“The body has not been found,” Andreas said, appearing in the doorway behind Raphael. “Though there was talk of a struggle in the woods, not far from here.”
“But why bring the head here? Why reveal the existence of this murder unless, in doing so, you achieve some other end. Was it meant to frighten Gerda?”
“It certainly did.”
“No, I wonder if it was meant as a symbol of some pagan ritual. An old warning that would have had some significance to her.”
Andreas pursed his lips, warily eying Raphael. “You think she is still a pagan?”
“Don’t you?” Raphael asked, somewhat guilelessly.
“If she is,” Andreas said, side-stepping Raphael’s inference, “I do not suspect she tried to deliberately hide it. The other villagers would know.”
Raphael indicated the bloodstained stones. “What triggered this rage, then? This was not an act of isolated passion. The villain-”
“Or villains,” Andreas interjected. “If what we have heard is true, Otto was torn open and his viscera removed. Such deviltry would be more readily accomplished if there were more than one assailant.”
“Villains then,” Raphael nodded. “So they slaughtered Otto elsewhere and then brought the head here where it would be discovered. But why did her neighbors leap to the conclusion that she had perpetrated this crime?”
“You ask curious questions, Brother, and I do not think we will find easy answers. I suspect we have been granted all the aid we are going to receive from the people of this village.”
“Aye,” Raphael said. “Our inquiry begins to frame an accusation to be laid against other folk, and though it is entirely un-Christian of them to protest otherwise, we have not seen any evidence that these individuals are willing to come forward and admit culpability in the crime. No one is going to volunteer to take Gerda’s place, and given the Inquisition’s predilection for casting a wide net in its capture of heretics, anyone who casts aspersions on their fellows could very easily find themselves named as a coconspirator in the ensuing tribunal.”
“And yet Gerda did not name anyone else in her confession,” Andreas noted. “Either she does not know who might wish her and her husband ill, or…”
“Or she thought her sentence might be lessened if she were to be the only culprit in this crime,” Raphael said, finishing Andreas’s thought for him. “Which would imply that she knows who is responsible.”
“Or suspects.”
“The magistrate?” Raphael posited.
“I would not be averse to asking him a few questions.”
“He has seen the enmity between us and the inquisitor; he will hide behind the priest. If he protests his innocence, the inquisitor will agree with him.” Raphael shook his head. “No, we need irrefutable proof, and I suspect the truth may be more readily revealed by seeking the knowledge of others.”
INVIDIA
The inquisitor had given Gerda an unexpected blessing when he had instructed her to pray silently. He had intended his words to be a threat, as a means of keeping her quiet as he lashed her, but she had taken them to heart. After the first few strokes, she stopped feeling the lash as it fell upon her back and buttocks. Her body would jerk and spasm from the physical blow, but she felt no pain. She fell into a stupor; the only sensation remaining to her was the sound of her own voice, echoing in her head as she prayed.
Not to the Christian God, but to the older spirits, the ones her grandmother had believed in-the spirits of wood and water, field and forest. The old ghosts who had haunted this land long before the Christian missionaries had come from Rome, extolling the virtues and sacrifice of their crucified god. He is the same, her grandmother had told her once. They had been picking flowers in the meadows beyond the river. The men from Rome hung him from a cross and then sealed him in a cave; our peoples burned our god and scattered his ashes upon the fields. But the manner of his death did not matter; he still came back.
But when her grandmother died, some part of the old ways died with her. It became harder and harder to remember the prayers sung in the spring over the freshly planted fields; the invocations at harvest languished as the farmers became more concerned with getting their bounty to the market in Mainz than maintaining their fields in the old ways.
Her grandmother had always liked Otto. He is a kind boy, she had said of him when he and Gerda were younger. He is not afraid of the forest. Her grandmother had been pleased when she told her that Otto sought her to be his wife, and after her grandmother was gone, she swore to herself that she would teach her children the same lessons.
But there had been no children, and in time Otto had stopped trying, no matter her efforts. She had despaired, trying desperately to figure out the reasons why her womb refused to allow his seed to take root and produce children. Was it because she still believed in the old gods when the rest of the village had transferred its devotion to Christ? She tried-she really did-but she found no solace there either.
Eventually she gave up, believing that the gods-both old and new-had abandoned her. She was a lost child, adrift between two worlds and party to neither. She hoped she would vanish, swallowed by the forest one day, and no one would miss her.
But the opposite had happened. She had begun to attract the attention of the other men in the village. Otto was liked amongst the villagers, and it was not because they pitied him for his barren wife. But it was something else-something about her and her alone-that drew them to her. She did not seek their attention, and she began to spend more and more time by herself, either in the narrow confines of their hut or in the woods. She could not bear their eyes on her. They whispered amongst themselves, as if she were deaf and dumb.
As the inquisitor beat her, Gerda begged for understanding. Why? she pleaded.
And in the darkness of her mind-so similar to the darkness beneath the trees on the nights when the moon was nothing more than a pale sliver in the sky-she heard the voice of her grandmother. It is the way, child. It is always the way. Blood must be given to the land.
But why Otto? Why me?
Because you are loved, child. Because you are loved above all the rest.
Gerda did not weep as the lash flayed her skin and her back ran wet with blood.
Blood must be given.
The room was cold and dark when she woke, the fire having dwindled to a few lingering coals in the narrow hearth. The room was devoid of the table and chairs it had held earlier and the door was firmly closed-barricaded undoubtedly from the other side. They had left her on the floor, and she had lain there, senseless, for long enough that the blood had dried to a crusted layer on her back. She moved gingerly, sliding her thin shift back down her body, and even though she knew the scabs on her back were tearing, she felt no pain.
Next to her was a cup, half-filled with ale, and a plate with a piece of bread and a half-eaten chicken leg. To her eyes and stomach, it was a lavish repast, and she fell upon the meal eagerly, making short work of it. The food eased some of the tension in her belly but did little to ease the ache in her heart.
Slowly she crawled across the floor toward the hearth. It put out very little heat, but the stones in front of it were still warm. She curled up as best she could with her manacles and her torn back and tried to rest.
She had seen the pyre in the green. She knew they would come to take her to it in the morning.
As she slipped toward a senseless slumber, she was saddened by the idea that they would not scatter her ashes in the fields. How else would she see Otto again?