Measures of Malice

Bull's-eye paned windows drove November light into the kitchen of Matthias Aldrich's burgher house. Warped reflections cast warped shadows across the oak table where Matthias was measuring deadly herbs with the same brass scales he used for Lankan cinnamon and Moluccan mace. The scale’s tray cradled monkshood from Jakob Bauer's apothecary—which can mimic death by fever or, in sufficient dosage, actually cause it.

Magda, the Aldrich's maidservant, was turning a spit roast pig with precision in the kitchen’s hearth and smoke curled up through the air. The chimney needed sweeping, so she had cracked open a casement window to ensure adequate draft. The aroma of baked bread mingled with that of the roast and sharp bites of autumn air. Below in the market square, cart wheels clattered on cobblestones and merchants' cries rose between the tolling of St. Ulrich's bells. The Augsburg guild masters would arrive for supper soon following vespers, when the cathedral bells struck five. By then, everything must be settled.

For twenty years Matthias had built his name in Augsburg's spice trade, rising from a chandler's son to a man who could smell the worth of a Ceylon cinnamon stick at twenty paces. His status as an importer of exotic spices had earned him entrance to Augsburg's prestigious merchant's guild. Now his wife Greta's madness threatened to topple it all. 

Yesterday, she'd wandered into Fugger's counting house babbling about angels in the marketplace. If word reached the guild that he could not keep his own house in proper order, the Venetian contracts would go to the Welsers instead.

No, Matthias couldn’t risk Greta ruining all he had worked so hard for. Taking out a teapot and strainer from the cupboard, he decided he would tell the guild masters that Greta had taken ill and gone early to bed—and extend apologies for her.

Matthias placed the herbs and petals he had selected into the tea strainer. Fingers trembling, he steadied them for a moment against a bone china cup. "This tisane must be precise," he murmured.

Realizing he was within earshot of Magda he added, somewhat louder and as if pricing a Kashmiri saffron for a client he wanted to impress, "A merchant's accounts balance to the last pfennig, or they do not balance at all". Then he chuckled at himself for forgetting he had hired Magda because she was mute—her tongue cut out by a previous master. She would not be one to spread gossip.

Another intruding thought made his hand tremble more—the memory of Christina, his first wife; how she had clutched her throat in her final moments; eyes wide with knowing.

"Calm down, Matthias. Calm down," he murmured, then placed the strainer into the teapot.

He took a long swig from the goblet of Rhenish Greta had poured him earlier. Then readied the tea to let it steep.

Greta creaked the oak-paneled door open and entered the kitchen with steady steps. She knew her apparent madness as a carefully orchestrated dance. For the past year—since discovering the truth about Christina's death—she had been building her case against him. Greta’s fever had been real enough; she had made sure of that, carefully dosing herself with herbs from Jakob's apothecary shop over several months. Each small dose of poison had built her resistance while teaching her its signs—knowledge that had revealed truths about the first Frau Aldrich's "illness."

Jakob's wife, Agnes Bauer, had taught Greta well before arranging her own perilous escape to a convent in Salzburg. Agnes, commonly thought to be dead, wasn't dead at all—but teaching other merchants' wives how to protect themselves from cruel and hateful husbands who would dare to solve their problems with careful measures of malice.

Matthias watched his wife glide into the room—not with her wild abandon of recent weeks, but with that unsettling grace he recalled from their courtship in the Fugger gardens. That grace is what attracted him to her. Today, though, her grace carried a market basket brimming not with the usual weeds, but with precisely arranged monkshood and belladonna, their poisonous beauty a mirror to her strange smile.

Magda crossed herself and edged closer toward the hearth.

A shiver from the open window settled in Matthias’s bones. He gripped the brass scales with one hand. With the other he shielded the herbs from the draft Greta brought in with her.

"Sit, wife," he said, the words measured like spice. "I've prepared your afternoon tea." He pushed the teapot and cup before her.

"Ah, what tisane today, husband?" Greta said.

"Chamomile, with rosehips and a touch of sage," Matthias said. Then he poured from the pot into her cup.

She sipped from the delicate bone china and placed the cup down on the table.

Greta traced one finger along his prized Venetian scales, watching her husband's face. Each movement was calculated. Each word chosen with the precision she'd learned from Agnes. 

"Such a careful man, my husband," she said. "Each grain of paradise weighed twice, each nugget of myrrh counted thrice." Greta lifted a sprig of belladonna from her basket. "Do you remember when you taught me to measure saffron?"

Matthias shook his head without looking up.

"A pinch too much would ruin a merchant, you said. Like your father, when the Thirty Years' War began."

Matthias looked up at her like a boy would his mother.

Behind her, Magda moved silently about her tasks, a secret held safe behind her scarred mouth. The mute servant had been the first to show Greta the truth, pointing out patterns in Matthias's ledgers with her keen eyes and scribbled notes.

Matthias caressed Greta’s wrist, his fingers finding the pulse that had raced with fever weeks prior. "The guild masters come after vespers," he whispered, precise as poison. "Our winter contracts will—"

"Ah yes, the contracts." Her free hand drew patterns in the scattered herbs. "Young Fritz, the Augsburg guild's master apprentice, has such observant eyes. He saw you at Jakob's shop last Wednesday. You scurried away like a mouse spotting a cat." Greta’s smile carried the edge of a Reisiger’s blade. "In Augsburg, rumors move faster than plague ships up the Lech River."

Matthias’s stomach lurched. Someone had noticed? How many others? He glanced at Magda, still turning the spit. One whisper of impropriety and the Venetian contracts would go to the Welser family instead. He released Greta’s wrist and turned to the kettle and cup, shoulders rigid beneath his fine wool doublet.

"Your tea is getting cold," he said, motioning to the cup. Then he added, "Oh, such rumors, wife. The Welsers already circle like ravens," Matthias said. "You would see us ruined? All I've built, everything we—"

"Everything you built upon your first wife's grave?" Greta let her voice carry the same sing-song quality she had practiced for months. The guild wives had been so sympathetic to poor "mad Frau Aldrich", sharing their own suspicions about their husbands over market stalls and church pews. Each "confused" revelation had been carefully placed, each witness prepared.

From her basket, she withdrew not just a glass vial marked with Jakob's herbal seal, but also a leather folio. Agnes's cousin—a Slovenian wine merchant—had helped her gather the evidence: purchase records, letters, testimony from past servants who had witnessed Christina's death. Three drops of nightshade essence from the vial mixed in Matthias's afternoon Rhenish would ensure he appeared drunk and confused by the time the guild masters arrived.

"The guild masters aren't just coming for dinner," Greta said, opening the folio. "They're coming because I sent them proof this morning. Your purchase records from Jakob, written in your own hand. Receipts for poisons, dated just before your first wife's death." Greta made the sign of the cross. "Poor Christina. May God rest her soul."

Greta tipped Matthias’s goblet of Rhenish over on its side, spilling very little onto the table. He had nearly drunk it all.

Cold sweat beaded on Matthias's brow. Through the window, he saw the first merchants leaving from vespers, their fine wool cloaks marking them as guild masters. In desperation he lunged for Greta, but she dodged aside. The teacup he poured for her clattered to the floor, spilling its deadly brew across the stones, and the St. Ulrich bells started their five o'clock toll.

Matthias staggered, vision swimming like a view through bull's-eye glass. The kitchen tilted like the deck of a spice ship in the Arabian Sea. Through the warping light, he saw not his mad wife, but the shadow of every woman he had dismissed as weak—Christina Aldrich, who died in silent scream; