The Witches’ Covenant
Copyright 2015 by Michael Dalton. All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. References to real people, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover illustration by Ellinsworth
Cover design by Wicked Book Covers
Map adapted from plate 38/39 of Droysen’s General Historical Hand-Atlas by Richard Andree, 1886. Scan by maproom.org.
“Now I am old as Bohemian gold” is translated from the original German by D. L. Ashliman and is used by permission.
Follow Michael at michaeldaltonbooks.com and on Twitter at @MikeDaltonBooks.
Table of Contents
Author’s Notes
Prologue
Part I: The Spring
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Part II: Marburg
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
Part III: The Witch
20.
21.
22.
23.
Part IV: The Flow
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
Part V: Complications
32.
Historical Notes
About the Author
Author’s Notes
THIS BOOK, though based on real people, places, and events, is best viewed as a work of alternate history. As such, certain liberties have been taken with elements of geography and the historical record.
A conscious effort has been made not to Anglicize place names. For example, the German state of Hesse is referred to here under its German name, Hessen, and references to the town of Giessen use the German sharp-s, ß, instead of the Anglicized “ss.” A similar approach has been used with cities, towns, and other elements in the region.
As used herein, the medieval German mile (miele) was equivalent to around 7,500 to 9,000 meters depending on the area, roughly five modern miles.
Central Germany including the city-state of Köln and the states of Hessen, Waldeck, and Paderborn around 1520.
Prologue
SABINE WOKE with a jolt when the child was conceived.
So long had it been that she had nearly forgotten the feeling of it. But it was the same as it had been, the same as it was every time.
And it would be time again soon.
Ten months, perhaps a year.
She could not take another newborn. She had tried before, and there were risks. The child needed to be older, more robust. Too early, and the margin for error was too thin. She had learned that the hard way.
She could not risk another death. The cost had been too high. For her, and for others.
There would be another bereaved mother, another family thinking it had lost a child. A child that was never rightfully theirs in the first place.
It pained her to think of it. The horror of it all, the unavoidable horror.
But she needed the children to sustain herself. Either they died, or she died.
It was the same as it ever was.
She steeled herself, and set about the preparations.
Part I
The Spring
1.
THE LANDGRAVE’S CASTLE in Marburg overlooked the town from a high hill just west of the municipality proper. Built largely of native red sandstone, it was a brooding edifice constructed in stages over the centuries by the rulers of the state of Hessen. The most recent work, completed only a few decades earlier, had added a new wing to the east of the original building and a separate tower just to the northwest to bolster the castle’s northern fortifications.
It was neither the largest nor strongest nor most impressive, nor even the most beautiful castle in the Empire, but it made Marburg the seat of the state, and it was where the Landgraves of Hessen had resided since the 13th century, thus the residents took a certain amount of civic pride in it.
That was well enough. There had been little else in Hessen to take much pride in for the past decade. After the death of William II in 1509, it had been unclear who exactly ruled the landgraviate. William’s final will had appointed his widow Anna as guardian and regent, but her claim was not recognized by the minor nobles of Hessen, who asserted their own authority over their lands while a council attempted to run the landgraviate’s affairs.
It took five years of petty intrigue before Anna rallied enough support for her regency, but she had hardly settled into the castle before Emperor Maximilian I declared her son Philip of age and placed him in control.
Philip I was a handsome, intelligent youth of much potential, but the years after his father’s death had not served him well. He had been separated from his mother and sister under the guardianship of another minor noble, and while the adults of Hessen schemed, Philip’s education was sadly neglected. He took control of the landgraviate with little beyond his birthright to qualify him for the task.
Philip knew this, and did not like it.
He had seen the chaos that resulted from his mother’s ineffective regency, and set about putting an end to it. One by one, he reached out to the Hessian nobles and other nearby allies he felt he could trust—ineffective though it might have been, his mother’s regency had fallen short through political factors beyond her control, not due to the astuteness of her counselors—and before long, the confused administration of his state began coming to an end.
But Philip was still young, and the passions of youth burned through his veins. When his counselors had departed and Philip had retired to his quarters, he spent much time thinking about what other things he might do as a ruler beyond plotting against his fellow nobles.
One night, he did more than just think.
The object of his thoughts was a chambermaid named Julia. She was about his age, perhaps a bit older, but small and slight of frame. She wore her blonde hair in a long braid, and though she never lifted her eyes to meet his gaze, her pretty face soon occupied Philip’s mind night and day.
