Quest of Hope(76)
News came just past the bells of nones on a hot afternoon on the tenth day of August. Heinrich had just finished wiping the ovens and was about to inspect the harvest with Herwin, when Irma, Herwin’s eldest daughter, rushed down the path to beckon him home.
“Methinks there to be trouble!” squealed the girl.
Panicked and fearful, Heinrich charged ahead to arrive at the barred door of his hovel. Not permitted to enter, Heinrich paced the croft behind his hut. He stopped and listened to hear a faint whimper, then a scream—then the cry of a baby. The man smiled and raced to his door. “Hello?”
The midwife stepped out of the bedchamber and beckoned Heinrich to enter. “Marta is good, but weary. The child is crying but methinks it seems too blue and … is … odd to look upon.”
“‘Odd’? What do you mean, ‘odd?”
The woman shrugged as Heinrich brushed past her and hurried to Marta’s side. Marta lay sobbing, holding the newborn with limp, disinterested arms. At the sight of her husband, Marta cried, “You! You cursed me and the child … you … some sin… have you some secret sin?”
Heinrich stood openmouthed and speechless. Sin? he thought. “What sin? What—” He looked at his girl-child and his heart sank. She was of poor color and misshapen.
Varina’s daughter had been summoned to fetch the priest but it seemed forever before Father Johannes appeared at the door. He was annoyed and sweating. He had been working with the harvesters as far south as the balk at the Oberbrechen border and was not pleased to trudge all the way to Weyer on such a steamy day. As he entered the hovel he stomped the dirt clotted on his sandals and grunted. “Does the child yet live?”
Heinrich nodded.
“And where is it?”
Heinrich pointed toward his bedchamber.
The priest took the child from her mother’s arms. He was in a hurry to return to his duties in the field. “The name?”
Marta answered clearly. “I wanted a girl-child to be Margaretha … after my mother’s mother, but—”
“Then so it is,” interrupted Johannes.
Heinrich nodded.
“And the godparents?”
Marta scowled at Heinrich. She was not one to forget an offense. “I’ll not burden my kin with this … this cursed thing. Herwin and Varina shall be named again.”
Varina looked sympathetically at Heinrich and the baby. She had long ago forgiven him the mystery of her brother and had grown to love him. Her heart now broke for him and the pitiful infant.
Heinrich nodded. Father Johannes hurried the sacrament. “We’ve no time for other things … I’ve no salt and—”
“Father, I do!” exclaimed Heinrich. He was anxious that his daughter have every advantage against the wiles of the Evil One, and he withdrew a precious pinch from his apron.
Johannes touched a fingertip of salt to the child’s mouth and poured water over her head. “Et Filii …in nomine Patris … et Spiritus Sancti…”
Wide-eyed and suddenly terrified, Marta shrieked. “Nay! Oh, blessed Virgin Mary! He spoke out of proper order … the child’s cursed and damned to be sure!”
Indeed, the aging priest had pronounced the baptism in error and the poor serfs were now in terror for the baby’s soul. A great wail was raised to heaven.
“My God, father!” shrieked Heinrich, “You’ve sent my daughter’s soul to hell!”
“It surely does not matter, my son. If it gives you peace I shall pronounce it again.”
Marta screeched. “Not him! Get Pious!”
Confused and uncertain, Heinrich ordered the dumbstruck Johannes away and went to Margaretha’s side to kiss her wet head. Then, angry and fearful, he stormed out-of-doors in search of Father Pious. In an hour he returned with Pious in tow. The corpulent priest was all too pleased to feign outrage for his superior’s shortcoming and quickly rebaptized the infant. To the great relief of the household, he then assured all that he had salvaged her little soul from the ever-straining reach of Lucifer’s evil grasp. “Pope Gregory had made it so very clear that all sacraments must be kept in perfect order. You were wise to call me.”
Exhausted and grateful, Heinrich offered a half-shilling for the parish alms tin and a tankard of ale for the smiling priest.
The day quickly passed into night and sleep came easy to the weary baker. But sometime in the predawn darkness of the next day, baby Margaretha found her rest as well. Her teary-eyed father bathed and wrapped her in a tiny linen shroud and laid her in an infant’s grave by the cold stone wall of Weyer’s church.
It was late September, a few days past St. Michael’s Day, when Heinrich confirmed the betrothal of Effi to Jan, a merchant of Frankfurt who traveled the region each season. Jan was a freeman, a city dweller of good report. Two years older than Heinrich, he was twenty-two and a widower without children. Effi, it seems, had served him water from Weyer’s well in the spring of the year prior and the two had met on several of his passings since that first meeting.