For his torment continued, especially at night, when he had nothing to keep himself busy. If his nights weren’t altogether sleepless, they were fitful and restless, and full of odd dreams.
Then, early one morning, when the valley was awash in fragrant greens and yellows and pinks, Rudi awoke to the sound of goat bells.
He sprang out of bed, every muscle surging with an energy he had not felt in months. He marveled at how lively he felt, simply from the thought of finding the coin and being rid of the curse.
But then Rudi stopped, and he realized another reason for his vigor.
For the first time since October, he had slept soundly all night.
There must be a simple reason, Rudi told himself. Perhaps he had finally learned to ignore the prickly feeling that he was being watched. Perhaps the hard work that came with the spring—the milking, and the cheese making, and clearing of the land for sowing—brought such a pleasant exhaustion that even nightmares could not penetrate it. Perhaps the witch’s servant had been listening for goat bells too. Perhaps, at last, he recovered the infernal treasure from beneath the rubble on the mountain, and had returned it to its owner in her dim and dreary cave.
Or perhaps by now the witch had simply given up.
“She will never give up,” remarked Oma. “The witch must have found the coin herself—or her servant did. At any rate, it seems she has her treasure back. That can be the only reason your nightmares have stopped.”
The reason did not much matter to Rudi. He felt only relief and peace. Finally, he could enjoy the blessed pleasure of his daily life.
Rudi loved working on his father’s farm. He loved the smell of the thawing earth, the sprouting grass, and the newborn calves. He loved the squish of mud under his boots, and the warm sun on his neck, and the sound of his mother’s voice calling him to dinner as the light faded and cast the shadow of the Berg upon the farm.
And in the warm evenings, Rudi loved to wander with his family toward the village square to join the nightly gathering. Here was where the townspeople of Brixen exchanged news, shared a bit of tobacco, and watched the children grow.
This night was no different, and for that, Rudi was happily grateful.
The miller’s newborn son was to be named Steffan, and he would be christened in two weeks’ time. Mama chimed in with the other matrons, offering to weave white ribbons to decorate the church.
Old Mistress Gerta had not risen from bed in a week, and her daughter—Not-So-Old Mistress Gerta—fretted that the next time the sun shone down upon her mother, it would be while being carried to the churchyard. Oma promised to visit in the morning and talk some sense into the old woman. Rudi knew that if any life remained in Old Mistress Gerta, she’d use it to get out of bed and venture outdoors just to escape Oma’s pestering. Which, he supposed, was the whole point.
The price of coal had gone up again, as had the price of beer. What was the world coming to, Papa complained, if even the brewer-monks at the Abbey of St. Adolphus tried to wring the townspeople dry? Otto the baker pointed out that the monks must pay more for their coal as well, and so of course they must charge more for their beer. As night follows day. Papa grumbled and chewed on the stem of his pipe.
Rudi followed only bits and pieces of each conversation. They all took place at the same time, as the villagers of Brixen perched on the benches and strolled the cobbles of the town square. Meanwhile, children of all sizes yelled and chased and scurried everywhere: between the benches, around the old ladies, along the top of the churchyard wall. No one took much notice, except for the occasional distracted scolding when things got too boisterous. At such times, the nearest adult would scold whatever child needed it, and that child would obey until he was out of earshot, at which point the next adult would assume the watchful duties. No one paid attention to whose child was whose. Every child was a child of Brixen, and that was enough.
Rudi sought out the far corner of the fountain, where the boys always gathered to trade rocks from their collections, or to thumb-wrestle, or to brag of accomplishments real and imagined.
“The lynx was this big,” declared Nicolas, spreading his arms wide. “It hissed at me, but I chased it from the chicken coop.”
Konrad snorted. “My grandfather says no one’s seen a lynx near Brixen since he was our age. Are you sure it wasn’t a barn cat?”
At this the boys tumbled over each other in laughter—all but Nicolas, who turned red in the face. Upon noticing Rudi, he changed the subject. “Are you coming with us tonight to Johanna’s house? We’re going to compliment her mother’s strudel, but really it’s so Konrad can show Johanna his muscles. Such as they are.”
