The second corpse was found three days later. It was discovered by Martin, a simple fellow who went at dawn to the underwood to chop firewood. In this part of Temeria even summer nights could be cold, and firewood was always needed for cooking. He chose a familiar place — on the edge of a rye field where young birch mixed with alder. The saplings grew straight here, not thick, just right for kindling. But that morning Martin did not find firewood.
Old woman Nastasya lay on her back among the thickets of moon mint — the very herb Agnieszka gathered at night. The old woman's arms were spread to the sides as if she were trying to embrace the whole world, and from her eye sockets and mouth stuck white little roots — thin as a baby's hair. Her skin had shriveled and darkened like Kazik's, but there was something especially ghastly in this dead body. The old woman had always been stout, full-bodied, and now only a dried frame remained, stretched over with colorless skin. As if someone had sucked all the life out of her, leaving only an empty shell.
Martin ran to the village, stumbling and glancing over his shoulder as if the dead crone might get up and chase him. He began shouting already as he neared the houses, waving his arms and choking on his words. Soon a crowd gathered around him — sleepy, disheveled people who could scarcely grasp what had happened. But when they did understand — they gasped all at once.
They went for the body in a small group. They asked Jaromir to help — he had strong, hunter's hands, and it wasn't the first time he'd had to deal with a corpse. They took a stretcher woven from willow withes and covered the dead body with coarse linen. Nastasya had been heavy in life, but now she weighed no more than a sack of straw — it was strange and eerie. Jaromir bore the stretcher at one end, Miron the cobbler at the other, and the rest followed, lamenting.
While they were laying the corpse on the stretcher, Jaromir looked it over properly. The sight was not for the faint of heart — the roots sprouted not only from the face but from the ears and from under the fingernails, wrapping the fingers in white threads. The old woman's dress had rotted as if she had lain in the ground not hours but years. But worst of all was the smell. Not of rot, as should come from a dead body, but a pungent odor of mouldering herbs mixed with something metallic and cold.
The men walked and murmured under their breath — that this was no accident, not by chance had old woman Nastasya died in the very herbs that Agnieszka collected. Only yesterday the crone had raged in the tavern, swearing by all the saints that the witch's whelp must be driven from the village, and today she lay dead in moon mint. Clearly — the orphan had avenged herself on her offender, had hexed her or slipped some potion.
Jaromir was silent, but he had his own thoughts. Nastasya was a practical old woman — sharp-tongued, yes, mean, but no fool. Most likely, despite her show of anger, she had believed Agnieszka's words about the healing herbs. She had decided to gather moon mint herself at night — her old ailments gave her no peace, she had suffered with her belly for the last few years, and her appetite had gone. Age was taking its toll, and then the girl had spoken of herbs that were easier to find by moonlight. So she went, secretly from everyone, so that later she wouldn't have to admit she'd followed a witch's advice.
What happened to her after that — Jaromir did not know. But he understood: this was no ordinary death. Not illness, not an accident, not old age. This was something else — magic, a curse, the vengeance of the dead, or the wrath of the gods. A chill ran down his spine at the thought. You could fight bandits, you could treat illness with herbs and prayers — but how do you deal with sorcery? No one in the village had faced such a thing. Even old Tadeusz, who remembered the temple rites, only muttered quiet prayers to the Great Mother.
As he carried the stretcher, Jaromir thought the same as the other men, though he did not say it aloud: where there is a second corpse, there will be a third. He would have staked every coin on it. Something had come to their village, something evil and hungry, and it did not intend to leave on its own.
On a small patch of waste ground by the cemetery they set the stretcher on the earth, and the entire village immediately gathered around the dead body. The women came running, the men drew up, even the children rushed out to look. The dead woman's sister, old woman Zofya, howled like a she-wolf when she saw the body. She thrashed on the ground, tore at her hair, and babbled something incoherent — either prayers or curses. Old Tadeusz tried to calm her, stroking her head with a dry hand, whispering words of comfort, but it did little good. Grief is grief, and no words will quiet it.
