Storm Wolf (31 page)

As Alexei watched Sybilla sit on the stool, Zygmunt and Beatrycze carefully unbraiding her hair, Frau Berhta sat alone in her house on a chair before her own hearth. The last of that season’s chestnuts sat roasted in her lap, and she delightedly pulled each smoky nut from its shell with her gnarled fingers. Throwing the shards of shells into the fire, she crunched on the nuts and savored the sweet flesh of the fruit inside. Even though many people thought chestnuts were the food of poor people, Frau Berhta knew better. She knew that eating roasted chestnuts would encourage the abundance and wealth of her family to increase.

“That miserable girl, what was her name? Sybilla, I think?” Frau Berhta munched happily on the chestnuts, thinking of the increasing wealth she was bringing to herself and her family and the increasing prestige that wealth would bring. “She’ll soon learn that marriage and housekeeping are not everything she hopes and dreams about. Men? Husbands? Bah! She’ll learn soon enough that men’s efforts are never sufficient to bring in what she needs.” After all, hadn’t her family relied on her eating roasted chestnuts for all these years?

Her eating chestnuts and… she toyed with the pickled thumb of a sailor that she kept in her apron pocket. That pickled thumb had played its own important role in maintaining the position of her family. Not so much by attracting wealth or fame, but by helping to eradicate competition or enemies. It was never enough to simply attract wealth, she ruminated as she crunched on another chestnut. The removal of enemies and competitors was just as important.

Of course, she had not used the pickled sailor’s thumb to simply remove business competitors. She had also used her skill to remove those who thought too highly of themselves or who taunted her and needed to learn a lesson in proper humility towards their betters. “Like that girl, Sybilla. She should learn a lesson or two in humility and manners. Like that other man, her cousin, was it? He had been talking among the miners, encouraging them to demand higher wages and better conditions in the mine, hadn’t he?”

She recalled the night she had used not the sailor’s pickled thumb but the long strip of skin she had cut from the sailor as he died and then had tanned to preserve it. It was at least a palm’s-breadth wide, and she had cut it from around and around and around his torso, starting in his armpit and ending in his groin. Now she kept it, oiled and supple like fine expensive leather, in a special box of chestnut wood to protect it. Chestnut wood to promote strength and longevity, to achieve justice and success in her endeavors.

She had used the long strip of skin last autumn to remove that miner and his silly fiancée before their wedding. She knew everyone thought they had run off together, but she, Frau Berhta, knew the truth. She had used the belt of tanned skin to change the two of them into wolves and she had seen them run off together into the forest.

But now there was more talk among the miners. They were becoming disrespectful again and forgetting their place in the world. Just a few weeks ago, hadn’t they pelted her and her house with fruit as they made their way to their sad little Saturday night drunkenness in the tavern? Hadn’t they called her disrespectful names? And in Polish or Bohemian or whatever other godforsaken languages they spoke, refusing to use good and proper German! Maybe it was time to teach these miners another lesson.

She could use the pickled thumb in her apron pocket to do several different things to teach them. But, maybe… maybe it would be better to use the strip of the sailor’s skin again? It seemed a shame to let the skin sit unused in its chestnut wood box. After all, she had used the pickled thumb several times in the last few months to… well, to teach many of her family’s competitors a lesson or two. Those competitors lived far away, and she could not travel so easily now, not like when she was a younger woman. And her son had become stingy and she had needed to teach him a thing or two about honoring his parents, hadn’t she? Not as sternly as she had needed to teach his father about respect. But still… better to teach the boy while he was still young, before he needed as stern a lesson as her now-deceased husband had required.

The sailor’s thumb worked best to teach a lesson to those she could not reach directly. But these miners, here... just outside her own door, practically. She could use the length of sailor’s skin here with the miners.

