The Wandering Harlot (The Marie Series Book 1) Read online

  Fita folded her hands as if in prayer. “People who kill themselves don’t make it into heaven, and I don’t want to take away my hope of making it there. God knows how I’m suffering, and didn’t Jesus accept Maria Magdalene even though she was a whore?”

  While the women continued their animated conversation, one of the carriage drivers exited the inn and looked at them. Berta stood up and headed toward him, swinging her hips. The others watched as she exchanged a few words with the man and then disappeared with him into the bushes.

  Gerlind shook her head disapprovingly. “Berta makes it too easy and doesn’t mind violating all the rules. She’ll regret that someday.”

  Marie, who had been listening quietly, turned to her. “What rules?”

  Surprised at Marie’s ignorance, Gerlind raised her eyebrows. “The unwritten ones that make it easier for us to survive. In marketplaces, we’re all competitors, and it’s fine for Berta to approach any man there. But when we’re traveling together, we make sure any eager man takes the one of us who has had the hardest time recently. This time it was Fita’s turn.”

  “It’s to make sure each of us has enough money,” Hiltrud added. “Fights would break out if one or two women had to go hungry while the rest had enough to eat. If we get together in larger groups when we travel, we don’t have to beg merchants or other group leaders to let us join them. We’re pretty safe traveling about in groups of five.” It sounded like an order to the other three.

  Gerlind looked Marie up and down skeptically. “I wouldn’t have any worries about you, Hiltrud. But what about your companion? She’s not one of us.”

  “Marie is a poor child who was brutally raped and so badly injured, she will need a week or two to fully heal. As soon as she recovers, she’ll work just like us.”

  Marie shuddered at Hiltrud’s words. She would never do that, she thought. At the same time, her stomach cramped with fear that her father wouldn’t find her and she would have no choice but to end her life in the next river. The water would certainly treat her more mercifully than people.

  While Marie tried to come to terms with her fate, the other women discussed what to do next. Fita sided with Marie, seeing a kindred soul. Gerlind hesitated before finally giving a halfhearted promise.

  “Let’s wait and see what Berta has to say. Unless she has any objections, let’s stay together at least to the next market.”

  Marie seemed dubious. “Isn’t it dangerous if we travel without the protection of a group?”

  “With five of us, it’s worth a chance. After all, we’re not defenseless little rabbits.” Gerlind held up her walking stick, showing Marie the iron tip. “I can use this like a spear, Berta has a cleaver, and Fita carries a dagger under her skirt. We can certainly fight off pushy beggars or a few robbers.”

  “I told you, child, that courtesans are not helpless.” Hiltrud smiled, pulling an ax out of her belongings. “Is this good enough for you? After all, you’ve already cut wood with it.”

  Just then, Berta returned to the fire, looking breathless and disheveled. As she stepped into the light of the campfire and looked into her hand, she flew into a rage. “Such a son of a bitch! Bangs me like a mad rabbit and cheats me out of the promised amount.”

  “You should have had him give you the money first,” Gerlind replied dryly.

  “He did show me the money, but in the darkness I couldn’t see he was slipping me those cheap Hallers instead of the Regensburg pennies we’d agreed on.” Berta snorted angrily and held the coins out to Gerlind.

  “The first thing a prostitute has to learn,” Gerlind replied, “is to check the coins with her fingertips. You were just too greedy, and I think it serves you right. It was actually Fita’s turn.”

  Marie was silent and fought back her tears. Gerlind and Fita were very nice, but she dreaded having to travel with Berta, who perfectly matched a respectable citizen’s image of a wandering prostitute. She was dirty, mean, and clearly thought only of herself. Ironically, it would be up to her to decide whether Marie and Hiltrud could join the three others. Ulrich’s wagon train wasn’t headed toward a market, and Hiltrud was worried about their safety without a group.

