The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(66)
Elena had read about similar concoctions in old grimoires—dated, dusty books that reeked of mold and damp from sitting in cellars and crawl spaces for too long. Such sadistic spells were illegal in the Chanceaux Valley and most regions beyond, though things were possibly different in the northern forests.
Gerda cupped a hand over her saggy neck as if reliving the pain. “We didn’t practice in the open the way they do now. It was a different time. The world was caught in a riptide of corruption and cruelty. Accusation was all it took to create a cloud of guilt. After the braumeister stole my voice, he publicly accused me of witchcraft, knowing I’d be swept up with the hapless mortals being rounded up like sheep. And then it was off to the drudenhaus for me.”
Elena tilted her head as if she hadn’t heard right. She understood there were still places where witches had to practice with discretion. But the drudenhaus were northern prisons erected during the height of the witch hunts to house those unfortunate mortals accused of malefaction. They were older than the castle that had held Celestine. “But there hasn’t been a drudenhaus for—”
“Two hundred and seventy-eight years.”
“That’s impossible.”
A wave of dizziness swept over Elena as logic and reason struggled to make sense of the time gap. If the witch’s claim were true, she would have to be nearly three hundred years old. And yet looking at the shrunken, grotesque figure Gerda had become, Elena could almost believe it was true.
“It wasn’t all mortals, despite what you were taught.” The witch took the femur of a small animal from her pocket and set the bone on the southern point of the star. “Do you remember the frailty you felt when you woke from your curse? The feeling that your head was filled with a thousand bees and your skin had turned colder than an eel fished out of black water?” She nodded, seeing Elena understood. “They hunted witches then, but it was like wolves chasing after deer. The strong got away while only the weak and old were taken. Hex-weak. Feebleminded. Those of us who fell behind were just as pathetically vulnerable as nonmagic folk. And just as susceptible to pain.”
“Was there no mercy to be found?”
The witch reached in her other pocket and brought out a black feather, which she placed on the southeastern point of the star. “Mercy? There was precious little of that to be scraped off the floor of the drudenhaus. No one left that place under their own power. Including me.” She gave the feather a turn so it sat horizontal on an east-west axis. “They had a room, built two stories high, made of stacked white stones. There was a window at the top where thin northern daylight grazed the ceiling.” The witch cast her eye on the medieval winepress. “It had a windlass with a rope attached to a beam and pulley in the high ceiling. The rope wriggled down from on high to a reddish-brown stain on the stone floor. The smell of copper, salt, and piss was so strong it embedded itself in the walls, the rope, and the clothes of the men who worked in the room.”
Elena knew what came next. “You wouldn’t confess, so they tortured you.”
“They confused my silence for the Devil’s obstinacy. They’d already burned off my hair, shredded my clothes, and debated the wickedness of a mole on my left thigh, and still I had not told them what they wanted to hear. So up, up, up I went, hoisted by arms tied behind my back and blocks of wood lashed to my ankles. I swung like that for hours while cloud after cloud passed over the sun and bitter winds howled above the roof. Shadows crept along the walls as the men ate their supper. And then down, down, down I came like an egg cracking on the sidewalk.” Gerda lifted her skirt and tapped her cane against her bent right leg. “They broke this one on the first try. It took two more falls to break the other.”
Elena closed her eyes against the horrific image in her head. “How did you survive it?” But even as she asked the question, she knew she’d already allowed too much sympathy to enter her heart.
“They dragged me back to my cell, showed me where they’d inked my mark on a written confession, and told me I would burn in the morning with the other confessed witches.” She shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I closed my eyes, hovering on a wave of agony, and wished for death to take me. But first I begged the All Knowing to smite those men who would set me aflame. After that I drifted in and out of a delirious sleep, stumbling into one nightmare after another. Just before dawn I awoke shivering with fever. I curled up in a pool of my own sweat and urine, listening to the sound of breaking wood as they built the pyre outside my window. I knew I’d be dead within hours. The All Knowing had forsaken me.”
Elena had been cursed, stripped of her powers, and accused of murder, but she’d never been violated so deeply it left a void empty of hope. “Even in death the All Knowing is watching, ready to reclaim its own,” she said, the words coming out awkward and misshapen in the wake of the witch’s account.
“And yet where was that benevolent eye when it was my blood staining the tower floor? Was it watching then for one of its own? Or when I begged for justice against my tormentors?”
“It doesn’t work like that. You know it doesn’t. You can’t make demands.”
“More’s the pity for you, then.”
Gerda turned her back to Elena. On the final two points of the star she placed a gold coin and a small bag of mixed herbs. Elena didn’t need to hold the sachet to her nose to know it was filled with ginger, fennel, turmeric, and garlic, medicinals that ebbed the tide of aging.