Authors: Ginger Garrett
“A broken neck,” someone replied from the crowd. “There were bruises, too.”
Ducinda pressed her face into her shawl, weeping. Stefan instinctively reached for her but stopped himself when he noticed the villagers watching him. What would it mean to comfort Ducinda if her friend was a witch? He took a step back from her, returning his attention to Bastion, willing the people to do the same, to turn away from his momentary indiscretion.
Bastion smirked, eyes closed. “Our enemy is predictable. Dangerous, yes, but entirely predictable. My friends, I have chased your enemy, the Devil, over sea and land, across borders and kingdoms, and yet I tell you the truth: Never once has he surprised me. His work is always the same. Only the women’s names change.”
Stefan nodded in agreement with Bastion, cutting his eyes side to side to see if anyone still watched him.
“The Devil often breaks the necks of his witches. In my travels, when I have caught a witch and she is to burn, I often find her dead in her cell by morning, most often by hanging. Her neck is always broken. Witches who desire confession, who desire to turn from their errors, are troublesome to the Devil’s work. He silences them the only way any woman can be silenced: through death. Sometimes there is a struggle, if the woman had been a good soul before she gave herself to him. Oh, beware, my friends: The Devil is indeed among you. But he cannot harm you without human assistance. For how can the spiritual world enter into the physical world except by human host? The Devil is powerless among you until he inhabits one of you. Bring me Catarina’s body.”
Erick pulled a cart with the casket upon it toward Bastion. Erick’s shoulders strained under the linen shirt Stefan had supplied last year. Erick had outgrown yet another set of clothes. He had become an impressive man in many ways. Stefan wondered if Erick would remain with him much longer, especially now that Bastion had arrived.
“Thank you, my son,” Bastion said. Erick seemed taken aback. Bastion called him a son for the second time today. He had only just met him. Stefan frowned.
“What fellowship does light have with darkness?” Bastion asked the people, who remained silent. Stefan glared at them and huffed. They should know the proper response. “What have you taught them, Father?”
Stefan froze with no answer.
Bastion ran his hand over the coffin. Ducinda had paid for a lovely coffin, carved with spring flowers and vines. Bastion shoved the lid onto the dirt and tilted the coffin away from himself. Catarina’s body tumbled out, her broken neck making her head land at a grotesque angle.
Children screamed and ducked underneath their mothers’ shawls. Men looked away, twisting their mouths. Stefan found he could not close his mouth, his shock freezing his will.
Bastion pointed at him. “You would give a Christian burial to a witch?”
Stefan was nervous. “I … I asked a woman, Ducinda here, to help with her burial, and this is what she chose.” He didn’t mean to turn against Ducinda, but it was the truth. He wanted this over quickly.
Faces turned to Ducinda, who lowered her shawl from her tear-streaked face in horror. “I did not know. Father Stefan told me nothing.”
“A witch must be burned and her ashes dumped into a river,” Bastion said to the crowd. No one moved. Erick stepped forward to protest, but Bastion whipped toward him with a pointed finger, holding him back.
“Did you hear me? Does anyone among you fear the Lord? An enemy of Christ is before you. Throw her body into the fire! Show me that you fear your Lord.”
In obedience, Stefan made a move toward the body, but other men grabbed her first. One took her by the ankles, the other by her hands, carrying her to the bonfire. Erick threw his arm over his eyes, turning away. Stefan looked away too, into the dark edges of the night. These men once hoped to court gentle Catarina. He had heard their confessions; he knew the thoughts they had of her in those days. Now he heard them grunt as they lifted and threw her into the flames. A shadow caught his eye, and he thought he saw a woman running into the forest beyond them, her silver hair catching the moonlight.
“Praise God,” a man muttered. “Let us be done with evil.” Other voices carried over the pops and cracks of the burning wood. A stench foreign to Stefan, foreign to them all, spoiled the air, seared into the night and memory, sneaked past them by the smoke, soaking into their clothes, their hair, their village.
