Breath (9781439132227) (8 page)

Großmutter goes to lift the sack of blackberries from the shoulders of the cow I was riding, but Hugo beats her to it.

“Where do you want it, ma'am?” he asks.

“Dump them in the holy water,” she says.

“Slowly, though,” says Pater Michael. “Dont splash.”

I don't even give pretense of helping carry the sack. I'm useless, with how weak I am. Instead, I stand beside the vat of holy water and spread my fingers around the mouth of the sack, trying to keep the berries flying straight.

Großmutter stirs the berries around in the vat with her arm. Then she squashes a single berry between thumb and finger and drops it into her cupped palm. She scoops holy water into that palm and gently rolls the berry around till it plumps up a little.

A nosy cow pushes her muzzle over Großmutter's shoulder. Großmutter grabs the cow by her upper lip and yanks. The cow lifts her head and opens her mouth. Großmutter throws in the blackberry. “Bring me another,” she says to me. “And you boys, as I finish with a cow, lead her down the road.”

We do the whole herd that way, with Hugo and Pater Michaels two altar boys helping.

“Will this make the milk come back?” asks Hugo. He s talking to Pater Michael.

“It can't hurt,” says the priest.

“There are plenty of berries in here,” Großmutter says to Hugo. “Hundreds. Go get your herd.” She waves an arm blue from stirring the berries.

Hugo hesitates. He's looking again at the herbs hanging around my neck. My chest convulses and I fight it—this is the wrong moment to cough. The wrong moment to remind Hugo of my sickliness.

“Go on, boy,” says Pater Michael. I'll stay here. I'll feed your cows the berries. Go tell everyone.”

“I will, then.” Hugo suddenly grins. “We'll have cheese again.” He runs into town.

The altar boys help me up onto a cow's back, with my rolled blanket in place. Großmutter drives our herd home. I'm convulsed with coughs, bathed in sweat.

Großmutter pours the mash of onions, pork liver, and rue into the mushroom-shaped mold. She garnishes the top with sprigs of parsley and carefully sets it in the basket. “Get a round of cheese,” she says to me.

I'm surprised. The cows have given hardly any milk for weeks, so we aren't making new cheese or butter. Poor Hugo was wrong—cheese has become a luxury. We leave what little milk there is for the calves. And I steal some for Kuh, of course. In fact, lots more bad has happened beyond the milk drying up. That's why we're having a coven meeting. Father would be furious if he knew Großmutter was giving away cheese. But I set the round in the basket anyway.

We walk through the woods and I'm the one carrying the food. I'm strong again. Finally. I was still sick when the barge came up the Weser, so I had to miss my lesson in Höxter—and miss the cinnamon treat. I won't miss it next month, though.

The traveling merchant who promised to bring back Arab medicine hasn't returned to Hameln's market yet. But he will. He got a schilling. One hundred forty-four pfennigs. Twelve times twelve. Hell come back for the other schilling she promised.

In the meantime I am determined not to need Arab medicine. I stand on my hands for long periods, sometimes up to an hour. So I'm keeping my lungs clear. As long as I stay inside whenever it rains, I won't get sick again. I won't let myself. I won't miss lessons with Pater Frederick.

And I won't make Melis do my jobs for me.

And I've been singing lately. This is another one of my promises to myself. I am determined that our coven not need a piper in order to be effective. I can sing. We can dance again, to my singing.

The others have already spread a cloth on the ground by the time we get there. Großmutter adds
our pork liver mold and the cheese. Murmurs of appreciation for her generosity surround us. No one else has brought cheese.

There are seven men, including me, and five women. I wince that we are not thirteen. But, oh, there's the number twelve again. Like in the schilling that I was just thinking about. So maybe it's right that we are one member short. I wish it were right. I wish I didn't have this feeling of being at a loss, a continual uncertainty.

