The Last Witch

1

Ravensburg, Duchy of Jülich

Holy Roman Empire

Dawn.

A yellow slab of light falls across the rooftops. A straggly crowd hems the town square, some folk behind pillared cloisters, others hanging out of attic windows. Public gatherings in Ravensburg tend to be loud, boisterous affairs, but this one is eerily quiet, the crackling of the stakes in the center of the square traveling to the far corners of town.

To the child wearing a black hood, the hissing timber sounds like whispers.

They say, Here is death . . . Here is death . . .

The child's mother holds her hand in a firm grip, and the child can feel her trembling. Both are shivering on account of being paraded across the square in their bare feet, their bloodied kirtles no match for an Alpine wind. The hood is too big for the child's head, and as she walks-wrists bound, raw from the chains-it slips back a little, lifting from the child's eyes to reveal her feet and those of her mother.

And the leather shoes of the monk.

They stop, and the air changes. A sickening stench of smoke.

"Remove the hoods," he orders, and she flinches at his voice. He is Father Kramer, and he terrifies her.

The executioner mumbles in reply. "We were told the heretics must be hooded, lest they-"

"Remove them," Father Kramer snaps. "The townsfolk must be reminded that witches look like everyone else. Even little girls."

The hood is pulled from the child's head, a gale quickly fingering her shorn scalp. Her vision adjusts, and she sees the solemn faces of the crowd around her, a low sun creating dark hollows where their eyes should be. In front of her two stakes have been erected, long branches leaning against thick posts, orange flames licking the wood.

For a sickening moment she believes she is already in hell.

She starts to cry, holding on to her mother's arm with both hands. A second woman is a few steps ahead, dragged by the monk. "Please," she begs, hauling her arms away from the executioner. "Please."

As the child nears the stake, the smoke thickens, filling her nostrils with a vile and choking scent. On the back of the wind there is the sound of a man sobbing, pleading. The child can't see him, though she spies familiar faces among the crowd. Her neighbors, her friends, Augustin and Isolde. They play together often, and yet now . . . It wounds her to see them stare at her, like gargoyles. And her father. He does not move to fetch her as her mother takes her toward the fires, but remains on the edges of the square, and she wants to call out to him and ask him why he stays so still, so unmoved. But her attention is on her mother. She wants to save her, to protect her from the men surrounding them.

Everything lurches with impossibility.

But then, the executioner grabs her mother by the back of her sackcloth dress and drags her whimpering to the blazing stake.

"Please," her mother cries. "Please, no . . ."

The child is screaming now. Help, she cries, someone, help! How can they all stand there, the townsfolk, while her beloved mother is torn from her and thrust to the flames?

"Wait," Father Kramer says. The executioner pauses, and the child feels a leap of hope. On the ground before him, her mother is sobbing and pleading for their lives. The other woman is shrieking amidst the blaze. Her hair is alight, a crown of flames dancing brightly on her head.

"Let them watch," the child hears Father Kramer say.

The executioner hauls her mother from the ground to a standing position, clamping his other hand upon the child's little shoulder, pinning her to the spot in a firm grip. They watch silently, their faces hot from the fire, the terrifying scene draining every last ounce of fight from their bodies. She feels her mother's fingertips on her cheek, gently pushing her face away. Do not look. But from the corner of her eye the child sees the limp figure of the other woman, an arm dangling above her head like a puppet's, snagged on a branch. Flame snarls at the skin there, the air thickening with the stench of cooking flesh.

"Now," Father Kramer says, and suddenly the executioner is pushing the child and her mother toward the stake, swearing as he does at the scorching heat. The child feels terror lift her violently out of her body, the lurching knowledge that she is going to die drawing bile to her mouth. Even as her wrists are tethered to the wood she prays aloud to Saint Anthony, pleading for an angel to come and save them.

But the fire is greedy, roaring in her ears. She hears her mother crying, the cheers of the townsfolk, celebrating the riddance of witches.

She sees the face of the monk watching her, making sure the deed is done.

2

Innsbruck

Archduchy of Austria

She sees it from the corner of her eye, a wisp of white hair streaking past the chair that sits, vacant, by the fire.

Helena Scheuberin turns sharply to the spot where she expected to see someone, a neighbor's child, perhaps, judging by the height at which she spotted the strands of hair flashing past, darting cheekily into the room.

But there is no one there.

The room seems to hold its breath as Helena scans the length of it, her eyes searching corners, the cedar cupboards, the fold of red drapes at the far window. Who was here, just before, with such soft pale hair? The air agitates, the walls resettle. There is no sign of anyone or anything else save Helena's beloved cats, Mulat and Dozn, coiled in a basket by the fire.

But there was.

There was someone here, just now. A child.

"Madam?" a voice says from the doorway behind, making Helena jump. Her handmaid steps into the room, her head tilted in a question.

"I thought I saw . . ." Helena begins, still scanning the solar, her and Sebastian's private quarters, for anything that might explain the pale tresses flung in the air, as though someone had spun around and dashed across the terra-cotta tiles. But then, the solar is on the first floor, and in order to get to it a child would have had to pass the servants on the ground floor and take to the stairs. Even at a tiptoe the stairs make a dreadful creak, the weathered timbers long overdue replacement.

It is bewildering.

