Storm Wolf

by Stephen Morris

  There was also growing excitement in the house because Sybilla’s wedding day was drawing very close. She and Benedikt were to be wed on the following Saturday. They spent every waking moment they could spare finishing the sewing work on the items in Sybilla’s bridal chest. There were also food and decorations to prepare, bridal wreaths to assemble, and small shears to sharpen for the ceremonial cutting of the bride’s long braids as she took on the responsibilities of a married woman. No one spoke of the aborted wedding feast of Ferdynand and Gosia the previous autumn.

  Alexei helped Zygmunt and Benedikt prepare by going to the tavern to drink on the last few evenings before the wedding while Beatrycze and Sybilla, with her bride’s maids Otylia and Renia, made the necessary preparations at home.

  “Back home, in the farming village where we grew up, a wedding would last for three days,” Zygmunt explained to Benedikt and Alexei. “But the work in the mine here does not stop just because a man is to be wed. So we have to adjust the wedding and make a three-day feast fit into the day and a half that the mine is closed.”

  Benedikt and Alexei lifted their mugs of beer. “Weddings back home were much the same. The best thing the men could do in the last few days was to stay out of the way of the women!” Alexei said, recalling many weddings, including his own. The three friends laughed together and drank as Zygmunt told them more about what a Polish wedding in the countryside would have been like and what would happen here when Sybilla and Benedikt wed.

  Sybilla had only a few days of work left before she was to wed Benedikt and then be a married woman, ineligible to work as a maid in Frau Berhta’s home. Sybilla was busily folding sheets and tablecloths that had been washed by the laundress and brought in after hanging outside to dry all day. There were also smaller linens—napkins, pillowcases, tea towels—to fold and put away. Distracted by both her plans for and daydreams about her wedding, she heard and saw nothing but the white linens in front of her as the fabric gently crunched and swished as she folded and stacked them.

  “Foolish girl!”

  Sybilla was so startled by the old woman’s voice in her ear that she dropped the pillowcase she was folding and knocked over the stacks of sheets and tablecloths beside her.

  Frau Berhta rapped her cane sharply on the floor. “Is this what I pay you for, girl?” she demanded. “To stare into space while you should be folding the sheets and tablecloths properly? See there?” Frau Berhta prodded the pile of sheets on the floor with her cane. “The tablecloths should be folded sharply here, making neat and tight corners. The sheets? Likewise!” She stabbed at the sheets.

  Sybilla blushed. “The corners were folded tightly, Frau Berhta,” she insisted, “until you startled me and the linens were all knocked to the floor!” She wondered how the old woman, with her cane and her goose-foot twisted in upon itself, had come up behind her so silently.

  “If that were so, they would not have come loose so easily when you were so clumsy as to knock them over,” Frau Berhta chided. “Is this how you think to keep house when you are married? In whatever hovel you and your simpleton papist Bohemian boy have found?”

  “I know how to keep a house properly,” Sybilla retorted, her cheeks now burning with shame and anger. “Benedikt is a clever man and no simpleton! And he will be well cared for when we are married and he will be proud to live in such a well-tended home!”

  “Not a simpleton?” the old woman sneered. “If he were not a simpleton, he would not be toiling as a miner in the bowels of the earth. It is the clever men who serve in the offices of the ironworks companies; does your Benedikt work in the office of the paymaster or as a clerk for one of the officials? Of course not! He is a Bohemian and a superstitious Roman Catholic who will never amount to more than what he is now, a man who lives as a mole does, digging in the earth!”

  “Benedikt digs in the earth like the moles because that is the only work the haughty German managers will give to the Polish and Bohemian men!” Sybilla snapped back at Frau Berhta.

  “And I suppose you are likewise a maid only because the respectable German women are too haughty to give you the work that you think you deserve?” Frau Berhta sniffed in disgust. “How clever can the little Polish girl be if she throws the linens onto the floor so that they must all be washed again, simply because she was startled by the little sound of a little old woman coming up behind her?”

  “The linens do not need to be washed again,” Sybilla insisted, scooping an armload of the sheets and tablecloths from the floor. “They simply need to be folded again and stacked in the cupboards.”

  “Are you saying that I am too ignorant to know when a clumsy maid has soiled the linens?” shouted Frau Berhta. “That I cannot keep my house even as well as the clumsy, foolish girls I am forced to hire? I should dismiss you here and now for your insolence, girl!”

  Sybilla threw the sheets down to the floor and kicked at them. “Dismiss me? You know that I have already given you notice; this week is the end of my employment here with you in any case! What are a few days more or less? Are you so miserly with your deceased husband’s money that you think the few coins you will save by dismissing me now will be enough to maintain your wealth?”

  “That shows me how little you truly understand the world,” barked Frau Berhta. “To think my charity is miserly, to refuse to recognize my charity to the poor and clumsy girls of this area by giving them employment? Your man has made a poor choice indeed by asking your family for your hand in marriage! You think I want to hoard my honorable husband’s wealth? You, girl, you want to keep hold of your father’s poverty or you would have chosen better and striven to wed a good German boy who had a future—if you could find a good German boy that would take charity on your poor and ignorant Polish upbringing!”

