VERONICA

BAMBERG, FRANCONIA, 1628

It was easy to become comfortable in the little cottage in the woods. Frau Berchta looked after us like orphaned kittens and while we did work hard to repay her kindness, it sometimes did not feel like enough. In the first few weeks after we arrived Hans and I spoke often of moving on and making our way to Würzburg, but we never did. Then, one day, Frau Berchta took me aside and held my hands in hers.

‘Veronica,’ she had said softly. ‘I sense that you have fear in your heart and that you are running from something terrible. Hiding from something or someone.’

I could not lie to her and, with tears in my eyes, I told her the whole story, from the day they dragged my mother to the Hexenhaus to leaving Spur and our cart in the open field to be searched and stripped by the witch-hunters. The old woman listened carefully and then nodded, pulling me into a strong embrace.

‘I thought as much,’ she whispered. ‘You and your brother must stay here until this madness burning through the cities has passed. You are safe here. Please stay.’

And so we had stayed on. It was not so long until the place began to feel like home. While it was a little lonely and isolated and I did miss the bustle and pace of Bamberg, I came to feel a part of those woods. It was strange to have a wolf visit us at night and sleep under the same thatched roof. Wolves were creatures of the night, but not Rudi. I had not mustered the courage to pat him, yet, and still felt a quiver of fear when Hans stroked him as he might a house dog.

Frau Berchta spent most of her days spinning yarn and singing old songs in foreign-sounding words. I believe she may have been born far north in the lands of long night shadows and ice. She had some strange ways.

We often saw hedgehogs waddling over the meadows and badgers darting guiltily from one thicket to the next. If you followed the stream far enough it spilled into a wide river. I was not sure which river it was but it was thick with fish and one could almost swish them out with the swing of a basket. The days were growing a little shorter, autumn was getting colder and the leaves were reaching their full colour. We learned the rhythm of the forest and felt her seasons in our blood. The deep pain of the loss of our parents never went away but it was softened and laid gently to rest in the peace and solitude of the woods.

In those first three months there had only been two visitors. The first one was a young woman who looked pinched and sad. I first saw her at the edge of the meadow, hanging back in the shadows of the fringe of the forest. She looked timid and nervous and was wringing her hands and knotting her skirts into bunches beneath her little fists. I wondered if she was lost. Then I panicked, thinking that if she could find the cottage in the woods, so too could the witch-hunters. Hans was skipping stones into the stream so I put down my knitting and went with a certain wariness to welcome the woman.

‘Are you lost?’ I asked.

‘Nein,’ she muttered.

Her pale eyes were almost translucent with speckles of grey around the pupil like a house sparrow’s egg. The thin hair braided on either side of her head was just as light and delicate. She reminded me of a blown glass figurine.

‘My name is Ruth and I have come to find the healer, Frau Berchta,’ she said in a small hesitant voice.

‘You have come to the right place,’ I told her.

Frau Berchta was a wise healing woman. In our time at the cottage she had gradually begun to introduce me to her secret wisdom, taking me on as her apprentice. It was women’s work, handed down from mother to daughter and Frau Berchta had welcomed me as a daughter in spirit if not in blood. While we studied and brewed herbal potions, Hans played with the chickens and went in search of field mushrooms.

I took Ruth’s hand, leading her across the meadow carpeted with dancing yellow grasses, and took her inside to the old woman who was spinning at her wheel.

‘Frau Berchta,’ I said. ‘We have a guest. This is Ruth.’

I made tea over the fire as the women settled at the table. Ruth began to speak in a rush telling the old woman of her desire for a child. I listened as she cried and told of her loss of three babies born too early to survive. She was afraid that her body could not carry a child all the way to birth. Her husband was unhappy and desired children as much as herself. Poor Ruth was at her wit’s end, thinking she could not bury another unfinished child because her heart was aching so badly.

We drank tea and listened while Frau Berchta gave the woman her advice.

‘A child is best conceived during the waxing moon,’ the old woman told her, looking gently into the visitor’s eyes, stroking her hand. ‘A baby is a sacred gift of Mother Earth and as you have been long married without a bundle to show, this is of concern. You have come to the right place.’

Frau Berchta asked about the woman’s diet, and Ruth described a meal table heavy with breads and meats.

