Lutz had thought himself into a tangle, a maze with no escape. He felt as if his head would explode, as if he were living a nightmare. One huge unending nightmare that had encompassed them all. Where was truth?
He looked up. It seemed wrong that the sun should stream through the stained-glass windows and warm the cathedral with cheery rainbows of light. Everything should be in black and shades of grey.
Maria elbowed him in the belly. Lutz moved to his knees, folded his hands for prayer, and tried to listen to the priest, but his thoughts – and his gut – churned, bringing a burning pain to his chest and throat. He stared at the crucifix. Where was God in all of this? Lutz had seen the doubt in Father Herzeim’s eyes, heard it in his voice. The priest didn’t believe that God protected the innocent. At least not in this earthly life. Why were the commissioners so certain he did? Lutz studied the suffering figure of Christ. His own son had been innocent, and God hadn’t even protected him.
Lutz bowed his head. Dear Father, he prayed, forgive my doubts. Forgive my weakness. But please give me a sign. Show me your will. Grant me the strength and courage to do whatever it is I must do. If they are truly innocent, help me to protect Frau Lamm and Frau Rosen. If they are not, help me to know that.
Maria touched him lightly on the shoulder, her concerned face close to his. He looked around. No one else was kneeling. He slid back onto the bench and scrubbed his face with his hands. He hadn’t slept at all the night before, tossing and turning, tangling the bed linens, soaking them with sweat. Maria had wondered aloud if he were ill. Perhaps he was. For the first time in his life, even the thought of food was revolting.
Maria slipped her hand into his. He forced a smile. He wanted desperately to talk with her about the hearings and about his doubts. And his fears. He wanted her reassurance that he was not a monster. But Maria was already afraid. Twenty times a day, her hand fluttered like a bird across her chest, making the sign of the cross. Every morning, she came to Saint Kilian’s to light candles and pray. Telling her anything more would only add to her terror.
“St. Augustine himself has written,” shouted the priest from the raised pulpit, “that he most firmly holds and in no way doubts that not only every pagan, but every Jew, heretic, and schismatic will go to the eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his angels, unless, before the end of his life, he be reconciled with and restored to the Catholic Church.”
Eternal fire. Lutz had never given it much thought before, but now he wondered. Would all those people, whose only sin was to believe the wrong thing about God, really be condemned to burn? It would be heresy to voice that question aloud. Lutz searched the cathedral for Father Herzeim. The Jesuit’s face was unreadable even as he listened attentively to the priest. Damn, if in nothing else, his friend was right in one thing: people ought to be allowed to debate and discuss, to give voice to their doubts without fearing for their very lives.
“Indeed,” the priest intoned, “one has only to look at the evidence to see that the poor harvests and pestilence now plaguing Würzburg are the wages of sin. And sloth.” He dipped his head toward Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf, who sat at the very front of Saint Kilian’s in an ornately adorned cubicle. Lutz imagined the deep scowl the priest’s words had brought to His Grace’s face. Wages of sin and sloth. The Prince-Bishop must be seething.
“In his forty years as Prince-Bishop,” continued the priest, “the great Julius Echter approved the execution orders for hundreds of witches. In the year before he died, 300 were beheaded and burned. And Würzburg knew peace and prosperity.”
The priest lowered his voice, almost to a whisper, yet his words resonated through the cathedral. “But then came Prince-Bishop Johann Gottfried. In seven years, less than a dozen killed.” His lip curled. “Apparently he had no interest in witches.”
His voice grew louder, its pitch higher. “And that is why Würzburg suffers today. The wrath of God is not diminishing in this age of wars, privations, and pestilence, as the world goes through its agonizing death throes approaching the end-time. Instead, God’s wrath grows fiercer everywhere, because all manner of sins and vices are gaining the upper hand in this Godless world.”
The priest raised his arms in a sweeping gesture toward the Prince-Bishop. “But now His Grace is putting things to right. Despite the grave dangers to his own person, he is pursuing the Devil’s agents with utmost zeal. Würzburg shall once again be a city of the righteous, a city of God.”
Lutz imagined the Prince-Bishop’s scowl relaxing into a broad smile.
