Wolves Among Us (15 page)

“Who is the witch you caught?” Stefan asked. Inside the dormitory, they faced each other alone.

Bastion grabbed him by his robes and jerked Stefan’s face closer to his.

“Do not ever challenge me again in front of others or I will have you sent to a parish so poor the people will skip communion and want to eat
you
.”

Stefan swatted at Bastion’s hands. Bastion released him and yawned. “You interfered with my work, but I have forgiven you.”

“I thought you did God’s work.”

“Is there a difference?” Bastion sighed, kicking off his boots. “Do not question my authority, Father. It is not good for your mind.”

“What’s in the bag?”

Bastion glanced at the bag, shrugging. “If you’re curious, open it.”

“I’m not curious.”

Bastion laughed. “You’re really moody this morning. I’d say your faith is wavering. Get some sleep and you’ll feel better.” He stood and walked to the bag, untying it. The mouth of the bag flopped open, revealing a tangle of metal contraptions.

Bastion pulled back the cover on his bed and stretched out, crossing his legs at the ankle, tucking his hands behind his head.

Stefan gave in. He went over to the bag and reached in a hand, grabbing a hard, cold object, shaking it loose from the pile. He pulled it out and held it up. It appeared to be a vise, made of two metal planks no bigger than a man’s hand, with thick, rusted screws driven down between the planks.

“What is it?” Stefan ran a finger along the rust. He held his finger up to wipe it clean across his pant leg.

“It’s a thumb screw.” Bastion sounded sleepy.

The stain on Stefan’s hand, and now his pants, was blood. Dried blood covered the device. Stefan dropped it, stumbling back.

“Show some respect!” Bastion grumbled, snatching it off the floor, thrusting it back in the bag.

“What else is in there?” Stefan threw the bag open again and began pulling out every device his hand fell to.

Bastion turned on his side this time on the bed, his eyelids getting heavier. He named the objects as Stefan held them up, like Adam naming the animals.

A helmet of metal with screws to tighten the band.

“Skull crusher.”

A mask that clamped round the jaws, with an iron pig’s nose.

“Scold’s bridle.”

A metal stake no bigger than a small dagger, with a blunted end.

“Fire poker. If Satan gives a woman a mole or freckle as a sign of their pact, I burn it off.”

Tongs.

“Good for holding a tongue when you need to cleanse it with fire.”

Bastion fell asleep before Stefan got through the bag.

One of the village boys rang the church bells, calling him, and the village, to morning Mass. Stefan walked to the window in a stupor, his hands shaking, seeing his people leaving their homes and the market stalls, more people than he had ever seen awake, ready to worship at this hour. Their faces looked anxious for Stefan’s words. Stefan had once thought crowds were a sure sign God blessed him. When the people came in great numbers, God was blessing the work. God should be credited.

God and no one else,
Stefan thought.
Unless, perhaps, God could not be found in this at all.

Chapter Sixteen

In the late afternoon, waiting for Bjorn to return from an errand in the village, Mia watched Alma napping with the kitten tucked into her side. Mia sat, hands folded in her lap, watching the steady rise and fall of both chests, the serene curves of their closed eyes. Behind her, Margarite sat in a chair near the fireplace, her chin almost touching her chest. She snored softly, her injured arm held close. Outside, a woodpecker tapped against a tree.

Mia stood, keeping her movements slow and quiet. She walked to the door, picking up her garden trowel from the basket near the door. The ground would still be hard and too cold for planting the seeds she harvested last fall. Swinging the door on its hinges only a breath at a time, she eased it open and stepped outside. After pacing in every direction, surveying the path that led to her home, and the woods around her, she chose a spot. Using one hand, she swept away leaf litter and pulled up dead vines, getting to the bare earth. Using her trowel, she began digging. She didn’t need a big hole, just a deep one, a well to swallow up her sin.

The hole completed, she sneaked back into the house. Her body felt weak. Fear drained her strength. She should eat, just for strength. But her appetite had fled. Maybe that was how the miraculous maids resisted food. Maybe they were afraid too.

No one had stirred inside, although the kitten opened its round eyes and blinked once, watching her without interest before returning to its nap.

Mia slid the delicately tooled chest from the dark, unused corner of her home. Alma sometimes used the chest, with its heavy frame and strong lid, as a stool. Mia should not have allowed that, she thought now.

She took a deep breath and opened the lid. Inside hid linens and pearls, gold thread and fine needles. They sparkled, even in the dim yellow light of the fire. Mia pushed them aside. She had used this chest only once, four years ago when she made a christening cloth, anticipating her first birth. Alma had been born in distress, and Mia lost much blood.

“Have her keep the christening cloth,” Father Stefan had told Bjorn at the christening. “We’ll bury the child in it.”

Bjorn became cold, unwilling to have another child, loath to touch either of them.

“You look so sad,” Dame Alice had said to her as Mia passed by her home on the way to the market. “Come inside, dear.”

“No, the baby is unwell today. I need to get her home.”

“Don’t you trust me, Mia? I’ve had children too.”

Yes, but they died,
Mia thought. “Perhaps later.”

And then other women began to turn a cold shoulder to her, as if she had offended them. She had sought advice sometimes, working up the courage to speak to another new mother, only to be rebuffed.

“Have I done something?” Mia asked Rose. They had both reached for a summer apple at the same time. Rose jerked her hand away as if burned and turned to walk away.

“Please tell me,” Mia called after her.

“Perhaps later.”

Alma survived that first stone-cold winter. Mia had spent all her energy keeping Alma warm, willing her to breathe.

