Anna Maria had started to attend to some of the women in the area as a midwife, and those who had seen her work agreed that she was capable and calm and worthy. Rumour also had it that she was often already on the road when someone set out to fetch her. She would meet them on the lane, basket in hand. No one other than Christiana and Magdalena Radtke ever suggested out loud that she was a Hexe – there was no question that the family had suffered for their faith, and what witch would gladly suffer for Christ? – but it became known that Anna Maria had a preternatural ability to know when a woman was in labour. I was a little afraid to ask Thea about it. Thea, too, sometimes had an uncanny way about her, a way of guessing at my thoughts. Once she answered a question before I had the opportunity to ask it aloud. When I pointed out that I hadn’t spoken, she seemed a little taken aback. ‘Yes, you did, I heard you.’
‘I didn’t say a word.’
Anna Maria interjected, throwing flour upon the table in a steady arc. ‘You two are old friends recently met, I think.’ She smiled at me, handed over a wrapped cloth. ‘Take this to Johanne. It’s blood sausage, to fortify her.’
Mama gave birth one year after the quiet loss of the unmentioned, unnamed child. She sent me for Anna Maria at midnight, bracing herself against the doorframe to my room, face licked with sweat.
Sure enough, as I ran towards the pine forest, breathless and clumsy, I saw the Wend’s headdress bobbing in the dark before me. She grinned at me as we met in the field and told me to wait for Thea, who was following behind.
When Thea approached, carrying a heavy basket, I ran to help her and together we returned to my home. Matthias had not woken from his bunk in the loft – nothing but Papa’s shouted summons would wake him in those days – but my father was up, sitting at the bare kitchen table as my mother’s groaning – and Anna Maria’s calm tones of reassurance – issued from behind their closed bedroom door. He nodded at Thea as she entered, stood then sat again, built up the fire and lit his pipe before knocking it out against the mantel. He pulled on his boots and headed outside.
Thea held out her scarf to the hearth to dry it and smiled at me over her shoulder. ‘He’s worried for her,’ she said.
I sat down on the floor in front of the fire and held my knees to my chest. ‘Papa is never worried. He says that the worried lack faith.’
‘He is worried. Of course he is.’ She sat down beside me, eyes reflecting the flames before us. ‘People here believe that they are born with a fixed reservoir of blood in their bodies. Maybe your father thinks childbirth will lower the stores.’
I turned to her. ‘You mean that’s not true?’
Thea wrinkled her nose at me. ‘If it were true, how do you account for the fact that men and women die at a similar age?’
I blushed then. Thea noticed and laughed. ‘You look so uncomfortable.’
‘I don’t understand how you can talk so easily about these things.’
‘It’s natural. You need not be ashamed.’ She picked up the poker and broke a log into embers. ‘Mama told me it was a sign of a gift. The power of creation.’
I hugged my knees closer to my chest and stared at the fire. ‘The first thing Mama said, when it happened to me, was how to wash and dry my cloths so that no one would ever see.’
‘Oh, Hanne.’
To my embarrassment, I felt my chin tremble. Don’t cry, I told myself. Not now.
‘Hanne? What is it?’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, but tears had filled my eyes. In the periphery of my blurred vision I was aware of Thea staring at me. I bent my face into my knees and breathed into my skirt, still damp from snow.
The familiar weight of Thea’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘Hanne?’
I pressed my eyes harder into my kneecaps until I saw lights flicker amidst the dark.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘No, I know.’ I wiped my face with my hands. ‘It’s just . . . Gottlob.’
Thea shook her head, confused.
‘Gottlob. My brother.’ I closed my eyes. ‘I had an older brother. He’s dead now.’
Thea was silent. ‘You’ve never told me.’
‘No. I’m sorry. I suppose I should have . . .’ I took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I mean, everyone here knows and I . . . Anyway, I was reminded of him.’ I gave her a small smile. ‘It was at his funeral that, you know . . . At the churchyard. I was wearing Eleonore Volkmann’s dress. Mama had to scrub the blood from it.’