Dancing in the Palm of His Hand

by Annamarie Beckel

  Eva dusted her hands on her apron and set the sweet buns to rise. She walked to the window that looked out on Domstrasse. The sky was beginning to grow light. She cracked open the window and heard the clang of hammering from a nearby smithy, then the distant bellowing of cattle being driven through the streets and out the gates to graze in the meadows beyond the city walls. A skeletal bright-eyed mongrel circled a heap of refuse, snarling at a scrawny pig rooting through the garbage. When the dog dashed in to snatch a bone, the pig squealed and trotted away.

  Eva smelled it then. Again. She’d closed the window and door tightly the day before, but the greasy stench of burning flesh had crept in. She was sure she’d seen grey wisps seeping in around the windowsill. Eva hated the stink. It made her skin prickle, and she’d tried to wipe it from her face and neck with a damp cloth. When the Angelus bells rang out and the Rosen Bakery closed for the day, she’d hauled out the rags and pail, hiked up her black skirts, and gone down on her knees to scrub the floors with lye soap. Then, she’d washed the counter and walls. Even so, the odour lingered. It always did, underlying the fragrance of baking bread.

  She heard a soft uneven tread on the stairs behind her. Eva turned and saw Katharina, still in her sleeping shift. In the candlelight, her long braid, twining over one shoulder looked white. Her eyes glittered like emeralds. Eva’s throat tightened even as she tried to smile. Just the day before, those beautiful eyes had seen visions of orange flames and white-winged angels.

  The girl’s strangeness made Eva afraid for her, and she forbade her to speak to anyone of her dreams and visions. There was little danger of that, however, as Katharina avoided other children and rarely even spoke to anyone but her mother. She spent her days at the window, watching the street, or walking the riverbank, collecting coloured stones, plants and flowers, and white feathers. Angel wings, she called them. Once she’d returned home after dark, telling Eva that the feurige mannlein, the little glowing men, had helped her to find her way. Eva had put her trembling fingers to her daughter’s lips and told her not to speak of such things. Ever.

  Katharina looked like a wraith, her milky skin never darkening in the sun. Her limping gait only added to her oddness. Jacob had claimed the girl’s misshapen foot was a sign that Eva had sinned.

  Eva knew which of her sins had crippled her daughter. Her limp was a daily reproach.

  Katharina yawned. “Some bread, Mama?”

  “Of course, Liebchen.” Eva walked back to the ovens and picked up a fresh loaf of barley bread. Herr Stolz jerked his chin at the shelf, at the day-old loaves. Ignoring his sidelong glance, Eva cut off a thick slice from the still-warm loaf.

  The journeyman wiped a forearm across his sweating brow. “You spoil the child.”

  Eva spread the coarse bread with a thin layer of cherry jam. No, he would not make a good husband. She filled a mug with beer. As she brought the food to Katharina, the morning bells began. A faint far-off tinkling at first, then a growing cacophony of pealing, clanging, booming, and jangling as other bells chimed in. She tried to identify each of the city’s cathedrals and chapels by the distinctive pitch of its bells: Saint Kilian’s, Neumunster, Saint Burkard’s, Mary’s Chapel, Saint Augustine’s, Neubau. Eva loved this time of day, the soft light of dawn, the bells ringing, the fragrant golden loaves ready to sell.

  While Katharina ate, Eva roamed the workshop, extinguishing as many of the tallow candles as she could. She paused by the painting of the Holy Mother and Child. The candlelight made the faces glow as if lit from within. The oil paint had begun to crack and peel, but Eva thought the web of lines only made Mary’s face more lovely, wrinkled softly, like a kindly grandmother’s. She crossed herself, then ran her fingers over the leather-bound Bible she kept on a small table beneath the painting. It had cost so much that Jacob had refused to buy it at first. Why have a Bible, he reasoned, when neither of them could read? Eva begged, then persuaded him that a Bible would bring good fortune upon the bakery, that it would protect them from loss and harm. He finally relented. She was careful then not to let him discover that the nuns at the Unterzell Convent, where she’d lived for six years after her parents died, had taught her not only numbers but letters as well.

