Chapter 14
Margaretha
Belinda waited until I’d stepped out of the gown to hold it up to the window. Pinpricks of sunlight shone through tears dotting the sleeves and skirts. She threw it over the bed, then looked at me, shaking her head. “The petticoat too? You’ve blood drops everywhere.”
“The holly was quite sticky.” I plucked a sharp leaf from my hair, and Belinda chuckled.
“Margaretha, you’re hopeless. If only you’d managed to use your folly for good!”
I hadn’t told Belinda the truth of what had passed, of Friedrich avoiding my gaze, his hands shaking with restraint or fear. I wasn’t certain of the exact emotion, only the source of it, and to think on it made my stomach ache.
I pressed my arm against it. “True. I’ve made no gains with Friedrich,” I lied.
“How can that be?” Belinda scoffed. “I’ve seen the two of you together. Your skills are much improved, and you’re certainly too beautiful to be ignored. Perhaps your naivete is making you blind to his attraction.”
The assertion rankled me. “Is it possible you don’t understand men as well as you think?”
Her eyes flashed, and I instantly regretted my remark. “You in your protected castle. I grew up much faster than you could ever imagine. I know men and their desires.”
My silence spoke my contrition, and once she’d slipped a fresh chemise over my head, I wrapped her in a hug. “I am sorry, Belinda. You are right. I could never understand.”
She sank into my hug, but only for a moment before she straightened her shoulders and turned toward the window. When she spoke, her voice was calm, as if nothing had passed. “I will admit Friedrich puzzles me.”
She had shut me out again, refusing to open up about her life from before she’d arrived.
Never an explanation for why she used to sneak food from the kitchens, hiding it in our room as if she didn’t trust there would be another meal.
Or why she’d clung to Samuel, following him around the castle.
He’d said he didn’t mind it, that it helped her feel safe, but why she should need Samuel to feel safe, she had never confided in me.
“I thought him an easy target with his sullen temperament and low birth.” Belinda’s words crowded into my thoughts as I sat on the mattress.
“Who?”
“Margaretha, do try to keep up. I was speaking of Friedrich. What peasant man wouldn’t want a countess as his conquest?”
“Belinda!”
“Tut.” She waved her hand dismissively. “’Tis just an expression.”
Flopping onto the coverlet, I rested an arm over my eyes. “It’s useless with Friedrich. I’m done.”
“Not quite.” Belinda pulled at the used clothes beneath me until I lifted my backside off the torn gown. “You owe him at least a few more French lessons, else he’ll think himself ill-used.”
“No. I’m finished with the scheme altogether.
Send me to Brussels to earn the trust of the queen, or you ask too much of me.
” I pressed a pillow against my aching belly, waiting for Belinda’s protest, but she went on silently folding my torn chemise as if she hadn’t heard.
Laying it over a chair, she sat on the bed beside me, looking toward the fireplace.
“Do you know how I came to be here, acting as your lady-in-waiting?”
I leaned on my elbow, my attention riveted on her.
“Your father and his men stopped to stay with Uncle during their travels. Samuel was among them.” She took a long breath, fidgeting with her ring.
“The men did the same as all of Uncle’s friends, laughing and drinking and hunting their game, none of them paying me any mind.
Those were my favorite times, when I was forgotten and alone.
Loneliness was best.” She stood and paced across the room, her back turned to me as she rested her hands on the writing desk.
The shudder coursing her spine betrayed her struggle to speak of it, even after all these years.
I stayed silent. I would not rush her.
“But Samuel didn’t forget me.” Her voice held emotion.
She cleared her throat. “He found me in the library and coaxed me to speak. We said nothing of importance, but he listened to me. Then he showed me a fox den with cubs, got me out in the garden to take walks. He picked a yellow flower for me, making me smile when . . . when I hadn’t even wanted to live.
And . . .” Another pause. More silence. “He alerted your father . . . when he saw.” Her voice was quiet.
