The Silver Cup (5 page)

“In the Hebrew of that now dreaded race, Elisabeth meant ‘worshiper of god,' and true to her name, Elisabeth, like her husband Zachary lived a blameless life. But though they were the best of people, their prayers for a child went unanswered and Elisabeth remained barren. Then, one day, long after he had given up hope, Zachary was in his synagogue, and the Archangel Gabriel appeared in his blinding glory.

‘Go, old man. Your prayers are answered. Elisabeth bears your son,' said the angel.

But Zachary did not believe the angel, and he was struck dumb.”

Here the old priest clapped his hand hard against his mouth, and Anna gulped. He continued.

“Indeed Gabriel had spoken the truth, for though Elisabeth's hair was white, she was with child. When her holy cousin Mary came to visit, Elisabeth's unborn babe leapt for joy in her womb, for Elisabeth's babe would be John the—”

Suddenly the priest stopped, interrupted by gushing, the sound of water hitting the stone floor, echoing throughout the church. In the priest's silence, the congregation inhaled, and in the void, there was only a trickling sound from Thomas who had wet himself, soaking his leather britches and his stockings. Agnes grabbed her child and dragged him from the church. Thomas began to wail. Some neighbors laughed, and some murmured in sympathy or disapproval.

 
 
Anna hurried to catch Martin who quickly left church as soon as the service ended. She overheard his friend Dieter and another boy call to him. Martin turned, and as he walked toward his friends, a third boy put out his foot and tripped him. Dieter and the two boys pounced on Martin.

“Hold still Martin! We're just checking your britches,” said Dieter with a laugh.

The boy who had tripped Martin added, “Let's see if you're wet like your brother.”

Martin squirmed and rolled and shook off his tormentors. Dusting himself off, he walked silently toward home. Anna held back and worried.
Poor Thomas. If Agnes doesn't beat him, Martin will.
It was a sad and terrible turn of what should have been a merry day for the family.

The feast of Saint Elisabeth was supposed to be one of the last bright occasions in Bloody November, the hateful month when most animals had to be butchered. Only a few of the strongest would be spared to share the precious stores of grain over the winter. Anna hated November. She had come to know each pig by his temper, each calf by his name, and each sheep and goat by his coat. She did everything she could to avoid the killing. But now Anna even dreaded the family dinner as she walked slowly toward her uncle's home.

There she found Thomas alone outside the door, bewildered and sobbing. She led him to the garden and helped him out of his wet clothes and put him in a shirt Martin had outgrown. The little boy twirled around in circles, happy again.

“Oh Thomas! Do you understand anything? ” she asked.

Agnes was angry so there was no celebration for Elisabeth's day. A simple dinner in silence followed the service, leaving the afternoon for the more bloody tasks of November.
If only it were still October
, thought Anna. She had spent many pleasant October days with the whole family in the forest, collecting nuts and fallen wood. During the silent meal, Anna remembered the last breezy, clear afternoon when, after filling two heavy baskets with beechnuts, acorns, and chestnuts, she had rested and watched Thomas. He ran laughing to Margarete, trying to hand her his basket. Margarete ignored her little brother, so Anna grabbed him and praised his work, a basket full of pine cones, pebbles, and twigs.

“What treasures, Thomas!” she exclaimed, and he clapped his hands joyfully. Then Anna grabbed Thomas by his wrists and spun him round and round until they both fell to the ground, dizzy and laughing. Anna remembered watching her little cousin, lying on the ground, blinking up at the trees and waving his arms like the branches.

“You're almost as stupid as he is,” snorted Margarete, who turned to help Elisabeth with her heavy basket.

All Anna had thought was how wonderfully Thomas could smile and laugh.

Sweet, hopeless, Thomas,
she now thought.
He's ruined Elisabeth's day
.

Anna's daydream was interrupted by Agnes who ordered her to fetch buckets of water while the men and boys began the butchering. But she was glad for the bloodless assignment. Martin's old shirt fell below Thomas's knees as he waddled happily behind her to the well. Returning to the house, Anna spotted Martin with his father and older brothers. He was barefoot and stripped down to his britches, killing animal after animal, bloody and exhilarated. She remembered a few years earlier when Martin had cried for weeks after his mother slaughtered a gosling who had followed him everywhere one summer.

