Breath (9781439132227)

by Napoli, Donna Jo

  “They’ll go knocking from door to door, killing the sickest, the ones who cough. To spare the rest of us.” Bertram speaks as though reason is completely on his side. “It’s the only way.”

  “The only way” goes around the room like a chant.

  “Quiet!” shouts the judge. “I heard Pater Frederick too. He talked of rat disease in lands far away from Germany, far away from Europe. We have no knowledge that this is the same rat disease.”

  “If that’s how rat disease progresses in other lands, why shouldn’t it happen the same way here?” says Father. “Christ preaches all people are the same before God, does he not?”

  Murmurs of approval. Someone slings a congratulatory arm across Father’s shoulders.

  “Christ also preaches that we embrace the sick,” says the judge. “Fear of the sick is rooted in pagan heresy. The sick are victims.”

  “Then, why do we shut the lepers in hospitals outside town?” asks Father. “Why do we ban them from using public wells? Isn’t someone in the last stages of the rat disease as dangerous as a leper?”

  And everyone’s debating that question.

  A cat yowls.

  Melis holds Kuh up high. It’s he who made the cat scream. “Look,” he says.

  “Whose cat is that?” calls the judge above the noisy room.

  Kuh spies me and jumps free. He runs and climbs me like a tree, straight to my shoulder.

  And now the word “heresy” is repeated all around, and I hear that most dreaded word again: “witch.” Then it switches to “warlock.” They’re talking about me now, not Großmutter. “Witch” and “coven” and “familiar.”

  “Is this your familiar?” asks the judge.

  My intestines cramp. I can’t stand any longer. I squat and rock back and forth on my heels. Kuh yowls. Sweat runs into my eyes, so I can barely see all the legs around me. They blur into a wall. I miss Großmutter. I have no protection.

  And I can protect no one. Ava. Where is Ava, my Ava?

  Someone is yelling.

  Father says Kuh is indeed my familiar.

  I am hated. Father hates me. Bertram hates me. Everyone blames me.

  The judge shouts for order. I hear him speak as if from far away. He’s saying, “Bertram is free. Salz goes into the Hundeloch.”

  Reason

  “Step back,” the guard barks through the bars at the top of the door.

  There’s nowhere back for me to go. I’m pressed into the corner. Alone, but for the crawling creatures that move indiscreetly over me, even inside my clothing. My shoulder stings from where Kuh gripped me when they pulled him off.

  The guard opens the door and puts a wooden bowl on the dirt floor. “Don’t say a word,” he warns. I understand: Heretics’ words are dangerous. Heretics’ tongues are cut out. I look at my feet until he leaves.

  The Hundeloch stinks. My own waste is in the far corner, on a pile of waste from past prisoners, all of it aswarm with bugs. But at least moving my bowels rid me of the pain.

  In its place, though, came hunger. I crawl to the bowl in a race with the bugs. When the guard opened the door into the cellar, a bit of light came into this prison room, but now that he’s gone, it’s dim again. Still, I know the bugs are going for the bowl, because there are so many of them they form a solid black line on the gray of everything else.

  The bowl holds a handful of beans and hemp. I eat the beans quickly and chew on the stringy greens. Just the act of eating makes me think of Großmutter and all the meals we prepared together.

  She lay on the floor bleeding and gasping. Her body spasmed in crazy ways. And she looked at me. She died looking at me. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. No matter what poultice I used. I tried.

  Like Bertram was trying when he swung the scythe.

  My grandmother died, oh.

  We will never talk together or eat together or work together again. She is dead. This woman that I loved so fiercely. This woman that loved me just as fiercely. She is dead.

  A bug cracks between my teeth. I fight a gag. I mustn’t let disgust empty my stomach now. I’ll need energy.

  For what?

  I’m crying.

  But I stop myself. This is not how to survive—dwelling on things I can do nothing about. I learned that lesson before. I learned after Gertrude’s death and Mother’s death. After Hilde and Eike were sold.

  Großmutter is dead.

  But Ava is alive. My sister is alive.

