Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

Herein I begin my account, with the help of my neighbor Simon Satler, since I am unable to read or write. I maintain that I am not a witch, never have been a witch, am a relative to no witches. But from very early in life, I had enemies.

When I was a child, our cow Mare at my father’s inn was cross and bitter toward me. I didn’t know why. I wouldn’t hesitate to put a blue silk ribbon on her neck if she were here today. She died from the milk fever, which was no doing of mine, though as a young child I felt it was my doing, because Mare had kicked me and I had then called her fat-kidneyed. Was she my enemy? It takes time and experience to gain a cow’s trust.

Now I’m seventy-some years old. I’ll spend no more time on the enemies, or loves, of my youth and middle age. I’ll say only that I’ve never before had even the smallest run-in with the law. Not for fighting, not for cursing, not for licentiousness, not for the pettiest theft. Yet attributed to me in this trial is the power to poison, to make lame, to pass through locked doors, to be the death of sheep, goats, cows, infants, and grapevines, even to cure—at will.

I can’t even win at backgammon, as you know.

IF MY DEFENSE fails, a confession will be sought through torture, first with thumbscrews, then with leg braces, then with the rack—or something like that. It depends who the council hires for the job. If mercy is taken upon me, I’ll be beheaded and then burned. If no mercy is taken, I’ll be burned without first being beheaded. That happened to seven women last year in Regensburg. My children, with some help, have been coordinating my defense.

There are two things a woman must do alone: she does her own believing and her own dying. So says Martin Luther. Or so you say that Martin Luther says, or said. I was born the year Luther died. I took Catholic Communion only one time, in error. My daughter Greta is married to a pastor who says that’s okay. My son Hans agrees. I hold Luther in highest esteem. He, too, was vilified. Again, I’m grateful to you, Simon, for sitting with me, for writing for me, for being my legal guardian.

This is my truest testimony.

On a Tuesday midmorning in May of 1615, four long years ago now, there was a gentle knock at my door. A freckle-faced young boy, with eyes downcast, said I was to follow him to see the ducal governor Lukas Einhorn. The boy had light eyes and wore clean, short trousers. It was hot out. I offered him a cool, weak wine, but he blushed and refused. Why was I being called? I asked him. He said it was an official summons. But he didn’t know for what.

You’ll remember, Simon, that it was a rotten spring that year. The beets were wrinkled, the radishes spare. The rhubarb, usually a celebration, was like straw, and same for the asparagus. The preceding winter had been fierce. One snowy eve a goat had turned up at my door, a beggar like Christ, I thought, and so I let the goat in, and he was so frozen that when he knocked his head against the leg of my table, his chin hairs broke off like sugar plate. I met a shepherd from outside Rutesheim whose nose fell off when he wiped it. The months had been ominous. The price of a sack of flour had nearly doubled. Half the town was having to borrow from the grain stores.

But it was a sunny day that Tuesday. I put on my boots, kissed my dear cow Chamomile, left behind my washing.

And I had a smug guess as to why I was being summoned. You’ll laugh at me when I tell you this. I thought that Lukas Einhorn wanted my help. Mine! On account of the dark and difficult seasons, you see? He was a new ducal governor and he had no idea how to manage. I suspected that Einhorn wanted me to ask my son Hans to prepare a horoscope for him, or even to prepare a whole astrological calendar. I began to be annoyed, assuming Einhorn would expect the work to be done for no pay. So many of the so-called nobles petition Hans for astrological calendars, for weather predictions, for personal horoscopes. Even Emperor Rudolf had asked him: What do the stars say for war with Hungary? And even the Emperor never got around to paying. The new emperor is no better. It’s always the same with some people. They may as well ask him to mend their hose. Hans was already living in Linz then. He had just remarried, and was teaching at a small school. He had been denied a job at his university in Tübingen on account of some nonsense about what Communion wafers are made of, and though Hans is known at all the finest courts, he is paid only in insubstantial status. That May he was caught up in all sorts of conflicts with printers, and also he was trying to find a suitor for his stepdaughter. I was seen as having Hans’s ear. But the man only has the two ears same as God has gifted the rest of us.

