Chapter 2
Katharina
The well-house door stood slightly ajar.
I wrapped a veil over my head and face before slipping inside to find the Welser girl pressed into the corner like a wounded animal, her thin shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Barely fifteen, her blonde braids marked her as one of the merchant families.
A family who still had enough coin for ribbons despite the war.
“Greta?” I kept my voice soft and low, the tone I’d learned from Sister Margareta in the sick house. The same one used to gentle a spooked horse. The one I used when I needed to hide.
She flinched at her name, eyes wide with terror. “You’re her. The—the—”
She wouldn’t say it, as if the word itself could summon the Vicar and his Schergen down on us. She wouldn’t say it, but the fear of a witch hadn’t kept her away. “You need my help.”
“I didn’t know where else—” Her voice broke. “My father will kill me if he discovers it. But if I don’t…I don’t want to die birthing Herr Braun’s child, like his other wives.”
I moved closer slowly, setting my basket of herbs on the rough wooden table. “How long since your last monthly blood?”
“Two months.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Maybe three. I’m not certain—they’ve never been regular.” Her eyes darted to the door, then back to me. “They say you learned the dark arts from the Devil himself, just like your mother.”
“Yet you came anyway.”
A laugh far too bitter for her age escaped her. “The Devil seems kinder than Herr Braun.”
I began preparing the mixture, grinding herbs in my small mortar. The sharp scent of pennyroyal filled the room, followed by the earthier notes of blue cohosh. Greta watched my hands, fascination warring with revulsion.
“My mother wasn’t a witch,” I said quietly as I worked. “She was a midwife who knew which herbs could help women when nothing else would.” That knowledge killed her. That and—
I shook my head. I had work to do.
“Everyone says she cursed the Bishop’s sister during birth,” Greta whispered. “That’s why the baby came out twisted.”
I’d heard that story too—a dozen versions of it.
In some, my mother had eaten the baby. In others, she’d coupled with the Devil himself in the birth chamber.
The truth was simpler and sadder: the Bishop’s sister had been forty-three years old, her body worn from eight previous births.
The baby had been turned wrong, already dead in the womb.
My mother had saved the woman’s life during the birth, a brutal mercy twisted into evidence of witchcraft.
“Babies die,” I told her, adding hot water to the herbs. “Women die. It happens in the finest houses with the best physicians just as it happens in hovels with only frightened girls to help. But when a midwife loses a patient, she’s a witch. When a physician does, it’s God’s will.”
The mixture steeped, releasing bitter steam.
“Then why do you hide your face?” she asked.
I did not answer. Instead, I poured the tincture into a chipped mug and handed it to her.
Greta’s hands shook as she reached for the cup, then pulled back.
“Will it hurt?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Your womb will cramp and bleed. You’ll need to stay somewhere safe for a day and a night.”
“What if…” She swallowed hard. “What if God punishes me? What if this marks me as damned?”
I thought of all the women who had come to this meeting place before her, slipping through shadows with the same fears, the same desperation.
Noble ladies who’d drunk my teas from golden cups.
Peasant girls who’d paid with eggs when they had no coins.
Even a nun once—young Sister Bertha—who’d wept through her confession of a moment’s weakness with a traveling merchant.
I tried not to think about how often I asked the same question.
“I’m no priest, but if God punishes women for surviving, then he’s not the God the priests claim to serve,” I said, pushing the cup toward her. “And if seeking my help damns you, well—you’ll have plenty of company in Hell. Half the women in Bamberg have knocked on my door.”
She took the cup with trembling fingers, then hesitated. “Aren’t you afraid? Every woman they burn, they question first.”
The truth was, I waited for it every day.
Every time the Witch Bishop’s guards marched past, every time I heard screams from the Drudenhaus, I wondered if today would be the day someone connected the dots, remembered what had happened to that little girl forced to watch her mother burn.
How she had been swept into a convent to toil and live a half-life.
That the well house where secret remedies could be found was only a stone’s throw away…
“My mother held her tongue through three days of questioning. She never named a single woman she’d helped. Never confirmed a single accusation. That’s the real reason they burned her—not for witchcraft, but for silence.”
Greta drank the tea in three quick swallows, grimacing at the bitterness. I handed her a small vial of oil of cloves for the pain that would come and a cloth bundle of clean rags.