  Not my real sister. But she may as well be. She doesn’t belong to anyone else. And we all need to belong to someone.

  I have to be strong for Ava. That’s what it means to deserve a child.

  There is no room for tears; crying takes energy. I have to think strategically, act smart. I have to be ready for what is to come.

  I have no idea what that may be. No one has told me anything.

  No one speaks of Ava.

  Can I put my faith in Pater Michael? I don’t care anymore whether his hypocrisy is the result of weakness or practicality. All I care is that he be true to his word to me. Has he taken Ava in?

  I have the sensation of being watched. I stand and look through the bars of the door. There is another prison room across from mine. The rest of what I see is barrels. The Rathaus basement holds not just the dungeon, but the wine and beer cellar of the town.

  “Hello,” I call.

  No one answers. The other prison room may be empty. I pray it is. I wouldn’t wish these cells on anyone.

  I return to my corner and squat with my back against the wall. I close my eyes and wait. I’m getting very good at waiting. It takes all my concentration to keep from falling asleep. I must never fall asleep. I must never dream.

  I am desolate.

  I don’t allow my head to sink forward.

  I am awake.

  The smallest noise comes from somewhere. I open my eyes. “Is someone there?” I call. I get to my feet, but I don’t leave my spot. “Who’s there?” I close my eyes again and listen hard for gnawing and the clicking of little claws—predictable noises.

  Instead, I hear voices. I recognize Pater Michael’s.

  “Step back,” says the guard. Soft light comes through the open cellar door.

  I press harder against the rear wall.

  My cell door opens.

  Pater Michael comes inside.

  I rush to him.

  “Hold out your arms, Salz.”

  What could he mean? I hold my arms stiffly in front of me.

  Pater Michael pulls up the sleeves and brings his face close to my skin. He brushes a roach off the inside of my elbow. He turns me around, inspecting in his inept way. “Come along.”

  I follow him past the guard. “Where’s Ava?”

  “I don’t know.”

  No.

  I breathe out and hold that moment, that nothingness between time that sometimes protects me from pain. I hold it long; I won’t let time go on. I won’t let Ava be lost somewhere, with no one to help her, lost and alone and small and vulnerable.

  But the air can’t be denied. It’s unfair how it won’t come when I want it to and it forces itself into me when I don’t want it to. “Unfair,” I charge. “You said we could take refuge with you. You said that. She needs someone to take care of her.”

  “She’ll show up, Salz. Right now yours is the life at stake. Stay quiet and pray.”

  I let him pull me.

  We go up the stairs, back to the courtroom. I blink against the light of day. I hold my hands over my ears, fending off the assault of so many voices after the quiet of the prison cell.

  It is even more crowded than it was this morning, if that is possible. Every face I make out contorts into ugliness. A man with no teeth bares his blackened gums in a grimace. A sick woman who seems to have trouble even holding her head up waggles her tongue at me.

  The judge sits at a table. The rest of the town council sits with him. And behind them stands Pater Frederick.


  “Salz has been accused of purposely infecting Hameln,” says the judge.

  Whispering and mumbling come from all sides.

  I search the crowd for Ava. Nowhere. I search again, going from face to face, slowly. Then I search for Father and my brothers, for the members of my coven, for Hugo, for Agatha and all the farm families I know. Fear must play games with my vision—I see no familiar face. Maybe Ava stands right before me and the fact that everyone’s making faces at the criminal—at me—blinds me.

  “Pater Michael has invited Pater Frederick of Höxter. They have asked permission to speak first,” says the judge.

  Pater Frederick motions to Pater Michael.

  Pater Michael steps forward, pulling me with him again. My eyes are still searching over my shoulder, so I stumble. The crowd gasps; a fall can be a sign of guilt. I cough. Pater Michael puts up his swollen hands to silence everyone. His hands look strangely yellow in the candle glow. “So many of us are sick.” His eyes linger just a moment on the sickest ones. “We cannot kill the sick. Jesus preaches against killing. Prayer is our salvation, not desperate delusions of being the soldiers of saints.”