"Something the matter?" Sophie asks. She is holding a goblet on a silver tray, and Helena groans. Sophie's eyes meet the object that has drawn a look of revulsion from Helena, and she curtsies. "Your potion, madam."

"Must I?"

"I'm afraid so."

Sophie brings the silver tray to the long table in the center of the solar, her face breaking into a smile. "Would madam like a glass of ale to follow the"-she can't hide her smile-"powdered pig testicles?"

"Hold your tongue," Helena murmurs, but she isn't angry, not really, though Sophie covers her mouth with her hand to stop up a sudden burst of laughter. She looks down at the goblet with a sigh. It has been eight years of childless marriage, and of all the potions and tonics Helena has had to endure to remedy the emptiness of her womb, this is the worst. The taste is bad enough, but it unsettles her stomach and produces pork-flavored burps for the rest of the day. Even a glass of ale does not fix it.

"Remember, you must cast your mind far away," Sophie says gently, pressing the goblet into her hand. "Do not think of the contents. And for pity's sake, think not of pigs . . ."

"Oh, stop," Helena says, seeing a mirthful gleam in her handmaid's eye.

"Oink oink," Sophie offers playfully, apologizing immediately upon receipt of Helena's stern glare.

Helena settles down into a chair, her eyes falling on the yellow scum collecting on the sides of the goblet like pollen, though the taste is akin to rotting bacon. "Sing me a ballad," she says. Sophie is always humming a merry tune and Helena could well do with a distraction while she drinks. It is one of the things she likes most about Sophie-she is cheerful always, even through the dark winter when Helena's own spirits tend to wither. Not even Sebastian's brutish sourness can quash Sophie's buoyant nature, nor their cook, Frau Kofler, with her sharp tongue. It all seems to run off Sophie, like water off a duck's back.

Helena squeezes her eyes shut and knocks it back, hard, a groan of disgust vibrating in her throat as the liquid hits the back of it, a thicker consistency than last week.

"Done?" Sophie asks.

Helena pulls a face, her eyes still closed. "Mm-hmm."

"Good," Sophie says, striding to the window to pull the shutter closed. "I'll get you some ale. And apple tart?"

"You have made some?"

Sophie beams. "I have. I waited until Sebastian left, of course."

Helena is grateful for her maid's timing-Sebastian does not permit Helena to eat sweets for fear she might become corpulent, which the physicians have cautioned against if she wishes to conceive. Eight years of marriage and not a sniff of pregnancy. It is embarrassing for both of them, and Sebastian's mother, Frau Ericka Scheuberin, has made it her mission to solve the problem, including sourcing the dreaded pig potion.

At first, Helena was relieved not to conceive, being all of fifteen when she wedded a man she had never met and did not love. Her father, Reinhard, a wealthy burgher, had arranged the union when she was still a child, and by the time she became Sebastian's wife, she had lost both parents and her siblings. Her entire family, gone.

But she has grown to crave a child of her own. It is as though something in her blood has bloomed of its own volition, a turning of her heart toward the small, soft creatures she has witnessed in the arms of her friends, and particularly her very best friend, Anna, who delivered her firstborn child just over six years ago, a little girl named Catherine. It softened Helena's heart to hear the pleasant coos of Anna's infant, to gaze upon her sweet, open face, at the delightfully pink cheeks, the color of peonies. The thought of waking to such a face has transformed from a pleasing idea to a deep ache, a hollow emptiness where her heart sits.

Last August, on the day before Bartlemas, Helena sought a wise woman from a neighboring town to make a fertility amulet that lies still beneath the marriage bed, a star made of corn and threaded with Helena and Sebastian's fingernails. When no progress had been made by Christmas, Sebastian summoned a physician, at enormous expense, from Munich. The physician-an irritable man with a face unnervingly full of warts-demanded pots of urine from both Helena and Sebastian, which were left outside by the elder tree. After nine days, Sebastian's urine was found to contain worms, certain proof that he was barren. Thereupon the physician prescribed the only remedy guaranteed to produce an heir-the seed of another man.

Sebastian's footman, Leopold, was quietly selected as the man for the job because of his loyalty, and because Sebastian could be certain that Leopold would never whisper a word of this transaction to anyone else.

Helena reacted to the proposition with horror.

"Lie with your footman?" she gasped. "You cannot expect me to do such a thing!"

Sebastian's look had cooled, and he remained silent for a long time-purposefully, she realizes now-to signal his grave displeasure. Finally, he spoke, in no more than a growl. "I would say you ought to be grateful that such a remedy is available to us, given that you have yet failed to grant me a son."

She opened her mouth to mention how the physician had stated that the problem lay with Sebastian's seed, not her womb, but he had risen from his chair, a hand curling into a fist.

"You will do as I say!" he boomed, and she took a step back, knocking into the lindenwood cupboard, sending her father's old Venetian vase toppling to the floor, where it smashed into a thousand pieces. She bent on impulse to fetch it up, as though the pieces could be reconciled, and she saw Sebastian's boot kick at a larger piece close to her hand, sending it skittering against a wall.

He had never raised a hand to her before, never beaten her, as many husbands were wont to, and for lesser reasons. A wife might die at her husband's hands and yet there was no recourse, for she was his property.

"You displease me," Sebastian said in a low voice. "And when a wife displeases her husband she is displeasing God."