‘You must fill your empty belly with yam and wild garlic,’ the wise woman spoke softly, nodding with encouragement. ‘They will cost you less at the market than meat. To nurture a child you must ready a pure nest. First, we build the nest and make it strong. Veronica, dear, please mix up a cleansing brew of dandelion and burdock root. This is for the blood that runs in your veins. Take these in hot water twice a day to help balance what is unbalanced.’

I nodded and went to the small room out behind the storage space that contained the herbs and roots hanging to dry. I took the herbs Frau Berchta had asked for and some more that I knew my teacher would need. She had told me the secrets that were as good for healthy newborns in the paddock as for young babies in the home. The herbs could even be burned at sacrifice under a full moon to encourage Mother Nature to be good to the earth and produce a plentiful supply of the fruits and vegetables of the fields and groves as well as healthy children. In a woven basket I collected them: yarrow, lady’s mantle, raspberry leaves and unicorn root.

As I began to mix and blend the herbs in the stone pot with the pestle back out in the body of the cottage, I heard Frau Berchta tell the woman to take chamomile as a brew at night to calm herself.

‘Worry is the very worst thing,’ the old woman cautioned. ‘You must stay happy and filled with hope. Nurture good and loving thoughts. Veronica, also fetch a mandrake-root charm.’

I took one from the pewter mug above the fireplace. Charms were warmed there and replaced with a new one when used. The mandrake-root charm was third along.

‘Pray to the Mother, and your God also, on the full moon and wear this,’ the woman told Ruth as she handed it to her. ‘The words you say will not matter so long as they are from your heart. Then bury it and do not touch it or take it up until a healthy babe is born. Then you can crush the root and press it on the babe’s belly to keep it neither too cold nor too warm.’

She then went on to tell her that life would blossom in Ruth in the cold of winter and that she must continue to take an infusion in hot water twice a day of chamomile and unicorn root throughout her belly-swelling time.

Ruth had left us happier and with more hope in her heart than when she had arrived. I waved to her as she disappeared into the copse across the meadow.

Our next visitor had been a woodchopper. His name was Christoff Kilian. Christoff was a big strong lad, a little older than me, broad of shoulder and with legs like tree trunks. Despite his daunting physical presence he was soft-spoken and gentle. He had come to Frau Berchta for six winter wood chops since he was a boy in breeches. He told me on that first day that he was seventeen, almost eighteen. I watched as he loaded our storeroom with the wood he had chopped the year before and left to season and dry behind the old shed. Hans helped him but could only carry two blocks at a time in contrast to Christoff’s six or more. My brother had grown taller since breathing the air in the woods. He ate well and played outdoors. He built bone strength by taking on some of the farmyard responsibilities.

Christoff had red hair. I had not met a boy or man with hair so fiery. ‘My father was of Celtic stock,’ he explained one day. ‘There’s a St Kilian’s Abbey in Würzburg. St Kilian travelled here from the green island and sometime, many years from now, I would like to go back and settle in my father’s land away from all the warring and superstition.’

I suspected that war and superstition were everywhere in the world where there were people. Only in the woods did I feel the whisper and promise of peace. Nature had no time nor need for petty superstitions or wars; there was just the rhythm and cycle of life.

Christoff was good for Hans, and I smiled as I watched them work together. I had been worried many times that Hans would suffer from our isolation and the lack of men to teach him how to become one. He and Christoff wrestled, tumbling like puppies over the slight incline of the hills heading toward town. Big and strong, Christoff reined himself in and never hurt the younger boy. Christoff chopped down many trees from deep in the forest and ferried them in his cart back to Ebrach where he lived with his mother. Some days he worked late and stayed over, sleeping in the back of his cart. Then he would load up wood and take it to town to sell. He was a regular visitor for the last weeks of autumn.

One day Christoff brought Hans a small baby hedgehog. The mother had died and Hans had found the little creature beside her, almost dead itself.

‘What had happened to her? The mother?’ I had wondered and asked aloud.

‘Her head had been badly savaged,’ Christoff had told me. ‘There were three besides this little one, also dead. I think an owl had tried to take the babies and the mother had died protecting them. This little one was the strongest of the lot to survive. I think we should call him Ambrose because it means immortal.’

