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.