The woman was in one of the beds. Her face was swollen and it was full of lacerations. Von Spee thought the newer scrapes probably came from the woman's dash through the woods to Grantville.
"Do you understand me well?" Mazzare asked in hesitant and newly learned German.
"Ja. And I can ein wenig English speak," said the young woman.
Mazzare took a deep breath. Von Spee could see that Mazzare was not comfortable with the idea of interrogating someone accused of witchcraft.
"I am Father Mazzare, the Catholic priest in Grantville here. How are you called, and from where do you come?"
The odd constructions of German made Mazzare sound stilted to his own ear, but Von Spee realized that it was easier to understand the English words when Mazzare used German-like grammar.
"I am Veronica Junius, and I come aus Bamberg," she replied.
"Why were those men chasing you?"
There was silence. She looked away.
"Veronica," Mazzare said softly, "were you accused of being a witch?"
She looked at him. The pause lengthened. He held her gaze.
"Ja . . . I mean, yes," she said softly, finally.
"Were you practicing witchcraft?" Mazzare asked.
"Sheiss no!" she retorted, animated for the first time. "I'm not a witch, I'm a whore!"
Behind him, Massaniello broke up. He tried to stifle his snigger, but failed, miserably. Dr. Adams started to chuckle, then Mazzare, and finally Veronica did too. Von Spee looked a little blank, parsing the statement in his mind. His English was poor, yes, but he finally got the joke, and he smiled.
"Well," the American sergeant choked out, "at least, in English, it starts with the same letter!"
As the laughter died, Mazzare gestured for focus, and went on.
"What did you do that got you accused?"
Veronica tossed her nondescript brown hair. "It was not what I did," she replied, "but who my father was, that got me into trouble."
"Mmmm?"
Her story came out in a rush. "Ja, my father was Junius the burgomaster of Bamberg. They . . . they burned him. But he was innocent! He never was a witch! I swear it! And I never was. After they killed him, and the bishop took our house and our business, I went to Würzburg. But I didn't have any money, and the families I knew didn't want to know me anymore."
"So you became a prostitute," Mazzare said quietly.
"Yes." Her language, Mazzare noted, was becoming better and more educated by the minute, like she was taking off a disguise.
"That is all right, my child," Mazzare said. "We sometimes have to do very terrible things in order to survive. God, I am sure understands."
Suddenly, von Spee pushed forward, and handed her the paper he'd been folding and refolding.
"I kept this for you," he said.
"Oh, Father Friedrich," Veronica said, "thank you. I thought it was lost. And then nobody would believe me."
She handed the paper to the Grantville pastor. Mazzare looked at the shaky German handwriting. He looked around the room.
"Father Friedrich, can you read this?" he asked. "It is hard for me to make out."
"Ja, I can read it," von Spee said. "Please excuse my English. I speak much better Latin and Italian." He cleared his throat.
" 'Many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head and—God pity him—bethinks him of something.' "
Friedrich somehow kept reading, slowly, and in almost a monotone, punctuated by the sobbing of the woman in the bed. He read on and on, until the end.
" 'Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people do not find it, else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers will be beheaded. So strictly is it forbidden. . . . Dear child, pay this man a dollar . . . I have taken several days to write this: my hands are both lame. I am in a sad plight . . . Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more. 24 July, 1628.' "
There was silence, except for Veronica's sobbing.
"You see, Father," she said through her tears, "he was innocent. There is a scribble in the margin, Father Friedrich. Can you read that, too?"
"Ja. 'Dear child, six have confessed against me at once: the chancellor, his son, Neudecker, Zaner, Hoffmeisters Ursel and Hoppfen Els—all false, through compulsion, as they have all told me, and begged my forgiveness in God's name before they were executed. . . . They know nothing but good of me. They were forced to say it, just as I myself was . . .' "