The Gravedigger’s Son and the Waif Girl 1

by Sam Feuerbach

  "True enough," nodded Farin. He was used to people seeing the deceased as his customers.

  "A wayfarer told my father over a beer years ago that Gerlunda had once been a lady-in-waiting at the court of the king."

  "After how many beers?" Farin associated ladies-in-waiting with beautiful, gentle creatures – qualities which were as far from the preparer of poisons as the king’s court was.

  Bloss now had his hand over his mouth as he whispered: "Let’s have a gawk in the old one’s house."

  "What? Why do you want to go there?"

  The innkeeper’s son whispered even more quietly. "Keep this to yourself now. Gerlunda is supposed to have concocted drinks – love-potions too, which are guaranteed to win over any girl."

  Farin looked wide-eyed at him. "Are you serious? How’s that supposed to work?"

  "Let’s go there, pick up the drinks and check them out." Blossak winked at him.

  "Hmm, I’m not so sure." Farin sucked his upper lip.

  "C’mon now! What’s going to happen? The old dear is dead!"

  "But isn’t that theft?"

  "You’ve just heard my old man and his cronies. There is no family. So, nobody is going to notice if we take a few things before they rot. It would be such a shame if we didn’t..." He winked again. His voice sounded oily, lewd and conspiratorial. "Just imagine, you put a few drops of the elixir of love into the drinking mugs, and the women will be all over you."

  No matter how hard he tried not to, Farin couldn’t help thinking of Annietta, the blacksmith’s daughter. A wonderful girl. They had been playmates from the age of four. He had saved her countless times with his sword Windswipe from the clutches of an unseemly dragon or an even more unseemly kidnapper. He remembered wistfully back to the time when the adults" reservations towards children hadn’t yet applied. In those days Farin had been Annietta’s favourite rescuer and favourite knight. It hadn’t taken much, just children with imagination who liked each other. Added to that, a knotty branch with a little stick tied on with hemp cord as a cross-guard. A sword couldn’t be more magical. Windswipe’s hiding place was always in the undergrowth behind the privy. He closed his eyes nostalgically. He had loved this girl all these years, something he had never shared with anybody. Especially not with Annietta herself. A few months earlier at the midsummer festival he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her: Her nimble turns at the dance, her spinning dress, her wavy hair, her smile. She, on the other hand, had hardly noticed him at all during the festivities – the gravedigger’s son. Farin had summoned up every ounce of courage, had walked up to her and was about to ask her for a dance, when her father’s stare hit him like a hammer on the anvil. At which point he’d reconsidered his plan. Or had he just bottled it?

  "What’s wrong now, Farin? Don’t be a wet blanket!" Bloss prodded him on the shoulder in a comradely fashion. No villager had touched him in years – after all, touching the gravedigger or the hangman brought bad luck. Whether he wanted to or not, he was grateful for this gesture, even if Bloss was just trying to win him around.

  He thought for a moment. Even if this absurdity with the elixir of love were to work, Farin couldn’t see himself satisfying his frustrated yearning through deceit. "That’s not my cup of tea."

  "Were you not listening? It’s not you who’s going to drink it." He winked again; clearly, his brain was in his trousers.

  "Just come with me."

  Farin swallowed hard. "Now, you mean?"

  Blossak snorted. "Of course, now – while it’s raining, and before the funeral starts."

  A final attempt to talk Bloss out of it. "Aren’t we a bit too old for that sort of thing?"

  "I’m not too old for shagging. C’mon, let’s go!"

  Was it curiosity, was it boredom, was it stupidity? Was he just happy that somebody was sharing secrets with him? Already Farin heard himself utter the two fateful words: "Right, then!"

  The three greatest catastrophes of his youth had begun with "Right, then!": The dare of running between the windmill sails as quickly as possible, the scheme for luring the wood sprite out of the sinister forest with a live piglet and locking him in a chicken cage, and the attempt to spy on the village girls as they bathed in the lake.

  Wasn’t it time to forget these "Right, then!" escapades once and for all? After all, he was now eighteen years old, an adult, rational and cautious. Well then, just one last time.

