Quest of Hope: A Novel (23 page)

It was a warm day in May when Sigmund delivered the miller’s heavy-laden donkey to the bakery. Heinrich greeted him with a grunt and pointed to the rope and pulley. Sigmund was one whose countenance was as horrid as his soul. His eyes were usually runny and yellow; his face covered with sores and pimples that crowded the bumps and scars of those that went before. None who knew him dared trust him with even a lentil. Sigmund grinned and motioned for the baker to come close. “I’ve something to tell you, Heinrich.”

Heinrich sighed.

“Something you’ll be wanting to know!” The man smiled and picked at the gaps in what few teeth remained.

Heinrich grimaced. “Well, go on.”

“You know that mason’s wench, Katharina?”

Heinrich tensed. He had just walked with her on the Sabbath past. They had talked with Emma in her gardens and danced in the “ankleblooms” of the meadow. He remembered the shame he felt. “Ja… what of her?”

“She’s to be wed next year, like you.” Sigmund grinned knowingly.

Heinrich felt sick. He turned his head.
No, it cannot be!
he groaned within himself. “To whom?”

Sigmund raised a brow. “She’s been pledged to a freeman’s son, Ludwig, son of dead Mattias the old forester.”

“Ludwig!” exclaimed Heinrich. “B-but he’s a brute. He has no heart… he’s—”

“He’s to be her husband and you’re not,” laughed Sigmund.

Heinrich leaned against the bakery wall and shuddered in disbelief. The thought of Ludwig with his cherished Katharina was more than he could bear. The young man ran away, sprinting toward the comforting shade of his beloved Magi in the cool wood by the waters of the Laubusbach.

It had been nearly two and one-half years since Ingelbert had suffered trial in the castle of Lord Tomas at Mensfelden. Since then, Tomas had become ever-more sullen and dark; he raged about his castle sending his knights after every peasant’s rumor. It was an obsession that Arnold calculated could be of some advantage in solving another mystery—the shadows of All Souls’ eve.

For years Arnold had hidden in wait, determined to snag the spirit that hovered by Emma’s door at midnight, but in every case he was seized by fear, or chased by beasts, and was now banished from all dabbling in such things. “The shadows,” claimed Father Pious, “may indeed be devils at her door, but to interfere risks hex and curse upon us all. Better to leave the woman be, and her monstrous son, else you risk your own soul.” Arnold had heeded the priest’s advice but with great frustration, for the man was drawn to secrets like a wasp to an eave.
Perhaps,
thought he,
Lord Tornas might press after Ingelbert once again, and why not on All Souls’ eve, only two months hence?

Lord Tomas, however, wanted no part of Ingelbert. His priests assured him that the combat was sanctified and God would surely be displeased if he ignored His just decree. But Arnold’s whispers of spirits and forces in the forests played havoc with the man. Night after night he sat in his large hall facing the roaring hearth with sword in hand. He cursed the lifeless faces of quarry taken from his woodlands; bear and wolf, fox and deer, all prey once walking free amidst the timbers of his realm. The grieving man stared and drank his ale, railing against his priests and knights alike until late one September evening he stood and faced his vassals. “The witch! Of course, the witch!” he shouted. “Why have none of you accused the cursed witch?”

The courtiers grew nervous as the man began to grin. He wiped frothy ale off his brown beard and threw his wooden tankard across the straw-strewn floor. “She hexed him and hurled him off the cliff! I know it—I feel it! Rumors tell me my son did love the witch’s daughter, Wilda. Ha! I’ll ne’er believe it! But, I tell you this… ‘tis plain to me now… the old one was jealous of his love and spied him out and killed him!”

Lord Tomas’s knights became noticeably concerned. They whispered around the hall in anxious, hushed tones. His soldiers had no fear of combat; to face another knight across a field and rush toward him atop a snorting steed was their virtue and their joy. But to step lightly in the forest mists at dawn in search of witches was something else entirely.

“What is the morrow?” roared the lord.

“The first Sabbath of September,” answered a clerk.

Tomas turned to his priest. “What say you, father, of witches? Have they the might to send a lad such as my Silvester to his death?”

The priest bowed his head. “Ja, my lord. From former times it is known that they’ve powers from Lucifer to incant and to enchant. ‘Tis they, I have oft heard, who guide arrows into the joints of armor.”

Tomas’s knights leaned forward, listening in earnest to the priest’s words.

“I’ve heard it said,” he continued, “that they are sometimes skilled in alchemy—a temptation of the Pit that draws others to them, but also provides them with means. For, it would seem, some do change acorns and beechnuts into gold, or even pebbles into silver pennies. Their witches’ sabbaths spawn curses and hexes, blasphemies and plagues that do fill all hell with wretched souls.

“Beware, good lord and noble knights, beware! Even the mighty Karl the Great was beset by their powers.”

Lord Tomas sat still, his eyes fixed on some unseen vision. He stood from his oak chair and raised his gloved hands defiantly into the air. His eyes burned hot with rage and his nostrils flared like a stallion readied for battle. “On the first dawn past Sabbath!” he bellowed. “We shall find these witches and send their souls to hell!”

Hours before prime on Monday, Heinrich was sweating and shirtless in his bakery. He and his two assistants were preparing for the morning’s onslaught of buyers. In good years the peasants would bring a penny for their bread; in difficult times they’d bring eggs or hands full of peas. In desperate years they’d not come at all, resigned to eating their mush. In this particular year the harvest had been good and the peasants were able to sell their excess for more than what the taxes required. Heinrich would be busy.

