by D. W. Goates
Forced thus to retrieve her candle, she then began quietly descending the stairway with her free hand grasping the railing. To move closer to the danger unnerved her. Elke’s heart raced like never before as she reached the foot of the stair, the doorway’s clattering din now most evident.
Thinking quickly, she considered her options. There was a back door on the opposite side of the house from which she could escape now that she was downstairs, should the intruder succeed in his efforts. But that would put her outside in the cold, alone, with naught but a sprint to some neighbor for relief. Could it get her before she could be rescued? Perhaps it was just a common thief who was simply unaware that this old house was occupied. In that case a show of light and a stern voice might do the trick to scare him away. But what if he had other things in mind? Would it be beneficial to reveal herself as alone to one of these other sorts of characters? And despite herself, these weren’t the only horrors Elke imagined there as she trembled in the dark. She also considered the supernatural, for once not thinking it the slightest bit silly. Thus with great terror, and no small confusion, the always decisive young woman selected what she felt was her only course of action under the circumstance: she would try to frighten it as much as it frightened her, and if that didn’t work, she would run.
Not wanting her candlelight to show any closer to the door with its nearby unshaded windows, she tried to use its last light to memorize a path through the clutter in the great room before putting it out. At this, before her courage could wither, she moved as swiftly as she could in the dark toward the door. Intending to slam upon it as loudly as she could with both palms and forearms, while at the same time giving vent to her terror in a scream, Elke hoped to frighten and startle the man on the other side into leaving. And if it was not a man, but some manes or other monster that troubled her door, then perhaps none other than a banshee would suffice in sending it scrambling for lesser prey.
Scream she did, but it came premature, pained, and accompanied a resounding rumpus. Elke made it only halfway to the door before ramming her right foot into one of the dusty crates on the floor in the middle of the room. Tripping, she fell headlong over it, taking the container that had been stacked upon it with her to the floor. The noise of all this, along with her pained shriek, matched in volume—if not proximity—that which had been intended.
As she lay upon the floor in blinding pain, it did occur to her that the infernal shaking had ceased. Wincing, she looked up to the window nearest the door in time to see the faintest of silhouettes. The shape was that of a large man, but no features could be made out in the darkness. If he was trying to peer in the window, he would see even less than she did looking out of it.
Only for a moment did the figure pause there, and then he, or it, was gone.
Elke lay there in abject pain for some time and began to get very cold, though the throb from her foot served to dull this new sensation. She feared she had broken her toe. When the immediacy of her agony finally subsided, and it was clear that the intruder had withdrawn, she helped herself up. With an awkward hop she felt her way, carefully, to the darkened stair. Once there she relit her candle and practically dragged herself back up to her room.
She locked the door and got back into bed without bothering to take off her robe or slippers. Only then did she realize how cold she was by how long it took her to rewarm under her blankets.
The pain prevented her from any quality of sleep and was the first to greet her when she awoke in the morning. Gingerly she removed her slipper from that foot and was not in the slightest surprised to discover the great toe there black, blue, and badly swollen.
Limping on her heel, Elke made her way down to toilet, and on her return upstairs she paused to look over the scene of her nighttime collapse. The old crate that she had knocked over had broken and spilled its contents upon the floor. From her vantage she could see that these were books—quite a few of them—all uniform and colorfully bound. Intrigued, she was drawn to them. It was a crate of schoolbooks—new and untouched by the look of them. She picked one up and opened it; the book lover was immediately and marvelously struck by its high-quality paper and beautiful illustrations. Even a cursory scan of the text told her that these textbooks were superior in every way to those available at the school.
“What are these books doing here?” she wondered, momentarily forgetting her aching toe.
School that day was an ordeal made the worse by her hobbled condition. Finding it impossible to don her boot, Elke limped to school with a slipper on that foot and employing an upright broom as a cane. She nevertheless insisted on taking with her one of those books, and so it was particularly tedious when Frau Gellar gave her another meaningless assignment over lunch that prevented her from delving into it at that time. Stealing glances at it when occasion permitted, the reluctant assistant counted the hours until the day would end so that she could go home and read at her leisure.
Already from what little time that she had with it, Elke was certain that this book was something special. Neither a simple history book, nor mere collection of literature and poetry, this textbook was a rich reader ostensibly intended for older students. Matters of philosophy, morality, even mythology and its basis were blended into discrete units of study in inventive ways.
The accompanying color images stood out in particular. That these were modern English-style prints was undoubtable, though Elke had seldom seen them before, and never in such a remote place.
After school, in spite of her difficulty—for she still required the assistance of her crutch—Elke managed to purchase and carry home with her some supplies in addition to her supper. These were a plain oil lamp, replacement wicks, and a jug of oil. The transport of these extra items would have proved impossible if not for the tavern keeper’s inventive bundling of her bread and cheese in a cloth pouch. Normally she ate her evening meals in the gasthaus before heading home, but tonight, in her eagerness to read the mysterious book without disturbance, Elke asked for something to take home.
