Forest of Whispers (17 page)

His voice tunnels out of my ears as I watch the men spill tiny stones from a cloth sack onto the table. They look at the contents curiously, trying to decipher what they could possibly be used for, and take turns stacking them and knocking them down.

I’ve seen stones like those before in the kitchen of Eltz, long ago. Two young serving girls played at reading each other’s fortune. Cook walked in and nearly fainted on the spot, telling them to bury the stones deep in the ground at the far end of the garden. She said she wouldn’t have the devil’s work tainting the food she worked so hard to make, and I remember how ashen her red face had turned at the sight of them. When I had the courage to ask what they were, she told me they were rune stones, and I’d do best to stay far away from them, if I knew what was good for me.

Rune…

At once I realize why I’m standing here—the
real
reason I’ve come. There is only one person those little marked stones could have been confiscated from. I break the force I’ve been mesmerized by and look at the man who waits impatiently across from me.

“May I see this prisoner you speak of?”

“Are you sure you know what you’re asking? She’s a very powerful witch.”

“If you can lay eyes on her, then I suppose I am up for the challenge,” I say brusquely.

“The burning shouldn’t have occurred yet. I suppose you have time.”

I stare at him. “Burning?”

“Why, yes. She’s guilty of witchcraft.”

“Are you to tell me you have no idea if a prisoner’s been sent to execution, even though all orders to do so would be given by you?”

He gives a tight, even laugh, despite the fact that I’ve come just short of insulting him.

“That’s because she is not being held here. We can’t run the risk of someone like her corrupting our other prisoners.” The Burgermeister holds a smug look upon his face now, one that is entirely different from the welcoming mask he first greeted me with. Quickly, my brain sifts through questions. I must know where this “witch” has been taken. I need to know if it’s Rune.

“Well then, if she’s as dangerous as you seem to think,” I say, “both my father and the bishop will be quite pleased to find you are indeed ensuring the safety of the village. Where exactly did you say she was sent?”

He eyes me suspiciously, but I know he won’t refuse me, not if it will reassure his status and control to the Electorate. A malicious grin of delight tinged with caution flares across his face. I pace nonchalantly to the window and look out onto the lawn, pretending his answer isn’t very important. The macabre sight below is mesmerizing and disturbing all the same. Nooses are being slung and tested in the gallows. I watch as four men build the stake and pyre, filling the spaces beneath the boards with bone-dry hay that will catch the instant a flame touches it.

Somewhere, someone is doing this for Rune
, I think to myself. I could very well be standing in another window, in another building, witnessing the preparations for her death.

“I suggest you pay the city of Bamberg a visit. Now if you’ll excuse me, My Lord, you can see there is much to be done.” His voice booms behind me, and I don’t miss the implication that he means to return to more important matters.

Rune is in Bamberg—taken to the Drudenhaus, the witch prison. Anyone taken there is as good as dead
.

The look on his face is cold when I turn around, and the Burgermeister nods my way, excusing himself, while the other men from the table rise to follow him out.

“Did you give her a fair trial, then?” I ask heatedly, crossing to stand in front of him. “One that suggests she is not guilty until she is fully examined?”

“The inquiry we gave her took all of five minutes—enough time to prove to us she is indeed guilty and extremely dangerous.”

“So minutes are all it takes to determine if a girl should be put to death, in the most violent of ways?” I am sure he wonders why I am so interested, why this affects me so, but I can’t be bothered with covering up my emotions. I need to know before he walks out of this room and I lose my chance.

“Tell me, what exactly has she done?” I doubt trading mushrooms is enough to prove oneself of being a witch.

“It’s not a matter of what she has done, but more who she is, that greatly concerns us.”

The door swings open, and the man who greeted me when I first came is standing there. “Sir, the prisoners have arrived.” He delivers his message flatly. If Rune isn’t here, then the stakes and gallows being built are for them. I look the Burgermeister in the eye, knowing he doesn’t plan to give trials to the newly arrested. He plans on killing them all, and I am angered by the atrocity of it.