  Eva flipped open the pages and read a favourite passage from Psalms. Give glory to the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever.

  She hardly heard, above the bells, the clip-clop of horses on the stone street. There was the squeaking complaint of leather, then a loud pounding on the door. Eva smoothed her apron and straightened her widow’s cap, but before she could step to the door, it was pushed open from the other side. A man in a broad-brimmed hat with long grey and white plumes ducked through the narrow doorway. He carried a lance. An ornate red scabbard hung from his broad leather belt, and a chain of iron links spanned his chest. The Prince-Bishop’s bailiff.

  Eva gasped and put her shaking hands to her mouth.

  Slowly, deliberately, the man unrolled a scroll. “On the authority of Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg,” he read, “Frau Eva Rosen is placed under arrest until such time as an inquiry can be made into the charges of witchcraft against her. She has been accused of turning from God and the Holy Roman Church and making a pact with the Devil.”

  Her heart in her throat, Eva was nearly unable to speak. “Who has accused me? Never have I turned from God.”

  The bailiff called over his shoulder, to the men pushing through the door behind him. “We are to bring the girl as well. Attend to them both while I search the premises. Herr Baunach, you question the journeymen.”

  6

  15 April 1626

  The canaries flitted to the porcelain cup filled with bread crumbs. Hampelmann, who sat to the right of the Prince-Bishop, was disgusted by their insipid chittering and the bits of dark excrement that fell from amidst their glossy yellow feathers.

  The Prince-Bishop pushed back his chair and folded his hands over his velvet robes. His eyelids drooped, blinked open at the canaries’ piping, then drooped again.

  Hampelmann’s stomach was full, but not excessively so, and he congratulated himself on his restraint. He’d eaten only sparingly of the lavish banquet for the Commission of Inquisition for the Würzburg Court, taking only small portions of the roast pork, partridge and swan, the poached trout in cream sauce, the baked goose stuffed with chestnuts, the white and yellow cheeses and dark rye bread, the dried African figs, currants and hazelnuts. He was vastly pleased that the meal had ended with apricot pastries flavoured with ginger and cinnamon from the Levant, costly spices kept under lock and key. Hampelmann hadn’t particularly enjoyed the sweets, a cloying indulgence to his abstemious palate. But serving pastries containing expensive spices was a sign that the Prince-Bishop approved of the commission’s work – despite Father Herzeim’s complaints.

  Sitting to the right of Hampelmann, the Jesuit had eaten almost nothing, though he’d emptied his wine goblet again and again. His face was downcast, and he’d hardly contributed a word to the jovial banter during the meal. It was clear the priest’s thoughts were far away from Marienberg Castle, and Hampelmann wondered if they were still in the Prisoners’ Tower with those whom the Prince-Bishop’s bailiff had arrested early that morning. The final confessor for witches seemed far too concerned for the earthly welfare of the accused, too little concerned for the fate of their eternal souls.

  The Prince-Bishop stood and bent toward the silver cage behind his ornately carved chair. Cooing to the birds, he slipped a brocade cloth over the cage. Herr Doktor Johann Brandt, the Prince-Bishop’s chancellor, rolled his eyes, then carefully recomposed his face when his hooded gaze met Hampelmann’s across the table. Hampelmann looked long at the chancellor, to be sure that Brandt understood that he had seen his indiscretion.

  The Prince-Bishop sat down and picked at his front teeth with a long thumbnail. “Good news, gentlemen. I’ve heard that General Wallenstein has gathered an enormous army for the emperor. He’ll put the Protestants to rout.�
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  “I’ve heard, though, that he’s ruthless in requisitioning men and supplies,” said Herr Doktor Lindner, the ruddy-faced physician who’d served on the commission. His bulbous nose glowed red from too much wine. “Wallenstein simply takes what he wants. Let’s hope he keeps the war in the north.”