“Isn’t that impertinent girl Sybilla to be wed tomorrow?” Frau Berhta asked herself, finishing the last of the chestnuts. She had heard the other maids in her house talking about the celebration in the tavern after the wedding service in that superstitious Roman Catholic church near the mine—when would these miners ever be sensible enough to ask the Lutheran pastor to perform their weddings instead of that ignorant priest? She brushed the flakes of chestnut shell from her lap. There would be no more chestnuts until next season. And after she used the sailor’s skin tomorrow, there would be no more insolent talk from the miners, either, for the next several seasons.

On Saturday afternoon, the men had come out of the mine as gritty and sooty as usual, but with an eagerness and anticipation unusual even in anticipation of a Saturday night of drinking and carousing. They’d lined up at the paymaster’s office to collect their wages and then hurried off to get ready for the wedding. Zygmunt invited Alexei to join him and Ctirad to wash and dress with Benedikt at his rooming house.

As they washed away the dirt and grime, splashing and laughing as they taunted Benedikt about his upcoming wedding night, Zygmunt explained a little of what Alexei would be doing in the Polish-style wedding of the Silesian miners, now that he had become an honorary member of their family.

“As both our parents have died, I am both Sybilla’s guardian and her brother, so I will be acting as if I were our father as well as attending to my new brother-in-law,” Zygmunt told him. “Beatrycze will be standing in as if she were our mother. But after we ride to the house to fetch Sybilla and Otylia and Renia, the wagon driver will take us all to the cemetery to greet our parents’ graves and ask their blessing. We will leave a platter of food on the graves so they can share in the wedding feast. Then we will all ride to the church for the wedding and then go to the tavern across the square for the wedding supper—with even more drinking than eating, I can promise you that!”

“That sounds like the weddings back home in Estonia.” Alexei laughed heartily.

“No doubt you had a similar practice of escorting the newlyweds to their bedroom—in the house where Benedikt and Sybilla will live as man and wife—and tucking them in for their first night together!” Zygmunt winked at Alexei. “We will all stand outside their window and serenade them, of course, in case they need any help to figure out what to do together for the first time!” All the men laughed, Benedikt blushing brightly.

“Back home on the farm, a wedding would go on for three days and nights of eating and drinking and celebrating,” Zygmunt finally went on. “But we must do tonight and tomorrow what would have been done over three days at home. There will be another wedding supper tomorrow afternoon, at our home, where everyone will gather to greet the newlyweds after their first night together. Then, at the conclusion of the supper tomorrow, Sybilla will be given her married-woman’s cap to wear for the first time, and that, as much as the ring on her finger, will mark her as one of the married women in town.”

Alexei nodded. “We have similar ways in Estonia.” He recalled the first time he saw his Grete wearing her cap.

“And then it will be just Beatrycze and I—and you, of course!—living in our parents’ house.” Zygmunt sounded wistful, almost like the father he would be standing in for at the wedding.

“But first, we celebrate!” Benedikt clapped Zygmunt on the back and the men hugged each other.

Freshly washed and dressed in their new garments for the wedding—borrowed finery had been found for Alexei in the past few days—the men emerged from the rooming house to find one of the mine’s supply wagons and an old wagon driver waiting for them in the street. The wagon was festooned with ribbons. A crowd of villagers—men, women, and children—were waiting for them, joking and singing. There were a half-dozen men with fiddles and an accordion, some of them warming up or practicing while some were already playing together with the singers. Benedikt climbed into the back of the wagon with Alexei and Ctirad while Zygmunt sat on the bench next to the wagon driver, who was also wearing his finest shirt and hat.

The wagon driver snapped the reins, adorned with bells for the occasion, and the horses pulled the wagon away down the street, followed by the villagers and musicians. Just as Zygmunt had told Alexei, the wagon made its way across town to the house of Zygmunt and his sisters. There was a crowd of people there as well, waiting for the groom to fetch his bride. Beatrycze, standing in the yard, went in to fetch Sybilla as the wagon pulled up outside the yard. Amid more music and joking, Sybilla climbed into the wagon next to Benedikt, followed by Otylia and Renia. Beatrycze climbed into the back of the wagon last of all, bringing a basket full of bread and pierogi and other samples of the food prepared for the wedding feast. The wagon driver snapped the reins again and the horses trotted off as the bells jingled merrily. Still followed by the crowds of villagers, the wagoner directed the horses out of the village a short distance until they pulled up at the cemetery gates.