  The two young men started walking. When they reached the small crossroads, they took the narrow path towards the forest, and it wasn’t long before they were standing in front of Gerlunda’s property, which was surrounded by thick hedges and a tottery picket-fence. The tall shrubs hid most of the hut – only a narrow, hardly trodden path led through the thick blackberry bushes towards the inside.

  Farin sucked on his lower lip. When he was younger, he had never dared go near the place for fear that the preparer of poisons would come storming out, cursing and waving her broom.

  It was raining heavily, one reason why they had come across nobody up until now. Just as the church had been standing in the middle of the village since time immemorial, so too had the preparer of poisons always lived in the lopsided cottage behind the hedge. Farin looked sceptically through the narrow gap between the blackberry bushes. He squinted over at the innkeeper’s son just as sceptically, in the silent hope he might be having second thoughts.

  Blossak noticed his expression. "Don’t chicken out now. But leave the stupid pickaxe and shovel down somewhere."

  "No way, I’m holding onto them, they’re our most important tools."

  Blossak grunted. "Whatever." He actually managed to move briskly towards the old woman’s house even though his face was telling a different story. "Come on!" he whispered.

  A quick glance behind. Nobody to be seen. Farin ducked and slipped through the opening in the hedge too. The path to the front door led through an overgrown herb garden.

  Baffled, Blossak looked down to the ground, left and right. "What are those horrible flowers. What was the old one going to do with them?"

  "Dunno." Farin inhaled deeply – a comfortable feeling, it eased some of the pressure he was feeling. And it definitely smelled better here than at home. He looked at the "horrible" flowers – Blossak really was an idiot – the rain strengthened the scent of sage, thyme, sweet woodruff, rosemary, dill and chives.

  The grey entrance door had been painted green long before Farin’s birth, as the remaining flakes in the cracks revealed. The door had neither a handle nor a bolt. Nobody in Heap locked their doors, which had less to do with the excessive trust of the residents but owed more to the fact that they didn’t have much worth stealing.

  What were they doing here anyway? Oh yes, to steal some kind of a love potion – what utter nonsense. Bloss pulled open the door and went in. He really must have been desperate; there was no other explanation for his new-found determination. In the past he’d always sent Farin ahead. Quietly, as if he might wake somebody, the gravedigger’s son pushed his way into the hut. He leaned the pickaxe and the shovel on the wall behind the door, then surveyed the scene. He gasped. There was only one room, yet it took him what seemed like an eternity to take in half of what he was looking at. Hundreds of garlic heads, branches and animal skins were hanging from the ceiling. This was enough to send anyone packing, and yet both Blossak and Farin bravely held their ground. Broken containers, items of clothing, boxes, plants, shards of glass, ripped volumes lay scattered on the clay floor, along with lumps of animal – or so he hoped – flesh. Bloody crosses had been painted onto the walls, and on a shelf were little crucibles with powder, ampoules and vials filled with various liquids. Underneath was a row of glasses with spiders, worms and beetles, some appeared dead, while others were still twitching their legs or other body parts.

  The stench in the room could knock you for six. Farin’s nose was undoubtedly tougher than Blossak’s, but the innkeeper’s son was holding up well and was breathing through his mouth, pale fac
ed.

  "Holy mother of God! What happened here?"

  Farin gave a start, then realised it was Blossak he had heard. His mind was racing. Somebody had turned the place upside down, looking for something. But what? There was one thing that was crystal clear: Her name, Gerlunda, the preparer of poisons, wasn’t created out of thin air – and she was much more than that – a member of the circle of black or red witches. Father said the priest had found her dead in her hut. What had he made of it all?

  Farin walked forward gingerly; he didn’t want to step on a glass shard in his bare feet. The glass crunched under Blossak’s leather boots as he peered at the shelf with the powders. Finely ground to coarse-grained and in all the colours of the rainbow – plenty to choose from.

  "There’s nothing labelled," he concluded in disappointment. "How am I supposed to know which of them are the shag-drinks?"