How he has changed!
she thought.
But at least he's forgotten Dieter's teasing
.

Last November, Anna recalled that Martin had been enraged when he had been forced to help her with the skinning.

“This is women's work,” he complained.

“And when did you become a man? ” Agnes had replied.

He had worked in furious silence with Anna, scraping the hides clean of hair and fur, which was saved for brushes and for stiffening the clay used to build the walls of the houses. A tanner would turn the hides into leather for shoes and clothing.
At least this year Martin is working with the men
, thought Anna.

For the rest of the day and in the days that followed, Anna often worked with Margaret and Elisabeth. They poured blood collected from the slaughtered pigs into boiling pans of oats and barley that hissed and then coagulated into black puddings. They boiled hooves to make jelly and saved horns for Uncle Karl who would carve them into spoons and cups. They made needles from bones and turned bladders into flasks. They helped Agnes salt meats that they hung from the rafters to cure slowly over the always smoking hearth. Later, the meat would be left to dry, hanging from beams, out of reach of the mice or worse. By the end of November, the rafters of both houses were decked with salted and smoked meats, hams, and sausages. Corners were cluttered with baskets of barley and rye and nuts. Wheels of cheese were wrapped in dried leaves and straw and stacked in the lofts. Everything was readied for the long cold, merciless winter.

Aunt Agnes was preoccupied with the work of these winter preparations. Anna spent much of her time watching and distracting little Thomas, finding tasks for him, redoing most of what he did. Though she criticized everything Anna did, Agnes seemed entirely unaware of Thomas. Nothing he did brought any response from her. She spoke no words to him or about him. It was as though he had ceased to exist.

7

THE WOODS

 
An early snow had dusted the fields and now swirled in the cold wind of the shortened afternoons. Martin and Gunther were preparing to depart after dinner, for they always on the road in the final weeks of the harvest season. Since sunrise, Anna had been helping make sausages. Elisabeth chopped and pounded scraps of meat and stirred in salt and bits of fennel and sage. Anna stuffed this claylike mixture into cleaned lengths of pig intestine that Margarete tied with strings made of sinew. As they blanched these sausages in a cauldron and hung them on a rope high above the smoky hearth, Anna sang a song she had learned from Martin. She had a surprisingly deep, rich singing voice that even Agnes had to admit she enjoyed.

While the girls made sausages, Agnes fussed about the midday meal. She set out fresh roast pork seasoned with mustard and garlic and a milk pudding of boiled grains and currants and stewed pears. The family treated the meal as a celebration for Elisabeth because her day had been ruined and for Martin who had been on the road with Gunther on his saint's feast day. Karl gave Elisabeth a splendid horn drinking cup on which he had carved snowdrops, and her older brothers gave her a new knife with a polished bone handle. Karl took her old knife to save for Thomas. Karl gave Martin a handsome shepherd's horn pipe to replace the one Martin had lonst in the summer. He was delighted and immediately put it to his lips and entertained the family with a quick and cheeful song.

“That was a feast of a dinner, dear wife,” said Karl patting his stomach.

Gunther thanked Agnes and rose from the table.

“Come Martin, we must be off now. It's a fine afternoon, but we should begin, or it will be dark before we reach Worms. The days are short now.”

“God speed Gunther,” said Agnes, pushing herself from the table and stretching her arms above her head. “How lucky they are to get out of this smoke-filled house. Well, Karl, before the snow traps me in the house, perhaps I will go out, too.”

“Go? Agnes where will you go? ” asked Karl.

“For a walk. Perhaps I'll gather the last of the nuts.”

“Dear woman, there are no nuts left to find. And the woods will be empty.”

“I have had a week of blood-letting and sausage-filling. My own stomach is fuller than a sausage casing, as over-filled as one of Anna's ill-made links.” She glanced scornfully at Anna.