Now it was Konrad’s turn to blush red, and Rudi laughed along with the rest of them, relieved and thankful that life had returned to the way it should be.
And so it continued until dusk, when the smallest children were carried home on their fathers’ shoulders or in their mothers’ arms. The middlesize children escorted their grandparents, slowing their pace to match that of their elders. The ones nearly grown, if they had not found someone’s hand to hold, hung back in bunches to snicker in envy at the hand holders. Husbands and wives strolled with their arms entwined. And so tonight, like every warm night of spring, the village of Brixen went home to bed.
But something about this night was different after all.
As dusk fell and the first lanterns were placed in windows, a scream rose from somewhere in the square.
The villagers stopped as one, and turned, straining to see who had made the noise, and why.
“Susanna Louisa, what’s wrong?” said her mother.
“I saw something!” said Susanna Louisa, the tanner’s daughter. She was eight years old and a skittish child, but Rudi liked her.
“Your eyes are working, then,” said her father, and he scooped her up, but Susanna Louisa twisted herself in his arms and pointed toward the cobblestones.
“There!” she squealed.
Rudi squinted in the direction the girl was pointing, but he saw only shadows. He strained harder and waited to see if any of the shadows moved.
One did.
“It’s just a rat,” declared Nicolas. “Do you want me to catch it?”
“Is it this big?” asked Konrad. He spread his arms wide, and dodged the flying fist of Nicolas just in time.
“I don’t like rats,” Rudi heard Susanna Louisa saying as her father carted her homeward.
“No one does, my little blossom,” sang her father. “They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”
Nervous and relieved laughter filtered through the night air as the villagers dispersed into the lanes and alleys surrounding the square.
But from somewhere behind him, Rudi overheard one of his neighbors.
“Won’t bother you, eh?” muttered the man to his companion. “Perhaps not, but I don’t like it. ’Tis bad luck to see a rat in the shadow of the churchyard wall. Mark my words, nothing good can come of that.”
At these words, Rudi felt a familiar, prickly feeling. What did it mean?
Then a hand grabbed his elbow. He started, but only for a moment. The hand was Oma’s.
“Pay no attention to that fool,” she said as they shuffled home together. “Sometimes a rat is just a rat.”
IT WAS A hot midafternoon in June. Rudi and Papa had come indoors for lunch, and they stayed in for a bit of a snooze in the cool, dark cottage.
Just as Papa’s snores filled the house, something banged on the door, startling Rudi awake. He shook the grogginess from his head and opened the door, squinting in the bright sunlight.
Susanna Louisa, the tanner’s sweet little skittish child, was bouncing on the doorstep.
“You knock loudly for such a mite of a girl,” Rudi said without further greeting.
In answer, Susanna Louisa held up a stone that was as big as her fist.
“Ah,” said Rudi. “No wonder. Why did you knock with the stone?”
“So someone
would open your door. People can always hear me better when I knock with a stone.”
Rudi stifled a smile and shaded his eyes with his hand. “It worked. Now what?”
Susanna Louisa blinked, and then she stood up straight and cleared her throat, as if just now remembering the purpose of her visit. “Mama says can we borrow your cat.”
Rudi shook his head. “We haven’t got a cat.”
“Yes you do,” said Susanna Louisa. “I’ve seen it in your barn. The gray and white stripey one.”
“Zick-Zack? She’s not ours, really. More like she belongs to herself.”
“Even so,” said the girl. “I need her.”
“Then go catch her,” said Rudi.
“I can’t. She’s too fast. And she scratches.”
“Then I suppose you can’t have her, can you?” And Rudi yawned and turned, ready to close the door.
“Wait!” cried Susanna Louisa. “Mama says we need a cat. Very badly. Can you help me find a cat?”
Rudi had the feeling he would regret asking his next question, but curiosity got the better of him. “And why do you need a cat?”
