Page 42 of Night of the Witch
I wait for Dieter to go back into the Porta Nigra before I leave, walking down the stairs toward the street slowly.
I take careful, measured steps. My back is straight. Even now, I may be watched. I cannot tip my hand. I cannot. Even if my heart thunders in my ears, I walk away from the hexenjäger base as if I bear neither sin nor worry.
I carry two maps in my head. One is of the aqueducts beneath me. The other is here, the real city of Trier, the paths that once started as organized Roman grids and have slowly evolved into chaos, with little alleys connecting one side street to another, wooden planks on roofs linking one building to another, hidden doors providing passage from one home to another.
That’s the difference between a village and a city. In a village, all the people are connected—my mother knew every single person who gathered around her pyre to watch her burn. She helped midwife some of the women’s babies; she sold beer to every family. But in a city, the people aren’t connected.
The buildings are.
I head from the Porta Nigra roughly south, toward the Hauptmarkt. There’s a noticeable shift in my reception as I near the market. Close tothe church, men call out greetings, some salute me or bow before the black cloak. But it doesn’t take long for me to see a child skid to a stop and race off down an alleyway to avoid crossing my path. A woman crosses herself and mutters a prayer of protection when my cloak swishes past her door. An old man pretends to cough, but I see the smirk when his spittle hits my shoulder.
Not everyone loves hexenjägers.
And that gives me hope.
The main market of Trier sells a little bit of everything from sunup to sundown, but currently, with Advent already begun, it’s a Christkindlmarkt. While the staples are still available, every open space is now crammed with stalls selling something seasonal. Warm spices fill the air, scents flickering like candlelight. There are more people in the city now than there were a month ago; fall is a busy time for harvests, but there’s little to do in winter other than make a day’s journey into the city and imbibe in too many sweets and too much beer.
This, too, was part of the plan. I have spent the past few years finding small ways to undermine the hexenjägers, saving individuals, but it was never enough. This was to be the coup de grâce that would light a spark for a revolution instead of a pyre.
The prisoners in the basilica were to escape through the tunnels, the aqueducts providing the perfect route. Hilde was going to instruct the prisoners on the paths I’d been secretly teaching her in our private correspondence, telling them the best ways to disappear and splitting the groups up so that a handful went down one path, another cluster went a different way, and so on.
We were going to workwithchaos, using the confusion of the breakout to mask the way groups of prisoners split up in different directions. I had carefully selected the routes, ensuring the aqueduct passagesprovided an outlet into abandoned homes or empty buildings. I had already stockpiled old clothing for disguises—from there, the plan was for the prisoners to disperse into the Christkindlmarkt, disappearing into the crowds as one more shopper, one more worshiper, one more random villager out for the day.
I’d factored in everything but Fritzi.
“Beer?” a pretty girl with braids says. She carries a yoke with buckets across her shoulder, a ladle in her hand. Her eyes drop to my cloak, the enameled brooch marking me as a hexenjäger. Her voice trembles when she adds, “Just one pfennig to wet your lips and warm your gut.” I glance down at the beer open in her bucket, and she dips the ladle into the liquid, holding the frothy brew out to me. Her hand trembles. “You can have it for free, jäger.”
I shake my head, and she shrugs, turning to offer the brew to another man, one who pays a penny to drink from the communal ladle. I ignore them, striding through the market, shoving past the men drunk on beer and the children drunk on honey. I whip my black cloak off, shoving it under my arm and hiding the brooch that marks me as a hexenjäger. I turn away from the main crowd, down a shrouded street blocked off with a plastered-brick stone archway. There’s no sign affixed atop the archway, but everyone in Trier knows—this is the Judengasse.
The Jewish Quarters in Trier were originally robust and vibrant. The Jews lived close together, not by law, but because their temple was nearby. Eventually, the Judengasse became an eruv, allowing activities in that area that would otherwise be forbidden on the Sabbath.
But with every plague, every drought, every flood, the Jews were blamed, over and over again. They were banned more than once, exiled from the city if not the entire diocese. Perhaps banishment years ago was safer than if they had stayed. Perhaps I only tell myself that to assuage the guilt of my people against theirs.
There are many abandoned areas inside the city walls. But none more empty than the Judengasse.
I learned long ago, however, that there is rarely a truly empty place. Orphans—there are quite a few these days—and the homeless scavenge scraps and live in the shells of homes. While many buildings were seized and sold for profit—I mean, of course, for the benefit of the Church—the archbishop turns a blind eye here, preferring to pretend the entire Judengasse does not exist rather than deal with the starving homeless lurking in its shadows.
A pebble bounces off my shoulder.
I turn and see a pair of wide eyes looking at me from the doorway of a house with broken glass windows. I reach into my pocket, pulling out a coin and tossing it to the little girl waiting for me. She snatches it from the air and disappears. Little Mia keeps both my secrets and my pennies ever since I first saved her and her brother.
Turning my back to her doorway, I look up at the building across the street from her.
Several house forts dot the city of Trier. They’re old—not as old as the Roman buildings, but older than the city wall, and several centuries have passed since they were first built with the wealth of Crusaders and the jewels of Jerusalem.
This one—the only one in the Judengasse—is a bit worse for wear. The white plaster facade is cracked; the colorful arches over the windows have faded and chipped away. But I don’t care about appearances.
What makes a house fort special is the fact it has no way in.
At least not on the ground level.
There is no door, no window, no access point within reach at all. Inconvenient, yes—the only way into the building, by its own design, is by a ladder to the second-floor front door. But it served its purpose atthe time. If Trier were under attack, the inhabitants merely had to lift the ladder, and no one could come inside and pillage the wealth behind the walls.
Now, though, this abandoned building serves as a natural defense for me alone. No one bothers trying to scramble up the decrepit crates I carefully piled under the door, and even if they did, they’d have a hard time getting inside without me knowing, thanks to a few strategically rotten boards and a shaky foundation. Plus the shutters over the only door are bolted with a heavy iron padlock.
I have an apartment in the city, near the Porta Nigra. It is filled with the signs of wealth I’ve accumulated being a hexenjäger, the paraphernalia I cannot sell off to fund my rebellion.
I hate it.