  Gerlind looked at Hiltrud and smiled while poking the fire’s embers until the flame rose high enough to illuminate their faces. “Hiltrud just proposed that the five of us continue on together. In the next few days there will be a number of fairs down the Danube as far as Ulm where we can earn good money.”

  Marie admired Gerlind’s cleverness. She had brought up the proposal of traveling together without making Hiltrud look like she was pleading for it. Thinking it over, Berta put a few more branches on the fire. “I thought we were heading toward the Rhine. Hiltrud and Marie can come that far with us.”

  Gerlind sighed with relief, and Marie could see she was happy to have settled the matter without an argument. She looked at Hiltrud innocently, as if she had no ulterior motives. “What do you think of Berta’s suggestion?”

  “It’s perfect! You can always make money in the harbors along the Rhine.” Since Hiltrud had never really planned to travel along the Danube, she eagerly agreed.

  “Very well, let’s stay together.” Berta nodded as if she had just gotten her way with the whole group, then stretched out her arms, yawning loudly. “I’m dog tired. Let’s go to bed.”

  Fita looked around anxiously. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea for one of us to stand guard? The men over there sound drunk, and frankly, I’m afraid of them.”

  Hiltrud nodded. “I agree. I wouldn’t put it past those fellows to play a dirty trick on us.”

  “Marie, you’re first,” Gerlind announced, assuming the role of group leader. “She’ll wake up Fita. Then it will be Berta, then me. Hiltrud can take the morning watch.”

  None of the women objected. Marie took the stick that Gerlind held out to her to defend herself if necessary. Since the weather was good, none of them had pitched their tents. Instead, the other four wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down close together by the campfire in a place offering a good view of the inn’s front door.

  From time to time Marie stoked the fire with pieces of the half-rotted tree trunk that she and Fita had found in the nearby forest just before dark. For once she tried not to think about her dreadful experience in Constance. The memories were always lurking just below the surface, ready to burst forth and torment her. To take her mind off them, she looked at the sleeping women who would now be her traveling companions.

  She already knew what she thought of Berta—she didn’t trust her. The woman was only looking out for herself and seemed to actually enjoy being a wandering harlot. Fita, on the other hand, viewed her life as a sort of worldly purgatory, hoping that her suffering would earn her eternal salvation. According to Berta’s snide remarks, the young woman contributed most of her earnings to the offertory boxes in the few churches open to them on market days. Since Fita wasn’t a very shrewd prostitute and attracted fewer customers than the others, she often had to go hungry or accept customers who paid her with only a bag of flour or stale bread. Marie wondered if Fita welcomed these deprivations as a way to hasten an early death.

  Gerlind was hard to classify. She was witty and had a dark sense of humor, but at the same time, she treated others coolly. Well over forty, she seemed still to have life in her, perhaps because she earned her living less from prostitution than from the elixirs and ointments she prepared from the various plants that she gathered. Indeed, other prostitutes paid her a small fortune for her medicine against unwanted pregnancies, since fat bellies drove away customers, weakened women physically, and burdened them with more cares if the children survived.

  Fita suddenly became restless. She lifted her head, looked up at the stars, and threw off her blanket. “Go to bed, Marie. I’ll take over the watch, as I can’t sleep anyway.”

  Marie threw another stick on the fire in o
rder to get a better look at Fita. “Surely not even half an hour has passed yet.”

  “More like a whole hour.” Fita spread a handful of leaves on the fire and watched as the flames licked their way through them. Smiling sadly in the flickering red light, she seemed resigned, as if even purgatory would be a welcome relief from her current fate.

  Marie pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders, as a cool wind had come up. “I can’t sleep, either. Perhaps we can talk a little to pass the time.”

  Fita demurred at first, but then let her hand drop and nodded. Marie moved closer to her and stared into the flames. After a while, Fita patted Marie on the hand.

  “They ran you out of town in a penitent’s robe as well, didn’t they?”

  Marie nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know how it came to that. The evening before, I had gone to bed with the certainty of appearing before the altar as a bride the following morning, but that night I was dragged to a dungeon and robbed of my virginity. The next day, I was condemned as a whore, whipped, and chased out of my hometown. It was . . . No, it still is a nightmare without an end.”