  A few people murmur agreement. But not many.

  “Don’t kill all the sick,” says someone, “just the sickest.”

  “The sickest?” says Pater Frederick, coming around the council table to stand before the crowd. “The last time I came to town, I told you about the sickest.” He looks at Pater Michael.

  Pater Michael says to me, “Strip.”

  I’m confused.

  “Take your clothes off, Salz. Every bit.”

  I take off my clothes and hide my nakedness with my hands.

  Pater Frederick circles me, like he does in our lessons when he’s about to make a point. He flicks bugs off me with the back of his hand and crushes them beneath his shoe. “The sickest have swelling in their neck and armpits. They have red spots that turn black. They are feverish.” He stops and points at me. “I see none of those symptoms on Salz. Do you?”

  They stare at me. Pater Frederick takes my hands and holds them over my head. He makes me turn slowly. I feel like a rabbit on a spit. But I turn willingly, for the sake of the argument. Let the argument win. Let the principle of order prevail.

  Still, a voice nags at me, deep inside my head, way back—so far that I cannot hear it clearly. Something about a lack of logic in Pater Frederick’s words. What? A lack of reason. A lack of order. I cannot understand it for the life of me. I’m too weary and miserable to think straight.

  “He coughs,” someone says at last. “You yourself told us the disease brings coughs.”

  “He has coughed all his life,” says Pater Michael, saying what Großmutter said to Bertram before he killed her. “Those who know him can tell you that.”

  The room is quiet.

  Then a boy pushes his way to the front. “I know that.” Hugo’s hands hang by his sides, and I can see they are swollen to double their normal size. His days of stoning rats are over. Poor Hugo.

  My own hands are strong as ever. Will anyone notice? If they realize I don’t have even the first signs of the rat disease, will they turn on me even more ferociously than if they think I’m in the final stages? Whether they find me well or sick, I feel doomed. Still, I pull my hands free from Pater Michael and hide them behind my back.

  “Salz coughed when we were children,” says Hugo.

  “See?” says Pater Frederick. “And the rat disease wasn’t even around then. Salz is far from the sickest among us.”

  No one speaks. Reason rules this courtroom. I feel weak everywhere.

  “He’s a servant of the devil,” says another. “He carries a familiar with him. Even if his own body doesn’t harbor the disease, he has brought it to us through his magic.”

  It takes but a second for the room to get noisy again.

  Pater Michael holds up his yellow hands.

  But the crowd won’t be silenced. There’s talk of torture, of burning. I imagine the smell of ashes.

  “Hush!” says Pater Frederick. “In the name of the Lord.”

  They finally quiet down.

  “A warlock’s familiar is all black,” says Pater Frederick. He pulls a burlap sack out from under the council table. It jumps and yowls. He thrusts the bag at me. “Is this your cat?”

  I look inside. Kuh struggles out and jumps onto my shoulder.

  The crowd murmurs.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Hold him so the people can see his neck.”

  His neck. Oh, yes. I lift Kuh’s head so the white splotch on his throat shows.

  “For those in the rear, let me tell you, this cat is black and white.”

  The crowd is noisy again.

  Both Pater Michael and Pater Frederick hold up their hands and the crowd quiets down.

  “Pater Michael is right,” says Pater Frederick, “the answer is prayer. I will lead a pilgrimage to see the curls of hair of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia.” He pauses.

  I remember Pater Michael in the woods the day we buried the cow alive. He suggested belief in oil and wax from the tomb of a saint was no more valid than belief in the magic of any pagan ritual. What about Pater Frederick? Is he no more convinced of the efficacy of a saint’s relics than Pater Michael? Does he seek to manipulate rather than guide?

  The crowd doesn’t react. They may be as suspicious as I am.

  “And if that doesn’t work,” says Pater Frederick, “I’ll lead another to the tomb of Saint Julian the Martyr at Brioude. I’ll ask all the pilgrims to pray to Saint Gall and to Saint Sebastian, to enlist their help in convincing Jesus our Savior to take away this illness from Hameln.”