Her new brass lamp was something of an extravagance, and its cost would indeed set Elke back in her savings. Yet it was a necessity; the teacher’s small ration of candles was in no way a match for her evening plans. The discovery of the strange books represented to her a singular joy—one that she had, of late, become convinced the awful village impossible of providing. She therefore intended to relish this unique pleasure in the utmost.
Tucked early in her bed, and basking in unaccustomed radiance, Elke reverently opened the fine book, resolving in the sitting to consume the thing front to back.
Straight away, the title of the textbook—Advanced Student Reader—gave no indication of what the peeking teacher knew to be in store. A positively pedestrian name for such a book, Elke mused, as she admired the frontispiece—an elegantly drawn but otherwise unfamiliar coat-of-arms. She turned to the first chapter, which featured selections in the theme of creation from different world religions and myths. The unnamed editor, or editors, evidently wanted students in this chapter to compare and contrast the beliefs of different cultures. The schoolteacher thought this lesson quite good, and she was also surprised at how many of the stories she—a prodigious reader and self-proclaimed history buff—found unfamiliar. In this chapter she also encountered the first of the beautiful color-printed illustrations she had noticed earlier.
Elke was just beginning with chapter two, on the subject of ancient moral and political philosophers, when she was finally forced to admit to herself how distracting she found the pictures in this book. It was undeniable to her now that a looking would have to precede any further reading on her part.
She began to flip the thick leaves of the book, flitting from one bright picture to the next like a hummingbird. In this endeavor the text that she otherwise cherished was treated as so much worthless filler. Each picture was a marvel of high art—a portrait, a scene, and some fantastic designs.
These pictures lit Elke’s imagination on fire. She was at once captivated by their splendor, impressed by their technique, and awed by the obvious cost. It was as if she had happened upon a factory lot of otherwise unique and colorful illuminated Bibles.
She had almost finished perusing the images when one in particular gave her pause. The scene depicted was familiar to her. It was the monument in Waldheim’s market square: the bronze statue of that brooding man with the long heavy coat. The caption of the picture read only, “Sachsdenkmal.” Apparently one Herr Sachs—Ernst Sachs, from the accompanying text—was the subject of the monument.
So this was the name of her fair-weather friend.
It would be no use trying to go back to chapter two, for there was an ineluctable story associated with her statue. Elke began to read.
The Horrible Fate of Ernst Sachs
Tucked within a narrow valley high in the Bavarian Alps is a village called Waldheim. Here once lived a man named Ernst Sachs. Herr Sachs was not native to the village but had been raised there, and there he remained into adulthood, marrying and opening a small mercantile. He and his wife made a modest living selling household supplies and other necessary goods.
Sachs was an honest and responsible man, but not so in any common sense, for he believed it was imperative that he uphold these virtues at all times, not only when others might bear witness. He abhorred hypocrisy, and while even he was not immune from it, he was more mindful to avoid it than most.
Ernst was also a curious man, with the quality of his curiosity nearly that of his integrity.
Yet any description of Ernst Sachs would be incomplete without the inclusion of a fourth trait: a certain innate stubbornness. The sum of these—honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and his dogged intractability—were what truly defined the man.
And because of their concurrent presence and unique and relative measure within him, Sachs was burned alive in his forty-seventh year.
Sachs Mercantile was something of a hub for the community—providing essentials and located near the center of the village. Despite this, and their offer of fair prices and friendly, sincere service, Herr Sachs and his wife found the townsfolk standoffish. It had not always been this way, and Ernst, examining his own behavior, managed to trace the origins of this treatment to an incident some years earlier.
That gathering people will chitchat is a matter of course, and no less so when shopping. But when left unfiltered by virtue, it is all too easy for such chatter to become supplanted by its vicious cousin—gossip. Ernst did not believe in the practice, and firmly trusted in God’s outright prohibition of it. So when he realized that his store had become an exchange for this rotten trade of other people’s business, Sachs immediately took action. He challenged the principal rumormonger not only for her misuse of his property but also for her associated moral deficits. Later, with this done, he went on to expel the rest of the gossips from his store. The resulting blissful peace, however, was short-lived: traffic in the shop slowed, and then followed an equally chilling effect to his livelihood.
Nevertheless, over the years Sachs Mercantile subsisted on the strength of its monopoly in certain items that were otherwise unavailable in Waldheim. Ernst and his wife guarded their source with great care—a supplier from the city of Regensburg in the Upper Palatinate—lest they lose what was left of their means.
