Page 37 of Night of the Witch
“Do you doubt the holiness of our cause?”
“No!”
“But you are to blame for the witch’s escape.”
“No! No, I—”
Dieter shakes his head, and Bertram closes his mouth so quickly his teeth clack. “It was not a question.” The kommandant’s gaze flicks to me.
“I held the torch as we went through the aqueduct. Johann guarded the rear. Bertram held the witch’s chains.”
“She caused a wind to blow out the light!” Bertram says, stepping forward in his own defense, his eyes wild with fear. “And demons—there were demons that ripped her from my grasp, demons that spirited her away!”
Kommandant Dieter Kirch raises an eyebrow and stares at Bertram with the full force of his pale eyes until Bertram’s voice stutters to silence.
There it is. The guilt and quiet that does all the work for him.
“There were no demons,” Dieter says finally, his voice brooking no argument. “You are a hexenjäger blessed by the saints. No demon could lift a hand to you. Unless you invited them in?”
“No!” Bertram says immediately. “I’m pure. I’ve been to confession; I have no sin for them to exploit!”
Dieter raises one finger, and Bertram is silent again, trembling. We all watch as Dieter strolls around the room, his boot heels clacking on the stone. “This room was once the cell of a saint, did you know that?” Bertram nods, but Dieter’s not even looking at him. He continues speaking, casually, as if this were a chat. “Saint Simeon. He became an anchorite, enclosing himself into this very chamber as if it were his tomb, dedicating every moment of his life to prayer.”
Dieter turns to face us fully, opening his palms toward us as if in veneration. “And then,” he continues, “a flood happened. The Moselle River rose and rose, and the people of Trier? They blamed Simeon for causing the flood. They called him a witch.”
Dieter crosses the room, toward a window made of glass pieces held tight with lead solder. He touches one of the panes. “They threw stones at this building, trying to get to him and kill him. And then the waters of the river receded. All was well.”
“Washe a witch, sir?” Bertram asks when Dieter does nothing more than stare at the glass pane.
Dieter strides back over to Bertram, footsteps heavy, and slaps him across the face.
“No, you fool,” he spits, his tone no longer casual but enraged. “He was a saint. And you—you,” he snarls, “are the unverschämt who cannot tell the difference between a witch and a saint! You are the unverschämt who drops a chain and blames made-up demons.”
Before any of us can react, Dieter grabs Bertram by the collar and drags him across the room. Bertram’s hands scramble to his neck, choking, but that’s not the punishment Dieter has in mind.
He kicks open a door to a small stone chamber and throws Bertram inside. Bertram crashes into the wall, spinning around even as Dieter slams the door in his face, turning a large iron key.
“Saint Simeon purposefully chose to become a recluse and dedicate himself to God,” Dieter tells the locked door in a calm, even tone. “May you learn something from his strength.”
I swallow, looking at the stone closet. It is narrower even than the aqueduct. There’s not enough room inside to sit on the floor. Bertram will be unable to spread his arms out—he would barely be able to lift them in such a constrained space. To say nothing of the fact that he has no food, nor any means to relieve himself. The tight space makes it impossible to do anything but stand in the dark.
It is a tomb.
Behind the locked door, I hear a strangled, choking sob.
We all know that Kommandant Dieter Kirch will not open the door for days at the very least. The last man who was punished in this way nearly died. When he emerged, he was pale and shaking, unable to do more than crawl out of the kommandant’s office on all fours, begging for water.
Kommandant Kirch turns to me and Johann. “Dismissed,” he says pleasantly.
11
FRITZI
Manacled, I wrestle crates into a crude pile in the cellar, fueled by my rage.
Verpiss dich, jäger.
I climb, dragging crates higher, stacking them as I go; only to climb back down for another, up again, stack it; down, another, up again—
