“Thank you, my son,” Bastion said. Erick seemed taken aback. Bastion called him a son for the second time today. He had only just met him. Stefan frowned.
“What fellowship does light have with darkness?” Bastion asked the people, who remained silent. Stefan glared at them and huffed. They should know the proper response. “What have you taught them, Father?”
Stefan froze with no answer.
Bastion ran his hand over the coffin. Ducinda had paid for a lovely coffin, carved with spring flowers and vines. Bastion shoved the lid onto the dirt and tilted the coffin away from himself. Catarina’s body tumbled out, her broken neck making her head land at a grotesque angle.
Children screamed and ducked underneath their mothers’ shawls. Men looked away, twisting their mouths. Stefan found he could not close his mouth, his shock freezing his will.
Bastion pointed at him. “You would give a Christian burial to a witch?”
Stefan was nervous. “I … I asked a woman, Ducinda here, to help with her burial, and this is what she chose.” He didn’t mean to turn against Ducinda, but it was the truth. He wanted this over quickly.
Faces turned to Ducinda, who lowered her shawl from her tear-streaked face in horror. “I did not know. Father Stefan told me nothing.”
“A witch must be burned and her ashes dumped into a river,” Bastion said to the crowd. No one moved. Erick stepped forward to protest, but Bastion whipped toward him with a pointed finger, holding him back.
“Did you hear me? Does anyone among you fear the Lord? An enemy of Christ is before you. Throw her body into the fire! Show me that you fear your Lord.”
In obedience, Stefan made a move toward the body, but other men grabbed her first. One took her by the ankles, the other by her hands, carrying her to the bonfire. Erick threw his arm over his eyes, turning away. Stefan looked away too, into the dark edges of the night. These men once hoped to court gentle Catarina. He had heard their confessions; he knew the thoughts they had of her in those days. Now he heard them grunt as they lifted and threw her into the flames. A shadow caught his eye, and he thought he saw a woman running into the forest beyond them, her silver hair catching the moonlight.
“Praise God,” a man muttered. “Let us be done with evil.” Other voices carried over the pops and cracks of the burning wood. A stench foreign to Stefan, foreign to them all, spoiled the air, seared into the night and memory, sneaked past them by the smoke, soaking into their clothes, their hair, their village.
“I always knew she wasn’t right.” Another voice Stefan did not recognize. He did not know this side of his people. He caught sight of little Marie looking at him as if he was a monster. She did not understand. She was still too young to know right from wrong.
“A fine girl Catarina was,” he heard someone saying, “until the day she came to market with bruises round her wrists. Her husband away on a journey, said she hurt herself carrying water buckets. Never the same after that.”
“Her eyes were cold. No life in them anymore.”
Stefan saw Bjorn on the other side of the crowd, observing it all from a distance. Bjorn caught Stefan watching him and nodded without expression. Bjorn crossed his arms, his body settling into place as if ready to hear Bastion turn the village upside down. Stefan turned away, telling himself his cheeks were flushed from the bonfire’s heat. Bastion paced in front of the fire, his eyes wide with excitement as the corpse burned. People circled and leaned in, waiting for his next word.
God burned Sodom and Gomorrah. Stefan reminded himself of that, for strength. God’s work was sometimes done with fire.
They wanted to hear what he said. And what he asked would be done immediately. They aren’t the sort of people who respond so well, Stefan thought. At least not to him. Now he could see they were exactly that sort of people. Stefan did not want to look at Bjorn again, but he did anyway. What had he taught his people, indeed? Bjorn’s criticism had been right. Tonight he knew this with grim certainty: His congregants hid from him, in plain sight, sitting through all those Masses and prayers and penitence with no intention of changing. If Bjorn asked again why his prayers went unanswered, Stefan would tell him this.
Bjorn had pushed his way to the front of the crowd, close enough to grab Bastion if he wanted. Stefan couldn’t reach him without calling attention to himself. He was stranded in this crowd of unrepentant sinners and a woman’s burning body, her beauty turning into a vision black and unrecognizable before their eyes.