The Sachses remained a happy couple, and neither really missed what passed for society in the isolated village. Beyond the gossip he so despised, Herr Sachs detected little substance to the relationships among his fellow Waldheimers. It seemed as though when not gossiping about one another, the villagers were nosily gathering material to do so later, greedy as squirrels stashing nuts for the winter. In the rare instance that gossip did not motivate their interactions, the townsfolk almost always opted for inane chatter in place of any alternative. Never would they allow glorious silence to reign for fear of what they might hear from within themselves.
Aside from pleasantries exchanged with their customers, or when the Sachses had need to patronize Waldheim’s other merchants, their only other connection to the community was the church. Faithful Lutherans, Ernst and his wife never missed weekly services unless one of them was seriously ill. However, in the aftermath of the gossip incident, Sachs had become more attuned to the behavior of everyone in town, not just those most blatant in their transgressions.
One Sunday, this newfound awareness fell upon none other than Pastor Lehmann. Ernst began to notice a secularization that had taken over the pastor’s sermons; it seemed present even in Lehmann’s private remarks. The focus had shifted—if it had ever been there at all—from the Kingdom Everlasting to more transient earthly pursuits. At first Sachs questioned himself, for though devout, he was not the most learned of the Bible. Surely if the devil were to poison his mind, it would be by way of calling into doubt Almighty God’s eternal message.
But this was not the case, for indeed Lehmann and his parishioners were spending an inordinate amount of sacred time upon the decidedly profane. Herr Sachs, in his quest for the truth of the matter, began tallying the worship time, week after week, to discover that the fellowship of man was more important to the people of this church than their relationship with God.
When he shared this concern with his wife, she confided that she too was uncomfortable with God’s house being used in this manner. Disheartened, the couple thereafter stayed home on the Sabbath and conducted their own Bible studies.
Already resented by the townsfolk for their aloof detachment, this unheralded departure from church represented the final straw that would break their camel’s back. While the Sachses’ distinct separation from the community rendered them free from manipulation, it placed them in equal peril of its caprices.
Soon Ernst Sachs found himself confronted with a special tax assessment, one especially onerous in its specificity; it was as if he alone applied to its terms. Naturally he protested, but when this got him nowhere, he began making inquiries. Employing skillful interrogation, and with the aid of the few trusted friends remaining to him, Sachs managed to uncover a foul nest of corruptions festering within the council itself.
Proximate of the malfeasance Sachs discovered an embezzlement; the town funds dedicated to policing—in particular, night patrols of shops holding valuable inventory such as Sachs Mercantile—had been drastically depleted. However, rather than investigate and put a stop to the crime, the town council—no doubt encouraged by the thief among them—chose instead to raise a convenient levy directly on the unpopular merchant.
Ernst refused to pay the unfair tax. He filed a complaint with the Bürgermeister, but this only led to his arrest. Jailed within a medieval dungeon, Sachs asked his wife to petition for redress with the margrave. Alas, neither the margrave nor the King—to whom he called on his final day—would ever get wind of his plight.
Unawares, but equally uninterested, the townsfolk countenanced the prosecution of Sachs and his wife—these activities stoked along by the powerful unknown embezzler. The most baseless charges were leveled at the pair, with each accusation in turn treated as true and decided upon delivery.
The first was tax evasion. They were offered no hearing on the matter.
The second was usury. For this and the first, their property was seized.
The third was heresy, for they had ceased attending church.
The fourth and final accusation was an ancient charge: witchcraft.
Herr Sachs more vigorously protested the charge of usury than that of tax evasion. He invited the council to review his scrupulously kept ledgers, believing that such transparency would redeem him. Instead, the council rallied the citizens to the square where the records he had hoped would be his salvation were burned before his eyes, called out as evidence of his wrongdoing. With his proofs reduced to ash, and his suppliers too far away to speak on his behalf, Ernst was defenseless. Feeding on
this weakness, the distrustful townsfolk quickly devolved into a mindless mob.
Their whispers became murmurs, and murmurs soon became shouts as outrageous speculation, like wildfire, spread through the throng. It took mere moments for the suspicious crowd to begin chanting its evil charge with one body, one face, and one ugly voice.
“Burn the witch!”
That very afternoon Ernst Sachs was burned alive in a fit of frenzy, with the Marktplatz maypole serving the fell purpose of the brutes his fellow citizens had become.
The kind and reticent Frau Sachs fared little better. The cruel horde tore at her clothes and cut her hair. She was scourged and banished from Waldheim, barefoot and penniless, never to be seen or heard from again.
It would be two years before the truth was revealed. A new councilman, beloved by the village, took over at the retirement of the eldest—a dour character named Vogel. It was Vogel who had been most active that fateful day. It was Vogel who had held those innocuous ledgers aloft while calling curses down upon Herr Sachs for robbing the citizenry with his prices. And it was Vogel who had burned the ledgers in a mock fit of rage to hide his own misdeeds. But the inquisitive new official would discover the intrigue.