By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Macbeth, Act IV
I. Back to the Astrologer's Table
What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire? Macbeth, Act I
"There are three of them. Sisters. Zorya, Antonia and Danica. There are many stories of them, and like all their foul kind, their sorcery is dangerous and heretical." Giovanni Seni said quietly across the table.
"Witches?" Raymond asked.
"So they are called. Zorya is the dawn, Antonia aligns to Aries, ruled by Mars, and Danica the morning star, which is Venus. Whoever named them had the heavens in mind."
"The good Friar Chück would have appreciated that," Johann mused.
Seni pushed a small bundle of papers across the table as he gathered his thoughts. For Johann it had been a difficult period recovering from his wounds. Daily sparring and dueling practice had aided his recovery, despite the odd torn stitch, but the new scars were still puckered in evidence of his recent trauma.
"We believe they are targeting the Emperor's commanders. A number have gone missing or died in suspicious or very mysterious circumstances. A few must be expected, this being war, but the number, location and personalities make the deaths beyond coincidence. They are targeted. Each loss weakens the Emperor's councils, and each commander we save is an obligation owed to Wallenstein. The Count remembers his debts, he added, pushing an empty plate away from him. Again, the meal provided had been excellent, if served simply.
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| "Count Albrecht von Wallenstein and Gionvanni Seni", Charles Nahl, Oil on Canvas, 1846 |
He paused. "We suspect that the Swedish king has turned to...unconventional means to decapitate our forces to tip the scales in his favour."
Beside Jahn, Greta's eyes lifted at the words, then dropped again to the table.
"And if you are wrong?" Johann prompted.
Seni's expression did not change. "Then you will discover what is really happening."
He looked from one to the next and contemplatively gave his wine glass a quarter turn. "You recovered the smith at Kurtstein and survived what had taken possession of that town. Others wanted him as badly as we did and I doubt they have stopped. Wallenstein believes you may be useful again." He nodded towards the papers. "Find these women. Kill them if necessary. Drive them off if you cannot."
Johann glanced around the table. "Where are Braun and Kessler?" he asked.
"Elsewhere," said Seni, "the Count has other tasks for them. He has no wish to put all his useful men in one grave. Their absence is the reason I have brought these two."
Seni indicated the first stranger at the table. "Jahn."
The man was enormous. He had come into the Empire only recently, and his bulk, together with the great two-handed sword resting beside his chair, discouraged most attempts at conversation. Some said he was Scottish, others English. One version claimed he had been exiled after finding himself on the wrong side of a dispute with Church authorities. Jahn had offered no corrections. Asked about it once, he had said only, "It was a matter of faith." He kept largely to himself, yet for reasons Raymond had never explained, the two had taken to one another and were often seen in quiet company.
"And Greta." The woman beside Jahn was perhaps in her middle thirties, plainly dressed and quietly watchful. "Margarethe Voss, but she prefers Greta. Widow."
Johann waited for more, but Greta supplied it in her Pomeranian accent.
"I was in Magdeburg. My husband was with the garrison." She paused. "He died there. I survived. Now I am here." She said nothing further. She had followed her husband from one campaign to the next and knew armies better than most soldiers did: where to find food, which officers could be trusted, how to read a column on the road and, above all, when it was time to make oneself scarce. That knowledge had carried her out of Magdeburg alive. What she had seen in the smoke there, which no priest could explain, had brought her to this table and this company.
II. Hearsay Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Macbeth, Act I
The journey to the district on Seni's map passed unremarkably. For several days they questioned people in the towns and villages, but learned very little.
Three strange women lived somewhere in the forest, the villagers agreed, but beyond that every telling changed. The women were sometimes young, sometimes old. They were sisters, widows, foreigners, beggars or cutthroats. A carter swore they had one eye that they passed between them. A miller's wife claimed they had paid in silver for the body of a stillborn child. Another woman crossed herself and remained tight-lipped. But each story revolved around the same location: a clearing with an ancient tree, and three women who did not welcome visitors.
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| "Witchcraft", Anon, etching circa 1630 (The British Museum) |
By the fifth day they had heard enough. They saddled their horses after sunset and rode for the forest with their lanterns shuttered, hoping to surprise the sisters by night. They tethered their beasts at the edge of the trees to proceed on foot. Since Kurtstein, Raymond had taken to carrying more than ordinary ammunition. Among the pistol balls in his pouch were several cast in silver, and he loaded one now as the others watched.
III. The Hollow Oak. Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Macbeth, Act IV
A late-summer chill had settled over the wood and the dry leaves and brittle twigs threatened to betray any careless step. Jahn and Johann took the left flank. Jörg and Raymond took the right, with the blunderbuss cradled in Jörg's arms like a sleeping child. Greta moved between them, placing her feet with a care that made her almost inaudible.
A glow showed between the trunks, and a clearing opened ahead.
At its centre stood the ancient oak they had heard tell of. Its trunk was split and hollowed into a black doorway tall enough for a man to enter without overly stooping. A crooked chimney of stacked stones had been built into the hollow and the smoke that drifted from it smelled faintly of lavender and honey. Before the tree a cauldron hung over a low fire, and three women stood around it, muttering in faint, indiscernible voices. The flames threw shadows high up the bark so that they seemed to multiply.
The party reached the edge of the trees. Johann raised one hand, and they waited.
"Some grenades would be useful about now, Herr Doktor," Jörg muttered pointedly.
Raymond arched his eyebrows in return. "No, our friend Kessler would be halfway home by now if I had them," and both grinned despite the tense atmosphere.
Then Johann and Jahn stepped out, Jahn unshuttering his lantern to sweep light across the clearing.
