A hurried breeze awakened Emma from her sleep and she sighed contentedly. She lay quietly in the green grass and thought of her life, of hard times and good. She recalled her childhood and thought of the mother she had never known. Would she be pleased her life was forfeited for the likes of me? she wondered. She then remembered her father, a wealthy lord, surrounded by the best physicians and moaning in fevered agony. Her memory took her to his solemn burial, and then to the long journey to the nunnery in Quedlinburg. As it often did, her mind quickly flew to the man she did yet love and the season of confusion in the orchards near the convent. A tug on her shoulder gave her a start.
“Frau Emma,” insisted Richard. “Are you awake?”
“Ah, good lad,” answered Emma. “Ja, I am indeed! And methinks it a good time to look to the sky!” She stroked Richard’s hair and marveled at the lad’s handsome features. Hardly the son of Arnold! chuckled Emma to herself. And when her own son tumbled next to Richard she fought back tears. For there sat one boy pleasing to all and the other doomed to contempt. She cupped Ingelbert’s homely face in her hands and kissed him. “Now, children. Lie on your backs and look up. Always be looking up! The light comes from above. The sun and the moon are like the eyes of truth; sunshine is hope, and moonlight is mercy. Heinrich, can you remember this?”
The boy nodded.
“Now, lads, watch the clouds and tell me what you see.”
A few moments passed. Finally Richard laughed. “I see Father Gregor’s face!”
The others squealed. Indeed, a thin, white cloud with a large nose was drifting by. “Ha, ha! Richard. Good one!” chortled Heinrich.
Ingelbert pointed to a round, puffy cloud. “Mutti!”
Richard giggled.
“Wunderbar! Wonderful, Ingly! Ha, ha, ‘tis fat like me!” Emma beamed.
The four laughed and tumbled, wrestling like pups with a playful mother. They rested in the grass and pointed to the sky once again where they discovered rabbits and cows, a hog’s face and a monk’s hood. “Can you see how the wind brings change? The sky is ever changing as the sun stays on its path. ‘Tis wondrous.”
The boys were puzzled by the woman’s reflections, but there seemed to be something right and true in the words she spoke. They gathered close and felt joy in her presence.
It was a gray, foreboding morning as the bells of Weyer’s church rang prime on the day of the Epiphany in the year 1180. From the sunny spires of Constantinople to the rain-soaked chapels of soggy Ireland, the faithful of all Christendom gathered to celebrate this high day, this Feast of the Three Kings. The abbot of Villmar was pleased to know that the subjects of his manor were winding their way to the village churches, all worshiping God in service to their earthly masters.
But as the column of peasants climbed the steep steps of Weyer’s dark-stoned church, they stopped as one, held for a moment by a shrieking cry from a clearing on the ridge above the Laubusbach on the opposite side of the village. All eyes turned to see the outstretched arms of a woman shouting and screaming at them with a small, white-haired child by her side. “A curse!” the woman screeched across the rooftops. “I cast a curse upon each soul. I throw a spell on all:
May fever, sores, King’s Evil gasps, come to whom it may,
St. Vitus’s Dance and pox and grippe befall this place this day!
All grain to dust, all swine to fits, all sheep to wolves, I pray,
All thatch to flames, all wells to bane, and Satan stain your way!”
Heinrich stood speechless and cold, unnerved and fearful. He, like the others, had heard of her, and some were reported to have secretly counseled with her in the dark forests. But none had been hexed before, nor had any heard of a whole village being cursed. Father Gregor paled and leaned, fainthearted, against the stone wall of the churchyard. He raised the silver crucifix hanging round his neck and offered a pitiful prayer in response. His timid, quivering voice was impotent and weak, and few thought the legions of heaven would rally to his cause. “Jesu Christe, have mercy.”
Heinrich followed his poor fellows as they raced up the steps and huddled in the damp church; a gray bundle of tattered wool and matted hair, tightened faces, and tongues tied in terror. Father Gregor watched the witch throw a handful of ash into the sky and dance wildly. She joined hands with her little one and the two circled one another, faster and faster until the child stumbled. Then, with a final cackle and crow, the black-clad sorceress waved her open-palmed hands over the earth as if to summon the demons of Satan’s Pit to her side. Gregor was certain she had.
Chapter 5