Book of the Night

  Lukas decided to head back to the marketplace, which was adjacent to a church and the city hall. A bedraggled fellow about sixteen years old was chained to a pillory there, surrounded by a crowd of children throwing stones and rotten fruit and vegetables at him. Lukas shuddered. Would he end up like that, as a common thief and vagabond, without a home or family?

  He was about to turn away when he noticed some men in black cowls dragging boards and wooden beams into the square. Laughing and jeering, they began to nail together a platform with a post in the middle alongside the pillory. Around it they piled twigs, bundles of straw, and large branches. Evidently, they were the executioner and his journeymen preparing for a public execution.

  The pyre for the Lohenfels witch.

  I can’t believe this, Lukas thought. Good Lord, make this just a bad dream.

  Lukas stood frozen at the edge of the square, watching as his mother’s execution pyre grew and grew. People kept coming to view the preparations, looking forward to the spectacle. By evening, the men had completed their work. The guards came and drove Lukas and everyone else out of the market square.

  “Come back tomorrow!” they called after them, laughing. “If you get here before dawn, you’ll no doubt get a good spot to watch. But the witch has the best view of all!” they howled as they left.

  Lukas hurried into a dirty alley to find a place to sleep for the night. Mud and feces covered the ground, and a few dead rats lay on a stinking pile of manure. In a dark corner, he found an old barrel that had toppled over, which he lined with a little straw, and rolled up inside like a puppy.

  When Lukas looked up at the light coming from the windows above him, he realized that his barrel was lying directly behind the same elegant inn where his family used to spend the night. Through the open windows, he could hear talking, music, and laughter that seemed to come from another world. A world that lay just two days in the past.

  How he wished he could have asked his father for advice. Certainly, his father would have found some way to help Mother and his sister. Lukas could see it all clearly in his mind’s eye: his father would have wrestled down the guards in front of the dungeon and broken open the door, and together they all would have ridden back home. But Father was dead and Lukas was just a thirteen-year-old boy without friends and completely on his own.

  Infinitely sad, confused, and exhausted, he finally closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  IV

  The next morning Lukas awoke inside the barrel to the muffled sound of drums. He had dreamed of his mother and how she’d placed her hand lovingly and protectively on his forehead. The dream felt so real to him that for a moment, everything seemed all right again, but with the roll of drums, merciless reality once more intruded. This was the day on which his mother would die.

  He crawled out of the barrel and made his way to the market square, where a large crowd had assembled. Peering around the heads in front of him, he could see the platform covered with bundles of straw. Expectantly, everyone looked down the wide main road where the drumming was coming from. Finally, a whisper passed through the crowd as a mud-splattered executioner’s cart rumbled over the bumpy cobblestone pavement. Lukas craned his neck, and for a brief moment, he could see a slender figure standing in the cart. A heavy lump suddenly formed in his throat, and he began to tremble.

  It was his mother.

  Lukas had to struggle to keep from shouting her name. The simple linen dress she’d worn on the morning she was taken captive was now torn and stained. She had a few bloody welts across her face, and her right arm seemed strangely twisted, like that of a broken doll. Her hands were bound and tied by a rope to the coachman’s seat in front, where the hangman and his journeymen were sitting. Nevertheless, she held her head high, her gaze proud though a bit dreamy, as if she was already in another world.

  “She probably thinks she’s still a countess,” shouted a fat, unshaven fellow nearby. “Hey, Countess, where’s your fancy dress?”

  “Use your magic and make it appear,” another man called, “and it better have wings so you can fly away!”

  People laughed, and Lukas felt a stabbing pain in his chest. He was about to jump up and grab one of these tramps by the throat. How could they talk that way about his mother! Didn’t they know she had never dressed in silk and velvet, and that she’d always helped people like them?

  “By God, if Countess von Lohenfels is really a witch, then she certainly is a good one, not a bad one,” someone muttered behind him.