And so Ambrose joined our growing menagerie of unusual house animals. There was Rudi the wolf, who only visited during the night and was always gone when I got out of bed at dawn. Frau Berchta must have let him out in the tiny black hours before the sun arose. A family of doves also lived in the beams of the shed and cooed and trilled in the shadows. And a fox came sniffing at the henhouse looking for a way in, but we handfed him bits of old dried chicken feet as little delicacies; he was tame enough to take them. We called him Reynard. I knew that he was a wild beast and if our backs were turned for even an instant all loyalty would vanish, and he would steal a chicken and tear it to pieces. Ambrose became the responsibility of Hans and he took to the chore with relish.

I would scatter seed for the hens and bring fresh water from the stream while Christoff threw his heavy axe against the trees with a thud that echoed back from the woods. His arms were strong and he would sweat as if he’d run under a waterfall. When the work was done he and Hans would splash in the stream to clean themselves. It was far too cold at that time of the year for me to put my legs in and play with them.

Whenever Christoff visited us in and around his work felling trees in the forest, he fed his little hedgehog friend snails and the small fragile eggs abandoned by the stick-like waterbirds. Ambrose the hedgehog became very vocal, grunting and snorting and, after a wary time of it, he and Rudi became sleeping partners, both nocturnal creatures living an upside-down existence. Ambrose curled into a ball at the side of the wolf where his powerful hind leg folded down on itself and by the fire they slept.

Christoff stayed maybe one night a week, usually if it was raining, as the path to town muddied, making it difficult for his cart. Mostly he arrived at high sun having made the trek from the township of Ebrach, half a day away, and leaving as the sun bruised to a pale purple of an evening.

‘Aren’t you afraid of the woods at nightfall and in the early, early morns?’ I had asked him once as we all shared the midday meal around the table.

His slate-grey eyes had looked at me with surprise, and he had smiled with a deep purple splodge of beetroot juice on his chin.

‘No,’ he said, showing straight white teeth. ‘Animals only ever hunt for food or attack when they are threatened. I have no fear and pose them none either. I’d make tough eating!’

I had never met anyone like Christoff. Once I might have been afraid of such a big, oafish sort of woodsman. The young men I was accustomed to were neat and buttoned-up townsfolk from good homes with fine table manners and some book learning and knowledge of state and history. Christoff knew how to stop still in the forest and listen for the sound of wren hatchlings and how to read patterns in groups of wild pigeons, but he could not write his own name and had no desire to learn to do so.

It was a cool day overhung with a grey sky. Little Hans and I were standing in the goat’s pen, curiously looking around for a lost pail, when we heard a shout. It was Christoff. My stomach leapt at the tone and cadence of his roar. It was violent and bursting with surprise and terror. I hesitated, frozen for a moment, and then ran breathlessly toward the sound, tripping over my skirts in my haste.

The young man was on the ground, roaring with pain, and I could see blood, a fountain of red, pumping from a dark wet stain on his upper leg. I felt my own blood drain from my head to pool at my feet, stopping me in my tracks. I gasped and panicked. Hans went closer, falling to his knees in the grass beside his friend. I heard Frau Berchta calling out and looked to see her hurrying from the cottage. She did not have her walking stick and appeared to be moving with more grace and pace than usual, but she was out of breath as she came to the injured man. I could see that she had pushed through her pain to get to him so fast. With some awkwardness she crumpled down beside him and began squinting at the bleeding, gaping wound. Christoff’s axe had missed its mark and taken him down, felling him like a tree. The blood was leaping out of him, dancing high, smattering his clothes, his face and the grass around him.

‘Quick! We must stop the blood flow,’ the old woman murmured. She tore at the boy’s trousers and thrust a hand into the wound, pulling out a ribbon of flesh, pressing her fingers to cut off the fountain. Two ends of what looked like a pale, slippery, thick worm were crushed beneath her bloodied fingers. Christoff had stopped wailing and his face was as white as the petals of a field lily. He looked terrified and he had a right to be. A deep gash to the thigh was a common woodchopper injury and usually ended with the victim drained of life-blood within a handful of moments. I prayed that Frau Brechta had pinched off the supply in time.

‘Fetch me twine, girl, and needles and some fine silken thread,’ she barked up at me, her white smock splattered with the boy’s blood, her arms red and slippery.

I ran and found the instruments. I chose a sturdy sharp needle, the sort we used on course hides, one that would do well to patch him up; but I also took a finer thread and needle for the old woman to sew together the inner parts of his leg.

