Dark and Deepest Red(17)

Lala’s throat grows dry as a sunbaked stone.

Witchcraft. It has taken only days for the suspicion to bubble from Strasbourg’s houses.

Geruscha shoves alongside Lala, Henne following after.

How plain they look compared to Enneleyn, with the soft brown and dull green of their dresses, their hair tied back in simple chignons. And how plain Lala must seem to Melisende and Agnesona, with her skin that holds brown even in winter, her black hair as coarse as a new harvest of straw, her body that carries its weight low.

Geruscha presses a handful of wood betony into Lala’s palm.

“To ward off the devil,” she says.

“And his demons.” Henne adds a sprig of angelica to Lala’s hand, and crosses herself.

Geruscha and Henne, it seems, fail to notice how many clutch their own sprigs tighter at the sight of Lala. Are they oblivious to all things on this earth? The snubs from the burghers’ daughters? The scorn rippling toward Lala?

Do they even know what they both witnessed at the crab apple tree four years ago?

Lala listens to the current of whispers.

Some say it is the people’s sin that brought this plague. The immorality of loose hair and kissing behind shops has let in the devil, they insist. Or they blame the sky. “The earth has moved across the stars in opposition to the head of Medusa,” an astronomer pronounces, showing his maps of the heavens, “and into the twentieth degree of the Virgin.”

The crowd breathes and moves like an animal. It shifts at its edges as dancing women who cannot be persuaded onto carts approach. It draws back from their pained, distant expressions as much as from their fevered movement.

Lala can smell their sweat, sharp and sour, and the blood their feet leave on the stones. By the way some dance, the physicians can tell they have broken ribs and loins, cracked bones in their toes, twisted ankles that will take months to mend. And still, they dance on, in clogs, or in boots, or barefoot.

Enneleyn slips alongside Lala, looking neat as the white and gold stars embroidered on her dress. As always, the mere sight of her makes Lala feel disarrayed. She feels the sudden impulse to brush her own hair and straighten her skirts.

Melisende and Agnesona follow behind her. Veil and wimple cover the sisters’ heads, as though they are married women.

They are so proud of their hair that to witness them hiding it seems as odd as a cat wearing breeches.

“Is there some new fashion I don’t know about?” Lala asks Enneleyn.

“You haven’t heard?” Enneleyn says. “Within the city walls, all those with red hair must cover it, married or not.”

“Why?” Lala asks.

“The dancers go into fits at the sight of red. They cannot stand to see the color of Christ’s blood.” Now Enneleyn whispers. “It’s the devil’s way of keeping the women from being brought back to the Lord. If they see it”—she glances right and left to be sure no one is listening—“they become violent against their own bodies and others. They scream that they are drowning in a red sea of blood. So the council forbids any shade of red for all but the priests. Cloth, jewels, even hair.”

Over the noise of the square, the beating of the women’s feet against the stones, comes a new pronouncement. Not from the priests, but decided by the magistrate and his commission, the ammeister and stettmeister, the councils of men who command this city, men who wear their wealth and family names as comfortably as dyed tunics or Swiss leather boots.

From so deep in the crowd, Lala cannot catch all of the crier’s words. She wants to reach into the air and snatch them from above her head, but finds only a few at a time.

The council has sought the wisdom of the physicians’ guild …

… a natural affliction, born from overheated blood …

Lala cannot help sighing with relief.

It is an explanation free of witches or the devil.

… excess heat in the body, which must be released …

Lala glances between Enneleyn and Geruscha, who never exchange more than a curt greeting. Their polite but chilled distance should make Lala feel even more favored, but it only reminds her what she is to the burghers’ daughters. A curiosity. Perhaps the daughter of some distant nobleman. These girls with smooth, pale fingers wear cloth that she and Alifair dye, and their fathers write in Tante Dorenia’s best ink.

At least Enneleyn shows more effort than Melisende and Agnesona. She at least greets Geruscha and Henne, while the sisters’ lips curl into twin sneers as though they might dirty the hems of their skirts.

How quickly Lala would lose their affection if they knew what she and Tante hide.

… the only cure will be for them to dance day and night until the affliction passes …

The words cure and affliction snap Lala’s attention back to the crier.

“There will be”—at last comes the loud crescendo of the announcement—“a great dance.”

A murmur of excitement fills the crowd.

“The trouble is dancing,” Lala says to Enneleyn, “and the cure is more dancing?”

Before Enneleyn can answer, a tall man’s shadow draws their eyes.

The sergeant named Sewastian pauses before them.

Melisende and Agnesona flicker their eyelashes at him. Sewastian is a handsome man, younger than his hard face would suggest, with a carved jawline and eyes as blue as dayflowers. Ever since he became a widower, the city’s maids have wondered who he might marry next. Melisende has told Lala, no less than three times, that his long nose speaks of virility.