Uffenstadt, Neiderbergen, Germany, 1567. Marta Holtz stands naked and shivering in the village church. She’s beginning to have an idea of why Bertolt has accused her. The Inquisitors – three Franciscans led by Abbot Thomas of Regensberg – are seated in a rough semi-circle of mahogany high chairs between the altar rail and the first pew. A brazier burns with occasional pops and snaps, tinting the rough carvings with petals of orange light. Jimbo’s crucifixion to the left of the altar releases a pterodactyl of shadow, and there’s a compact and vivid eruption of daffodils from the vase at the Virgin’s feet. The smell (I imagine) is of incense and chilled stone. The first pew used to be the fourth; the brothers have had three pews removed to make room. Marta, who isn’t stupid (that’s one of the reasons she’s here), has more than an inkling of what they might need room for. This more than an inkling began life in her feet and knees, but soon scurried up into her loins and belly, thence ribs, breasts, throat and face. Now this more than an inkling is all over her like a host of hairy spiders. She’s beginning to have the idea that Bertolt accused her because that is his job. Bertolt came to Uffenstadt three months ago. She’s barely had any dealings with him. Once, he helped her catch a piglet that had got loose. Another time she gave him a taste of the damson cake she had baked for her sister’s birthday. On neither of these occasions did she have the slightest sense that he had any feelings about her beyond the one shared by most of the men in the village: that she was a desirable woman and that Günter Holtz was a lucky sonofabitch. (At this moment – this moment of Marta’s realisation that Bertolt works for the Franciscans, and that with the first three pews removed there will be plenty of room for the good Fathers’ manoeuvres – Günter is being informed by the Regensberg accountant that should Marta be found guilty of witchcraft her execution will be followed by Church confiscation of any property belonging – even jointly or by virtue of marriage – to her, not to mention an itemized bill – implements, fuel, labour – for the cost of the interrogation. At this moment Günter is looking at the accountant’s broad and porous face and wondering how its cheek came by those three silver scars like fishbones. He’s thinking, too, of Marta’s pale and downy midriff, of her sloe eyes and oddly deep voice, of her habit of making him laugh at his own struggle to be a manly man, of the small mole at the back of her left knee, of her wheaty breath when she comes, of the pear-sized baby in her thickened womb. He’s thinking that he’ll kill this accountant, no matter what. The accountant and Bertolt. With the heavy scythe. Bertolt first. He’s thinking these and many other things, none of which is of any use to Marta, who having been clumsily shaved by Brother Clement, is now being hand-examined by the trio, who bring to bear a predictably excessive investigative zeal when it comes to her vagina, breasts and anus.) Marta – who, somewhere beneath all this, is trying to single out a jewel of memory to take to her grave, something of hers and Günter’s, like the warm night in summer they swam and made love in the Donau, skimmed by ghostly fish and overarched by fierce constellations – has never met a Pope. She’s never heard of Pope Pious XXII, who, nudged in the small and heartburning hours by yours truly, granted formal power to the Inquisition back in 1320. She’s never heard of Pope Nicholas V, who, 130 years later, extended its authority, nor of Pope Innocent (don’t you love these names? Pious? Innocent?) VIII, whose Bull, which I might as well have dictated, commanded secular authorities to co-operate fully with Inquisitors and to cede judiciary and executive powers in matters pertaining to heresy and witchcraft. Marta’s never heard of any of these good prelates, nor of Bulls (except the ones that cover cows, precariously, standing on their little back legs) nor, indeed, of theology. Marta, as a matter of fact, can’t read or write. (Neither can Günter, for the record.) She has absolutely no idea that the coals in the brazier, the branding irons, the thumbscrews, the lances, the cat o’nine tails, the bullwhip, the hammers, the pliers, the nails, the ropes, the hot chair, the manacles, the knives, the hatchet, the skewers – she has absolutely no idea that her impending relationship with these items has been facilitated by Vatican scribes and a string of Popes, some shrewd, some spooked, all quick to catch on to the remunerative potential of witchhunting. Marta has never heard of Brothers Sprenger and Kramer, my star students among the German Dominicans, whose labour of love, the Malleus Maleficarum published eighty-one years earlier, drew a minutely detailed diagram of how to detect, interrogate and execute nubiles deemed suspect. She’s never been to a Sabbat, nor signed in blood, nor sacrificed babies, nor delivered the acolyte’s ‘infamous kiss’ (the tonguing, thank you my dear, of His Satanic Majesty’s slack and gamy butthole), nor flown on a broomstick, nor – I’m sorry to say – copulated with me or any of my hircine proxies. Truly, Marta’s venials make a paltry list: stole an orange; wished Frau Grippel would get a fever; called Helga a farting sow; sucked Günter’s cock (and a formidable bratwurst it is, I can tell you); admired the beauty of my arms in the Donau; thought I’m the prettiest girl in Uffenstadt.