The three women turned as one. The firelight showed them as three ages of one woman: a crone bent over the cauldron, a matron with a ladle, and a svelte maiden. Their eyes reflected the beam, green and like the eyes of foxes. Something flashed between them.
Jahn staggered. For a moment the forest dissolved around him, and then it returned. He shook his head once and tightened both hands on the hilt of his sword.
Johann was less fortunate. The clearing vanished from around him, and he was back in Kurtstein. The killing cold of that street closed over him, and he felt the wet heat of blood spreading beneath his torn coat, with the church tower swimming above. He heard the creature's scream, then the master vampire was upon him again, tearing, ripping. Johann dropped to his knees with his rapier half drawn, his left shoulder burning where the scars were still tight, and his hand locked round the grip.
Jahn took a step towards the witches, then checked and planted himself over the kneeling Johann with his sword raised, as a man guards a fallen comrade in a shield wall.
The worn motto on the silvered guard bit into Johann's palm and he held to that small pain like an anchor rope. In degrees, Kurtstein loosened its grip on him.
Raymond stepped forward with his pistol levelled and took aim at the nearest sister, the stooped crone. The silver ball struck the elderly Danica squarely between the shoulder blades and blood burst from her chest. Greta fired an moment behind him. Her wheel-lock cracked, and Danica folded to the earth.
For a heartbeat nothing moved but the pungent gunsmoke, then Antonia screamed. She flung out both hands and shouted something in a language none of them knew, and where Danica had lain the grass held only a dark stain, spreading and then still.
"Doktor!" Greta said sharply, but he had not seen Zorya cross the clearing. The youngest sister came at him with a speed that no living woman could have managed, and her nails opened four bloody furrows across his chest through the coat.
Raymond stumbled and looked down at the wounds. "Not too deep," he mumbled with a detached air.
Zorya struck again. He caught her wrist and they crashed together. He swung the butt of his spent pistol at her face, but she ducked it and raked him once more with her talons.
Jörg stepped out of the trees and brought the blunderbuss to his shoulder. The two figures were spinning together in the firelight, and he swung the muzzle after them, and fired. His boot caught a gnarled root as the weapon roared. The muzzle jerked skyward and its flash turned the clearing white. The charge went over the grappling pair and stripped a broad pale scar of bark from the oak. Jörg had missed the witch and the doctor both, and by a comfortable margin.
"A pox upon it!" Jörg cursed as he lowered the blunderbuss.
"Mind where you point that!" Raymond shouted.
Jörg was already reaching for his powder horn.
Greta dropped her own spent pistol, drew the hand axe from her belt and came in from the side, low and out of the dark. The blade buried itself deep in Zorya's shoulder. The witch shrieked and twisted, and Greta hung on to the haft with both hands and would not let her turn. Raymond seized her other arm.
Across the clearing, Antonia had backed round behind the cauldron to use it as a shield. She raised both hands and began to chant, and the fire under the tripod bent towards her, as though listening.
Jahn saw Zorya pinned and left his post next to Johann. He ran across the clearing, two-handed sword raised high above his head and his face set like a mask carved for a church door. Zorya, held fast between Greta and Raymond, looked up and her eyes bulged when she saw him coming. The sword came down and Zorya's head left her shoulders to roll across the leaves, and her body followed it to the ground.
Jahn turned without pause. Antonia had reached the middle of her incantation and the fire was leaning hard towards her. He rounded the cauldron and was on her before the last word left her mouth. His blade struck once, and she fell across the tripod and the chant stopped in mid-word.
Silence returned to the clearing, broken only by the hiss of the fire settling.
For several moments the party simply stood among the dead. Johann had got to his feet by then, though only just, and Jörg had a fist knotted in his collar to keep him there.
Raymond looked at the bodies as blood soaked through his coat. Jörg eyed the four fresh furrows beside the pale scars the thrall had left at Kurtstein.
"Matched set," he said, pointing at them. Raymond just grimaced as he reached into his satchel for his surgical supplies.
Johann was still breathing hard and his hands trembled where they gripped his rapier. Raymond noticed.
"You all right?"
Johann looked towards the place where Zorya had fallen.
"They knew just what to show me," he said, but did not explain further.
IV. Ashes When shall we three meet again? Macbeth, Act I
Greta searched the clearing like a camp follower after a battle: dried rue and henbane, three stoppered bottles of colourless liquid, a sheaf of papers in a hand she could not read. Other objects that might have been charms, or might have just been the possessions of three women who had lived too long in the forest.
Johann looked up from the writings in his hands. "No."
Greta glanced up. "No?"
"Braun would have wanted them," said Raymond.
"Braun isn't here," said Johann. "We burn it all."
"For once, I agree" Raymond replied, but one item found its way into Greta's coat so swiftly that no one saw it go.
They dragged the two remaining bodies into the hollow of the tree and piled the books and bundles about them. Then Jahn took a brand from the fire and thrust it among the papers. The heartwood was tinder dry and within minutes the whole trunk was roaring, sparks spiralling up between the branches into the night.
Nobody spoke of what might have been brewing in the cauldron, and nobody went near it until, eventually, Jahn upended it with a kick that sent it over, its contents spilling onto the ground. The grass visibly withered wherever the liquid splashed, and everyone took care to keep clear of it. They continued watching the oak burn until the crown fell in with a groan of splitting timber, and only then did Greta turn towards the horses. "It is time."
Johann nodded and Jörg chimed in, “It is indeed, Frau Hexenjägerin,” but Greta did not smile. They rode back through the forest without speaking, and behind them the glow was eclipsed by the enveloping trees.
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