  Lukas turned around in astonishment and noticed an old farmer leaning on a cane. When the man saw Lukas looking at him, he cast his eyes down anxiously.

  “Keep speaking,” Lukas said. “You have nothing to fear from me. I . . . also was somewhat acquainted with the countess.”

  “Well, then you know she was a healer,” the old man replied. “My little grandson came into the world a cripple, and she cured him. She put her hand on his forehead, murmured some words, and the boy was able to walk again. If that was magic, it’s all right with me.” He nodded approvingly. “And back then, when the well ran dry in Neckarsteinach, she found new water with a divining rod. She is one of the white witches, one of the last of them, and people are burning her as if she were in league with the devil.”

  “One of the . . . white ones?” asked Lukas, perplexed. “What do you mean by that?”

  But there was no time left for an answer. The executioner’s cart rolled into the middle of the square, the crowd grumbled as it was pushed back, and Lukas was separated from the old man. He was able to squeeze his way between a few spectators until he was standing right in front of the wagon. It was his mother up there! Despite her torn dress and bloody welts, she appeared to Lukas just as she always had since his earliest memory—loving, gentle, yet in a strange way as wise as a very old woman. If he stretched out his hands, he could touch her dress. She was very close yet infinitely far away. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  “Mother!” At first he just whispered it; then he cried louder when he noticed that his voice was lost in the general hooting and jeering. “Mother, here I am . . . Here!”

  But the other voices were too loud, and Lukas didn’t dare call out again for fear of being discovered.

  But suddenly, she seemed to notice he was there. Sophia von Lohenfels looked down, her expression a mixture of joy and horror.

  “Lukas,” she said softly. “My God! He mustn’t find you here, or you are lost.”

  “But . . . but . . .” Lukas’s voice failed him. “I’ve got to help you . . . I’ve . . .”

  “Listen to me, you don’t need to help me.” His mother smiled kindly, as she used to when he had a skinned knee or a broken toy. “I am already in God’s hands. Whatever happens, I am always with you, Lukas, even if you don’t see me.” Then her face turned deadly serious. “But now run away, do you hear, Lukas? It’s important that he never finds you.”

  “Where is Elsa?” Lukas asked. “What did they do with her?”

  People in the crowd began to stare at him suspiciously, and now his mother bent down to him again. “She is—”

  At that moment, the hangman yanked the rope to which his mother’s hands were bound. She stumbled and fell into the dirty straw in the cart.

  “Hey, no talking here!” the executioner shouted. “What magic spells are you mumbling now, witch? The only one you can talk to now is the priest, do you understand?”

  Terrified for his mother, Lukas stepped back. His mother got up again, looked at him sternly, and her lips silently formed the words,

  Please . . . run . . . away . . .

  A monk wearing a black robe and a chain around his neck with a wooden cross stepped out from behind the cart. With an earnest expression, he walked toward Sophia, holding the cross like a shield before him and murmuring a Latin prayer. Again his mother mouthed the words, but this time Lukas was amazed he could hear as well as read them from her lips, or rather, this time her voice came clearly from deep within him. r />
  All will be well, my son. I will always be there for you. And now go!

  Lukas was so astonished he fell back a few steps into the dirt. His mother had spoken to him—directly inside his head! How was that possible?

  “Hey, I think this lad knows the witch,” a farmer next to him cried out. “She mumbled something to him, I saw it. Perhaps he is a witch as well.”

  Lukas was still dazed. Dirty fingers were reaching out for him, pulling on his hair, but at the last minute, he pulled himself free and pushed his way through the crowd to the edge of the square, his head spinning. Had he just imagined hearing the voice of his mother? That had to be it. Anything else would be . . . He hesitated.

  Magic?