Benedikt helped Sybilla climb down from the wagon. Together with Zygmunt and Beatrycze, they brought the basket of wedding foods to a pair of gravestones. Alexei could not hear what they said, but could see that Sybilla was addressing the stones, no doubt hoping that her parents could hear her, wherever they might be now. She set out the foods atop the two graves and then she briefly rested her hand atop each headstone, as did Zygmunt and Beatrycze. Benedikt seemed to be saying something to the headstones, probably making his own request for the parents’ blessing on his union with their daughter. Then all four came back to the wagon and climbed aboard. The wagoner managed to get the horses, reins a-jingling, to turn the wagon around and head back into the town.

Music and laughter and smiles filled the late afternoon until the wagon finally pulled up outside the church near the entrance to the mine. The shadows were growing longer as the sun was nearly set now. The doors of the church stood open, and the priest, surplice and stole stirring in the breeze, stood beside them as he waited for the bridal party to arrive. Alexei helped everyone climb down from the wagon and then stood aside as everyone—bridal party, villagers, and musicians—streamed into the little wooden church. Finally the wagoner snapped the reins for the last time and the horses set off towards their stable. Alexei, the last to enter, closed the church doors behind him.

Following the last “Amen!” of the service, the church doors burst open as the newlyweds and the bridal party emerged into the square, surrounded by cheering friends and guests. The crowd made their way into the tavern across the square. Alexei, helping Beatrycze to organize the children and youth of the village who would be serving the food to the guests, finally took the last seat available and found himself next to the door.

The newlyweds sat in the middle of the table furthest from the door. The bridal party sat on either side of them. The guests were singing and laughing, drinking mug after mug of beer. Even though the songs were all different from the ones he knew, Alexei couldn’t help but try to sing along.

Candles and lanterns adorned the tavern. Musicians played. Guests shouted toasts and well-wishes to the newlyweds from across the room between verses of songs. Platters of food appeared on the tables, brought from the kitchen by the younger folks. Beatrycze was still in the kitchen, overseeing the feast as her mother would have done if she had still been alive.

Without warning, the door beside Alexei creaked open. It hung there, showing the darkness of the evening outside, ignored by everyone but Alexei. Ignored until the unmistakable thump of Frau Berhta’s cane and the rough grating of her club foot dragging behind her made everyone turn and quietly stare as she made her way down the central aisle of the tables filling the tavern until she stood directly before the newlyweds.

“Long life to the newlyweds!” Frau Berhta toasted Sybilla and Benedikt, holding out an empty hand until someone thrust a mug of beer into her grasp. She lifted the mug towards the newlyweds and then sipped the frothy draught.

“Thank you, Frau Berhta,” Benedikt replied, raising his own mug towards her. “We had not thought you would care to join our celebration,” he went on hurriedly, “or we certainly would have included you.” He looked around anxiously. Someone stood and offered his seat to the old woman, but she shook her head.

“No, thank you… Benedikt,” she answered him. “I cannot stay this evening. My old bones do not permit me to join in such festivities as I would like. But I did want to toast you and your happy bride on the occasion of your wedding.” She raised her mug of beer and then touched it to her lips again.

“Long life to you as well, Frau Berhta.” Sybilla struggled to stand beside her new husband and raised her mug to toast the old woman in return. Alexei could sense Sybilla’s tension and suspicion. The whole room was full of it.

“I know we did not part as… friends,” Frau Berhta went on. “I did not wish to have such… animosity… between us. Every young woman should begin her new life as a good wife without such things in her background. Do you not agree?”

Sybilla clearly wanted to answer. She chewed her lower lip.