Eleanor Junius is old and very wise. She has acquired more land than anyone else in our farmlands or from the village of Wurzburg and Flocksburg nearby. She is wise in that she has raised fifteen head of cattle, and four flocks of sheep. Her husband, Michael left her ten acres of good farmland. She now has fifteen acres. No one knows that the devil helped her. Now no one will believe me, but my mind will be vexed by the devil, telling me of her. He shows me her likeness- in my mind, and that I must sit in cold water until they have left me.
When she would offer us her services- taking care of our young son one day- letting him take two of her hens back (ours had died- both in one day) we refused. Our son Johann had been sent home with six of her hen’s eggs. He was only ten years old. His hands swelled that night after eating two of those eggs for dinner- soft, hardly cooked at all. But that’s the way he will eat them. He was so hungry from the walk back, from helping to plant herbs- mint in her garden. The remaining four eggs we chose to save, and mix with milk. We threw them in the fire and prayed instead. They had been cursed by her- made into poison.
Johann grew feverish and vomited. We think he would have died had we not sat by him and prayed, putting a cold towel on his forehead for three days- four times a day. My mother told us what to do. If we had accepted her cursed hens, what would have -happened? We would have died, and our goat and what little food we have would have spoilt. One of the hens she’d wanted us to have, died the day our son recovered.
She was very angry when we didn’t accept the hens, telling us never to set foot on her property again. And that she had prayed for our boy to get well. But did she pray that his sickness go back to the hen? The devil’s poisonous spirit she had welcomed? She always asked for our boy to help her- to help her with small chores- with her herbs. Why ask for the boy to help, and not one of us? She could not bewitch us, not like our good boy- ten years old. We knew that she’d been first called a witch twenty-years ago.
She only says that she liked our boy’s company- that she had been barren, without child all her life. Her and the husband had tried, and now at her age it was impossible to even consider- too old to have and too old to manage a baby. Her womb was poisonous, like the hens- giving birth to poisonous eggs.
Her husband Michael died quick- of consumption- a sickness that with anyone else has taken a long time, of long suffering. Not with her husband. The witch’s doing, and with him this one small mercy.
Our pastor, the pastor Reverend Bock of Wurzburg (fictional village nearby Rothenburg) told the city councilors: “there is nothing to report on this woman. She has long been accused, but there is nothing in her manner that is improper. She bodes no ill will.” “She goes to church and wants harmony with her neighbors and hired workers on her property.”
Widowed and without a need for children. She wants our boy to do her bidding. This is the true intention. Did she marry to blind us to the fact that she is a witch? Did she care that we know her to be too mean to be loved, to have ever been able to bear a child? Her husband we would have tried as being in league with her had he lived. He brought her land and cattle- power too- greater than a woman’s place in our village should have.
Why should she have more than the god-fearing? That are raising children? We are younger, my husband Wilhelm at twenty-seven and I at twenty-four. Before her trial, a witness had to work for her….and like the rest of us showed her the respect shown toward an elder. Now that the trial councilors have declared her innocent, we are to be blamed for the “cause of malicious rumors.” Yet our cows have died within the following weeks when she was present, by our farmland.
Our land as well, is whittling away- “squandered by our own doing” according to the court- not by her curses. She told the court my husband was too foolish to manage a plough. She had worked hard to learn how to plough skillfully, that she had to show farmhands even. She said my husband was lazy and so we got what we deserved. That she’d offered to show us how to better govern our property. But a witness, a Franck Gurst that had bought a cow from her said it would only answer to her call. He agreed it must have been under her spells. After being told this, we refused her so-called instruction. She told the court that the steer she’d raised from birth, so it answered to the sound of her voice.
Her workers have come and gone from her employment quickly. They don’t want to be considered in league with her and be considered of the devil. They too insisted that she must be a witch. Her land has always prospered, they’ve said, and it is mysterious- since surrounding properties have done poorly. And ours is the closest, and look at our misfortune.
There are many others as witnesses in her trial. Robin Günter who was struck lame when he refused her affections, he was a herdsman, and now he is a tinkerer. He begged her to remove the curse, but she said he was mad. She said she did not know what he was talking about. What would he have expected? Another man, by his first name only- Huzzle, he is slow, but a hard worker. He would help her with the plough. He had horrible dreams that would leave him screaming. His sister had died as a baby, and he saw her in his dream, dead and floating above the head of old Eleanor. She would be walking on the property, in the fields with an overcast sky- the dead child floating above her head. Wherever she would go, so would the dead child- floating like that. A strange man, but a good one. He quit work for Eleanor after five weeks. Where he is now, we don’t know. He has not been found for the trial.
When she was on trial, they put thumb screws on her. We could not know of this until the trial, it is done in secret, with the clergy present. She would laugh when this was mentioned. This is not a proof? Such strange behavior from a woman that has managed her property as well as she. A madwoman is what we have seen, and of a bewitched and evil nature, a worker of magic then- to be crazed and still able to have what she has. Laughing at her torturers- with her thumbs in heavy bandages. They came off of one hand and her thumb was a solid black, as ripe in rot as a diseased plumb. She laughed. She would not eat or sleep. Only a cold sweat on her forehead. Six days later it was reported, that her thumbs were healing- so quickly! And her sweats had left her. So had her strange laughter- back to how we have always known her- as a mask of kindness, but ruthless- evil.
The councilors told us that we- Alma and Wilhelm Sholdt were the main ones that had caused “great rumors to circulate, to put fear and fancy stories in the public- of a woman that means only good.” Still, they did say that she was difficult at times- moody and suffering from a general melancholia, but not uncommon among the old. The councilors saw us as envious, as schemers to get her land if she were put to death. That we had organized the witnesses to come forth and bring her to trial. That another opportunity might not be this good. They don’t understand. After so long it was due time. We had been next to her magic land for too long. Who would want a land filled with wickedness- so fertile or not?
The councilors went to the university- to talk with the legal men at Tubingen University. The jurists from Tubingen were angered by the case, especially by what we had testified. Both Robin Günter and Franck Ghurst are dead. They had moved elsewhere only months before the trials began. We had to recall what they’d told us. A book called The Carolina instructed them- the imperial legal code. It said that our recollections were not of measurable evidence. Huzzle was not considered reliable- since he is slow witted, and could not speak for himself. My husband was not considered credible. He had cheated a Hans Grupt out of a colt for a cow sick with a palsy, and had paid a large fine. But this was twelve years ago. Our evidence was said to be “null and void.” Everything else we had said, or other charges that were made by other townspeople were found to have possible natural explanations- not of an evil nature at all. Even the letter we have of Huzzle’s. It is not enough, and the Tubingen jurists have declared it a document of questionable authenticity. There is no other document owned by anyone else in the town of Huzzle’s to compare his letter to. And the other witnesses- they were willing to speak at first, but would not now. So the councilors let Eleanor go back to her property. These damned Tubingen jurists. We are leaving- afraid now of her wrath and of the townspeople’s lack of faith in us. Our property we will sell as quickly as we can, surely at a great loss.
