“Good morning, brother!” chirped Effi as she waited for her bread.
“Ah, and to you!” brightened Heinrich. “Have you punched or bitten anyone yet this morn?”
“Ha! You’d be the first!” With that the girl playfully struck her brother on the shoulder.
Heinrich feigned injury. “Save me, saints!” he cried. “I’ve been wounded by a … a flea.” He smiled.
“Humph!” Effi laughed.
“Enough! Can we not get some bread?” grumbled a voice from the waiting line.
Effi winked and retreated for home to help Varina feed Baldric, Herwin, and a hut full of Varina’s children. Baldric was in a particularly foul mood that morning. After storming about the dimly lit hovel, he finally bent his heavy head out the low doorway and disappeared into the gray light of the new September day. He had business along the borders by Weyer and had borrowed Arnold’s pitiful horse. The day was young and cloudy, but warm. The forest’s trees were a faded green, soon to begin their glorious conversion to the wondrous colors of autumn.
Baldric passed through the valley of the Laubusbach and kept a sharp eye for poachers rumored to be stealing the monks’ deer from the heavy spruce just ahead. The widening valley was clean and green, pungent and pleasant, but the wood was thick and difficult to spy. Baldric followed the stream to an eastward bend where he paused not far from his nephew’s Magi. He dismounted to cup some cool water and while he drank, he stared through the ferns carpeting the woodland. Something seemed amiss. As woodward, he had spent many long days beneath the canopy of the forest and his instincts were keen. He peered through the timbers, suddenly aware there was no sound—no birds, no rustle of squirrels—nothing. Even the wind was still.
The man walked carefully past the abbey’s boundary poles onto Lord Tomas’s land. He tied his horse, then moved deeper into the wood. Suddenly, he heard something—a crack, then another, and another. Baldric lowered himself into the ferns. For a long moment there was silence again. Then he heard loud snapping and a flurry of cracks and rushes. He lifted his head to see two women darting between the trees about a bowshot away. They were leaping and lunging like frightened doe and disappeared in the shade to his left.
Baldric followed them at a run but suddenly heard a loud noise to his right. He dodged behind a broad trunk and looked to see a long line of armed men trotting in his direction, presumably in search of the women in flight. Baldric’s mouth went dry and his heart began to race. He was trespassing.
Baldric, now in his midthirties, was not the youth he once was. He found himself gasping for air and stumbling over logs like a clumsy old man as he raced ahead of the soldiers. He crashed across the forest floor until he arrived at his tethered horse and heaved himself upon its saddle with the grunts and snorts of a stiff-jointed bear. With a jerk and a whinny, the nag carried the man across the border to safety.
Relieved to be on his own land, Baldric breathed more easily. He drew another drink from the Laubusbach and wiped the sweat off his face. Still curious, he turned his horse northward along the narrow trail that followed the abbey’s eastern boundary. He trotted about a furlong or two when he saw the two women once again. They dashed across his path and disappeared into the stands of spruce to his left. Now confident on his own lord’s land, Baldric kicked his horse forward.
The two fugitives had run into heavy brush and Baldric was forced to dismount and follow them on foot. His tracking instincts were sharp, and in less than a quarter hour he came upon their low, panting voices. The woodward crouched and stepped lightly on the carpet of soft needles until he spotted an outcropping of gray rocks. To one side he spotted the ragged figures of two women talking in urgent tones.
“Mother,” urged the one, “we’ve needs go west.” She spoke with a strong, resolute voice.
“Aye,” answered the elder woman. “But methinks it better to take different paths … and quickly. You, head north over the Lahn and into the beech groves near Arfurt… and I’ll go west, across the Villmar road and into the forests of the abbot. You go on now … I shall hex this land ‘fore I leave … we needs call the grundlings and the sprites to build a wall of shadows.”
Baldric felt a chill. My God, the witches of Münster!
The old one continued. “I shall curse them with scabbies and warts, fevers and blisters that shall bring tears to their weeping eyes!” She cackled and wheezed, and strung a string of blasphemies that singed even Baldric’s calloused ears.
As he listened, Baldric felt another unbidden chill tingle along his spine. That voice … ‘tis known to me … He lifted his head for a moment and stared more intently at the two. Their clothes were little more than tattered robes, threadbare, and snagged with brambles, twigs, and pine needles. The old one’s head was covered with stale gray hair, her hardened face worn and weathered like the pocked and broken face of a stony cliff. Baldric was certain she was mad. On the other hand, the young one was a striking beauty. Others had said as much. She wore her blonde hair knotted on either side of milk-smooth cheeks. Her body was lean and supple; she moved gracefully.