  "Don’t think I’m going to test them out for you," said Farin emphatically. "Anyway, I’m passionate enough as it is."

  Bloss gave a half-hearted smirk. "Well, I definitely don’t want to sleep with you."

  The gravedigger’s son gestured to a low door at the back of the hut. "Let’s get out of here – best if we go this way."

  He stooped down low and slipped out through the back door. Now he was standing in another herb garden, directly at the edge of the forest. Bloss struggled out into the open air too. The rain had stopped and the last of the daylight fell on the plant-beds. Various types of mushroom were growing in a secluded corner – hardly surprising in this damp autumn.

  "The red ones with the white spots, I know them. They’re fly agarics," said Blossak proudly. "Those ones are poisonous. The others look edible."

  Farin’s eyes narrowed. He recognised clouded agarics, deadly skullcaps, death caps, destroying angels, and slippery jacks. Exclusively toadstools, all deadly. Mother had taught him a lot about plants and animals – quite casually, and always without beatings. Thirsting for knowledge, he had soaked up every word.

  He looked at Gerlunda’s collection of upstarts. How the devil – he stopped himself from instinctively blessing himself – did the old woman manage that? Another example of her witchy activities, for only women who had fallen into evil ways grew toadstools. Flabbergasted, he looked at the dark earth.

  "We’d better get out of here, through the forest would be best so nobody will see us," suggested Farin, turning away. The star-shaped leaves of a plant with withered yellow blossoms caught his eye as he was about to make a move. He stood there dumbstruck. He found it comforting that at last he’d got a real fright.

  Blossak followed his gaze. "Why are you staring at that weed?"

  "That…that’s a mandrake."

  The innkeeper’s son’s face went as white as Gerlunda’s this morning when she was lying on the workbench. "Whaaat? Are you sure?"

  "Of course, I am! Nobody jokes about mandrakes."

  As if by command, they both looked upwards. A beam stretched from the roof until over the plant.

  "Old…old Gerlunda must have hanged someone here," stuttered Bloss. "There can’t…can’t be any other explanation. Somebody swung from these gallows and passed water when they were dying."

  Farin nodded, horrified. After all, mandrakes only grew in ground sprayed with urine from the hanged. Every child knew that. It followed that Gerlunda wasn’t just a black witch, but probably a murderess as well.

  The two young men gawped at the mandrake with a mixture of fascination and disgust, their fingers shaking. Anyone who grasped this plant and pulled it out would die. The mandrake’s dreadful yelping and groaning would travel directly through the auditory canal and into the person’s head, destroying everything within.

  "That’s worth a fortune," whispered Blossak.

  "And why did the intruder, who turned everything upside down, not take it with them?"

  "Probably there at the wrong time – you know how hard it is to pluck a mandrake. Maybe he’ll come again soon."

  Of course, Farin knew the stories about the most magical of plants. If you wanted to grasp one, you had to stop your ears with wax or pitch, and you had to pick your time carefully – either on a Sunday after sunset, or on a Friday before sunrise. On Sunday you needed a black dog, and on Friday a white one without other colours on the body. You had to tie the mandrake to the dog’s tail with a noose and chase the animal away so that it would pull the plant out of the ground. The poor mutt would kick the bucket in a most painful way on account of the mandrake’s screams.

  By this point it was all too much for Blossak. "Let’s skedaddle. I’ll…I’ll have to think of another way of winning Annietta round."

  A hot shudder ran down Farin’s spine like lightning, and it had nothing to do with the persistent drizzle, nor with the toadstools, nor with the state of the hut, nor with the mandrake. Had he heard correctly? Had Blossak actually mentioned Annietta? Annietta of all people. Unable to respond, he let on that his head was full of noxious thoughts.

  "What’s wrong with you? Let’s get out of here." Blossak raced to the remains of the rear fence and disappeared into the forest.

  Slowly, Farin’s spirits revived. Gritting his teeth, he followed the innkeeper’s son.

  reason

  G ood-for-nothing ne’er-do-well!" Father’s loving voice woke him. "Where are the pickaxe and shovel? Stupid idiot!"