“I always knew she wasn’t right.” Another voice Stefan did not recognize. He did not know this side of his people. He caught sight of little Marie looking at him as if he was a monster. She did not understand. She was still too young to know right from wrong.
“A fine girl Catarina was,” he heard someone saying, “until the day she came to market with bruises round her wrists. Her husband away on a journey, said she hurt herself carrying water buckets. Never the same after that.”
“Her eyes were cold. No life in them anymore.”
Stefan saw Bjorn on the other side of the crowd, observing it all from a distance. Bjorn caught Stefan watching him and nodded without expression. Bjorn crossed his arms, his body settling into place as if ready to hear Bastion turn the village upside down. Stefan turned away, telling himself his cheeks were flushed from the bonfire’s heat. Bastion paced in front of the fire, his eyes wide with excitement as the corpse burned. People circled and leaned in, waiting for his next word.
God burned Sodom and Gomorrah. Stefan reminded himself of that, for strength. God’s work was sometimes done with fire.
They wanted to hear what he said. And what he asked would be done immediately.
They aren’t the sort of people who respond so well,
Stefan thought. At least not to him. Now he could see they were exactly that sort of people. Stefan did not want to look at Bjorn again, but he did anyway. What had he taught his people, indeed? Bjorn’s criticism had been right. Tonight he knew this with grim certainty: His congregants hid from him, in plain sight, sitting through all those Masses and prayers and penitence with no intention of changing. If Bjorn asked again why his prayers went unanswered, Stefan would tell him this.
Bjorn had pushed his way to the front of the crowd, close enough to grab Bastion if he wanted. Stefan couldn’t reach him without calling attention to himself. He was stranded in this crowd of unrepentant sinners and a woman’s burning body, her beauty turning into a vision black and unrecognizable before their eyes.
Stefan’s shoulders slumped. He must apologize to Bjorn later. Bjorn had been right. Bastion would not stay longer than two or three days at most. Stefan would learn how to lead the people, how Bastion called up their obedience and hunger for righteousness with only words. Stefan would be Bastion’s most devoted student, and his people would prosper. That was what a good priest must do.
Bastion ducked his head, whispering something to Erick. Erick looked with great sorrow at Stefan before disappearing. He returned, wheeling a cage straight to the crowd. The people pushed into each other, making room for Erick, none wanting to touch the cage.
Catarina’s burning body made the air smell foul. Villagers lifted hems and sleeves to their faces, blocking the smell. A worse smell, almost inhuman, seeped from the cage Erick drew near. No one wanted to know what could be inside the cage, covered by a thick wool blanket, but no one could turn away. They pressed their clothes harder against their mouths and noses so that only their eyes remained visible on their faces. Stefan could not tell them apart.
Bastion stepped in front of the cage, giving the people something to focus on, an excuse to look away from Catarina’s lovely blonde hair rising up to the moon as it caught fire.
“Search your hearts. Think on Catarina, a seducing witch who caused an innocent man’s death. Consider what evil hides among you. Witches are real, my friends. The Bible teaches their existence and says we must not suffer a witch to live. These witches, what do they want from you? Do you know? Have you guessed? A witch craves what is forbidden, and what is forbidden but carnal knowledge? Witches will drive a good man to do terrible things. And their power in this village may be great.”
“But what of the cage?” Erick asked. “What is inside?”
“No, I can see I have told you all too much tonight. Go home and rest.”
Stefan moved beside Erick. “Where shall I put the cage?” He would secure it somewhere out of sight. Bastion would probably sleep in tomorrow, and everyone would be anxious to attend the first Mass of the day. Stefan would use his most thunderous voice to speak the old Latin words. The people would find great comfort in Stefan—the way a child runs to his mother after a frightful dream in the night.
“Put the cage where it can be secured at all hours, near the church,” Bastion answered. He said it loud enough for several men in the front row to hear. “No one must be allowed near it for fear of their very salvation.”
“What is it?” Stefan asked, ready to kick himself as the words left his mouth. He sounded as eager as Erick.
“I think it’s an animal,” Erick whispered to him. “Smell it.”