“To eat the mouses,” said Susanna Louisa. “Mama says we have too many and she can’t catch them all herself and Papa is no use so we need a cat.” She took a breath. “A hungry cat would be best.”
Rudi scratched his head. “Zick-Zack has plenty of mice to eat around the barn, so even if you could catch her, I don’t think she’d be much help. What about Old Mistress Gerta? Doesn’t she have a house cat? You could ask her.”
Susanna Louisa shook her head. “I asked her already, but she says no. Says she’s got mouses too and can’t spare her cat.” The little girl blinked a teary eye. “I’ve asked everyone. Everyone says the same thing. Everyone has mouses.” She hung her head, let the stone fall from her hand, and began trudging homeward.
“Wait!” called Rudi. He pulled on his boots, closed the door behind him, and fell into step beside her in the dusty lane. “What do you mean, everyone has mice?”
Susanna Louisa shrugged. “That’s what everyone says. I say we need to borrow a cat, and everyone says no, we can’t spare the cat because of the mouses.”
“You’re sure you’ve asked everyone?”
Susanna Louisa nodded. “I saved you for last. Because you only have that nasty mean ZickZack, and I didn’t want to try and catch her. But Mama is near going mad. She told me, ‘Don’t come home without a hungry cat in your arms, Susanna Louisa, or you’ll be sleeping with mouses in your bed tonight.’” And Susanna Louisa stopped walking, stood on her tiptoes, and whispered to Rudi, “I don’t want mouses in my bed.”
Rudi stopped too. The little girl looked so forlorn and worried that his heart melted.
“What if I help you catch the mice?”
“You?” said Susanna Louisa, and her face brightened. “Do you know how?”
“Well …,” said Rudi, not quite ready to admit his shortcomings to an eight-year-old, “I’m sure it can’t be that hard. We’ll go back to my house and get a bit of cheese. Then we’ll set some traps, and poof! No more mice.” He smiled down at Susanna Louisa, but resisted the urge to pat her on the head.
“Oh, no,” said the girl solemnly. “We’ve tried that. For days. It does no good. It seems the more we trap, the more come out of hiding. Under the floorboards, amongst the thatch, in the wood pile. It’s a regular mousie party!”
Now they had arrived at the tanner’s cottage. Susanna Louisa’s house.
From inside, Rudi could hear scuffling and cursing and muffled thwacking. Then the door opened and two black rats scurried out, followed by a large, red-faced woman waving a broom in their wake. The rats vanished under the house, and the woman narrowly avoided smacking Rudi with the broom.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, straightening herself and tucking a lock of hair under her cap. “Good afternoon, Rudi. What brings you here this sweaty day?”
Rudi kept his eye on the mistress and her broom. “Susanna Louisa,” he said quietly, “those were not mice.”
But Susanna Louisa was nowhere to be seen.
Mistress Tanner shook her head. “She’s gone to stand on a rock in the middle of the stream. Poor child thinks rats can’t swim.” And Mistress Tanner plopped down on her doorstep, rested the broom across her lap, and bit her lip.
“Mistress?” ventured Rudi. “Susanna Louisa says your … problem might be worse than usual?”
Mistress Tanner sighed and wiped her eyes with her apron. “It’s the time of year for them, I know,” she said. “What with the warm weather and the abundance of smells. Still, this is worse than anything I’ve ever seen. The smith next door says so too, and the miller, and the baker, and everyone. It seems the vile things are overrunning Brixen. It’s not a good sign.” She yelped, and reached under herself, and pulled a young rat out by its long naked tail. “See this? They’re hardly afeared of humans at all.” She flung the creature to the side, where it squeaked and scurried toward the woodpile.
Rudi scratched his head. “We don’t have such a problem at our house.”
Mistress Tanner snorted. “Just wait.”
As Rudi wandered homeward, he recalled the words he’d overheard that night in the village square, weeks before: ’Tis bad luck to see a rat in the shadow of the churchyard wall … Nothing good can come of that.