  “And to take away the rats, too,” says someone at last.

  “Take away the rats. Take away the rats.” Now everyone’s saying it. “Take away the rats.”

  Pater Michael’s hands are up again.

  I stare at those yellow hands, and I remember my own hands in the light that streamed through the stained glass—yellow and green and red—the colors the piper wore. It comes to me in a burst and I blurt out, “I know how to get rid of the rats.”

  All eyes are on me.

  Pater Frederick tsks in dismay. “Hush, child. Your danger is past.”

  “We must hear him,” says the judge. “Tell us, Salz.”

  “It will sound like nonsense,” I say, “but it’s true.”

  “Speak.”

  “There’s a piper in Hannover who can charm animals.”

  “So?”

  “He’ll pipe and lead the rats away.”

  The room gets noisy again. They’re saying I’m a fool. And some are saying worse. Those few words of mine may have undone all the good that Pater Frederick just did for me. Am I possessed, that I cannot control my own tongue? But I believe what I say, I believe it as strongly as I’ve ever believed anything. My meeting with the piper in the woods was meant to be. He’s the missing thirteenth from our coven—the one who can make all this misery go away and save Hameln at last. If only I had convinced him that day in the woods, none of this would have happened.

  “Quiet,” says the judge. “Have you seen this piper at work?”

  “Yes. He charmed squirrels and a skunk and a hawk. He charmed rabbits and mice and voles”

  “Rats aren’t that different,” says someone.

  “This is a hoax. How could this boy even know about a piper in Hannover?” says another.

  “I’ll answer that, and any other questions,” I say, “but only if you grant me a favor.”

  “Don’t overestimate your importance, boy,” says the judge. “Your fate is still undecided.”

  “All I want is Ava. My sister.”

  “Step forward, Ava,” says the judge.

  “She’s not here,” I say. “Someone has to find her. Then I’ll tell you everything I know about the piper. Every detail. And he’ll save Hameln.”

  The judge looks at me sharply.

  “He’ll save Hameln,” I
say louder.

  The judge shakes his head. Then he shrugs. “It’s a harmless request.” He calls over a court clerk. “Find the girl.”

  The clerk leaves.

  “Speak now,” says the judge, “How do you know of this piper?”

  “I came across him in the woods one day,” I say.

  “In the woods?” says someone.

  “Is he disreputable?”

  “Is he a criminal?”

  “He’s a piper,” I say loudly. “And he will save us.”

  “What is this piper’s name?” asks the judge.

  “He’s easy enough to find,” I say. “His shirt is red, his trousers are green and yellow striped.”

  “Is he a piper or a jester?” someone calls, tauntingly.

  “He’ll be playing at the beer festivals,” I say. “Without a doubt, you’ll find him there.”

  “What have we got to lose?” says someone. “We have no other plan.”

  Then everything happens fast—instantaneous resolve. The town council members call the lords together and talk about money. They send for a messenger. The idea of charming the rats away somehow catches everyone’s fancy. It’s unexpected—no one’s ever tried it before—so maybe, just maybe, it will work. The atmosphere in the courtroom grows almost giddy. Someone laughs. More people are laughing.

  A councilman is advising the messenger. He tells him to take the road built on terraces across the hills. It’s longer than the road that lies on the valley floor, but in this rain it’s safer. The raised roads don’t puddle as fast.

  Others give advice about where to go when he gets to Hannover, how to find the piper, how to lure him back. Ah, yes, that’s the biggest problem: how to lure a healthy man to an ill town. Pater Frederick came here, and he’s not sick; no one in Höxter is sick. But Pater Frederick is different—clerics have to come when the people call. It’s their duty. No one else owes us that. The boats on the Weser don’t even stop at Hameln anymore, everyone is so afraid of our illness. This is most definitely a matter of luring. What will it take to lure a traveling piper to Hameln?

  The mayor beckons to the messenger.

  The messenger rushes to the table and leans over the mayor.

  “Offer two hundred gold bars,” he whispers.