Each morning he took the night’s rested doughs from their shelves. He and his helpers would knead them, pause for a short break, then shape them into loaves of various shapes and sizes. Afterward they were stamped, decorated, braided, or marked if necessary and as the season warranted. Otherwise, as on this day, they would be immediately placed deep into the hot, brick ovens.

Then, while the morning’s bread was baking, the next day’s yeasted doughs were prepared. Each day was the same: buckets of water were carried from the well to the barrels of the bakery, then the water was mixed with the flour taken from storage overhead, and then kneaded in long wooden troughs. When the first kneading was done, the heavy doughs were broken into lengths that draped across the baker’s forearms and then set on shelves for the next day’s bake.

The baking loaves were browned and sometimes blackened by the wood-fueled ovens and set into baskets where they waited for hungry
Hausfrauen
to appear. Usually about an hour before prime, a column of weary women began to snake its way toward the candlelit bake-house for the day’s fare.

It was on this quite typical Monday dawn that Varina came for bread. By her side was Effi, Heinrich’s sister of fifteen. Though younger than he by two years, Heinrich suddenly realized that she would need to be betrothed within a year. Given Baldric’s eagerness to seal alliances and pay debts, Heinrich was puzzled why he had not yet bound her to someone. Heinrich loved his sister, though he rarely saw her. Her duties with Varina kept her in the fields, often sowing grains, pulling flax, and bundling willow wands as the seasons required. When she was not in the fields, she would be working with Varina at sewing or carding wool, spinning or managing the garden.

Effi had grown into a beautiful young woman; shapely and petite—a quality sought more by nobles than peasants. She was clearheaded and smart, and her hair was braided to the waist, though bright red—a color not pleasing to many. Her blue eyes were always kindled with a fire of spirit that kept many at some distance, but she was a hard worker and not lacking in mercy. She had been a good sister to Heinrich and one for whom he wished only blessing.

“Good morning, brother!” chirped Effi as she waited for her bread.

“Ah, and to you!” brightened Heinrich. “Have you punched or bitten anyone yet this morn?”

“Ha! You’d be the first!” With that the girl playfully struck her brother on the shoulder.

Heinrich feigned injury. “Save me, saints!” he cried. “I’ve been wounded by a … a flea.” He smiled.

“Humph!” Effi laughed.

“Enough! Can we not get some bread?” grumbled a voice from the waiting line.

Effi winked and retreated for home to help Varina feed Baldric, Herwin, and a hut full of Varina’s children. Baldric was in a particularly foul mood that morning. After storming about the dimly lit hovel, he finally bent his heavy head out the low doorway and disappeared into the gray light of the new September day. He had business along the borders by Weyer and had borrowed Arnold’s pitiful horse. The day was young and cloudy, but warm. The forest’s trees were a faded green, soon to begin their glorious conversion to the wondrous colors of autumn.

Baldric passed through the valley of the Laubusbach and kept a sharp eye for poachers rumored to be stealing the monks’ deer from the heavy spruce just ahead. The widening valley was clean and green, pungent and pleasant, but the wood was thick and difficult to spy. Baldric followed the stream to an eastward bend where he paused not far from his nephew’s Magi. He dismounted to cup some cool water and while he drank, he stared through the ferns carpeting the woodland. Something seemed amiss. As woodward, he had spent many long days beneath the canopy of the forest and his instincts were keen. He peered through the timbers, suddenly aware there was no sound—no birds, no rustle of squirrels—nothing. Even the wind was still.

The man walked carefully past the abbey’s boundary poles onto Lord Tomas’s land. He tied his horse, then moved deeper into the wood. Suddenly, he heard something—a crack, then another, and another. Baldric lowered himself into the ferns. For a long moment there was silence again. Then he heard loud snapping and a flurry of cracks and rushes. He lifted his head to see two women darting between the trees about a bowshot away. They were leaping and lunging like frightened doe and disappeared in the shade to his left.

Baldric followed them at a run but suddenly heard a loud noise to his right. He dodged behind a broad trunk and looked to see a long line of armed men trotting in his direction, presumably in search of the women in flight. Baldric’s mouth went dry and his heart began to race. He was trespassing.

Baldric, now in his midthirties, was not the youth he once was. He found himself gasping for air and stumbling over logs like a clumsy old man as he raced ahead of the soldiers. He crashed across the forest floor until he arrived at his tethered horse and heaved himself upon its saddle with the grunts and snorts of a stiff-jointed bear. With a jerk and a whinny, the nag carried the man across the border to safety.

Relieved to be on his own land, Baldric breathed more easily. He drew another drink from the Laubusbach and wiped the sweat off his face. Still curious, he turned his horse northward along the narrow trail that followed the abbey’s eastern boundary. He trotted about a furlong or two when he saw the two women once again. They dashed across his path and disappeared into the stands of spruce to his left. Now confident on his own lord’s land, Baldric kicked his horse forward.

The two fugitives had run into heavy brush and Baldric was forced to dismount and follow them on foot. His tracking instincts were sharp, and in less than a quarter hour he came upon their low, panting voices. The woodward crouched and stepped lightly on the carpet of soft needles until he spotted an outcropping of gray rocks. To one side he spotted the ragged figures of two women talking in urgent tones.