The Burgermeister mutters to himself and avoids my gaze as he leaves the room with the others, and I’m left alone in the massive meeting room. The witch prison in Bamberg has already earned a dark reputation. I cannot imagine anyone surviving it. It is a place of horror, I hear, with screams that leach from the walls in the middle of the night and float away among the darkened streets. And poor Rune is there.

I waste no time and rush toward the table, collecting the rune stones and pushing them into the little bag. I toss the last one in, giving the old cord a firm tug, but a lumpy cloth sticks out, preventing me from closing it all the way. I pull it out and look it over in the graying light of the room, tracing my thumb over the impression of old stitchery holes that dot it. I fumble inside my coat, knowing the bishop’s parchment is still there, read and forgotten. I am sure its words mean nothing to this village. They show no fear or concern about an illness; all they see is that a witch still lives among them and must be destroyed. I uncurl the scroll and exhale a stunned breath, then hold it up to the cloth. The parchment bears the Prince Bishop’s insignia at the top, of course, but halfway down the decree is the Pyrmont shield. It is practically an exact replica of the design made by the missing stitches on the cloth.

How did this cloth ever come to be in Rune’s possession, I wonder? And why has only Pyrmont fallen to the illness? Perhaps Plague is not the monster here, but something else entirely, something that will undoubtedly continue to fill the hearts and minds of everyone with a dread so terrible they will be willing to turn on one another to escape it. They’ll be willing to blame neighbors, even their own families, for an invisible evil, just to save themselves.

A wave of sickness hits me. The cleansing of this village has nothing to do with an epidemic that has claimed the lives of those just miles away, but an invisible disease that I fear is far more volatile. I spare a second to glance out the window one last time and hope I am wrong, but I’m not. It’s happening, just like the bishop more or less warned me the other day.

An inquisition.

A stage in which the real monster is set, and the clever characters who will act it all out are ones who wouldn’t dare be questioned—the Burgermeister, the council, even the Prince Bishop himself.

And from what I’ve learned here today, Rune could very well be caught in the middle of it.

Chapter 23
Rune

T
he cart’s wheels hit every rock and hole in the road on purpose, just to torment us. We’ve been traveling for hours along the Regnitz River, and I long to stretch my limbs, only there isn’t any room.

I sit on a bed of straw in this tiny wagon, along with four other women. Three girls are about my age, while the fourth is much older. She reminds me of Matilde, and for that reason I turn my head. I cannot look at her without feeling myself fall apart.

The girl closest to me is crying. Our shoulders bump one another, and despite the many times I’ve tried to give her room, she ends up leaning against me, drenching my shoulder with her tears. The sour-looking girl sits with her back to us and has spent the entire trip looking out at the moving trees, clearly mesmerized by the endless green scrolling past us. She would be pretty if she didn’t have awful teeth, and every time she curls her lips back at what she sees during our ride, the muddy stain of brown pokes out. It sickens me, and I turn away.

“My son will come for me.” The old woman chants to herself, as if convincing us, rather than herself, that she will escape the horror of where they are taking us.

“No one leaves the Drudenhaus, old woman. At least not alive.” The girl with the bad teeth pulls herself away from watching the road and pitilessly acknowledges the old woman’s declaration. I feel sorry for the woman. She was just trying to be hopeful, and now, she is not even allowed that.

My hand presses against the girl whose head lolls back and forth on me. She’s cried herself to sleep, I think, although I can’t understand how she’s managed to do that under these circumstances. She begins to shift a little, and I’ve just enough room to twist myself around and peer out the bars myself, but what I see, I cannot believe.

We have reached Bamberg. From between the bars of the wagon, I count the seven hills that dot the city, using the steeples of the churches that sit atop each one as landmarks. I think of the stories Matilde told me. This is the city whose red rooftops cover the buildings like a sunset blazing across them at all hours of the day. It’s almost easy to forget what’s happening and see the beauty in it, but it’s as if this town mimics the one I’ve just come from and it has turned on itself overnight.