Philip was not ignorant of what men and women might do together—he had heard enough bawdy tales and ribald stories from the soldiers who served his guardian during his mother’s regency—but he had never had the opportunity to partake himself.
That night, when Julia came to collect his chamberpot and inquire if he needed anything else for the evening, it occurred to him that, as his subject, she was subject to his whims.
Rather than answering, he caught her wrist and pulled her to him. Her eyes widened in confusion, then in fright. She cringed. But she did not resist him.
He pulled her to his bed and undressed her. Her eyes closed, and she seemed to be fighting tears. But she said nothing as he lay her naked form down beside him.
His manhood was painfully stiff and rampant, but in his inexperience he thrust at her inexpertly several times before finding his target. She was as virginal as he was, and she cried out in
pain when he broke into her. But she did nothing to hinder what happened next.
He spent himself in mere moments, but did not stop. Not until he reached his peak twice more did he feel sated.
Thereafter, he took her to his bed nearly every night. He would grope at her small, hard breasts and then ride between her thighs until he spent himself within her narrow loins.
If she did not appear to enjoy his attentions, she no longer wept from them as she did the first night. A few times, he thought he saw timid anticipation in her eyes when she came to his room.
So it went for several months. Then one night, he noticed that her small, hard breasts were no longer so small, and her narrow loins were no longer so narrow. He had paid no attention to this up to now, but as he regarded her body beside him, he saw that her stomach, once so smooth and flat, now curved gently outward.
In his youth and naiveté, he was confused for several moments before the truth surfaced in his mind.
“Are you with child?” he asked.
She would not meet his eyes.
“Yes, your Grace.”
He was stunned. Of course this was the result of what he had been doing. But he had never stopped long enough to think of it. Yet he was not so young that he did not appreciate what this meant.
“You must speak of this to no one.”
“Yes, your Grace.”
Far from chilling his ardor, the realization that Julia was carrying his child—illegitimate though it might be—inflamed his desire for her. He took her every night as he had been doing, even when she grew round and heavy, and she did nothing to deter him.
He did his best to conceal his thoughts about her, but occasionally he would catch sidelong glances at him from his retainers when Julia was near, and whispered words when others thought his attention diverted. But no one ever said a thing about it to him directly.
Then came the night a new chambermaid appeared, and quietly informed him that Julia was feeling ill. Subtle inquiries revealed the truth that she had given birth to a baby girl.
The news of the child’s sex struck something fundamental within Philip. He had been envisioning a boy as his first child—how could it be otherwise?—and the knowledge that Julia had given him a useless female disgusted him to his core.
All at once his lust for her evaporated. What good was she if she could give him nothing but daughters to be married off? Unless he fathered a male child, his throne would pass to his cousins. Under Salic law, he could not pass anything of substance down to a girl, even if he chose to clear the taint of the child’s bastardy.
He gave word that Julia was henceforth to work in the kitchens and never enter his quarters again. There were other pretty girls working in the castle, after all, and he soon found one to take Julia’s place.
JULIA HAD NOT yet risen from her birthing bed when the head housekeeper unexpectedly appeared in the room she shared with a dozen other servants. With her slight frame and slim hips, it was a hard delivery, made harder still by the disapproving stares and whispered imprecations sent in her direction during her labor. She was still struggling to nurse the little child when she was brusquely informed that she was being transferred to the kitchen and was to never enter the Landgrave’s presence again.
On receiving this news, her heart broke—not for herself, for she held no illusions about what little she meant to Philip, but for the child. She had hoped and prayed for a boy during her pregnancy, and learning she had delivered a girl had crushed her. Even so, she had held out hope that Philip might still hold some parental interest in the child and her welfare, perhaps one day even marrying her to one of his retainers.
But clearly he cared nothing for her, first child or not.
So—knowing her child had no one else—Julia hardened her heart and did what she had to. She was an orphan, having been abandoned at the church in the village as a newborn, and she had nothing at all in the world beyond her employment in the castle and a pretty face. And the latter had been more trouble than boon. If she must work in the kitchen, then the kitchen it would be. It was that or whoring.
The old woman who ran the kitchen took pity on her, allowing her time to nurse the babe when she needed to and giving her simpler tasks like monitoring the kitchen automata. But Julia brought the whispers and looks with her, and none of the other servants in the kitchen cared to befriend her.