Anna said nothing, but Lukas, who was sitting at her side, took her hand beneath the table.

“Go and breathe some clean air. There's still a good amount of sun today,” said Karl.

“I'll take Thomas home with me,” said Anna.

Agnes glowered at her, “No.
I
will take the boy.”

“Take the dog as well,” said Karl.

“I shall.”

“Do not go deep into the woods,” he added.

“Am I a fool?”

“No, you're a trying woman, but a matchless cook. Wrap the boy well. It's very cold. Our Thomas shall be glad to go with you,” said Karl, raking his fingers through the pale silk hair of his youngest son.

Agnes fitted Thomas with his warmest things; she wrapped him in an extra woolen shirt and tied a fur-covered skin across his back and shoulders, and they were off. Thomas could not contain his joy. He was leaving with his mother, who often scared him into tears, but whom he loved dearly.

As they wended through the town gate and off beyond the fields, the sun was already low, and the shadows were long. The ground was patched with snow where the trees were thickest, and the brooks and pools of water had the thin white skins of ice Thomas loved to shatter.

 
 
Anna never believed the rest of the story that Aunt Agnes told when only she and Gray returned that evening. Agnes said they found little to collect in the woods, but of course the season was late. Her basket was light, filled mostly with the twigs and pebbles and useless rubble Thomas had gathered. Still, the weather was clear and fine, and the boy seemed pleased. By midafternoon she sat him down for a rest and a small biscuit before they were to head back. As they finished eating, she said she noticed that Thomas had something clenched in his small fist. When Agnes grabbed his hand, he struggled and broke free. And then she saw two loose and very poisonous mushrooms next to where he had been sitting.

She feared he still had more. She chased him, yelling at him not to eat them, trying to grab them back. He, half laughing at this game of chase and half terrified that she was once again angry, scampered off.

When Agnes returned home, it was dark. She was dirty, and her knee was bleeding. Karl covered her with a bear-skin and blankets and placed her near the fire, rubbing her hands and trying to calm her shivers. Her gulping, broken, sob-filled story stunned the family.

“I was running after Thomas, yelling at him to stop. He just kept going. The child is so clumsy, and yet he can be fast.” Agnes looked to Karl who nodded. She continued, “The light was dim, and I was watching only him, and I fell. There must have been a log or a root, or something, and I fell to the ground, and though I cried out in pain, he never looked back. I tried to get up, but I was light-headed, and at first my foot wouldn't bear my weight, and the pain— the pain was—I was crying, thinking I might never get up, and there was Gray who knew I was hurt. Licking my tears. A stupid dog knew more than the boy.”

Agnes coughed, and Karl handed her a mug of ale that she sipped. She wet her lips several times, watching Karl. He looked dazed. Agnes continued.

“ ‘Go find the boy! ' I yelled, but Gray stayed by me. Finally I found that I could stand and limp, but by then I had lost all sight of Thomas. I yelled. I screamed. I could feel the wetness of my own blood on my leg. Gray and I stumbled about looking for any sign of his path. I called. I prayed he would come to my voice. The pain in my foot was nothing to my heart's pain. But the light was fading, so I headed home for help. I could hardly walk myself. He is lost. Dear Lord, help us, the boy is lost.”

By then, it was altogether night with only the sliver of a moon and no hope of finding the child in the dark forest, nor much hope that his little body would survive the cold or worse in the night. Anna pleaded with everyone to go and search, but it was too dark and too dangerous. So she prayed that he had crawled into a hole or under a log and burrowed in for safety and warmth, or that some kind soul had found him and would care for him.

Who but a wolf (or worse) would be in the woods at night? And what would a stranger do with a child unable to say his name?
thought Anna.

No night had ever been so long. Before daybreak they were all in the woods, searching the whole day and the next as well. Friends joined. No trace of Thomas was found. Lukas and Anna would not give up. They searched day after day, eventually only hoping to find the little boy's body for burial.

 
 
Lukas sat on a stool by Anna's hearth, staring at the flames. A tall young man, knotted up by sorrow and confusion, he rested his chin on his knees.