  “You think that I should have maybe waited until your grandson came of age, and sought to wed a good German boy like that?” Sybilla taunted.

  Frau Berhta slapped her cane against Sybilla’s calf. “How dare you, Polish flittchen! To suggest that my grandson might one day take pity on you and bring you into my family’s home? In my charity, I have put up with your insolence for too long!” She wacked at Sybilla’s legs with her cane again and then—as Sybilla bent over to rub her calves—struck Sybilla across her back and sent the young woman sprawling across the floor.

  “Get out—out of my house!” roared Frau Berhta. “Out, you fratz! And do not think to come asking for any wages that you might think I still owe you! Those are forfeit as penalty for your clumsiness and impertinence! Out of my house!” She struck Sybilla over the shoulders again with her cane and then, as Sybilla struggled to push herself up from the floor, kicked the girl in the knee with her good foot.

  Sybilla fell to the floor again and cried out in pain.

  “Out!” cried Frau Berhta, pointing to the way.

  Sybilla slowly pushed herself up and stood facing Frau Berhta, her shoulders hunched and her fists clenched as she struggled to find the right retort to snarl at the old woman. But then, realizing that no words could adequately express her fury, Sybilla turned and stalked out of the house.

  Zygmunt and Benedikt tried to make light and joke about the fight when Sybilla reported her dismissal from Frau Berhta’s employment that evening, but everyone at the supper table—Sybilla, Benedikt, Zygmunt, Beatrycze, and Alexei—knew that Frau Berhta could convince her son to dismiss the men from the mine just as easily as she had dismissed Sybilla.

  Nevertheless, they all tried to set aside their worries. The wedding was only a few days away now and there was too much work, and then too much celebrating, to do.

  Sybilla and Beatrycze spent the next few days doing little but cleaning and cooking. At a wedding back home where they had grown up, the wedding party and wedding guests would stop at a tavern after the church service to eat and drink and dance before coming to the bride’s home for the wedding feast proper, which would last for two or three days. But since they did not have the luxury to celebrate for that ma
ny days before the men were expected to report for work again, Benedikt and Sybilla were to be wed in the church on Saturday in the late afternoon and then everyone would go to the tavern to celebrate. Late that night, Sybilla and Benedikt would be escorted with songs and jokes to their first night together and then all the guests would reassemble at Zygmunt and Beatrycze’s home on Sunday for the wedding banquet. So Sybilla and Beatrycze, with the help of Otylia and Renia and a few other women in the village, kept cleaning and cooking for both the Saturday night celebration at the tavern and the Sunday afternoon celebration at the house.

  When Friday night finally arrived, Alexei joined Zygmunt and Benedikt at the small house where he and Sybilla would live as man and wife. They would need to take in two other men to rent the second bedroom in order to pay the rent, but for the first few days it would be theirs alone. Ctirad joined them and they all washed the dirt and soot of the mine off and dressed in their best clothes. Eventually they made their way to the bride’s house, after a short stop at the tavern—of course!—and met a contingent of women, led by Otylia and Renia, in the yard outside the house.

  “You cannot enter!” Renia insisted, lifting a large stick over her shoulder.

  Otylia, the maid-of-honor, hoisted another makeshift club. “We will defend the house against your attack, Benedikt!” she warned, her eyes dancing. She swung the club and Benedikt stumbled back.

  “But I must enter!” he insisted. “My bride is within!”

  “You will not enter!” Another of the women laughed. She swung her club and nearly fell over.

  A mock battle broke out between the women defending Sybilla within the house from Benedikt and the men outside. Laughing, pushing, and shoving made for a happy confrontation that Ctirad, as best man, was able to resolve by negotiating a truce with Otylia. After promising that the men with Benedikt would all dance at the Saturday celebration with the women defending Sybilla’s honor, Otylia relented and allowed the men into the house.

  More laughing and singing and drinking followed inside the house until Sybilla stepped out from the bedroom into the parlor. Ctirad made a speech praising Sybilla’s beauty and danced with her as everyone expected him to do in order to demonstrate what a good choice Benedikt had made in choosing Sybilla as a wife. After the dance, someone brought a stool to set before the hearth and Ctirad escorted Sybilla to it. With Sybilla seated in the midst of the room, Zygmunt and Beatrycze stepped forward to unbraid their sister’s long hair. Some of the women tittered or giggled as they watched this act that was one marker of Sybilla’s transition from girlhood to womanhood. When Zygmunt and Beatrycze were done, they solemnly stroked Sybilla’s hair so that it hung down as straight as it might; on Sunday evening, the maid-of-honor would step up with newly sharpened shears to cut it to the more respectable length appropriate for a married woman, but until then Sybilla would wear it hanging free as she stood next to Benedikt.

  As Alexei watched Sybilla sit on the stool, Zygmunt and Beatrycze carefully unbraiding her hair, Frau Berhta sat alone in her house on a chair before her own hearth. The last of that season’s chestnuts sat roasted in her lap, and she delightedly pulled each smoky nut from its shell with her gnarled fingers. Throwing the shards of shells into the fire, she crunched on the nuts and savored the sweet flesh of the fruit inside. Even though many people thought chestnuts were the food of poor people, Frau Berhta knew better. She knew that eating roasted chestnuts would encourage the abundance and wealth of her family to increase.