“There was no time later,” Mia said to herself, thinking of Rose. To drive the thoughts away, Mia moved her hand under the sewing goods and clutched a metal square, drawing it up into the light, turning herself from the door so she could not be seen with it.

She traced the outline of the perfect letter M. Her father had given it to her when she was just a few years older than Alma. Mia glanced back at the door again. She had to bury it forever. Her stomach burned. Her knees were shaking as the memories came back to her.

She had been so happy, peeking around her father’s legs, making him swat at her with feigned impatience. He held his impossibly strong arms—the arms of a printer—straight out, grasping the handle, pulling it to him until the press shook with terrible creaks and snaps.

Releasing the handle, he nodded to Mia, who pulled the paper free with her small, gentle hands, walking somberly with the sheet as though she held the emperor’s crown. She took it to the sad man who sat so often by the window.

She knew him as Master Hutchins. It was not his real name. He would not tell her his real name. Only later did she learn it, when it was too late to save her father. Or herself.

Master Hutchins took the paper and studied it. She saw how his eyes moved over it, from one side to the other, starting at the top and working down to the last line of type. One day he did not hand the paper back to her. Instead, his eyes peered back over the top, looking down at her, his thick eyebrows wiggling.

Mia laughed and held out her hands for the paper.

“’Tis fine,” Master Hutchins called to her father. “We have money for ten tonight. Best to work fast and eat later.”

Then he returned his attention to Mia. “You have no brothers, do you?”

Mia hung her head.

“No, no. I did not say it to shame you, my dear. Indeed, it could be a blessing. Look how fine your hands are, how delicate and careful your every movement with them. You have made a fine puller.”

Mia tucked her hands behind her skirts.

“I can see that you like to work. But tell me, Mia, do you like to learn?”

Mia bit her lip and looked back toward her father. He pressed the paper. She should fetch it. That was her job as puller.

“You will outgrow that task, probably by winter’s end. You could be worth more than ten sons to him, if you are willing to learn.”

Mia ran away from him. She took the paper from the press, her hands trembling, and laid it with the others, listening to her father argue with Hutchins.

“You surprise me, William.”

“Are you quite mad? When she’s married,” her father continued, “what use will she have for letters and words?”

“Oh, she might marry a printer, a man like yourself.”

“I pray not. One cannot make a living in publishing.”

“She’s a bright girl but lonely. You cannot give her brothers or sisters.”

Mia had hung her head again then. Her mother had died giving birth to her.

“But you can give her truth.”

Her father lunged at the man, the man she would later learn was called by the name of William Tyndale. Her father knocked him to the floor. Mia hid her face in her hands. She heard punches and grunts. When she looked back up, her father stood over Master Hutchins, who had blood pouring from his nose. Mia tore across the room, ripping at her cloak, pressing it against Master Hutchins’ wounds.

“Father, no! He is my friend!”

“He’s going to get us all killed.”

“All we have is each other. You said that yourself!”

“You are not a parent, Mia. You can’t understand.”

“I want to know this truth he speaks of. I want to know.”

Father shook his head at Master Hutchins. “She is my only child.”

Master Hutchins made no reply. Father scowled at Mia. “Learn the letters if you want. But hear me: Letters become words, words become books, and you will become an unfit wife. It won’t matter that you know the truth. Is that what you want?”

Mia nodded her head yes with great vigor.

Her father had laughed without joy, extending a hand to Master Hutchins, lifting him off the floor.

Mia sighed as she remembered days that were no more, and men she had loved. Those loves were long dead now.

Carrying the silver piece of type with the letter M, she went back to the hole she had dug and dropped it in. Getting down on her knees as if to say a prayer over it, she leaned over the hole. “I am sorry.” She sat back on her heels and began pushing dirt into the hole, tamping it down, piling leaves and dead vines over the spot. With any luck, spring would cause something green to grow up over the spot.

Going back inside, Mia set her mind on the life she had now. She sat next to the box with great relief, waiting for strength to return. She smoothed the linens and christening cloth back into place inside the chest. Catching a hint of smoke, she pulled out the christening cloth and held it to her nose. It smelled like smoke and needed a good airing. She set it in her lap and fished in the chest for her sack of pearls.

“Burial cloth, indeed. Those days are gone, Father,” she said, though she knew she sat alone. “But you’ll see. I’ll sew my pearls onto this, and she will wear it at her wedding someday.”

The pearls were gone.

“How could that be?” Mia asked, dragging the chest closer in between her feet and searching again with trembling fingers. The pearls were small but not so small that they could go missing in this chest. They were held together on a simple string, tied together like a necklace with a silver clasp in the center. The clasp, a poor-quality one, had marks on it from the smith’s tools. Even so, that crude clasp proved strong enough to hold the little pearls secure. The pearls had been her mother’s, meant to be sewn onto Mia’s own bridal veil.

Hairs raised along Mia’s forearms. Tears started to build, making her throat burn as she swallowed and tried to stop them. No one even knew she had the pearls, save for Margarite and Bjorn. Why would anyone steal from her? She was neither rich nor proud.

Mia threw a hand to her mouth. A witch had stolen these pearls intended for a happier day.

“I have to ask Bastion. Why would a witch steal them? Are more curses still to come?”

The home remained silent, save for Margarite’s soft snoring. Alma stirred, opened her eyes, and smiled at Mia. She sat up in her bed, pulling herself up to the window. She loved to watch the squirrels scampering all around the house. Spring meant squirrels jumping from tree to tree, and turtles lumbering though the leaves, and birds singing at all hours. Alma slapped her palms against the window frame, cheering.

Bjorn opened the door, leaning in. Mia jumped, startled.