Stores have been pillaged, and cries and screams leak out from the shadows, which seem to be everywhere. Those who stray from the safety of their homes walk along the street with quick steps and disappear as they retreat behind closed doors.

“Is this it?” the girl beside me asks softly. She’s woken, probably because the cart moves differently along the cobbled road.

I stare up at the large stone structure in front of us and watch the clock that hangs below the bell tower, waiting for a chance to see the hands move, but the wagon moves too quickly and we pass beneath the massive archway without giving me the chance.

There are more guards than I have ever seen in one place before. Dressed in the regal red and gold of the Prince Bishop, they move like a giant wave from house to house. The stocks that line the street are full, which is something I’ve never seen in all the times I’ve visited my own village. From what I can see, the prisoners are mostly women.

“Look at all of them,” the older girl says. “They are all being taken for something they haven’t done. Just like us.”

I watch her closely, noting how she is angry while the others are silenced by shock and fear.

“What have they taken you for?” I ask.

She looks at me, and something in her eyes turns vile.

“Because they think I’m just like you.”

“Me? You don’t even know who I am.”

She looks at me as if I am every bit as clueless as I feel at this moment. “If it weren’t for you and the old woman, I’d be safe in my bed right now. But no, now they accuse each and every woman, here, in Baden and Württemberg, as if we are all responsible for some means of sorcery. Those men came and broke into my home. They hit my mother and told her she was a witch, just like the old woman who lived in the woods, just like
you
.”

I am frozen by the fierceness of her words. It seems all the efforts I’d spent staying quiet and invisible have been worthless. I want to ask what became of her mother, but I don’t dare. How can it be that absolute strangers seem to know me, and believe that this, all of this, is my fault? I turn away, unable to answer her, because it
is
my fault. Even though I was never taught to cast a circle or a single spell, or dance beneath the light of a full moon, as they say witches do…

Even though I have never done any of those things, I am every bit a witch.

What good did it do that Matilde tried to protect me, by teaching me the very basics of what I should know—how to survive, how to respect the Sacred Mother and all she gives to the world? I begged and begged for her to teach me the Old Ways, to learn what she learned at my age, and she refused. Her protection failed because I am still the one responsible. It is my veins that are tainted. The true blood of a spellcaster runs through my body. The whispers in my head remind me who I am. I cannot escape it, and now I fear I must face it, no matter what the price.

My back presses tightly against the bars. I don’t wince as they dig into my shoulder blades when the wheels catch and rise along the uneven road. I can’t look beyond the interior of the wagon anymore. I close my eyes and picture the forest instead—the shelter of the shady branches, the coolness of the air that is trapped between the shadows, the moss-covered slopes that find their way down to the hum of the little stream. If I pretend I’m there, I can escape all this, because when we finally reach the Drudenhaus, the witch prison, I fear I never will.

It looks like an ordinary building, with cream walls and timbered beams running the length of it; only what lies behind the doors, I am sure, is anything but commonplace. We are not slowing as we approach the massive front doors, but instead are taken around back, where the wagon heaves before finally coming to a rest. The hinge is released, and the metal door swings open. My first instinct is to leap through the little hinged gate of the car, throw myself out and run—run anywhere, with all the strength my legs can endure. But I cannot. As terrifying as the ride was, it’s the wagon that feels safe now, compared to the building that looms over us.

We move inch by inch, pushing against one another to the edge, where we are grabbed by the wrists and yanked to the ground. The guards lead us through a larger gate, and I am surprised to find we are now in a little courtyard, contained by a high stone wall that surrounds it. But the prison casts its grim shadow across the moist, green grass as we approach, leaving me to stare up at its tall sides. I can’t help think how the cheery garden disguises what must be inside, waiting for me. Before I have the chance to glance up at the blue sky one last time, I am inside the witch house, submerged in darkness, watching with dread as the door closes, swallowing away the sun’s warmth.

New faces look us over and grunt at us as if we are livestock headed for slaughter. We are sized up, poked, and prodded as if we were things, not people.