How many of those hundreds put to death had been innocent? And who was responsible? The Prince-Bishop or the commissioners? Or God himself, for allowing the deaths to happen, for not protecting the innocent? Lutz thought of Father Herzeim’s book, the one he kept hidden. But when the great searcher of hearts shall appear, your wicked deeds shall be revealed, you tyrants, sanguinary judges, butchers, torturers...the truth you have trampled under foot and buried shall arise and condemn you.
Where was truth?
Lutz felt as powerless and inconsequential as one of the motes floating in the rainbows of light, moved hither and thither by unseen forces.
God or Satan? What force was moving him?
29
27 April 1626
Judge Steinbach tapped the gavel, startling Hampelmann, who’d been paging through his ledger, but thinking about his father. And Eva. Together. It made his stomach turn.
“We’ve lost another one,” said the judge. “Fraulein Spatz is dead. Her throat slit.”
“Oh my God,” said Lutz. “That poor girl.”
“Poor girl?” Father Streng threw down his quill. “This is exactly what I feared. We stopped the questioning too soon. Now the Devil has killed our most valuable informant.”
“How can you be so sure it was the Devil?” said Lutz.
“It’s just like Frau Bettler,” said the priest. “The Devil kills them before they can reveal anything more.”
Lutz’s face took on its customary look of befuddlement. “But if the Devil can come into the jail with a knife,” he said, “why doesn’t he just slit the throats of the guards and free the accused?”
Behind his spectacles, Father Streng rolled his eyes. “Herr Lutz, surely you must realize that God himself assists us in our work. He does not allow the Devil to liberate witches who’ve been arrested. Nor does the Devil want to free them. They’re of no use to him once they’ve been revealed as witches. He wants them to die before they can escape from him by obtaining pardon from God through sacramental confession.”
Hampelmann had heard these arguments before, but he wasn’t entirely convinced that the deaths of witches in jail were always the work of the Devil. There were times when he suspected Frau Brugler of having altogether too much pity for the accused and of smuggling to them the means to take their own lives. It always amazed him that, even with all their contact with witches, so many jailers and guards failed to comprehend just how dangerous they were. Only a few months ago, the Prince-Bishop had had to order the execution of a guard who’d helped an accused witch to escape. That was part of their menace: witches could so easily seduce or deceive unwary or stupid people into helping them.
“But Fraulein Spatz had already confessed,” said Lutz. “I was there when she made her confession to Father Herzeim.”
Father Streng held up a hand, palm toward Lutz. “She should not have confessed while you were there, and you cannot reveal what she said. But if Fraulein Spatz has confessed and been reconciled with God, then the commission has done its work well. We have saved her eternal soul.”
“But then why would the Devil kill her?” said Lutz, his jaw clenched.
“So she couldn’t reveal anything more to us,” said Chancellor Brandt. “A pity. It really is. Now we have only Frau Lamm, who is entirely uncooperative, and Frau Rosen, whose case is weak.”
“And the Rosen girl,” added Freude.
“She has not been accused,” said Lutz.
Father
Streng polished his spectacles on the sleeve of his cassock. “What do we do about the Rosen girl?”
The Rosen girl. Hampelmann had been obsessed with her since the questioning three days ago when he first noticed her striking resemblance to his own daughter. He’d noted Katharina’s date of birth, quickly calculated backwards, and realized that, unless one took as truth Eva’s dubious claim that Katharina was born early, Eva had been working in the Hampelmann household when she conceived, at least two months shy of her betrothal to Jacob Rosen. Hampelmann thought he was prepared when he went to her cell; even so, he was shocked by what he heard from Eva’s own lips. He fell into a blackness then that no amount of St. John’s wort or hellebore could relieve. For two days and three long nights, he couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even clear his mind for meditation and prayer in the Lusam Garden. He was hardly surprised the angel didn’t return, not when he could think of nothing but Eva. And his father. And the product of their sin. The girl was of his own blood. Noble blood corrupted by witch’s blood. A cripple. He bore no responsibility, but still, he felt ashamed, as if the sin were his own.