“Saw the marks on my wrists.” Her last words ended in a whisper.
She finally turned to face me. “That is a man worth saving.”
My heart ached for what Belinda had suffered. It ached with longing for my brother. I sniffed back the sting of tears. “I intend to save him, Belinda. I do! Only let me do it as I will, winning the queen’s favor instead of scheming for a man’s heart. It isn’t right.”
“Margaretha!” Belinda’s voice was sharp, and I reared my head back, surprised by her tone.
We watched each other, neither blinking until she spat, “Do what you will, Countess.” She bent to pick up my muddied shoes.
“If you’re willing to risk your brother’s life, then so be it, but it’s a wonder you’re willing to risk our eternal souls.
Samuel’s suffering could be brief, but ours will be endless.
” Her shoes clipped over the stone floor, and she left the room.
I buried my face in my pillow. What had I done?
I’d upset Belinda the moment she had confided in me.
I’d dismissed her pain, her need to save Samuel, and her need to atone for the healer’s death.
She had suffered so much. We had suffered so much together, having no one but each other to confide our shared shame and grief, yet our guilt alone could never make amends. And now I was putting it all at risk.
Flopping onto my back, I looked up at the canopy, the same red velvet filling my view as when I’d first met the healer. I ran a finger over the rough scab on my palm, remembering that night.
I am so cold despite the layers of blankets piled atop me.
A woman bends over me, her wiry black ringlets escaping the confines of her wulsthaube headdress as she dabs my head with a wet rag reeking of urine.
I raise my arm, weakly pushing her hand away, but she nods at someone, and Belinda’s face appears above me.
“It will make you well, Countess.” Belinda settles my arms down to my sides but wrinkles her nose, turning her face from the rag.
“You must keep the fire burning,” the woman instructs Belinda, “and douse the rag in fresh pig urine every two hours. Wipe her brow and wrists with it, then squeeze three drops onto her tongue. I will return as soon as I’m able.
” She stands from the bed, and Belinda stands too, releasing my arms as she nods dutifully.
The woman tucks her loose curls back into her wulsthaube, then takes a pinch of powder from a jar and drops it over my left shoulder.
“May the shedding of Saint Nikolaus’s blood give health to the sick.
” She takes another pinch and drops it over my right shoulder.
“May his cures be upon thee.” The last pinch she smears from the top of my forehead to the tip of my nose, then rests her finger in the hollow of my neck.
“O, how the cures of diseases reveal the sanctity of that holy leader.”
She covers the jar of powder and tucks it into a basket, then pats Belinda’s shoulder and leaves the room without another word.
Belinda’s smiling face is the last thing I see before closing my eyes.
I sleep, unaware of the danger I face, of how near my soul is to slipping away, but when I awake, it’s to Father’s shouts.
He stands beside my bed yelling at a cowering, crying Belinda, and though I try to calm him, my voice is too weak.
He only notices me at all when I try to sit up, and he rushes to my side, lifting me into a tight embrace.
He growls at Belinda over my head. “You’ll need a winning explanation if you wish to remain in my employ. Margaretha almost died for your negligence. I’ve a mind to send you back to your uncle.”
Belinda’s eyes shoot wide with fear, tears pooling in them. “Please, Your Lordship. I followed all the healer’s instructions. I used the rag and the urine and kept the blankets on her.”
“Why was the fire not lit? The healer said to keep it lit.”
Beads of sweat forming along Belinda’s brow make me suspect her deceit. She fell asleep again. Of course she did. After long days and nights keeping watch over me, I don’t blame her for it. And I certainly don’t want to see her punished, but if she admits the truth, Father might have her dismissed.
“The fire wouldn’t stay,” she answers. “Every time I’d light it, a sudden wind set upon it, blowing it cold, like it was cursed.”
Father’s eyes narrow.