  “There’s little enough in Würzburg to take,” sniffed Chancellor Brandt. “Plenty of extra men. He could requisition all the beggars. But there’s no supplies to be had.”

  Judge Steinbach, who sat beside Chancellor Brandt, raised a frail palsied hand. “Even so, there are the taxes the emperor is demanding. How can Würzburg possibly pay them? The council has been debating the question for days.”

  Hampelmann dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin, then held it in place to hide his clenched jaw. Steinbach was Judge of the Würzburg Court and first burgomaster of the Upper City Council only because of his wealth and reputation in the city, not because the old man was competent – at anything. The Upper City Council ended up debating nearly everything for days because the timid judge could not maintain order at the meetings. As second burgomaster, Hampelmann always had to intervene.

  The Prince-Bishop waved a hand dismissively. “Increase the wine tax.”

  “We’ve considered that,” said Judge Steinbach. “But the harvests in the vineyards have been nearly as poor as those in the fields.”

  “Mark my words,” said Lindner. The physician’s voice was overly loud, his words slurred. “With soldiers travelling about, there’ll be outbreaks of plague everywhere.”

  Hampelmann studied the dark freckles sprinkled across Lindner’s face and wondered if the drunken boor had been listening to anyone but himself. How could anyone take seriously the opinions of a man who had freckles, as if he worked in the fields like a common peasant?

  “War. Famine. Plague. It’s all punishment from God.” Father Streng’s high-pitched lilt was ill-suited to the harshness of his pronouncement. The young Jesuit, who sat to the left of the Prince-Bishop and across from Hampelmann, was so slight, his fair skin so smooth, that he looked and sounded like a boy, though he was at least twenty-five. “To quote my fellow Jesuit, Martin Delrio,” continued the priest: “The wrath of God grows ever fiercer and more dreadful. If this evil of witchcraft is not suppressed, the whole country can expect nothing more certain than the punishment and curse of God. Witches are at the root of it all, gentlemen.”

  Hampelmann nodded stiffly. He found Father Streng’s habit of quoting authorities verbatim exceedingly tedious, but he rarely disagreed with the priest. He did, however, recognize his own sin of pride in the young man, pride in his nobility and his membership in the Upper City Council. And the Cathedral Chapter. Hampelmann suspected that Father Streng coveted the Prince-Bishop’s power and authority. With precious little subtlety, the Jesuit vied with Hampelmann to be His Grace’s favoured advisor.

  Father Herzeim absently rolled a silver goblet between his hands. “When I was a boy growing up in Nuremberg, bad weather and poor harvests, plagues and other misfortunes were blamed on nature or thought to be acts of God.” He gazed into the emptiness of the goblet, then set it upright. “Now it seems that everything is blamed on witches, or God’s wrath at witches, or his wrath that we are not prosecuting witches. Why is that?”

  Chancellor Brandt’s lip curled. “You speak like a Lutheran, Father, not a Jesuit.”

  Father Streng’s grey eyes were huge behind his spectacles. “Nein, even that Devil’s spawn Luther knew the evil of witches. I would have no compassion on these witches, he wrote, I would burn them all.” He plucked up an embroidered napkin and twisted it, as if wringing the neck of a goose. Hampelmann groaned inwardly and wished that Chancellor Brandt had not mentioned Lutherans. He sat back in his chair and readied himself for one of Father Streng’s long-winded lectures.

  The young Jesuit cleaned his spectacles with the napkin, then placed them back on his nose. “So you would question the wisdom of the authorities, Father Herzeim?” Without waiting for the older priest to answer, Father Streng drew back his narrow shoulders and launched his verbal salvo. “Ephesians, chapter 6: Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in high places.”

  His left eyelid twitched, making the small mole above his pale eyebrow jump. “And to quote the great French lawyer, Jean Bodin: If there is any means to appease the wrath of God, to gain his blessing, and to punish the most detestable crimes of which the human mind can conceive, it is to punish with the utmost rigor the witches.”