  “A nightmare . . . That’s how it seems to me as well, even though I must say, in my case it wasn’t quite so unexpected.”

  In contrast to Marie, Fita’s soft voice seemed to harbor no feelings of hatred. “There was nothing I could do about it. The master was so much stronger than I, and he took advantage of me as if he had every right to. Perhaps he did, because when I complained at home, my parents scolded me and told me not to be so prissy. The master’s wife was harsh with me, but she let her husband do what he wanted.”

  Fita sighed, relaying how her mistress had taken her to court. “I suffered the full force of her anger and jealousy when I became pregnant. She must have hated me for the full belly her husband gave me while she was running to church every day, begging the Mother of God for a child that never came. But how was that my fault? The court condemned me for immorality and ordered the bailiff to be strict with me.”

  Fita stared at her intently. “Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “First they branded me with an iron, then beat me with no consideration for my pregnancy, and that’s how I lost the child. All I could see was that it was a boy. The priest overseeing my beating said the child would go to hell anyway, so my baby was buried without being baptized. But I’m sure God took my little fellow into heaven, for he was the most innocent of us all.”

  Rocking his imaginary form in her arms, Fita continued to speak of the boy as if she were watching him frolic through heavenly fields. Marie realized that she lived only to atone for her unbaptized child and prepare her own way into the heavenly kingdom.

  As Marie listened to Fita’s life story, she envied her piety. Fita still believed in God’s goodness and found consolation in prayer. But what would she herself have if her father didn’t find her soon? She had lost her faith, even as she continued calling upon the Virgin Mary, begging her to send an angel to guide her father to her and release her from shame. But her prayers were empty words that gave her no hope.

  Marie realized that miracles no longer happened in this world. She had heard many people say that all misfortune had been caused by the three men who had each declared themselves pope, fighting over which of them was Christ’s true vicar on earth. This was a time of the devil and his demons, turning men into animals and making them violate all the commandments of God. Until just a short time ago, Marie hadn’t taken an interest in this talk, but she was now convinced that people were right.

  Suddenly Marie recoiled from these thoughts. She couldn’t continue down this path. But she didn’t want to end up like Fita, nor did she want to take her own life voluntarily. She knew that it wasn’t easy for her father to follow her path, as she had already traveled a great distance and he couldn’t know she had fallen in with a group of wandering harlots. In her heart, however, she firmly believed that her father would save her in time.

  VII.

  They spent the next day on the road and reached another inn shortly before nightfall. A simple fence surrounded the large front yard, and inside it many freight coaches stood around. The wagon drivers had already secured their loads and were sitting, relaxing in a circle.

  Since the front part of the inn was not surrounded by a wall, there was no fortified gate and no servants to keep undesirables away, so Berta had been able to run ahead and easily approach the men. As her traveling companions came nearer, they saw that she was already shaking off the straw clinging to her from her roll in the hay with her first customer, and she came forward to meet them, waving cheerfully.

  “We can earn good money here. There are two large wagon trains, one from Constance and one from Stuttgart.”

  “From Constance, you say?” Marie asked in a trembling voice. Without waiting for Berta’s reply, she hurried over and looked around, seeing a wagon bearing the sign of a business she knew from home. Scrutinizing all the men sitting at tables relaxing and drinking their wine out of simple wooden cups, she hoped to see a familiar face. Perhaps she could learn something here about her father—or possibly, he might even be here himself. She soon spotted a man who seemed familiar even though he was sitting with his back toward her. For a moment she hesitated, but when he turned around to answer another guest’s question, she was shocked and ducked back into the shadow of a freight wagon. She looked out again more carefully and realized she hadn’t been mistaken. It was Utz Käffli.

  Marie wrapped her arms around herself and doubled up with the pain that suddenly shot through her abdomen. The sight of the filthy man in his shabby coachman’s uniform terrified her, and though she felt like running away, she stayed in the hope of learning something about her father.