  Lukas looked around and discovered an ivy-covered wall about six feet high. Other children had climbed up onto it to get a better view of the spectacle. He boosted himself up, squeezed between the children, and watched as the monk addressed his mother in a few pious words and made the sign of the cross. Then the executioner and his journeymen dragged his mother up onto the platform. After they’d tied her to the post, they started piling bales of straw around her. Again Lukas felt the urge to simply charge toward the executioner and his henchmen, punch them in the face, and free his mother.

  But he knew this was impossible. That would only mean he’d be put to the stake alongside his mother, and then there would be no one left to care for Elsa.

  Now the guards pushed the jeering crowd back from the platform. Nearby, under a canopy, a few chairs were set up. A fanfare sounded as a procession of nobles descended the steps of the city hall and took these seats. With a trembling heart, Lukas saw that among the guests was the grand inquisitor Waldemar von Schönborn. He was dressed all in black except for his hood, which shone crimson, like blood. The beating of drums began, and the crowd fell silent.

  “Citizens of Heidelberg!” The voice of the inquisitor resounded over the plaza as he pointed with outstretched arms toward the execution site. “This woman is a witch. She admitted it herself, but she kept stubbornly silent on whatever else she knew. She neither gave us the names of other witches nor”—he made a grim pause—“nor did she reveal to us how she acquired her magic powers. Therefore she forfeits the mercy of a beheading ordinarily granted to the nobility and is to be burned alive. Executioner, do your duty.”

  Waldemar von Schönborn took a seat on his velvet-covered chair while the executioner lit the bundles of straw with a torch. At once, little flames appeared, the fire quickly spread, and the crowd shouted expectantly. Lukas shouted as well, but his voice was drowned out by the cheers of all those standing around. He felt paralyzed; it all seemed like a nightmare to him from which there was no escape and no awakening.

  When the executioner climbed down from the platform, the smoke was already so thick it was almost impossible to see his mother anymore. Still, Lukas thought he could see her outline. The heat on the platform must have been horrible, but not a single sound came from there.

  At that moment, something very strange happened.

  A shining blue cloud suddenly appeared above the smoke and began rising heavenward. Small stars appeared around the cloud, glittering and fluttering like tiny birds.

  Lukas shouted again, but when he turned around, he realized the other spectators had not seen the strange cloud. The children at his side also didn’t seem to notice.

  “Why isn’t the witch screaming?” asked a little girl, looking up at her brother.

  He just shrugged. “That’s surely some kind of magic again. The devil came to help her on her final trip.”

  Nobody said anything about the blue cloud, which, in the meantime, had become just a pale shimmer until it finally disappeared. But then Lukas felt a soft touch on his cheek, as if by an invisible hand, and once again heard the voice of his mother in his head.

  Have no fear, my son. I will always be with you. Take care of your sister.

  The flames rose higher and higher as Lukas sat there, stunned, atop the wall. The jeering and laughter all around him seemed miles away. Even after the fire had burned itself out at last and the journeymen were sweeping up the ashes, Lukas sat there unmoved. His mother had touched him and spoken to him. And then this cloud . . . Was it magic, too? Was his mother really a witch? And what did the old man mean before when he spoke of the “white” witch?

  Anger unlike anything he had ever felt before rose in him when he thought of Waldemar von Schönborn. This man was responsible for everything that had happened to his family, and he would pay for it!

  The hours passed without Lukas even noticing. He was still staring at the execution site, where, from time to time, the wind whipped white and gray ashes up into the sky. The market square had emptied out, and only a few small children were dancing around the remaining embers. Finally, very slowly, Lukas climbed down from the wall and made his way through the streets, through the city gate, and over the bridge with the Neckar murmuring beneath him like an anxious old woman.

  His legs carried him, but he himself seemed to still be sitting on the wall. From now on he would be on his own, yet in a sense, not completely alone. His mother had promised to be there for him always, and her words gave him consolation and support.

  And soon, he swore to himself, he would find out what had happened to his sister.