Rudi had feared, upon hearing those words, that the Brixen Witch had leveled a new curse upon him, and upon all his neighbors too. But he could think of no reason for it. His nightmares were gone. Certainly the witch had recovered her coin.
Besides, the villagers of Brixen were a superstitious lot. They claimed enchantment and omens with every turn of the weather and with every stillborn calf.
And yet …
Even if the witch had not recovered her coin after all, why would she curse the entire village?
Rudi shook himself. The infestation of rats was only a coincidence. A result of the warm weather and abundant food, and nothing more. Besides, if the rats were an enchantment, wouldn’t Rudi’s own house be overrun with the creatures?
He turned a corner and wandered up the lane toward home.
As he approached his own front door, he heard a shriek coming from inside the cottage. The door flew open, and his mother ran out with a bundle in her apron. She shook it frantically, and out tumbled a large, pink-tailed rat.
Mama looked at Rudi, her eyes wide and her chest heaving. Then, without a word, she stepped back into the house and slammed the door.
Through the open window, Rudi could hear Oma somewhere inside, tsking.
And Papa was still snoring.
MISTRESS TANNER’S words proved to be prophetic. In short order, Brixen was indeed overrun with rats. Rats in the woodpiles, rats in the thatch, rats in the stream (poor little Susanna Louisa). Rats spilling down chimneys and onto hearths, scorched tails and all.
To be sure, rats were nothing new in Brixen. Much like mosquitoes and vipers and the surly barn cat Zick-Zack, rats were vile, unwelcome, barely tolerated creatures, but they played a role in the natural order of things. They provided a home for fleas. They gave parents a reason to scold children who ventured too near to dark and unhealthy corners.
But this June, something was different.
The rats were worse than ever before. True, it was an especially warm summer, but there had been other warm summers. The cats had done all they could and were fat to prove it, but it was not enough. The dogs chased whatever rats ventured into the open, but rats were stealthy creatures, and they easily avoided a species that excelled at napping. Traps, as Susanna Louisa had told Rudi, could catch only so many rats. And there seemed to be more every day.
Rudi began to suspect there was a curse after all. He decided to ask Oma about it.
“Enchantment?” she said, and then she hummed a bit to herself, thinking. “Are you sure you’ve had no more nightmares since the snows melted?”
Rudi shook his head emphatically. “I sleep like a ro
ck every night.”
“Then I still say the witch has retrieved her coin. If this is a new enchantment, it’s not your doing.” Oma shrugged. “Then again, sometimes a rat is just a rat. There’s one way to find out.”
“How?” said Rudi.
“If ordinary measures get rid of the rats, then there can be no enchantment. Yes?”
“I suppose so,” said Rudi. Then he frowned. “What ordinary measures have we not already tried?”
Oma tapped her own forehead. “The mayor will know.”
“He will? How will the mayor know?”
She patted Rudi on the cheek. “Because I’m going to tell him, that’s how.”
That very evening, Rudi overheard a conversation in the bustling village square.
“Did I not say so weeks ago?” said a familiar voice. “I told you it would come to no good. And now here we are.”
It was the voice Rudi had heard that night in the spring, when the trouble with rats had first begun. Now he saw that it belonged to Marco, the village blacksmith.
Oma, who had been dozing on a bench, jerked awake at the words. She stood and addressed the blacksmith, who was more than twice her size.
“Ah, Master Smith. Did you also predict that the sun would rise this morning?”
After a few seconds looking around, the blacksmith’s gaze fell upon Oma, who stood more or less as high as his rib cage.
“Good evening, Mistress Bauer. You have a bone to pick with me, do you?”
She wagged a finger at him. “It seems you’ve spent these last weeks using all your energy in predicting and complaining. What about a remedy? Here we are, true enough. But what we need to know is this: What’s to be done about it?”
“About the rats?” said Marco. “There’s nothing to be done, except wait for the winter to freeze them out. Or wait for a new sign. Whichever comes first.” And with that he spun away from Oma, as if their conversation had come to an end.
The Brixen Witch Page 3