Miron the cobbler, who had helped carry the body, could not restrain himself and blurted out exactly where the deceased had been found. He told of the moon mint, of how the old woman had been lying right in the thickets of the very herbs Agnieszka collected. The crowd immediately began to buzz, like a disturbed beehive. All at once they remembered the orphan, her nighttime wanderings, her strange salves and remedies. Someone shouted that the witch must be found at once and forced to lift the curse; someone else demanded she be burned at the stake without waiting for a third victim.
A murmuring of disagreement arose. Some, fists clenched, urged they go to the elder, insisting the orphan's spells had already put down roots in the village. Others, however, hesitated, glancing at each other and whispering: could frail Agnieszka really be capable of such evil? There were others still who maintained that Stanislav, with his heavy hand, would give her no quarter. The discord hung in the air until one of the men, unable to stand it, went off to the elder with the alarming news.
Stanislav came out to the people unhurriedly, smoothed his beard, and said loudly:
— For prevention I'll give the girl a whipping, and then make her scrub the privy till it shines. I'll smother her with work so there'll be no time left for witchcraft, even if it was in her head!
The men nodded, some with a smirk — as if to say, that's right, that's how to handle women's heresy. And those who had wavered fell silent — not from conviction, but because no one wanted to argue with the elder. His words, harsh and unyielding, calmed the crowd, and the tension in the village slackened a little.
Stanislav lodged Agnieszka in the byre, together with the other servants — the cook Jadwiga and the groom Jan. In the village the girl was seen only in the mornings when she went to the well for water, and in the evenings when she went down to the river to wash the masters' laundry. People shied away from her as if from a plague-stricken, clutched their religious amulets, and turned aside. But Agnieszka seemed only glad of such treatment. Resentment toward the villagers showed in her every movement — in her proudly lifted head, in her straight back, in the way she looked through people as if they did not exist at all.
The girl clearly had not forgiven the village for what happened at her father's wake. She had not forgiven how quickly the people believed the slanders, how easily they agreed to hand her over into slavery to the elder. And now, when death had come to Rechitsy again, when the villagers looked around themselves in fear, something like grim satisfaction could be read in the orphan's eyes.
The only one who did not avoid Agnieszka was Katara. Jaromir's wife clearly had not forgiven her husband for keeping silent that time in the tavern when the crowd wanted to drive the girl from the village. And now, to spite everyone and even Jaromir himself, she talked with the orphan, helped her wash the laundry by the river, asked how things were, whether she had enough to eat. Agnieszka answered in monosyllables, but it was plain that human concern was not indifferent to her.
Jaromir tried to persuade his wife to keep away from the girl. Not because he feared the villagers' side glances — he didn't give a damn about the opinions of those cowards and chatterers. He simply understood that there are forces in the world that ordinary mortals do not understand and ought not to, or they'll lose their wits. He himself had used her remedies a couple of times — once when bad meat had twisted him up, another time to quiet his brother's night pains. But still he was not sure that she had taken her knowledge only from her father's book. It seemed strange to him that someone could practice medicine without studying at the temple of Melitele or somewhere in the capital with learned people. Where did a village girl get such knowledge? And was it somehow connected with the deaths?
But Katara only waved off his warnings. She said she had a conscience, and if everyone turned away from the orphan, at least she would not. That the girl had suffered enough, and now everyone looked at her as if she were a leper. And that if her husband was a coward who was afraid to stand up for the truth, then she herself would do what she thought right.
Jaromir's younger brother advised him to give his wife a good thrashing, or she'd grow completely insolent, defying her husband's will. However, Jaromir had never raised a hand to his spouse and wasn't about to start. Instead he told Katara sternly to stop associating so openly with the orphan — people might think his wife was in league with the girl, and then trouble would be unavoidable. Katara curled her lips but held her tongue.
Agnieszka did not come to old woman Nastasya's funeral, so it was calmer in the communal house than the first time. But they talked a lot, and drank even more. Smoke from pine-splinter torches pooled under the rafters in thick coils, mingling with the reek of ale, sweat, and fear. The men sat in a circle at the big table, heads propped in their hands, and their voices now sank to whispers, now broke into shouts. The women huddled in the corners, sometimes sobbing and wiping their tears with the ends of their kerchiefs. Mostly people were guessing what sort of calamity had fallen upon them and what to do about it. And whether anything at all could be done against such an evil that turned the living into the dead, killing horribly and unnaturally.