  Since Berta, Gerlind, and Fita had attracted the attention of the wagon drivers, nobody paid her any mind, not even Hiltrud, who had quickly tied her goats to the fence and also joined the men. So as not to be noticed, Marie stepped behind one of the shelters open on three sides where draft oxen and servants spent the night. Darkness was falling fast, concealing Marie from the gazes of others while she herself could see what was going on in the firelight.

  She watched as Hiltrud came to terms with a well-dressed, middle-aged man and followed him under the canvas of a freight wagon. Fita was dragged off into the darkness by a heavily built man, and another coachman tried to grab Berta, but Utz got there before him and pulled the plump woman to him with a triumphant grin. Soon Gerlind had also found a customer and disappeared with him behind one of the large wagon wheels while the other drivers jealously looked on.

  Visibly satisfied, Utz returned to his seat. Marie crawled back to the freight wagon and hid behind a wheel. She had to know what happened in Constance after she left, but under no condition did she want this devil to see her. The presence of the man who had slandered her and raped her prevented her from trusting anyone here, since he would turn anything she said against her and just add to her misery. Thus she had to be satisfied with what she was able to overhear.

  Unfortunately, the wagon drivers only talked about everyday concerns and news they had picked up along the way. Their conversation soon turned to politics, and they discussed each of the three popes’ having excommunicated the other two, sending their supporters with armies of mercenaries to fight and weaken their opponents, with no consideration for their believers who were thus embroiled in hopeless confusion.

  Marie cared little about this matter and was afraid she wouldn’t learn anything about her father. Just as she was about to leave and search for a half-safe place to sleep for the night, the well-to-do man who had been with Hiltrud returned, sat down with the Constance wagon drivers, and drank with them to the success of their trip. Judging by his clothing, Marie thought him a merchant who owned some of the goods in the caravan coming from Stuttgart and hoped he would change the topic of conversation. Indeed, he soon turned to Utz, who was
the leader of the other wagon train.

  “You’re coming straight from Constance, so you must know the merchant Matthis Schärer, don’t you?”

  Utz grumbled something incomprehensible into his unkempt beard and nodded grudgingly.

  The merchant didn’t seem to notice Utz’s deprecatory manner, as he smiled with relief. “Matthis Schärer ordered several wagonloads of Flemish cloth from me and was going to send me a partial down payment. I’ve tried to contact him twice but haven’t received an answer. Can you tell me . . .”

  “You can’t depend on that man anymore, sir,” one of the other servants interjected. “Master Matthis’s business closed after his only daughter was driven from town because of wanton behavior and other misdeeds. Schärer took it so hard that he sold his entire business and left the city. Some say he has crossed Lake Constance to join a group of pilgrims on the way to Rome or even to the Holy Land.”

  Another driver demurred with a contemptuous wave of his hand. “What nonsense! That’s just a story that well-meaning people have been spreading. As far as I know, Schärer threw himself in the lake and drowned the very day his daughter was convicted.”

  An elderly wagon driver shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know what to make of all the gossip. Some say as well that Schärer sold everything he had to his almost-son-in-law and set out to find his daughter.”

  Marie was about to breathe a sigh of relief when she heard those words, but a traveler accompanying the wagon train from Constance who was, judging by his dress, a scholar from Lucerne, shook his head reluctantly. “That’s not possible. I was involved in a legal matter a few months ago with Counselor Rupert Splendidus and his father, Count Heinrich. Rupert was as poor as a church mouse and couldn’t even afford a decent counselor’s robe. How could he have bought the property of a rich Constance citizen?” His voice sounded spiteful.

  The older driver contradicted him vehemently. “You certainly got that wrong. The counselor now lives in Master Matthis’s house and is always very well dressed. Hey, Utz, speak up! Weren’t you there when the affair with the Schärer girl happened and Master Matthis disappeared?”