A hand closed on his arm. He looked from the pale hand to Father Streng’s perplexed face, then down to the pile of paper fragments before him, the remains of a page from his ledger Hampelmann’s fingers had just shredded.
“The girl is possessed,” said Freude. “And her mother is responsible.”
Lindner sat, clicking his thumbnail against his front teeth. “Possession is nearly always evident from its outward signs: voices, flailing, contortions,” the physician said thoughtfully. “The Rosen girl seems more dim-witted and confused than possessed. I recommend that we proceed to the questioning of Frau Rosen under torture. The girl’s testimony has provided enough evidence for that at least.”
“Nein!” shouted Lutz. “There is no evidence. If the girl is dim-witted, her testimony should be discarded.”
“Not in cases of witchcraft,” said Father Streng.
“I concur,” said Chancellor Brandt. “What do you think, Herr Hampelmann?”
Hampelmann rubbed his gritty eyes and tried to recall what had just been said. “I-I’m not sure. Are you asking about the girl’s possession or discarding her testimony? Or the questioning of Frau Rosen?”
“Not sure?” The chancellor gave Hampelmann a withering scowl, then pointed at the judge’s gavel.
“Herr Freude,” said Judge Steinbach, “bring in Frau Rosen.”
Lutz released a long exhalation that whistled through his teeth.
Father Streng turned to Hampelmann. “What is wrong with you? Are you ill?”
“It’s nothing. A mild griping of the bowels. I slept poorly.” Hampelmann cupped his pomander in his palm, examined the gold filigree, then brought it to his nose. Lavender and hellebore, always lavender and hellebore. He should have put in hartshorn, something to clear his head of the fog. He needed to prepare himself for Eva’s questioning. He ground his teeth. How could she have chosen his father over him? How could she have led such a good and pious man into sin? Claiming he’d forced her was ludicrous. His father, the righteous and upstanding Herr Doktor Hampelmann, forcing a maidservant? Impossible. Hampelmann stared at his gold ring, the family crest. He polished it on the sleeve of his silk doublet. But at the very least his father had allowed himself to be seduced. By a witch! Had his father confessed to his lust before he died? Or was he writhing in hell at this very moment?
Freude returned with Eva, who stepped backwards into the chamber, a rusty-brown stain on the back of her shift. The executioner prodded her, and she turned to face the commissioners. Looking directly at Hampelmann, her green eyes held a desperate plea. He seethed. How dare she appear before them as if she were weak and helpless?
Father Streng came forward with the crucifix. “By the belief that you have in God and in the expectation of paradise, and being aware of the peril of your soul’s eternal damnation, do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is true, such that you are willing to exchange heaven for hell should you tell a lie?”
“I swear, by all that is holy.”
The priest noticed the drops of dark blood between Eva’s bare feet and scrambled backwards. “The filth of women,” he muttered, taking his seat at the table.
“Frau Rosen,” said Judge Steinbach. His voice quavered. “In your previous questioning, you persisted in denying all the charges against you – killing your husband, making Herr Kaiser ill, attending the sabbath. Do you wish to reconsider those denials?”
“Nein, I do not.”
“Are you quite sure?” said Chancellor Brandt. “Because your own daughter claims that you have, indeed, met with the Devil.”
“But Katharina believes that Herr Freude is the Devil,” said Lutz, “so it is not accurate to say that Fraulein Rosen testified that her mother met with the real Devil.”
Chancellor Brandt ignored Lutz’s protest. “Look around you, Frau Rosen, at the tools we can use to extract the truth. I ask again, are you quite certain that you wish to deny all the accusations against you? Or do you wish to confess now – and spare yourself?”
Hampelmann twisted his ring. His palms were damp.
Eva looked at the thumbscrews, which had been cleaned and polished since they’d been used on Fraulein Spatz and Frau Lamm. “I am innocent, and by the grace of God, my innocence will be proved.”
“Very well then.” Judge Steinbach banged the gavel, its ring reverberating through Hampelmann’s aching head. “We, the members of the Commission of Inquisition for the Würzburg Court, having considered the details of the inquiry enacted by us against you, Frau Rosen, find that you have been taciturn in withholding information from us. After questioning Fraulein Katharina Rosen, there is now enough evidence to warrant examining you under torture. You may proceed, Father Streng, Herr Freude.”