"We must pray," old Tadeusz muttered, shaking his gray head. "Pray to Melitele to show her mercy."
"And what good are prayers?" blacksmith Boris objected. "If trouble came on its own, then we must drive it out ourselves. Let's comb all the fields and forests; maybe we'll find the lair of this evil."
"And what will we do then?" sneered Miron the cobbler. "Have you seen what those corpses look like? Do you think a sword or an axe can overcome such evil?"
One of the men dared to suggest that the miller and the old woman had been chosen not for nothing — that evidently they had somehow earned such a death. But he was quickly shushed — it is not customary to speak ill of the dead. And dangerous, too: who knows, the spirits might hear and take offense.
In the end, thoughts returned to Agnieszka. In the absence of other ideas, people clutched desperately at the only supposition — after all, whom else to blame? On whom else to pour out their fear?
"I keep thinking," said the peasant Yakub, stroking his beard, "wasn't it she who conjured all this? First her father, then the old woman..."
"Of course it was her!" old woman Zofya chimed in. "Who else? We've no other witches in our village."
Stanislav sat at the head of the table, sprawled on the bench, generously pouring ale for all comers. Coins jingled in his pocket each time he waved for another bottle to be brought up from his cellar or for smoked meats and salt pork to be served. For such a table the men forgave much — both his high-handed tone and the liberties he allowed himself with their wives. Stanislav's hands kept ending up on women's shoulders, backs, and lower still. The women only grew gloomier, and the husbands pretended not to notice. For drink and a piece of meat from the master's stores the local men were ready to close their eyes to a great deal. Jaromir looked at it and turned away — the sight was too repulsive to him.
He was more surprised that Stanislav had not tried to lay hands on the house and land of the dead old woman. Most likely what held him back was that the hut was utterly decrepit, about to collapse. And the deceased's sister, Zofya, lived in it, though she was at death's door — well into her nineties. Then the land could be gotten without extra trouble.
Near the end of the meal Maciej, the elder's son, appeared in the house. He looked as if he had just come from a fight — shirt unbuttoned, hair disheveled, three thin red scratches on his cheek as if someone had run sharp fingernails along his skin. He was breathing hard, his eyes shone feverishly. The lad quickly crossed the room, approached his father, and began speaking hurriedly, bent to his ear. Stanislav silenced him with a gesture.
"Let's step aside," the elder grunted, rising from the bench.
They withdrew to the far corner, where the father listened to the son attentively. Maciej spoke quickly, waving his hands, touching the scratches on his cheek every so often. The men at the table fell quiet, trying to overhear, but could make out no words — only the tone, angry and agitated.
When the conversation ended, Stanislav returned to the table and announced loudly: "Seems Agnieszka truly turned out to be the devil's daughter! She fled my house toward evening, when the servants were being called to prayer. And she gathered her things, as if she'd planned the escape beforehand."
"And my son," Stanislav went on, nodding at Maciej, "tried to stop her, spoke kindly. But the girl went wild, nearly clawed his face to ribbons! So the villagers were right — an innocent wouldn't run out of the village."
An approving buzz rose at once. The men agreed as one that the orphan must be found and executed before she cursed anyone else.
"Find her!" someone shouted. "And burn her at the stake!"
"We must search the bogs!" another picked up. "She's there, gone to her unclean kind!"
Jaromir did not take part in the talk. He silently finished his ale and headed for the exit, feeling a weight settle on his shoulders. He understood where it was all going, and that by running away Agnieszka had signed her own death sentence. They would hunt her like a beast, and if they found her — they would not leave her alive.
But the look with which the elder's son had regarded the girl on the day her father was buried would not let the hunter rest. And there was something off in Maciej's story — he tried too hard to lay all the blame on the girl. And another strange thing: if the girl had merely been trying to flee, why was the boy's shirt unbuttoned?