‘My eyes are not good enough to do this work,’ she told me, shaking her head as I offered her the instruments. ‘You must do it, Veronica.’

I gasped and felt my heart flutter. I had sewn much in my short life but never pulsing, bleeding flesh. Needlepoint, tapestries and skirts were not the sinews and tendons of a live person. Christoff looked up at me with desperation in his eyes. I knew that the old woman’s arthritic fingers could not hold the bloody strands much longer and, without the necessary compression or repair, Christoff would bleed out in minutes. His life was in her hands, in her gnarled fingers, and she was passing that responsibility to me. A man’s life was being offered to me, as fragile as a bird with a broken wing. I nodded and took a deep breath.

My heart was in my throat and I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. I looked back up to see that there were pearled beads of sweat on Christoff’s brow and his breath was coming short and sharp. My limbs felt like water.

‘Hurry now, child,’ Frau Berchta whispered. ‘Hans, take off your belt and put it around the top of Christoff’s leg. Good boy. Quickly. Fasten it tight. Christoff, you lie back, head down. We need to lift your legs up higher than your heart.’

Her voice calmed me. Frau Berchta seemed to know what had to be done and I needed to get busy saving the young man’s life. Christoff’s eyes were wide and scared. He lay back, then, and shut them, the lashes wet with tears.

Hans tightened the belt and, gradually and carefully, the old woman released her grip on the torn ends of the vein. I kneeled beside Christoff and watched as the bloodflow stopped to a trickle.

‘Fine, very fine stitches, here around the ends.’ Frau Berchta nodded and held the two squid-like pieces like tentacles in her fingers.

I took the thread and pressed it through the eye of the needle, knotting it at the other end and, with a deep breath, I willed my fingers to be steady, to be firm. I went to work, imagining I was making delicate stitches on an open-weave canvas. My nostrils were congested with the scent of blood, a warm and sickening fog of it wafting around me as I worked, frowning and concentrating intently. Christoff lay still and did not so much as flinch.

‘Good, good girl,’ Frau Berchta whispered, and I could feel the presence of my brother standing behind me watching with a keen and morbid interest.

‘I think you have sealed it well. Here.’ Very carefully the woman began to loosen the belt and I watched the worm of gristle go from a deathly pale to a healthy pink in a rush. I held my breath, afraid it would spring a leak. It did not. Frau Berchta nodded.

‘Now you will go in layers, still with the fine thread,’ she said firmly, as I threaded my needle once again. ‘These walls of muscle must come together, here and here, and then finally we can close the curtain of skin above.’

I looked down toward Christoff and could not tell if he was awake or asleep. His eyes were shut, his cheeks had a better colour and his lips were soft and fluttering under his breath. Perhaps the shock had knocked the energy from him, but he looked well enough. He was alive.

I finished my work and accepted the woman’s praise for my precise and neat handiwork. We were afraid to try to move the boy in case our struggles broke the stitches, out or in. Hans and I built a little fire in a pit nearby and we collected pillows and quilts to make Christoff comfortable. He accepted sips of water and Frau Berchta told us to keep pressing him to drink to replenish the fluids in his body.

Hans sat by his friend and told him stories of fairies and elves, while I helped Frau Berchta with a tonic for Christoff’s recovery and boiled up some herbs to make a compress and poultice for his pain. We took some goose fat and bishop’s wort and cleavers, pounded them together and then squeezed them out and added a spoonful of soap.

Hans and I sat by Christoff all night. He was very quiet and mostly slept. It wasn’t as cold as the previous nights and I made Hans catch some snippets of sleep, patting his little back until his breathing slowed. The cries of night animals filled the air. Rudi padded past us into the cottage at high moon and did not even glance our way.

Once when Hans was murmuring nonsense in his sleep, curled up tight under the quilt, Christoff whispered to me as the dimpled moon slipped out from a shield of cloud. ‘Thank you, Veronica,’ his voice burbled through the snap and bluster of the small, flickering fire. ‘Your hands saved my life and I will be eternally your servant. You are an angel.’ With that he drifted back to sleep.

I stared into the flames, wiping the night mist from my nose with my sleeve, and prayed to the good Lord and to Frau Berchta’s Goddess that the woodchopper would stay alive and heal well to become the man he was destined to be. I prayed that my needlework would hold firm.