Chapter 12
Margaretha
We broke out of the forest, chasing the setting sun into a grassy meadowland dotted with half-timbered cabins of wood and white plaster.
Friedrich directed me toward one tucked snuggly against the wood-laden hills, indistinguishable from the other cottages save for the strange smell, which struck us before we’d even dismounted.
It grew stronger as we approached the cabin door.
Belinda and I covered our noses against the scent of curdled milk and spoiled meat but quickly dropped our arms to our sides when Friedrich lifted his hand to the door.
Before his fist met the wood, we heard shouting, then a crash from inside the cabin.
Friedrich didn’t bother knocking. Charging through the door, he headed straight for a pair of boys, catching the arm of one boy mid-swing and ducking from the blows of the other.
He shouldered himself between the boys and pushed them apart.
“Heinrich, Emil, stop fighting,” Friedrich ordered.
Surprise, then recognition registered on the boys’ faces, and a momentary peace ensued as they both greeted their old friend.
But it passed as the older boy began to justify himself in the fight, and the younger defended his part.
Other, older voices joined the argument, and I wondered just how many men lived inside this tiny cottage.
While the boys continued their squabbling, I followed Friedrich into the orangey glow of a small, firelit room, nearly tripping on an overturned chair beside the door.
Pushing it upright, I carried it around shoes strewn here and there to nest it beneath the dish-littered table.
The feet of the chair squealed over the dusty wood floor, echoing in the sudden, conspicuous silence, and I felt the weight of every eye upon me.
Doing my best to ignore the dumbfounded stares of the men and boys standing about the room, I fixed a smile upon my face, but the silence had me shifting between my feet.
I gave Friedrich a pointed plea with my eyes.
“Oh, yes.” He moved beside me, announcing to the cabin, “Everyone, this is . . .” He paused, and I realized we hadn’t made a plan for what name I should take.
“Margaretha,” he finally finished. I tensed with the initial surprise of hearing him speak my Christian name.
It was startling how much I liked the sound of it on his lips.
“Guten tag.” I curtsied as a young maid should. Gesturing to Belinda still standing beside the door, I said, “This is my friend, Belinda. We’ve come to visit you.”
The miners continued to gape. My cheeks ached with the pain of a forced smile until Friedrich picked up a loose shoe, throwing it to land with a thud against one boy’s chest. The boy startled to awareness.
“Glückauf,” the boy said.
I looked at Friedrich for clarity. “I don’t know this expression.”
He bent his head to mine. “It’s a miner’s greeting. To offer luck in finding veins of ore.”
“Oh. Glückauf to you,” I addressed the young man. “And what is your name?”
“Forgive me,” Friedrich said. “I forgot the introductions. Margaretha,”—I felt a strange invigoration as he said my name again—“our two fighters here are brothers. The ugly one is Heinrich.”
Heinrich picked up another shoe and launched it at Friedrich’s head, but Friedrich ducked in time for the shoe to bash against the plastered wall. It left behind a hand-sized dent, one of many pockmarking the cottage.
Friedrich straightened, dusting off his green jerkin while nodding toward the other brother. “The uglier one is Emil.”
Emil, who couldn’t have been more than eleven, had the audacity to wink at me. I did my best to give him a most serious, disapproving look, to which he laughed, wholly unrepentant.
One man too eager to await his turn at an introduction made his way over to me, bending low from the waist before catching hold of my hand to place a lengthy kiss on my knuckles.
“This is Wilhelm.” Friedrich cleared his throat, prompting the man to finally end his kiss.
I smiled at him when he straightened but couldn’t help noticing his bowed back and stunted legs as he waddled over to give Belinda a greeting every bit as gracious.
It was easy to see why a child might mistake miners for dwarfs.
“The resident cook is Daniel,” Friedrich said, turning my attention to a man at the fire. Daniel flicked his hand in a sort of wave but continued to stir whatever bubbled in his cauldron. I hated to think it was the source of the rancid smell enveloping the cabin.
Daniel turned a keen eye on Friedrich. “Do we get a red hart today, or were ya too busy fer deer catchin’?” His eyes darted to me, and I blushed from his implication.
Friedrich shook his head. “You know I don’t hunt anymore.”
I caught the surprised look on Daniel’s face before Friedrich pointed behind me across the room to introduce me to an older man sprawled out on a short bed.
“Last of all is Ernst, your patient.”