  Father Herzeim considered the young man’s flushed face. “I do not dispute the authorities, Father Streng, but I am persuaded that Jean Bodin and the others have given insufficient attention to the parable of the cockle in Saint Matthew.”

  “How so?” Father Streng panted, as if he’d just run all the way up Marienberg Mountain to the Prince-Bishop’s castle.

  “Chapter 13: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field. But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way. And when the blade was sprung up and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. And the servants of the goodman of the house coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? Whence then hath it cockle? And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?”

  One of the beeswax candles flickered, then burned out. A servant stepped forward to replace it. Hampelmann glanced from one Jesuit to the other. Father Streng’s spectacles reflected the yellow candlelight, hiding his eyes, but his mouth was a tight pucker. Father Herzeim was not nearly so drunk as he ought to be.

  Father Herzeim stared at his own reflection in the silver goblet. “And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.”

  “And just what is it you think the authorities have missed?” said Father Streng.

  “We are the servants, not the reapers. Who are we to judge who is cockle and who is wheat? Might we not be uprooting the wheat with the cockle in this zealous hunt for witches?”

  The Prince-Bishop placed both hands flat on the table. “So you would allow witches to destroy the Holy Church for fear of hurting an innocent?”

  “The protection of the innocent must be utmost in our minds, and in our hearts,” said Father Herzeim.

  “Nein,” shouted Father Streng. “It is the prosecution of witches that must be utmost in our minds.”

  “We are doing God’s work,” said Hampelmann. “He would never allow us to condemn an innocent.” He pulled at the scratchy white ruff encircling his neck and caught a whiff of hexen gestank on his sleeve. His fingers went to the ball of wax at his throat.

  Father Herzeim turned to Hampelmann. “Surely you have not forgotten that not long ago Duke Maximilian himself ordered the execution of a witch judge in Bavaria for precisely that – condemning innocents.”

  Judge Steinbach suddenly sat straight up, his lashless eyes blinking rapidly. He tugged at the little tuft of white beard on his bony chin. “What did he do?” His voice quavered.

  Spineless, thought Hampelmann. The Judge of the Würzburg Court twitched all through the commission’s hearings, and now the fool was fretting that he might be executed himself.

  “Judge Sattler’s legal errors were egregious,” said Hampelmann. “We are far more careful in our procedures.”

  Judge Steinbach ran his tongue over his teeth, then spoke haltingly. “With all due respect, Your Grace, some of these recent accusations do trouble me. Frau Rosen and Herr Silberhans – they’re not beggars. Frau Rosen is a bake
r’s widow, Herr Silberhans a law student at the university.”

  “The end-time is near, Judge Steinbach,” said the Prince-Bishop. “Witches are becoming ever more numerous. And more and more clever at disguising themselves in the world.”

  “In these dangerous times it is quite proper to take the strongest measures to root out evil,” said Father Streng. “Let the trials hit who they may.”

  “Even the nobles?” said Father Herzeim.

  Father Streng pounded a small fist on the table. “Even the nobles! Because if we are negligent, God will punish us all.”

  “All right,” said Father Herzeim, “investigate. But must they die?”

  “That is what God demands of us,” said Father Streng. “It is God’s will that they die. And as Jesuits, we are but instruments in the hands of God.” He dabbed the sweat on his forehead with a napkin. “You would remind us that a judge was executed for condemning innocents. I would remind you of the words of Martin Delrio: Judges are bound under pain of mortal sin to condemn witches to death; anyone who pronounces against the death sentence is reasonably suspected of secret complicity; nay, it is an indicium of witchcraft to defend witches. Would you be a defender of witches, Father Herzeim?”

  “I am a defender of the faith. Remember our way of proceeding, Father Streng, noster modus procedenti. We are here to console, not to condemn.”

  The Prince-Bishop crossed his arms over his velvet robes. “It is a mercy to kill them.”