back. All the heat of the lamps in the snow. It was hot, and the man was back there too. Not Hensel. Not even pretending to be Hensel. A different voice growling into my hair. A hot voice pressed into my back, ready to burst into flame. And what had he said? My gray curls falling into my face while he bucked into me. While he spake into my curls. While my curls singed. They were witches, and what had he said?

Preparing your way to farewell…

Was my back on fire from the heat of him? Or the dogs’ lamps?

You signed the book,
he said. But I never did, I never did, I never did, I never did.

Irmeltrud was slapping me. “Would that you don’t awake,” she was muttering. She pressed a wet cloth to my forehead and grunted. I was on the ground. I could reach out and touch the closest leg of the table’s bench. “Are you all right then?” she asked.

“My head hurts….”

“You were in a stupor and fell to the ground. Your head hit first.”

“Is there blood?” I asked.

“No. Simply a tumble as a child would take. You shouldn’t have sat so close to the fire; it made you dizzy.” She sat me up and made me drink some water. “It’s not even dented,” she said as she pushed off my cap to run her hands through my hair. “What looks worse is the mark upon your forehead.”

“The one you termed the devil’s mark,” I said.

“Which you denied,” she said. She took away the wet cloth and stared hard into my face. “I can’t believe the number of wrinkles that have beset your face,” she said. “I hope to die before my face is that of an apple fallen from the tree and left to shrink and tighten.”