With great effort, Ernst leaned onto his elbow and offered a nod before being overtaken by a deep, chesty cough that multiplied into a fit. Friedrich crossed to him, pulling him upright and beating his back until Ernst’s coughing subsided.
“Belinda, the herbs,” I ordered, and she slipped out of the cabin to retrieve the packets of crushed herbs from the saddlebag.
I knelt beside Ernst’s bed, taking his gnarled hand in mine. “Friedrich tells me you’ve been unwell.”
He nodded. “Pains in my chest and a cough I can’t be rid of. Sometimes I’m fightin’ fer breath.”
“He don’t eat much either,” Daniel offered as Belinda reentered.
I rubbed Ernst’s hand. “We’ll get you on your feet again.” Joining Belinda at the table, I sorted through the herbs for the thyme.
“How can I help?” Friedrich was at my elbow, his breath tickling my ear.
“Perhaps heat a pot of mead?”
He rooted around the wooden shelf, pulling down a jug of mead and a small, three-footed pot, which he nestled into coals beside the fire.
While he poured the mead out in glugs, I untied the thyme packet and sprinkled the crushed herbs into the pot for Friedrich to stir with his wooden ladle.
I left him to steep the thyme brew, returning to gather the unused packets of herbs and trying to ignore Emil as he leaned against the table beside me.
“So,” he said, “have ya any suitors?”
“Stand down, Emil.” Friedrich’s words sounded like a warning.
Wilhelm knocked Emil on the head as he waddled past. “She’s clearly spoke fer.” Taking a seat opposite us, he looked back and forth between Friedrich and me, then asked, “How’d ya meet?”
The room grew warm, and I glanced at Belinda for guidance, but she stood with a hand to her lips, poorly concealing her smile.
“We haven’t—there’s nothing—” Friedrich stammered.
“We serve together at the castle.” I tried to sound composed.
“The castle?” Daniel stirred his pot, looking down at Friedrich. “How’s that goin’?”
“Enough, Dan.” Another warning. Friedrich was testy with his friends this eve.
“I’m only surprised ya’d take work there after—”
“The tonic is warm,” Friedrich said to me. “Cups and spoons are there.”
I reached for the wooden shelf where Friedrich pointed, collecting a cup and holding it steady as he poured the hot brew.
Giving it a final stir, I made my way to Ernst while Friedrich gathered pillows from the other beds to arrange them behind Ernst’s back.
When Ernst was comfortably upright, I set the warm cup in his hands.
He breathed in the steam, stopping short under another string of coughs until he’d recovered enough to take a tentative sip. His face puckered with distaste.
“It’s repulsive, isn’t it? Most things she brews are.” Despite his words, Friedrich gave me a warm smile, and I sensed something like admiration in the soft way his eyes trailed over my face.
I smiled back, but feeling unaccountably shy, I turned my gaze away, letting my sights drift over the untidy little cabin. Miners’ caps scattered halos of dirt wherever they lay. Shirts and hose muddy enough to grow a garden were piling up in corners, and every bed was unmade save one.
“Who sleeps there?” I asked. “He deserves praise for being the cleanest among you.”
No one answered. No one spoke at all, and the uncomfortable silence grew heavy enough that even Belinda paused when she’d returned from putting away the herbs, looking around the room curiously.
Friedrich finally replied, “That was Jakob’s bed.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Who’s Jakob?”
Heinrich and Emil started straightening the shoes, but Wilhelm pulled out a chair and patted it, inviting me to sit beside him at the table. By the time I’d taken my seat, he was already staring at the twisting hearth flames with a faraway look in his eyes.
“The mines aren’t safe fer workin’,” he began. “We do what we can—wear hoods and aprons and such—but there’s nothin’ fer it when the Meister H?mmerling decides to play his tricks.”
“Meister H?mmerling?” I raised a brow.
He nodded. “An evil spirit that haunts the mines. At times he’s a giant bear.
At others, a black horse with one great red eye.
But most often he’s a monk wearing flowin’ robes of blackest night.
And he plays tricks, doin’ all manner of mischief, then punishing any miners who get angry.
Jakob said he saw him befer we climbed into the shafts, a dark monk standin’ back in the trees.
Jakob was afraid to go down, but we told him all’s well, that he’d only imagined it.
He was young enough to fit in the narrow veins, and when we heard the rocks and dirt tumblin’, we knew there’d been a cave-in.
Emil wriggled down the shaft first to try to dig Jakob out.
He and the other boys crawled on their bellies, using shunts to haul out the extra dirt, but they wasn’t fast enough. ”