Quest of Hope(12)

The next day, little Heinrich awakened just before dawn. He cried for his mother and, while Berta attended his needs, Kurt stood in his doorway, anxious and suddenly filled with dread. Sieghild had not yet returned from her journey, and the man sensed something was wrong. He stepped lightly past his trestle table and raised the hardwood latch of his door. The village was dark and smoky, the air heavy and clinging. He hurried to Baldric’s hoping for news, but, having none, he could do little else but report to his duties with the carpenters working in the nearby village of Oberbrechen.

By the bells of nones, Kurt returned to Weyer and inquired again, only to learn nothing. Gravely concerned, he reluctantly marched to his fields that lay just north of the village. He arrived and stared mutely at the large stones that marked his strips. With a deep breath Kurt forced his attention to the fertile ground and calculated his hopes for the growing season ahead. Of his half-hide, half were in fallow and the rest would yield barely enough for a profit. He needed to keep about one third of the harvest for the next planting’s seed, another third for taxes, and only the last third would be his own. That final third needed to feed his family and leave enough to be sold for profit.

Herwin, Kurt’s tenant, was clever and insisted that more manure would increase the yield. Unfortunately, Kurt owned no sheep or cows and would have to purchase it. Kurt preferred to argue, “the best fertilizer is the farmer’s foot.” He knew his land, he said, and somehow that would have to be good enough.

For the remainder of the day he labored behind his rented oxen, but Kurt’s thoughts were never far from Sieghild. Twilight finally urged him to follow other weary silhouettes toward the village. He was hungry and his legs ached. His mind pictured Berta’s bubbling mush and Heinrich’s laughing face.

Kurt made his way to Baldric’s hut once more—only now he arrived to find a scene of horror. Baldric’s face was purpled in a rage that Kurt had never seen. Arnold’s wife was holding Sieghild dutifully and turned cold eyes toward Kurt. “Your brother’s half-dead from a Gunnar beating and this one’s been used—by more than one—and she’s in need of a midwife.”

Kurt paled. A shiver chilled his back and anger coursed through his body. He looked at Sieghild with a devastating pity. He reached for her but she pulled away and turned her face in shame.

Baldric roared, “By God, Jesus, by Odin and thunder; by the wind I do swear this night that blood will spill!”

Kurt nodded and turned toward Arnold who was slouched and unattended in a corner. The badly beaten young man looked up from swollen eyes. His nose was broken and he was bent in two with pain.

“I… I am sorry, brother,” Arnold wheezed and coughed. “There was five, methinks. I—”

“Hush, Arnold,” snapped Kurt. “There’d be no shame for you in this.”

Baldric crouched by his younger brother and Arnold grabbed his shoulder. “Vow this: vow you’d not be seeking Gunnar kin without me. I… I needs time for strength, but by God, I must make them pay with m’own hand.”

Baldric hesitated. He wanted to strike that very night. He stood and paced the room like a wounded bear. His narrow eyes flickered and flamed. With a howl and an anguished cry he smashed a stool with the edge of his huge fist. He hesitated, then relented. “Aye, brother, I so vow.”

The next morning Berta reluctantly held a cup of the midwife’s infusion to Sieghild’s lips while her sisters-in-law stood grimly in the corner. Berta was told the drink might keep God’s judgment from the girl’s womb by sparing her the consequence of her attackers. “A blend of secret herbs and steeped in water hexed years ago by a passing Syrian,” the midwife said.

Berta was not unkind, nor without compassion, but she wanted no part of this uncleanness. She had worked too hard at her own perfection to be soiled by this woman’s indignity. Her pity was blended with disgust. “Touched and handled by so many,” she whined. “Methinks some spirit within her must have drawn them … talk’s always been of such.”

Hildrun nodded. “Despoiled, I say, and none will want her now. What Christian man would?”

Gisela agreed. “I’ve always thought her to have demons hovering about.”

Poor Sieghild had said not one word since the attack and had done little more than stare and groan in pain. Though mute, she was not deaf, however, and had the other women bothered to look, they would have surely seen the unspoken anguish flooding the young woman’s eyes. Evil men had plundered her body, but it was her own kin who now ravaged her soul. A wicked tongue and haughty heart are surely among the most ruthless of evil’s weapons, and in the blackness of the night, poor Sieghild could bear the eyes of shame no longer. Slipping out of Baldric’s hovel and across the Laubusbach, she wandered past the boundary poles of her manor and was gone.