  “That miserable girl, what was her name? Sybilla, I think?” Frau Berhta munched happily on the chestnuts, thinking of the increasing wealth she was bringing to herself and her family and the increasing prestige that wealth would bring. “She’ll soon learn that marriage and housekeeping are not everything she hopes and dreams about. Men? Husbands? Bah! She’ll learn soon enough that men’s efforts are never sufficient to bring in what she needs.” After all, hadn’t her family relied on her eating roasted chestnuts for all these years?

  Her eating chestnuts and… she toyed with the pickled thumb of a sailor that she kept in her apron pocket. That pickled thumb had played its own important role in maintaining the position of her family. Not so much by attracting wealth or fame, but by helping to eradicate competition or enemies. It was never enough to simply attract wealth, she ruminated as she crunched on another chestnut. The removal of enemies and competitors was just as important.

  Of course, she had not used the pickled sailor’s thumb to simply remove business competitors. She had also used her skill to remove those who thought too highly of themselves or who taunted her and needed to learn a lesson in proper humility towards their betters. “Like that girl, Sybilla. She should learn a lesson or two in humility and manners. Like that other man, her cousin, was it? He had been talking among the miners, encouraging them to demand higher wages and better conditions in the mine, hadn’t he?”

  She recalled the night she had used not the sailor’s pickled thumb but the long strip of skin she had cut from the sailor as he died and then had tanned to preserve it. It was at least a palm’s-breadth wide, and she had cut it from around and around and around his torso, starting in his armpit and ending in his groin. Now she kept it, oiled and supple like fine expensive leather, in a special box of chestnut wood to protect it. Chestnut wood to promote strength and longevity, to achieve justice and success in her endeavors.

  She had used the long strip of skin last autumn to remove that miner and his silly fiancée before their wedding. She knew everyone thought they had run off together, but she, Frau Berhta, knew the truth. She had used the belt of tanned skin to change the two of them into wolves and she had seen them run off together into the forest.

  But now there was more talk among the miners. They were becoming disrespectful again and forgetting their place in the world. Just a few weeks ago, hadn’t they pelted her and her house with fruit as they made their way to their sad little Saturday night drunkenness in the tavern? Hadn’t they called her disrespectful names? And in Polish or Bohemian or whatever other godforsaken languages they spoke, refusing to use good and proper German! Maybe it was time to teach these miners another lesson.

  She could use the pickled thumb in her apron pocket to do several different things to teach them. But, maybe… maybe it would be better to use the strip of the sailor’s skin again? It seemed a shame to let the skin sit unused in its chestnut wood box. After all, she had used the pickled thumb several times in the last few months to… well, to teach many of her family’s competitors a lesson or two. Those competitors lived far away, and she could not travel so easily now, not like when she was a younger woman. And her son had become stingy and she had needed to teach him a thing or two about honoring his parents, hadn’t she? Not as sternly as she had needed to teach his father about respect. But still… better to teach the boy while he was still young, before he needed as stern a lesson as her now-deceased husband had required.

  The sailor’s thumb worked best to teach a lesson to those she could not reach directly. But these miners, here... just outside her own door, practically. She could use the length of sailor’s skin here with the miners.

  “Isn’t that impertinent girl Sybilla to be wed tomorrow?” Frau Berhta asked herself, finishing the last of the chestnuts. She had heard the other maids in her house talking about the celebration in the tavern after the wedding service in that superstitious Roman Catholic church near the mine—when would these miners ever be sensible enough to ask the Lutheran pastor to perform their weddings instead of that ignorant priest? She brushed the flakes of chestnut shell from her lap. There would be no more chestnuts until next season. And after she used the sailor’s skin tomorrow, there would be no more insolent talk from the miners, either, for the next several seasons.

  On Saturday afternoon, the men had come out of the mine as gritty and sooty as usual, but with an eagerness and anticipation unusual even in anticipation of a Saturday night of drinking and carousing. They’d lined up at t
he paymaster’s office to collect their wages and then hurried off to get ready for the wedding. Zygmunt invited Alexei to join him and Ctirad to wash and dress with Benedikt at his rooming house.

  As they washed away the dirt and grime, splashing and laughing as they taunted Benedikt about his upcoming wedding night, Zygmunt explained a little of what Alexei would be doing in the Polish-style wedding of the Silesian miners, now that he had become an honorary member of their family.

  “As both our parents have died, I am both Sybilla’s guardian and her brother, so I will be acting as if I were our father as well as attending to my new brother-in-law,” Zygmunt told him. “Beatrycze will be standing in as if she were our mother. But after we ride to the house to fetch Sybilla and Otylia and Renia, the wagon driver will take us all to the cemetery to greet our parents’ graves and ask their blessing. We will leave a platter of food on the graves so they can share in the wedding feast. Then we will all ride to the church for the wedding and then go to the tavern across the square for the wedding supper—with even more drinking than eating, I can promise you that!”