Sometimes in her room, she would fall to weeping at her lot in life, but then the child would cry about one thing or another, and she would put her cares aside and tend to it.
It was weeks before she even thought to give the baby girl a name.
THE MAN SAT alone in the corner of the tavern, nursing a mug of ale. Though he was handsome, and had a dangerous air about him that intrigued the barmaids, his dour mood kept them at bay.
Every now and then he would glance at a folded sheet of paper on the table beside him, shake his head, and sigh. Then he would take a sip of ale and stare vacantly across the room.
It was that look in his eyes—a look that suggested he had seen both stirring triumphs and imaginable horrors—that kept the barmaids glancing over at him. More than once that night, one or another of them wondered to herself whether she might forgo the few pieces of silver she normally wanted to take a man to bed just to see what lay behind that look. But then the darkness behind it would surface, and every one of them lost her nerve.
It would have been pointless in any case. Had any one of them offered herself to him, she might not have lived to see her next breath.
Giancarlo Attendolo was a man who had lost his purpose in life, or so it seemed tonight.
He had misgivings about working for Duke Wilhelm from the beginning. It was not so much that the man was a vicious bastard; working for vicious bastards was generally the lot of a mercenary captain.
No, it was the nature of the job he contracted for.
Fighting for some sliver of land or disputed settlement because of a disagreement over the legitimacy of some third cousin’s issue was one thing. Very often such disputes were carried out between mercenary bands, and the “victory” could be decided over wine and bribes the evening before a sham battle in which the troops would ride up and down sparring with each other without anyone actually getting hurt.
But Wilhelm asked him to do something very different, to settle a blood feud between brothers that—from Giancarlo’s perspective, at least—had already been more or less settled by Erich fleeing his birthright and living as a common soldier.
Instead, Giancarlo delivered Erich and his wives to be tortured, likely for years.
It had left a sour taste in his mouth even before the letter on the table had reached him.
Giancarlo was not a man who countenanced violence against women, and this long set him apart from other mercenary captains. Most of his ilk would have handed the two girls over to his men to be raped and thought nothing of it. But Giancarlo did not allow such things. His men could whore to their heart’s content, but he did not allow rape. More than one recruit had turned up his nose and withdrawn from prospective employment in Giancarlo’s band when informed of this stricture.
Giancarlo’s motivation in this respect was in some sense selfish. He had left his wife behind in Firenze, and he wished to feel that he was not putting her at risk any more than he needed to. He was a pious man, and had long taken to heart the scriptural commandment about doing as one would be done to. He did not want his wife raped in his absence, so he would not allow other women to be raped in his presence.
He had not raped Erich’s wives, this was true, nor had he allowed his men to rape them. But he had turned them all over to Wilhelm, and Giancarlo had no illusions about what Wilhelm would do to them in order to exact his revenge on his brother.
Giancarlo expected Erich’s capture to be difficult, but it had gone even worse than his greatest worries. He had nine men; Erich was but one, how difficult could it have been?
Hans and Ilian were his two best men, which was w
hy he left the two of them alone to guard the west gate. Yet Erich cut them down like grass.
Paulo and Stefan were no tyros either, but they died like levy troops under Erich’s sword. The engagement had scarcely begun before half of Giancarlo’s men were dead. He simply intended to question Walther and the girls about Erich’s whereabouts when the girls attacked Francisco, who attempted to pull them out of the wagon. Then all at once, the man was on fire.
When Erich appeared, Giancarlo grabbed the girl and put his dagger to her throat for the simple reason that he was certain he was about to die.
It had worked, yes. But Giancarlo was then stuck with what to do with the women. Releasing them was pointless; they would have come after his band to free Erich, and after what they had done to Francisco, Giancarlo had no illusions that they would not do the same to him if given the chance.
It occurred to Giancarlo now that he might have held on to the girls and only turned Erich over to Wilhelm. He was not sure how he might have managed this, but at least doing so would not have violated his long-held principles.
It might then not have brought the judgment of Heaven down on Giancarlo’s head, and Giancarlo’s wife might still be alive.
He looked back down at the letter on the table and shook his head.
His wife had been dead for nearly a year, having succumbed to fever. It was nearly a year ago that he had taken service with Duke Wilhelm.
Of course his wife was dead long before Giancarlo had even met Erich and his wives. But he could not shake the feeling that his conduct in that matter brought this tragedy down upon him.
The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2) Page 1