I was born Karl Bauer in the year of our Lord 1606. I was not given a middle name to distinguish me from my extended family as I had none. My father was a linen weaver from Bielefeld. I never knew my mother. My father told me that she died from an illness shortly after I was born, but I never heard any other accounts that verified the accuracy of this claim. He was probably telling the truth, after all many mothers die during or soon after childbirth, but it was also possible that she’d run off and left my father to raise me alone. It would be just like him to keep that from me. He could be very protective, but also very selfish.

He was also a very good father, and made certain that I watched him working the loom from the moment I was old enough to understand how it worked. It was his hope that I would pick up his trade and his techniques, and that was not surprising as our linen had developed something of a reputation. Not just us, the Bauers – though that was true enough. Bielefeld, our home town, was known for its linen, and every week my father would take all of his linen to the local marketplace and sell it to traders who would take it all across France, Germany, the Netherlands, England… All across Europe. And, in exchange, the traders would bring money from these places and give some of it to my father, and he’d use it to pay for food and ale. Sometimes he’d make a particularly good sale and we’d indulge in meat or butter. On rare occasions he’d buy himself something foul-smelling to wedge between his teeth, but that was a passing indulgence. I helped when I could, but for most of the time that I lived with my father I was too young and restless to truly be of assistance. We possessed only the one loom and it was a one man job.

Eventually, when I was twelve, John Sigismund of Brandenburg made a rare appearance in our town. He was the ruler of the County of Ravensberg, in which Bielefeld was located. My father told me, rather sternly, to stay home. As my father was both responsible and dutiful I was usually an obedient child, so I remained indoors and occupied myself with my imagination. There wasn’t much for a child to do in the Bauer household barring weaving linen, and that was more of a chore than entertainment.

My father returned home hours later with a weary look upon his face. It was similar to the expression he bore after a particularly difficult day at the marketplace, but this time I sensed that something more dire weighed on his mind. I didn’t know to ask him what was wrong, and instead I tried to cheer him up, as he would have done for me had I been saddened by some childish thought or event. I went into the downstairs cupboard and withdrew his pipe and carried it to the living room, where he was seated upon an aged wooden chair. I offered the pipe to him.

He shook his head and smiled sadly at me, ‘thank you, son,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘Did John Sigismund do something to upset you?’ I asked him.

‘Yes,’ my father responded after a moment of hesitation, before taking another. His beard seemed to have more grey hairs than usual. ‘You’re getting old enough to understand what’s happening, and it might affect you soon. Perhaps very soon.’

That remark made me feel as if a great adult secret were to be imparted upon me imminently, and I beamed at being entrusted with such a confidence. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, with all the eager innocence of a child.

‘Have I ever told you what witches are?’

I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘They’re bad people, they work for the Devil.’ I’d shrugged my shoulders because I wasn’t sure if my father had told me that or if I’d picked it up from one of the other boys around town, and I didn’t want my father to know what they talked about.

‘That’s true, Karl,’ he said to me, sighing. ‘Your Aunt Katherine has been accused of being a witch.’

I furrowed my brow in confusion. Aunt Katherine, my father’s sister, was the only family I had outside of the house in which she lived. She was older than my father and had never married, yet she’d never been anything but kind to me. ‘But she’s not a witch.’

‘I know that Karl, but not everyone agrees. John Sigismund has ordered that she be tried for witchcraft,’ he told me. Despite his earlier refusal of the pipe that I had offered him, he now took it from my hands. I helped him light it and the leaves contained within began to smoulder.

‘She’s innocent,’ I said, with far too much faith in what passed for a legal system in those times. Back then I was so naïve, but there was something beautiful about that naiveté. While it lasted.

‘I hope that’s what they find,’ my father said, puffing at his pipe. ‘Either way, there’ll be trouble here for the next few weeks. I want you to be careful.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You be careful too.’

He smiled, and that was when I realised how serious matters had already become because his smile was unusually tempered with solemn dejection. I noticed that he stole a glance at the locked chest that we kept in the back corner of the room. I didn’t know what was inside it. ‘If there is trouble, I’ll have to help your aunt,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll help too.’

‘No!’ he exclaimed with a surge of vigor. He leaned forward in his chair and pulled the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Karl, as a man I must help my family, even if the cost is my life. You are a child, you have no such obligations. If I die, you must avenge me, but it is not your obligation to defend me or my sister for some years yet. If you live on then the Bauer name also lives on.’

‘Okay, okay!’ His intensity was scaring me and I wanted it to stop. Thankfully, he then reclined in his chair and puffed at his pipe once more.

‘Tomorrow, we will go to Church and pray for your Aunt,’ he said and I nodded. I liked going to Church, it made me feel like I was a part of something. I think that was why my father clung so strongly to Catholicism, even though much of the rest of Bielefeld was Lutheran. With his extended family dead or non-existent, he relished being a component within a larger institution.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

My father didn’t touch the loom for the rest of that day. He gathered a book and we sat down at the table where he taught me to read. I’d been learning my letters for a few years but I hadn’t made much progress. I could read simple words, but it took a long time for me to process longer words and phrases, and as we only had three books my exposure to the wider German language was limited. If my father had persisted in teaching me more regularly then perhaps I would have been perfectly literate, but I don’t think he considered it to be an important skill. Certainly, there was no reading or writing involved in weaving linen or bartering with traders. I think he taught me out a sense of fatherly duty, as if he thought that teaching one’s son to read and write was something that a good father should do.