I look around the group, remembering how Bertram called us riffraff. Everyone but Großmutter and me is dirt poor. And all of us are suspect. One is handsome, but he's a foreigner. One is beautiful, but she's a widow with no discernible source of income, yet she survives. One is a woman whose husband beats her when he finds out she's been to a coven meeting—so she has to put a broom in her bed, to fool him into thinking she's shut herself up sick for the day. One is a midwife, but she's different from Großmutter; she's helped many women abort their babies. The rest of us are wrinkled, lame, deformed, foul, sickly. But when we come together, we don't seem that way at all. We give one another energy.

My own impression of the woman in Höxter—the
one I brought the hens to—comes back to me strongly. She seemed bleak, though she was young and well formed. I imagine her now with her coven. Does she race around in excitement? Is she attractive? Even fascinating?

We dig a hole, each of us doing the amount of work that makes sense for our strength. One side slants, and soon enough the hole is so deep the diggers have to use that incline to walk in and out. The supreme head sits, and I know he is about to lead us in a chant, when what we really need hides trapped in our legs. This is the time to act on my resolve.

I sing.

At first the others hush in surprise. Then one by one they sing too. Loudly. We move naturally in a circle around the grave, going to the left, facing outward—what we call widdershins. And we're dancing, at last. Oh, it's so good to be dancing again. We break into pairs and dance back-to-back, our arms linked. Partners take turns bending forward and lifting the other off the ground. We shake our heads and howl so loud it hurts my ears. If anyone saw us throwing ourselves around like this, they'd think we were mad. They might even be afraid of us, like I was the first time I came. But
there's nothing to fear in these joyful jumps. We work for the good of everyone. We're dancing now to bring milk to the cows, to bring health to the animals. We're using the dark powers against themselves. There's no limit to what's possible. We're dancing for the unlimited.

Euphoria fills me. I don't care what practices may be written on Albert the Great's list. Whatever we do is in the Lord's name. Everything here is good. Every last thing.

After dancing, I fall on the ground, spent. But the others bustle around with the food, and I realize they're right, for I'm famished. We eat so many kinds of roasted meat. I don't usually like meat without salt, but we never have salt at a coven feast. Unless you want to count me—I smile at my joke, but it's too stupid to say aloud. And my mouth is too full to speak anyway; the meat is delicious today, even without salt.

Someone brought wine. Only lords and ladies drink wine on a daily basis, so it feels like a grand gesture to be drinking wine. I can't have any, naturally. Großmutter says it slows the breathing even more than beer. But I'm part of the grand gesture just by being there. I drink from the brook, down on all fours. I feel cowlike. But I mustn't think that way. I
can't think about the cow waiting behind the bushes.

There's honey cake for dessert.

Our familiars make noises at one another. Most of them are black hens, but there are dogs, too, and one bony black horse. They're all closed up in wood cages, except the horse, who s tied to a tree. That's so they won't harm one another. Even Kuh is in a cage, though he's too young to harm anything.

The supreme head calls the meeting to order. People report on what's happened since our last meeting. They take turns talking. The rats. The rats. The rats.

The foreign man holds up a trap he's designed. It's two flat, round wood plates arranged one above the other with a spread hand's width between them and little poles attaching one to the other at regular intervals around the perimeter. The top plate has a hole in the center the size of a fist. You drop a piece of meat through the hole. The rat noses along and jumps down inside to eat the meat. But he can't fit between the poles. And he can't climb back out the center hole because it's greased so thickly. The man wants us all to charm the trap design for extra strength. He's already made a dozen at home, and he plans to sell them in town on the morrow. We recite rhymes in unison:

Then people take turns listing the ailments of the cattle. Everyone listens closely. This is what we're here for. This is it:

That same thing happened in another herd as well. To three cows
.

Body parts are drying up and turning black, dying right off the animal. Ears and tails fall to the ground
.

Hooves are rotting away
.

Calves bleat in misery as cow udders dry up
.

After awhile, no one says anything more. We look at one another.

Someone asks if anyone knows of sick sows yet. No one does. That's good.

