Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [42]
Finally, as we were leaving, I saw Tony in the doorway. My whole body sagged with relief. I hadn’t realized how uptight I was. So, naturally, I was furious with him.
‘Where the – ’ I began, as we went towards him. And then I shut up, because I had gotten a good look at his face.
‘Sorry for being late,’ Tony mumbled. ‘I got . . . I got interested’ – he choked oddly – ‘in something. I forgot the time. No, thanks, I’ll grab a sandwich someplace. I’m not hungry.’
‘The scholarly habit,’ said Irma, smiling at him. ‘It must be very difficult for a wife.’
She was pretty obtuse, that girl. There was Tony, looking like a sick dog, and she thought he was just an absentminded professor. But when she blushed and batted those long lashes at him, he revived enough to blush back. Irma was certainly responding nicely to treatment, I thought. Maybe a girl that resilient didn’t need quite as much TLC as she had been getting lately.
We got back to the Schloss without incident, except for Tony running into trees and buildings and knocking down an occasional pedestrian. Irma decided he was faint with hunger, and after she had deposited him tenderly in a chair in the garden, she bustled off to get him sandwiches and beer.
When she had gone, Blankenhagen turned on Tony.
‘Now what is bothering you? You behave like a creature from a horror film. Is it so hard for you to be normal, for that child’s sake?’
‘Sorry.’ Tony stared dismally at us. ‘I’m stunned. I just found out what happened to the Countess Konstanze.’
‘Well?’ the doctor said, less angrily.
‘She was burned to death as a witch. Down there in the main square of Rothenburg, on the afternoon of October twenty-third, fifteen twenty-five.’
‘Herr Gott.’ Blankenhagen dropped into a chair.
I decided I might as well sit down, since everyone else was. I shared the general feeling of shock. The damned woman had become too real; it was like hearing of the ghastly death of an old acquaintance.
‘The trial records are in the town archives.’ Tony produced the notebook without which no aspiring scholar goes anywhere. ‘The evidence was conclusive – if you believe in witchcraft.’
‘But . . . witchcraft!’ Blankenhagen shouted. ‘This was the beginning of the Renaissance . . .’
‘The persecutions were at their height just then. Five years after the countess was killed they burned thirty-five witches in a single day, in Cologne. The mania gripped every country in Europe. By the time America was settled, the worst was over, but we had our Salem trials, and that was a century after Konstanze.’
Blankenhagen muttered something in a language that was neither German nor English. Tony gave him a surprised look, and translated.
‘“It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men alive on account of them.” Nobody ever said a truer word. But Montaigne came along too late for Konstanze, and the Essays were only the opening wedge of rationalism. If you think people are ever rational.’
‘So that is why she is not in the crypt with her husband.’
‘You bet your sweet life that’s why. She was accused of murdering him.’
‘You said witchcraft . . .’
‘Same thing.’ Tony turned pages. ‘She cursed him to death. The count fell ill the day after he got back from Würzburg. At first they thought he had the plague or something. Here’s part of the testimony of the old woman who had nursed the count in infancy, and who tended him during his illness.
‘“On the Friday my lord was stronger and we dared hope for his life. My lady shed tears of joy. She had watched by his bed day and night, allowing no one else to take her place . . .”’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked.
‘Wait. It gets worse. She goes on: “On the Friday at night I sat with my lord again. I was afflicted with a strange heaviness of the eyes.”’
‘So she was tired,’ I said. ‘An old woman, sitting up night after night . . .’
‘Sure, sure. But the judge said it was undoubtedly the countess’s black magic at work. Then, says the nurse, “When I woke I saw my lord standing by the bed. His face