The plant seemed to shiver in the still air, mirroring the chill that ran down my spine. I took this as permission and carefully cut three stems, whispering my thanks.
“Tell the hive I mean no harm,” I murmured toward the skeps where the convent bees were still stirring to life. “Tell them I take only what’s needed, only to preserve a life, not to end one.”
I waited, and a single bee emerged from the nearest hive, circling me once before settling on my hand, its tiny feet tickling my skin. I held perfectly still as it walked the lines of my palm. This was the only true confession I still gave.
Whatever fate the bee found, it did not reveal it, but instead flew back to its sisters, and I knew my message would be carried through the colony’s dreams.
The sky lightened in the east, painting the gray clouds that never seemed to leave Bamberg. The city was stirring, and with it the endless appetite of the Witch Bishop’s court. Yesterday they’d taken the baker’s wife, accused her of cursing her neighbor’s bread to fail. Last week, the mother of eight who lived by the river gate. The week before that, three sisters who’d had the misfortune to remain unmarried past thirty. A single accusation was a death sentence in Bamberg, and the pyres never stayed unlit for long.
Children had become precious in these hungry times. War had taken the men, famine the weak, and plague anyone foolishenough to believe God might show mercy. Perhaps that’s why they’d let me live after my mother burned—a child, any child, was worth more than vengeance. Especially one who could be put to work.
I sometimes wondered what would happen if this city knew the full truth of what I did in these pre-dawn hours—that I could taste the weather changing in the honey from our hives, that sometimes when I touched a woman’s belly I could feel whether the quickening child would thrive or fail. That I could cause it to fail.
My mother had burned for less.
As I’d grown older, what had begun as whispers burned brighter with each passing month—a fire raging inside me, anger for each woman taken, for each child left without a family. But it wasn’t only the trials. It was every girl married too young, never taught how her own body worked, never taught to read so she might learn more. So she might escape the leash placed on her at birth. Born to serve men’s purposes, and nothing more.
In the early dawn light, I felt the flames rising inside me, swore I felt them licking at my fingertips.
Keep to the shadows.
I let out a slow breath as the fire threatened to consume the very darkness I hid within, pushing it deep into my belly.Survive.Her last command to me. I tasted ash and knew I must remain hidden, must keep that fire from devouring me at all costs.
The garden gate creaked again, and I tensed before recognizing the shuffling gait of Sister Margareta. She made her way to the herbs, gathering feverfew with her arthritic hands.
“The Welser girl is lingering by the well house.” She did not look at me as she said it. We’d done this dance many times.
I nodded, though she wasn’t watching. She shuffled away, leaving me alone with my bitter harvest and the growing light that chased away shadows like me. Somewhere in the city, a rooster crowed, and I heard the first wagon wheels on cobblestones. There wasn’t much time before the girl would be missed.
I gathered my herbs and made my way back inside, already mixing the proportions in my mind, already preparing the words I’d use to comfort a frightened girl. This was my inheritance—my mother’s true legacy. Not the nightmares of fire, but the knowledge of how to kindle hope in desperate hearts, and how to preserve life in a city devoted to death.
They had taken my mother, but they hadn’t taken what she taught me. I wouldn’t let them take my purpose too.
Even now, I didn’t know what was worse—the fires that always threatened, or the shadows of guilt that ate away my heart, bit by bit.
Chapter 2
Katharina
The well-house door stood slightly ajar. I wrapped a veil over my head and face before slipping inside to find the Welser girl pressed into the corner like a wounded animal, her thin shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Barely fifteen, her blonde braids marked her as one of the merchant families. A family who still had enough coin for ribbons despite the war.
“Greta?” I kept my voice soft and low, the tone I’d learned from Sister Margareta in the sick house. The same one used to gentle a spooked horse. The one I used when I needed to hide.
She flinched at her name, eyes wide with terror. “You’re her. The—the?—”
She wouldn’t say it, as if the word itself could summon the Vicar and his Schergen down on us. She wouldn’t say it, but the fear of a witch hadn’t kept her away. “You need my help.”
“I didn’t know where else—” Her voice broke. “My father will kill me if he discovers it. But if I don’t…I don’t want to die birthing Herr Braun’s child, like his other wives.”
I moved closer slowly, setting my basket of herbs on the rough wooden table. “How long since your last monthly blood?”
“Two months.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Maybe three. I’m not certain—they’ve never been regular.” Hereyes darted to the door, then back to me. “They say you learned the dark arts from the Devil himself, just like your mother.”
“Yet you came anyway.”
A laugh far too bitter for her age escaped her. “The Devil seems kinder than Herr Braun.”
I began preparing the mixture, grinding herbs in my small mortar. The sharp scent of pennyroyal filled the room, followed by the earthier notes of blue cohosh. Greta watched my hands, fascination warring with revulsion.