Bastion sighed as if exasperated. “Let me relieve your impatience,” he said, then took hold of the corner of the wool blanket. With a violent snap it ripped away. A beast crouched in the corner, thick, tangled hair hanging down past its spreading haunches. It was covered in filth. A handful of yellow teeth broke the dark opening of its mouth; underneath, its eyes were covered with crusts of mucus. As the crowd watched, it picked at a scab.
Stefan studied the beast with the slow realization that it was a woman. Erick ran to the edge of the woods and vomited.
“She, too, once had a name, a home. But the Devil came to her window one night, and she beckoned him in. How handsome he must have looked to her in the moonlight, a seducing serpent. Look upon her, ladies. This is what becomes of the woman who abides with the Devil. See what has become of her beauty. Look upon her and know what it means to be abandoned by mercy. Behold, a witch!”
No woman found the strength to look at her. Their heads were bowed, and they cried into their shawls. Stefan heard little whispers of prayers, as if they could repent right then of every wrong they had done if it would save them from this woman’s fate.
“Go now! Go and pray to be spared!” Bastion called as the people fled into darkness in all directions, through gardens and past homes, trampling the tender green growths of the fresh and innocent spring that had overcome winter.
Chapter Nine
Mia kept her eyes on the ladle, careful to scoop from the sides to get the hottest portion of the stew to please Bjorn. She ladled it into his bowl then pushed the ladle deep into the center of the pot, touching bottom, scraping up thick chunks of the best meat and depositing them in his bowl. She picked a soft leaf of sage from the plate on the table and tore at its edges, dropping the bits in a neat cluster in the center of the stew. Her mouth watered at the thought of her own bowl, and she fantasized about a chance to sit and rest as she ate it. But she would wait.
Alma gnawed her bread, taking bites then holding it out for inspection, fascinated by the marks her teeth made. She bit the bread at a new angle, delighted at the new shape she crafted. Margarite sat forlorn, her hands folded in her lap. She stared at her bowl as if it had been responsible for some great sorrow. Mia left her to her quiet thoughts. Not all sadness needed an immediate remedy. Mia had learned to sit with her own sorrows on many nights and had discovered that very few sorrows needed anything at all from her. They came and settled in her soul while Mia tended to her work, like quiet companions, like birds in the town square. They came and settled in, right in the middle of life, with no hope of scattering off into the winds.
Bjorn watched her, his hands clasped together, one finger raised and laid over his mouth. “What is the gossip? What do the women say?”
She set the bowl before him and began tearing free a thick chunk of bread to serve him. Their earlier argument still pierced her heart. He would say nothing more of it, she knew, and he would not allow her to bring it up. She put the entire loaf before him and sat, feeling the pain of blood rushing into her feet as they left the floor. She was exhausted from her soles to her head.
“Well?”
When Mia had exhaled, letting the pain pass, she answered. “I’ve heard no gossip.”
“Really?”
“None.”
“I will tell you what I have heard, then. The Inquisitor, this man named Bastion, said Catarina was a witch. That she bewitched another man, luring him to sin, that it is her own fault she died. He says the Devil murdered her.”
Mia’s body went numb. Her mouth dropped open, and she took small, hot breaths.
He waved a hand at her as he ate. “Is this what the women say?”
Mia reached down, rubbing her calves. “I have no idea. But it sounds more tale than truth.”
“You went to the market today, did you not? There’s meat in the stew, I see. I want to know what people are saying. I want to know if they believe the Inquisitor.”
“I went to market,” Mia admitted. “I bought the meat and came home after Mass.” She gave great attention to stretching her legs, keeping her head bent low so he would not read her expression. She told him the truth, but not all of it. Women had been whispering, and she had heard some of what they’d said, but she had not listened well. She had interrupted them, asking if anyone knew of a new remedy to try for precious Alma. She’d said that Alma had kept Bjorn awake again, and that would not do. Husbands can be so ill-tempered if they don’t sleep. She meant it as a joke, but the stone faces around her just stared, immobile. She apologized, letting her shawl cover her face, running away, not stopping when she heard Dame Alice calling after her.