I get so little acknowledgment here in Leonberg of Hans’s place in the world, and that’s good—who wants to bring out the devils of envy? But I suppose I was waiting for the chance to dismiss a compliment, to say that Hans’s accomplishments were his own, and not mine, though Hans does say, and I don’t disbelieve him, that the mother’s imagination in pregnancy impresses itself upon the child. And Hans does look like me, not like his father, may he rest in peace or whatnot. As I followed that boy, I thought: Okay, I’ll ask Hans for the horoscope, or whatever this ducal governor wants, it will be good for my son Christoph, who had only that very year purchased his citizenship, who wanted to move up in the world, as Hans had, and why not? We passed one of the small civic gardens where hurtsickle and blue chamomile had been left to overcrowd each other. A white rabbit crossed my path. Outside of the ducal governor’s home, a stone engraving of Einhorn’s shield was being finished by a young mason. The shield showed a unicorn rearing up on its hind legs, like a battle horse. A vanity.

In the cool front room of the ducal governor’s residence, the boy showed me to a seat next to a vulgarly stuffed pheasant and then left. The pheasant had green glass eyes. The feathers looked oily; the pheasant looked evil. Turned to evil, I will say, as opposed to born of evil. I was thirsty. I waited there, next to that unmoving pheasant.

Well, Kath-chen, I said to myself, you’re not a child, you must be your own source of light. You can say yes to asking after a horoscope, or you can say no, but if you say no, you should say so politely.

I DON’T REMEMBER how long I waited. Then a woman walked into the room. A woman I knew. It was Ursula Reinbold. Had she also been summoned? Her hair was falling from its bun. Her curls were sweaty. Her face was flushed. She was laughing, crying—both. Ursula has no children, looks like a comely werewolf, is married to a third-rate glazier. It’s her second marriage. Two of Ursula’s brothers, to my great misfortune, have come up in the world. One serves as Barber Surgeon to the Duke of Württemberg, the other as Forest Administrator here in Leonberg. The barber I call the Barber. The Forest Administrator, Urban Kräutlin, I call the Cabbage. It suits him, right? If you speak with people from Ursula Reinbold’s hometown, as my son Hans has done, everyone there knows that as a young woman Ursula took powerful herbs given to her by the apothecary—the apothecary with whom she had an affair before her first marriage. Also widely known is Ursula’s later affair with Jonas Zieher, the freckled coppersmith, an affair that preceded her second marriage. Zieher was recently before the court for calling an honorable man a devil’s godfather and was fined five pfennigs. I am getting ahead of myself. What I want to say is that Ursula’s brother the Cabbage was there with her. He was wearing a green hunting cape, and his posture was poor, and his cheeks were red. Behind him was the whiskered ducal governor Einhorn, unkempt, and with a spotted spaniel in his arms. They smelled of drink. The crowd of them looked like a pack of dull troubadours who, come morning, have made off with all the butter.

I KNOW YOU’LL think it’s not wise, Simon, but I’d like to say something about Ducal Governor Einhorn, whom I prefer to call the False Unicorn. He’s not from this area. He was brought in by the marvelous Duchess Sybille, may she rest in peace. The False Unicorn was to defer to Sybille’s judgment in all matters. Then Sybille died so suddenly. The Duke was distracted—with counting soldiers, signing treaties, commissioning lace shirt cuffs. He was paying no attention to affairs in Leonberg, and so the False Unicorn usurped powers that should have reverted to the Duke. He began to puff up, Einhorn did. He wore his hair longer. He had a new collar made. He went around telling anyone who would listen that he was very bored in Leonberg, and that the women in Stuttgart were more attractive. I will say that the False Unicorn looks like an unwell river otter in a doublet.

This manuscript is for after my case has ended, whatever the outcome.

In Duchess Sybille’s time, people traveled long distances to see her medicinal garden. It was often open, for walking or festivities. There were pinks and bitter oranges and a bright coltsfoot for cough. There were aromatic rhizomes for teething, rare scurvy weeds. There was a sesame plant that Sybille grew near hellebore. The two plants, if brewed together, could help with certain forms of madness, or so Sybille suspected. Even the downy thorn apple was tended in her garden. I could go on. Many mornings, with Sybille’s permission, I took home cuttings. She was a woman of substance. I will add that she showed considerable interest in my research into herbs for St. Anthony’s fire. She took even a peasant like me seriously. Not because of Hans. But because she was a woman of science. Sybille’s garden is now all but a goat’s grave. Einhorn has neglected it.