  V

  Some Weeks Later, Somewhere in the Wild Odenwald Mountains

  Lukas looked up at the clouds and watched as snowflakes spiraled down like dandelions, melting as they landed on his face. Winter didn’t usually arrive that early, in the middle of November. The farmers, too, complained that many of them had lost crops and were starving because the first frost that year had arrived in October.

  Shaking with the cold, Lukas wrapped himself in the coat he’d stolen from a scarecrow, which was much too large for him, and continued his wanderings through the forest. He was grateful for the unshapely felt hat that the old maid Agnes had given him, which protected him from the worst of the cold and concealed his soiled face that in recent weeks had grown gaunt and careworn. When Lukas saw his reflection in a fountain, it was a far older boy staring back at him whose face he didn’t recognize. Occasionally, when he was out stealing from the barns and stables, he met other villagers, but he had such a grim appearance that they went out of their way to avoid him. If there was a dispute, a short fight with a stick he’d whittled from the branch of a larch tree usually settled the issue. Once again Lukas was aware how much he’d learned from his father. Usually, his opponents were larger than he was, but all it took were a few quick feints, thrusts, or blows to send them packing. He’d also driven off a few hungry wolves that way.

  Almost two months had passed since his dreadful experiences in Heidelberg, but to Lukas it seemed like two years. There were days when he wished he’d simply fall asleep and never wake up, but then he remembered he was the son of a Palatine knight, the son of Friedrich von Lohenfels. He would never give up; he would fight and avenge his family. And he had to find Elsa again, as he had promised.

  It wasn’t yet clear to him exactly how he’d carry out his plan, but for now he thought it was best to lie low. Since his mother had warned him about Schönborn, he’d headed northeast into the Odenwald Mountains, an inhospitable wilderness of widely scattered small towns, where he felt safe from the grand inquisitor’s henchmen.

  The first few weeks had been somewhat tolerable. He survived on apples, pears, and plums, which grew on the trees in large numbers in October. Occasionally, he’d been able to snare a rabbit or steal a chicken from a remote farmyard, always trying to make sure that as few people as possible noticed him. Since the outbreak of the war, many former mercenaries had come together to form bands of highwaymen who robbed or even murdered travelers.

  Recently, the weather had gotten nastier, and the first snowflakes heralded the winter to come. Lukas knew that if he didn’t soon find a place to stay, he would probably freeze to death. But what should he do? Perhaps ask a poor family of farm
ers if he could take shelter with them? People in this region were happy if they could provide for their own children. There was nothing useful he knew how to do on a farm, and one thing they certainly didn’t need was another useless mouth to feed. As a nobleman’s son he could ride a horse, hunt, and fight, but he knew nothing about sowing and harvesting, how to repair a rake, help in the birth of a calf, or even milk a cow. Of what use could he be to anyone?

  Lukas was so lost in his gloomy thoughts that he didn’t hear the sound—a faint, ominous crackling in the branches behind him—until it was too late. Before he could turn around, a fist-sized stone hit him directly on the temple. He staggered, fell, and blacked out before he touched the ground. Dazed, he heard footsteps and whispered voices.

  Voices of children.

  “Quick, quick, look in his purse to see if he has something to eat,” someone whispered.

  “Look, he’s just as poor and skinny as we are,” another child said. “Just leave him lying there, or kill him, for all I care. He’ll just get in our way.”

  “First let’s grab his purse.”

  With a trembling hand, Lukas clenched his battered little bag containing a few shriveled apples and some moldy crusts of bread—the last of his provisions—but small, nimble fingers tore the purse from his grip.

  “Like I told you,” someone said after a while in a disappointed tone, “he has almost nothing. We’d better just smash his head in with a stone before he starts screaming and attracts attention. And then let’s move along.”

  “No . . . ,” Lukas gasped.

  He shook off his fainting spell, but all he could see around him were vague outlines. He struggled to reach out for the invisible opponent with his right hand, and finally grabbed hold of a foot. He yanked on it, there was a shout, and then the sound of something hitting the ground.