“When it begins, don’t fight it,” I instructed. “Let your body do what it needs to.”
She started sobbing again, and despite my reservations, I pulled her against my chest. She was so small, still a child.
My grip tightened as anger burned in my heart—that she was the one forced to pay the price for the actions of horrible men like Herr Braun.
My fingers curled into her shift as I began to shake, the faint smell of smoke filling the air.
“What—about—next—time—” She tried to speak between hiccuping sobs. Yes, next time. This was her husband, after all.
“Did your mother teach you how your fertility works?” I asked. She shook her head against my chest. I sighed. Of course not. Not necessarily her mother’s fault—she might not have known herself. I explained the monthly cycle to the girl, which days she should abstain to prevent pregnancy.
“He…he never leaves me alone. He won’t stop just because—” She sobbed into my chest again. I closed my eyes briefly, steadying myself, then eased her back and reached for my basket of herbs.
“There’s another way,” I murmured, pulling out a small bottle of tincture I’d prepared weeks ago, though I’d hoped never to use it. “Valerian root, mostly. With a touch of poppy.”
Greta’s eyes widened. “To kill him?”
“No.” I pressed the vial into her hands. “To make him sleep. Deeply. On the nights you’re most fertile, or when you simply need peace.”
She stared at the amber liquid. “How much?”
“Three drops in his evening ale. No more.” I gripped her shoulders, making her meet my eyes.
“Listen to me carefully, Greta. Three drops will make him sleep like the dead until morning. Five drops, and he’ll sleep for a full day.
Ten drops…” I paused. “Ten drops and he might not wake at all. The line between sleep and death is thinner than you think.”
“Would anyone know? If I—”
“Stop.” I pressed a finger to her lips. “Don’t even think it. Not because he doesn’t deserve it—God knows he does. But because they would burn you for it. A young wife, her older husband dead? They’d call you a witch before his body was cold.”
I considered snatching the bottle back. She was too young, reckless and hurting. The vial glinted in her palm, a spark that could ignite everything.
She nodded, clutching the vial like a lifeline. “Three drops.”
My shoulders lowered. “And only when necessary. The body builds tolerance—use it too often and it stops working. Save it for when you need it most.”
“Why are you helping me like this?” she whispered.
“This is prevention,” I said firmly. “My mother used to say healing isn’t just about curing sickness—it’s about preventing suffering. Your suffering matters too, Greta. Your body is not his property, whatever the law says.”
“My grandmother told me witches steal men’s virility. Make them unable to perform their husbandly duties.”
I almost smiled. “Those aren’t witches. Those are wise women who know which herbs cause temporary…difficulties. Mint, when used in excess. Licorice root. Even too much ale can do it, though men never blame the drink.”
“Could you—”
“That’s harder to hide. A man who can’t perform starts asking questions, starts looking for someone to blame. A man who sleeps deeply after his evening ale? That raises no suspicion.” I touched her cheek gently. “Choose your battles carefully. Survive first, fight second. Keep to the shadows.”
She nodded, tucking the supplies into her basket beneath a layer of fresh bread—her alibi for this early morning excursion. At the door, she paused.
“My mother told me once that your mother helped birth half the children in Bamberg—that she had gentle hands and knew songs to ease the pain.” She met my eyes.
“The women at the market whisper about you. They say you’re cursed, that you’ll burn like your mother.
But…” She drew a steadying breath. “I think you’re the closest thing to an angel this city has. ”
I almost smiled. “Angels don’t teach young women to drug their husbands.”
“No,” she agreed. “They probably don’t. Which is why we need you more than angels.”
After she left, taking the back path through the orchard, I cleaned my tools and burned the leftover herbs.
No evidence. Never any evidence. That was how I’d survived this long—that and the fact that fear of childbirth still outweighed fear of witchcraft in the desperate arithmetic of women’s lives.
Outside, the bells tolled the hour, low and solemn. Father Heinrich would be wondering where I was. I smoothed my skirt, my heart beginning to race at the thought of the hidden amusement in his eyes when I slipped in late. I was already grinning at the image.
But I thought back to the girl’s words. If I wasn’t an angel, didn’t that make me a devil?