Our lesson concluded when the sunlight faded. We lit candles, but there was little else to do at that time of night. Usually, my father would have taken me out while he drank with his friends, but he wasn’t in the mood. I retired to bed well before my father, who presumably was kept awake by his thoughts of Aunt Katherine as when I woke soon after dawn I found him still in bed.

Despite my sympathy for his fatigue, I roused him as he’d promised to take me to Church. Some of the other kids hated Church because they thought it was boring, but I was always in awe of the majesty of the buildings and the priests who manned them. I had even considered becoming a priest when I reached manhood, but I had no brothers or cousins and it was my duty to continue the Bauer family lineage. In reality, I was presented with little choice other than to continue my father’s trade.

My father stirred slowly. I gave him a cup of water which he downed in one go, before wiping his brow. Despite the cool temperature, his forehead was dripping with sweat. Still not entirely understanding or believing the seriousness of the situation in which my father was involved, I next carried to him a set of clothes. If he didn’t hurry up we’d miss the morning sermon. He got the hint and dressed himself.

We walked to the church, which wasn’t far. Bielefeld was a small town, though a regional hub and the capital of Ravensberg, so we crossed the distance in a few minutes. We passed a Lutheran church on the way, a grand tall building with tall steeples and broad stained glass windows. The Catholic church was less grand, despite the Protestant claim to the elevation of poverty. It was a simple stone church with a crucifix above the wooden door and simple clear glass windows on its side walls. Morning light strained onto the altar, distorted by the single stained glass window on the wall behind it.

My father and I took a seat in the front pew. There were only three other churchgoers seated in the church by the time the priest began his sermon, as Bielefeld’s Catholic community was relatively small. The priest was a hunchbacked man, bent over the lectern at an unnatural angle. I do not recall which biblical tale he recited to us, but no doubt I was enthralled by it. I loved stories, regardless of whether they were from the bible, a passing trader from the East, or even just one of my father’s books.

We also went before the altar to receive a blessing from the priest. His wrinkly hands felt moist and grainy on my forehead, but they also emanated power and grace. I felt a chill run down my spine at his touch. It was that chill which sent me back to the church every week, to feel the security and safety of God’s favour. I sometimes think that if the witch hunters had never come, I would have lived a simple life, perfectly content to weave linen and attend sermons until I grew old and died.

But they did come.

I first saw them as we were leaving the church. I recognised them immediately as they were armed but not clad in the garb of the Ravensberg soldiery. There were two of them, both dressed in leather tunics and bearing various melee and gunpowder weaponry on their waists and shoulders. They took no notice of me, and were simply passing by on their way to the town centre. My father grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me away from them.

‘Stay away from them,’ he said to me, and I nodded because that was what was expected. Unfortunately, they had piqued my interest. Bielefeld was an unimportant town and those who travelled to it were usually merchants. The witch hunters were intensely interesting, even if they were in charge of trying my Aunt. I knew that they’d find her innocent, because she was innocent. She couldn’t hurt a fly, though her tongue had a barb that could slay a serpent.

My father took me home, and just like yesterday he told me to stay put. I would have disobeyed him in order to sneak outside to follow the witch hunters, but he told me that he’d be back in an hour or two, which made it a risky prospect. I occupied myself with my thoughts again. I was probably imagining whatever story the priest had preached in his sermon, or perhaps inventing fanciful tales regarding witch hunting.

That evening, shortly after dusk, my father finally returned home. Across his face was written a frantic fear that instilled a deep uncertainty into me. He closed the door behind him and stood beside it for a second, motionless other than his heaving chest. Then he looked at me, a darkness in his eyes that I had scarcely witnessed previously.

‘The chest, Karl,’ he said. I didn’t even nod, I was too frightened, but I did walk over to the corner of the room in which the wooden chest resided. My father walked to the opposite end of the chest and we carried it into the centre of the room. He stood on his toes and reached onto the cabinet and retrived from its top a single metal key, which he inserted into the padlock barring access to the chest. I was excited to see what was inside, and when he opened it I was not disappointed.

Several silver kreuzer coins lay at the bottom of the chest, and these he scooped up and handed to me. ‘Hold onto these so that no other may take them.’

Yet the coins were not what caught my eye. The other object inside the wooden case was a sword. It was short, which I guess made it a short sword, and only one side of its blade was sharp. The handle was a simple strip of leather wrapped around metal, and my father lifted it with some difficulty. I could see that he was not used to handling it, but nonetheless he slipped it into his belt so that the crossguards prevented it from sliding out.

‘This is a messer,’ he said to me. ‘I bought this a few years ago when it looked like war might come to Bielefeld. The one they’re calling the War of the Jülich Succession.’

‘Are you going to use it to help Aunt Katherine?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied, and then said no more. He knelt before me and put a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I began to tremble slightly. I didn’t understand how quickly life could change for I had never seen it do so before that day, yet I was starting to feel change in my very bones. It was inevitable.

My father kissed me on my forehead and stood back up. He left by the front door, fingering the hilt of the messer on his hip, and vanished into the night. He left the door open, but at first I stayed put. He hadn’t given me any instruction regarding whether to follow him or remain in the house, though I was old enough to deduce that he’d prefer the latter option. As such, I sat in the house for several minutes before I came to my senses.

That was when I realised that my father was going to fight the witch hunters. Some part of me had probably known it when he had first revealed the messer, but I was slow to put things together. I didn’t want to be stuck in the house while important things were happening at the town centre so I ran from the house into the city, slamming the door shut behind me and leaving the kreuzers on the table.