Lutz laid his head on the table and groaned.
Herr Freude prodded Eva toward the chair. Careful to avoid defilement by the blood on the floor, Father Streng stepped forward and made the sign of the cross over Eva and the thumbscrews, then sprinkled holy water over both. “In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti.” He returned to the table and picked up his quill.
Freude grabbed Eva’s bound hands and placed her thumbs under the metal plate. He tightened the centre screw just enough to hold them in place. Her lips trembled, but Eva did not pull away or try to resist.
“Do you wish to confess now, before I begin?” Freude growled.
“I have nothing to confess.”
The executioner turned the centre screw. Eva cried out, and Hampelmann nearly screamed with her, so great was the shooting pain in his own thumbs. His fingers curled tightly around them. He forced himself to straighten his fingers and look at his thumbs. They were undamaged.
“When and where did you first meet with the Devil?” said Father Streng.
“Never,” she wailed.
Herr Freude gave the screw another turn. Hampelmann heard the sickening crunch. Blood trickled onto the instrument. Pain shot from Hampelmann’s thumbs to his forearms. Dear God, what was happening?
“When and where did you meet with the Devil?” repeated Father Streng.
“Nein,” she whispered.
Herr Freude gave the screw yet another turn, and Eva’s head fell backward. Though she held her lips tightly together, an animal cry escaped.
Hampelmann couldn’t draw breath. The pain was unbearable. He’d watched this procedure dozens of times and never felt this. He saw blood gathering under his thumbnails. Horrified, he put his hands under the table.
“When and where have you met with the Devil?” repeated Father Streng, his voice rising.
Eva lifted her head. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. As it hath pleased the Lord so is it done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
The priest leaped up. “She dares quote to us from Job!” Behind his spectacles, his grey eyes were enormous. Freude forced Eva’s jaws open, and Fath
er Streng poured holy water into her mouth. Eva sputtered and choked.
“Surely that will free her from the Devil’s grasp,” said Father Streng. “Proceed, Herr Freude.”
“I will say to God, Do not condemn me. Tell me why thou judgest me so.” Eva’s voice was barely audible. “And shouldst know that I have done no wicked thing.”
Hampelmann blinked, then blinked again at the strands of thin white mist her words had woven around her. Job’s lament. Without thinking, he completed the lament, murmuring to himself, “Thy hands have made me, and fashioned me wholly round about, and dost thou thus cast me down headlong?”
Lutz opened and closed his fists. Hampelmann saw blood oozing from his thumbnails as well. He glanced at Judge Steinbach’s hands, which lay folded upon the gavel. Blood pooled beneath them.
Eva looked at Hampelmann, her eyes wide and distant. “Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity. Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie.” Her head sank to her chest. “Deliver me from my enemies.”
Agitated, Father Streng danced around the chamber, pointing at Eva. “The witch now dares to quote from Psalms?”
A loud chuckling erupted from the shadows. Hampelmann saw a tall dark man with glowing red eyes and a broad grin. His exposed member was huge and erect, and he shoved his hips forward obscenely. Staring at Hampelmann, he raised his arm and crooked his long bony finger, beckoning.
Hexen gestank. Hampelmann nearly choked on the stench. Though the pain in his thumbs was excruciating, he laid one shaking hand on Father Streng’s breviary and, with the other, touched the ball of wax at his throat. “In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti,” he whispered.
Eva raised her head and fixed her gaze upon the man. His arm dropped, his grin became a grimace, and his member withered. He began to fade, until all that was left was a wisp of black smoke smelling faintly of witches’ stench.
Hampelmann gasped and turned to Chancellor Brandt, but his face was impassive. Did he not see that? Hampelmann spread his hands. The pain had subsided. There was no blood under his nails, no blood on the table. Was this the message the angel in the Lusam Garden had come to deliver? A sign from God that Eva was innocent? But the other men were so calm. Had no one else seen Eva save them?
Dancing in the Palm of His Hand Page 21