But then someone talks about poultry. Combs
and wattles are falling off. And the woman whose familiar is the mare says it spontaneously aborted a month ago. The foal was all black. Another reports on a sheep herd that's sick. We fall silent.

None of these reports is new to me or to anyone else. Hameln town and its surroundings have an illness. No one yet has been able to cure it. Not the farmers with their home remedies. Not the newfangled surgeons. Not the healers. So it's our turn.

And we'd better succeed, for there's already been talk that the livestock have been put under an evil spell. Talk like that can turn deadly, even to a papist coven like ours. We know about witch trials. Ordinary trials start with a crime and go in search of a criminal. Witch trials go in reverse.

But we don't talk about that. There's no point.

We're waiting for Pater Michael. He won't take part in a coven feast, but he'll come for the burial. While we wait, people finish off the last crumbs.

The two altar boys guide Pater Michael through the forest. He'd get lost on his own, with those eyes. He carries a crucifix in front of him to ward off evil.

The three of them walk into our midst, their black garb lost among ours. Ah. I remember the
piper in the woods thinking our coven wears black for the devil. But church clerics wear black too. I never made the connection before. It's fitting that we all wear black.

No one exchanges greetings. Instead, Pater Michael looks at each of us in turn. When he looks at the midwife—the one who helps women get rid of unwanted pregnancies—he blinks and his lips purse. But she doesn't flinch; she looks right back at him. When he looks at me, I try to talk to him with my eyes.
Are you torn? Do you think about Albert the Great's list? Don't worry anymore, Pater Michael. Don't worry, because it's all right to let our coven do whatever it must. I know that now. Our dancing just made that clear to me
.

We get to our feet. The supreme head goes off behind alder bushes and comes back leading the cow I knew was there. The poor thing is missing an ear. Her head droops. She hobbles. He pulls her toward the grave and tries to lead her down the incline. But cattle always balk at going downhill. We should have made the slope much less steep.

I join three others and we push the cow from the rear. She stumbles but somehow manages to stay upright on those hooves that seem to have been eaten away. Now she's in the grave.

We light candles and set them floating in small bowls around the edge of the grave. Then we turn our backs so we can't see what's happening at the grave. But we can hear our supreme head throwing dirt in. His breathing grows raspy. It's a long job for someone his age.

I've never been at a live burial before. Großmutter has, though. It's one of the best ways to cure disease among farm animals.

I sneak a peek at Pater Michael. He's facing the grave, watching. He doesn't throw dirt, he just watches, though it's not clear what his bleary eyes can see. He holds his hands clasped on his belly and watches.

So I turn and watch too.

At first the cow pays no attention to the dirt. But when it reaches her belly, she looks up at us. She lows. And when it reaches her anus, her eyes grow wild. She struggles, but it's too late. The weight of the dirt overwhelms her, especially in her sickened state. She moos and her nostrils fill with dirt.

I'm cow again—like I was when I drank at the brook, only more now because I, too, know what it's like to struggle for air. It's all I can do to keep from rushing forward and sweeping the pathetic creature's
nostrils free and clean. I have to swallow and swallow so I won't scream.

I look at the turned backs of the coven members. I look at the supreme head and at Pater Michael. I look at the heavens. Then I look back at the dying cow. My breathing is so labored now that Tm rocking on my feet.

My coven knows what it's doing. Pater Michael knows what he s doing. They know, they all know better than me. I'm chewing my tongue. My mouth fills with blood. I'm rocking and chewing.

The cow's lone ear twitches even as our supreme head covers it. Then there's nothing. No sound. No movement.

I'm shaking so hard it feels like I'll come apart. Our supreme head stops.

“Keep throwing the dirt,” says Pater Michael. “The cow has to be completely buried. The head has to stay on the corpse. I mean it.”

The pope has forbidden exhibiting the heads of sacrificed animals. We know that. That's a part of the list that Pater Michael doesn't omit.

I'm hugging myself and shaking.

Our master throws dirt until the horns disappear. The mound rises past level ground.