Simon, I understand your point: I don’t want to make enemies where there are none. But I am laying out basic and indisputable facts about a man who, almost idly, as a pastime, became my persecutor.

THE FALSE UNICORN was slouched in a chair behind his desk. He scratched the chin of his spaniel, cooing, smiling. It’s a curious thing, how much God leaves behind for us to do. Well, whatever mistakes we make, he’ll correct them in the end, so maybe it doesn’t much matter what we do. Still, we have to look like we’re making an effort, am I right? This sermon was directed at his spaniel. Then he looked up. Well, then. So. Where was I? Oh yes. Frau Kepler. That’s you, yes?

I said it was.

It has come to my attention that you’ve used your very considerable dark powers to make this fine glazier’s wife—at this he looked over at Ursula, who nodded encouragement—to make her moan, weep, cringe, writhe, be barren, and cackle.

No cackling, sir, Ursula said. But the other stuff—yes.

All right, then, never mind about the cackle, Frau Kepler. But the rest.

It was a poison she gave me that did it, Ursula said. It was a bitter wine, a witch’s brew.

Don’t interrupt him, sister, the Cabbage hissed. Our apologies, sir.

Einhorn was kissing his spaniel’s head. The spaniel licked his face. He set the spaniel down. Sorry, so much going on, Einhorn said, with another smile. I never thought when I was posted to a little backwater like this that there would be so many … tasks. This one wants alms, that one wants foraging rights, the carpenters don’t want the stain of building the gallows. Where were we? Here: With the force of my office, I ask and insist and demand that you remove the curse or wound or injury or make an anti-poison using whatever powers devilish or whatnot are needed. I give you permission. I insist. So as to help this poor and kind and humble woman here before us today.

I looked around. Was he really speaking to me? The glass-eyed stuffed pheasant was silent. I turned to Ursula, who was looking into her lap. This is silly, I said. You’re all drunk.

The Cabbage, rising from his seat, said, We’ll stop telling people you’re a witch. Just remove the curse. Please. We won’t ask for unreasonable compensation. Only for what’s fitting. You’re not going to get a better deal than this. It was like he was bartering for buttons. What’s done by sorcery can only be undone by sorcery, I have looked into it, he said. "She can’t urinate without shouts of pain. She cries in front of important guests. Her husband says she doesn’t function for him anymore. What did my sister ever do to you? If you hate the glazier, why not attack him? Don’t you have any pity? You’ve had children of your own. She’s my own mother’s child—"

Suddenly he was on his knees, pulling at my skirts, begging me to cast my undoing spell, telling me she suffered terribly. I should have been more afraid, I know that now. But all I could see that Ursula had suffered from was grease stains on her blouse and hair that needed re-pinning. Unfortunately, I said as much.

Look, I had once upon a time enjoyed a laugh with Ursula at the market. She used to do a good imitation of the cheesemonger’s stutter, and also of the old pastor’s sermonizing. Her laughs were always mean, now that I think about it. When Duchess Sybille was building her summer palace in Leonberg, she hired many contractors and craftsmen in town. She hired my own son Christoph to make a magnificent pewter bathtub, for which she paid him one hundred and eighty thalers. Ursula pressed Christoph for an introduction for her husband the glazier, but Sybille didn’t hire the third-rate glazier.

You have to help her, the Cabbage said. His Honor the ducal governor has ordered you to help her.

Ursula was weeping, or at least pretending to weep, and my own heart was moved, as if an infant were crying. I reached out toward her. I had an impulse to fix her hair. You’ll feel better soon, I said to her, stupidly.

At that, the Cabbage rose unsteadily to his feet and pulled his sword from its scabbard. It was a vain sword, made to look like rope at the grip, something a nobleman might commission and then reject at the last moment, leaving the sword maker in a bind. Un-curse her, you toothless witch.

I have most of my teeth, and have lost only the most superfluous ones. But I didn’t say that. Fear had finally made its way to me, where it belonged. It was as if God had forgotten where I was. There came to my mind the image of the severed thumb of a woman from near Augsburg. Her thumb had come off under the screws and rack. She was being tortured for her confession. No confession came, and she was sent back to her cell. The next day, she was cleared of the charges of sorcery. When the officers went to release her, they found her dead. No one contributed funds for her burial.