“I wanted to warn you but feared leaving the countess alone. Please,” she begs again, tears dripping from her chin. “I did all I was asked, though it was none of it natural.”
Father freezes beside me. “What do you mean ‘not natural’?”
“The healer. She said a chant over the countess. She dropped some herbs.” Belinda wipes the tears from her cheeks.
“I don’t see anything unnatural about that.”
“Herbs crushed with white powder and a strong scent. And when the healer passed over the door’s threshold, she spoke to herself, muttering in an unfamiliar tongue before spitting on the ground.” Belinda clasps her hands together, as if begging Father to believe her.
Father holds me at arm’s length to study my face. “Is it true?”
I don’t comprehend his sudden interest in the healer, but Belinda’s wide, imploring eyes and the quiver of her lip are too much to ignore. She gives a slight, almost imperceptible nod, and I realize I must lie or Belinda will be returned to the clutches of her uncle.
“’Tis true,” I answer.
“The herbs and the foreign tongue? You saw this?”
I resist the urge to look at Belinda again, meeting Father’s gaze when I answer. “I saw it all and more.”
Father’s eyes bore into me. “What more?”
I tax my brain, searching for some rumor I’ve heard passing among servants, something else I can say to wholly remove the blame from Belinda. “The healer put a waxen image under my bed.”
Father sets me free and gets down on the floor.
Oh, please don’t search, I think as he pulls the coverlet up, rooting beneath the bed while I shoot Belinda a panicked look.
“It’s gone, Your Lordship,” she interjects. “I found and destroyed it just before the countess started to mend.”
He stays squat on the floor, one hand still pinning the coverlet against the bed as he looks back and forth between the two of us. “And you say a sudden wind took the fire?”
“Yes.” Belinda nods.
Father stands up fast enough that Belinda cowers again, but he only gives me a quick kiss on the forehead before striding out of the room.
The weight of our lies doesn’t crush us until the day they burn the healer.
Word spreads through the servants in the castle, rumors of angry townsmen storming the healer’s cottage and dragging her to the town square for burning.
With Father gone to the mines, Belinda and I race to the stables and order the coach ready.
Rolling onto the scene, we leap from the coach and force our way through the press, hearing the healer’s screams before we see her.
“Stop this! Set her free!” I yell, but my shouts are drowned beneath the roar of the villagers.
When we finally push to the front of the crowd, the flames already touch the healer’s feet, grasping at her chemise and clawing up the fabric to her hands bound firmly behind her back.
The fire shoots up waves of smoke and heat, lifting the healer’s hair while she tilts her face toward the sky, letting out an agonizing scream that chills my blood.
Belinda covers my eyes with her hand. “Look away,” she whispers in my ear, but it’s too late. I will never unsee the woman’s pain, never unhear her anguished cries.
“Margaretha!” Belinda’s cry brought me back to the present. “What have you done to your hand?”
I furrowed my brow, looking down to see blood oozing from my scabbed burn, my fingers covered in the gore.
“You’ve picked it open again. And there’s blood all over your clean chemise.
” Belinda pulled me toward the washstand to run cool water over my hands.
The basin turned deep red, the blood and water twisting together like my thoughts.
Belinda was right. The stain on our souls had been too black for too long.
If there was any chance that rescuing Samuel would also free us from the weight of our sin, then I could not be casual.
I knew I’d never impress the queen with my attempts at hunting, but I could marry a man of power if I applied myself with careful study and practice.
Still, I needn’t torture Friedrich in my efforts.
“I concede, Belinda. I’ll abandon my schemes for the queen if they jeopardize my chances to save Samuel.”
She sighed her relief and gave me a towel. “You show wisdom by listening to reason.”
I patted my hands dry. “But it’s time to admit defeat and move on from Friedrich.”
“Don’t give up on Friedrich entirely. You’ve still got French lessons to win him over, but in the meantime”—she shot me a sly grin—“I’ll start the search for our next subject.”
I shook my head. “The poor fool.”