No, Marta’s been a good girl. God really should be taking better care of her. But, as is the way of it with Creators who move in mysterious ways, He isn’t.
Any other time and any other place Marta would draw closer to the brazier for warmth. This time and this place she’s keeping all the distance she can. The idiocy of the question is bald, even to an illiterate farmer’s wife. Do you believe in witchcraft? No, and you contradict Church doctrine; yes, and you’re virtually confessing to occult knowledge at the get-go. How long have you been in the service of Satan? I’m not in the service of Satan. How did you make your pact with him? I have no pact. Is your unborn sired by a demon? No, by my husband. What is the name of the demon with whom you copulated? No demon, sir. Were you sodomized by this demon as well as impregnated?
Abbot Thomas, fifty-eight, tonsured and corpulent with eyes the colour of conkers and a ferociously irritable bowel, would rather Brothers Clement and Martin weren’t here. He has a fiery mind, does Thomas, liable to burst into outraged combustion at the slightest provocation. Marta, naked, shaved, innocent of all charges, already constitutes more than slight provocation. The thought of Marta (or Wilhomena, or Inge, or Elise or whoever), which is perpetual in the hot pudding of his brain, is perennial provocation. He’s a beautifully divided being, Thomas. A great, sane part of him knows that the girls are tortured and slaughtered for his pleasure and profit. A great and sane part of him knows this. But another part of him demands moral justification. Demands it loudly. Bellows for it. This ignites the fiery mind. (You’ve phoned in sick, haven’t you? Nothing wrong with you of course. Just can’t Face It today. You’ve prepared the husky speech, the wobbly or frustrated diagnosis – bloody flu – and damn you if by the time you’ve hung up you’re not sure you haven’t got the flu. Humans: need a lie desperately enough and you can take yourself in. Ditto with Abbot Thomas. The blades slide under the fingernails and the wretches’ confessions come pouring out. My God I was right! Infernal bitch! You dared deceive God’s holy minister? Thank Heaven I held to the odious task!)
The Pricker is called in to search for the witch’s mark. Third nipple, scar, mole, pimple, freckle, wen, wart, birthmark, scratch, scab – pretty much anything in the blemish family qualifies. The Pricker – crew-cut, long-faced, missing an eye – who’ll be well paid should he successfully detect a sign of witchhood (100 per cent success rate so far) spends a good deal of time examining Marta’s clitoris, which he’s not sure isn’t large enough to be unmasked as the witch’s teat, before noticing with relief the mole behind her left knee. (’I make this mine,’ Günter had said to her, kissing it, on their wedding night. ‘And this, and this, and this . . .’) He turns her over on her belly the better to see while I drop my flakes of flame onto the clerical genitals and Franciscan lust fills the ether like the odour of sweet and sour pork. The Pricker reaches into his pocket and takes out a greasy leather wallet. Marta’s tears (I don’t think there can be a God . . . If there’s a God, how is it that –) wet the stone floor. The pterodactyl shadow shudders, seems to elongate, then subsides. From the wallet the Pricker removes one of several bright needles of various lengths and girths. He turns his back to the now hot-faced Brothers, brings the needle close to the mole, does nothing for a moment, then turns. ‘My lords. It is my sad duty to report that this woman is beyond doubt a witch. I pricked this mark behind her knee and yet as your own ears will attest she made not the slightest sound.’ He hadn’t had to think about it. Long experience – that is to say years of pricking – had taught him which blots were insensible and which receptive. This wretched girl was practically alight with sensitivity. Prick her anywhere and she’d yowl the roof down. Therefore the report of pricking instead. He went in more and more for the reporting of successfully carried-out prickings rather than actual prickings themselves these days. The going rate was the same either way.