  His endearing visage loomed over him – creased, shot through with grey stubble, red nose, droopy eyes. And, last but not least, the old familiar smell – of warm beer and sweat.

  "Good-for-nothing ne’er-do-well" was a phrase Farin knew well. It was the standard wake-up call. But what did good old dad mean by pickaxe and shovel?

  Farin sat up with a start. With sudden terror the image of the two tools flashed through his mind – in Gerlunda’s hut behind the door. The sheer horror of bloody crosses, toadstools, mandrakes and Annietta’s admirer had meant he had clean forgotten them.

  Farin, you’re nothing but a moron.

  "Are they still in Georig’s tavern? I thought you were getting them. Didn’t you head off to the village yesterday? I’m taking that from your wages," father grumbled.

  Oh, right!

  Taking it from his wages was new, especially as he’d never received a wage. And it was probably best not to completely forget either, who had left them behind in the first place.

  His father started shaving himself with the kitchen knife. It wouldn’t make much of a difference – he still always managed to appear unshaven.

  "Why don’t we just leave the shovel in the graveyard? Then it’s there where it’s needed," suggested Farin.

  "Are you mad? With all the dishonesty in the world? It’ll be nicked in no time. I paid the blacksmith twelve coppers for it."

  As much as his father would spend on booze over two days in Georig’s, thought Farin. "I’ll get them."

  He swallowed hard at the thought of having to go into the witch’s house again, but the thought of what the other villagers would think if they found the gravedigger’s pickaxe and shovel was too much to contemplate. They certainly wouldn’t look too kindly on this knavery – at the very least they would suspect him of theft.

  Blossak would be of no help, he knew the coward all too well. He’d probably deny having been there at all. His ire rose when he remembered what the innkeeper’s son had said about Annietta.

  His heart pounding, he ran towards the village and took the turn to Gerlunda’s hut. The fat miller’s wife was coming along with her handcart and looked after him in surprise as he ran past. His dark thoughts increased the speed of his legs.

  Suddenly he stumbled over something that had appeared out of nowhere. He fell to the ground, pulling his arms forward at the last moment so his face didn’t crash into the dirt. His palms burned terribly, the path being covered in sharp pebbles.

  Laughter above him.

  "Hey, corpse-digger. Why are you stumbling around here and not at the graveyard?"

  Farin recognised th
e voice immediately. Peat, the alderman’s son, and his three bored cronies. What were their names again? Blunt, Dull and Dense – something like that. They were all two or three years older than him and were notorious ruffians. They were standing on the edge of the path, and Farin hadn’t spotted them in his hurry. One of them had stuck his leg out, probably the beanpole – over six feet tall and skinny as a rake. The four were always on the hunt – for a fight, that is.

  Farin pulled himself up and rubbed his stinging hands.

  "He walked right into my leg. Just like that," grumbled the long one.

  Laughter all around him. The four were surrounding Farin now.

  "Why did you hurt my friend?" said Peat, the ringleader, in an enraged voice.

  Oh yes – beanpole’s name was Kaal. And he was as stupid as he was long.

  Farin forced himself to get the words out: "Oh, I’m so sorry. I never saw your leg, or I’d never have fallen over it." He looked at his bleeding knee with gritted teeth.

  Shit, I really need to get going.

  Peat turned to his cronies. "Ah now, this is all a bit fast for me. And you know, I don’t think it really came from the heart. What do you think, lads?"

  The three shook their heads sadly.

  "It sounded just too trite. It sounded too phlegelmatic."

  "Phlegmatic?" suggested Farin.

  "Exactly, arsehole. You said it. There’s the proof!"

  Laughter again. They were really having a good laugh at him. Which took nothing away from the fact that the situation was becoming more dangerous by the second. What should he do? He could spend the day apologising – it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. Should he make a run for it or let himself be beaten up by the four wretches. Not a good option, either way. He was in a real bind. He was the master of binds. His whole life was nothing more than one incomparable, magnificent, abominable bind. He really should change his job: Farin, the binder! Whenever he had a choice, then it was always between pretty awful, really awful and unbeatably awful.