“Talking with you is a fool’s errand,” he muttered.
Mia’s father had known this moment would come. That is why he hadn’t wanted her to learn those letters, to learn how letters made words and words made a new world. Master Tyndale had taught her the letters, and she had learned how to lay them in the wooden case to make his words and sentences. Mia also printed pamphlets for the church and for profiteers, even spent weeks on one volume titled The Good Wife’s Guide. She could read by that time, and she read that one so many times that she committed entire sections to memory.
“You’ll put your father out of business,” Tyndale had laughed. “You’ll stand in the market and recite it all, line by line.”
“Not so. I’ll be married. I’ll be so busy being a good wife that I’ll have no more time for books.”
Tyndale scowled. Mia wrinkled her nose back at him, inching closer to him so he could hear her whisper.
“Unless you would let me sell your book, along with the others in the market,” she said. “You can trust me with it.”
Tyndale took her by the shoulders. “I do not trust the world around you.”
“’Tis not fair.” Mia’s eyes filled with tears.
Tyndale’s tone changed into a soft, soothing comfort. “Mia, I will never have a daughter. Did you know that? I will never marry, never hold a child of my own. You are the only daughter I will ever have. I am afraid you will get hurt.”
“But why?”
“Because these are dangerous times. If harm came to you, in my name, I would die in my heart, Mia. Promise me that you will tell no one you have helped print it. Keep that secret. Memorize it if you want, but tell no one what you know. Store it up in here,” he said, pointing to her heart. “But trust no one.”
Mia had begun to hear whispers in the streets as she fetched eggs or bought bread for her father. Those caught with Tyndale’s book were burned to death like criminals, they said. But for Mia’s father this book meant life, not death; bread for the table and eggs for his daughter. She forced herself to eat them, smiling, as if she did not understand the risks her father took to feed her.
“I will store it up in my heart,” she said, taking Tyndale’s hand. He drew her into a hug, kissing the top of her head.
“And keep me in there as well,” he whispered. “Always.”
“I’d like a taste of beer before I sleep.”
Mia was startled back to attention, refocusing her thoughts on her husband. She fetched a wooden mug and poured some of Stefan’s brew into it from a ceramic pitcher. She cocked her head to the side with a new thought. “How does Bastion interrogate the women? Surely no woman would confess to a crime if the punishment is burning.”
“Bastion knows what women hide in their hearts. And he knows every trick of the Devil. It is written that the Devil forbids some women to confess, even under the most severe torture, so that they will not admit the truth. Bastion must bring some to the very moment of death before they confess.”
“Could they not be innocent?”
“What do you know? You know nothing about witches or their foul sins. You’ve never read the Malleus Maleficarum.”
Her chin trembled.
Bjorn’s face softened. “Mia, we are near the very root of our troubles. Trust me. Bastion and I will clean this village. I will have peace, no matter what it takes.”
Mia kept her voice gentle. “I want you to have peace. But I would say, although I am but a woman and know very little, that peace is a gift of God. I thought gifts were freely given.”
“You do amuse me with your logic. If peace were freely given, as you say, I would be out of work tomorrow.”
Mia made no reply.
“I will sleep now, at last. Try not to wake me.”
Mia watched him stretch and prepare for bed.
Bjorn saw nothing in her except a dutiful, dull wife. Once that had seemed enough. It had seemed more than enough. But she had let another man kiss her. Was her heart infected with witchcraft, or was this her true nature? How could she harbor this sin in her heart, the same place she kept the sacred Word, the same place she kept the memories of her father and Tyndale? How could a good woman have such hunger?
Mia looked down, shielding her eyes with her hand. Bjorn had changed since their wedding day too. The once-friendly women of this village had changed, as had Rose. Everything had changed.
Please God, she prayed. Give me something to hold onto, one unchangeable thing.
“Answer me.” Stefan shook the bars of the cage, but the witch would not look at him. “How do you know her to be a witch? Just answer that.”
“Your midwife, Nelsa, she kills newborns and offers them to the Devil,” the caged woman said.
“What? Why do you say that?”
“Bastion says it.”
“How does he know? Where is his certainty?”
“You never asked me my name.” She turned her back to him, sitting there on her rear, wrapping her arms around her knees.
Stefan groaned. “What is your name?”