CONTRARY TO WHAT my children might believe, and though I was very afraid, I said only exactly what was proper. I said that it was wrong to surprise an old woman with such fantastical and abominable charges. And it was also not legal. Charges should be made before a court, not at the edge of a sword on a midday afternoon when an old woman is meant to be in her home. I didn’t even have a male guardian with me. I repeated this, that I did not have a guardian.

In so many years of living one learns a thing or seven.

The Cabbage shook his sword.

I said I had done nothing to injure Ursula, and could do nothing to cure her.

That’s not true, the Cabbage said.

Your brother is a proper surgeon to the Duke, I said. If he can’t help her, why would I be able to?

What’s done by a devil can only be undone by a devil—

You’re asking me to call the devil—

I am—

You’ll have to call on the devil yourself—

The Cabbage stumbled and stepped on the tail of the spaniel, who yelped.

Now this is getting disorderly, the False Unicorn called out. He picked up his dog. The absurdity of my peril! At the same moment, the Cabbage pushed the tip of his sword against my chest, jingling a pewter bauble my son Christoph had made for me. The fabric of my dress tore. I screamed.

This squabble is getting boring and dangerous, the False Unicorn said, stepping forward. Put away the sword, please, he said to the Cabbage. Then he turned to me and asked me couldn’t I just give the two what they wanted, just a little un-cursing, was it really so much trouble?

I said I was a poor widow called in recklessly against the rule of law.

What law? Einhorn said, as if waking up. A paper on a nearby desk interested him suddenly. Something had sobered him. He set down his dog and approached me. What a stupid mess of a morning. He inspected me. Your dress can be easily repaired. He reached past his waistcoat, pulled out three pfennigs. This will cover the mending. Or you can mend it yourself. Whatever you want to do. He held the door open for me, and told me that I was welcome, more than welcome, to go. He said that all of us should go. Then to me: It’s true that you have no guardian. This encounter is, well, it is void. It hasn’t happened. Under the eyes of the law, and therefore of the Lord, this afternoon is invisible.

Once when I went mushroom hunting, I came across a large elk missing the main part of its left antler. One of its eyes was swollen shut, crusted with pus. The elk’s gait was unsteady. It smelled of yeast. Its grunts were unearthly. As that elk moved, the forest around it seemed transformed: the leaves had become eyes. I was being tested or invited or was about to die. Then the ill elk made another lowing sound, louder: as if dispossessing itself. Oniongrass tickled my ankle. The elk walked away. I walked home.

No, Simon, I didn’t tell my family right away. I told no one right away. I didn’t even tell you, as you know. I gathered some chicory on my way home and brought it to my cow Chamomile, who was looking well and unaltered. The next hours were curious, unsettling, dreamlike, ordinary. Maybe what happened had been meaningless. Maybe, as Einhorn had idly announced, it hadn’t happened. I finished my washing, kissed Chamomile goodbye again, and then walked over to my son Christoph’s home.

I’m not in a good mood, and I don’t want any advice, my son said when he opened the door. No opinions, no takes, and no guidance, and no naysaying.

Okay, I said.

A man wants to eat a whole sausage now and again.

His guild taxes had been increased. This had been announced at the guild meeting that very day.

He went on, Of course, being junior, I said, Yessir, thank you very much and I agree completely, and I don’t need to hear anyone acting as if another option was available to me.

Christoph’s wife, Gertrauta, was near the stove, preparing a simple meal of dumplings in soup. If they told him the sky was green, he would say, Yes, it is, sir, a lovely emerald. She was adding a lot of dill to the soup, which I hoped Christoph wouldn’t notice, as he isn’t friends with dill. He’d say it was emerald and then he’d come home and complain to me about the price of tin.

No one is hurt by saying the sky is green, Gertie, Christoph said. No one goes hungry.

He’s a field mouse, Mama Kepler.

So I resolved to sit at this meal without making mention of my encounter with the Werewolf, the Cabbage, and the False Unicorn. I would put it out of my mind.

This resolution was, however, shortly challenged. Gertie had that very day read a pamphlet on the recent witch trials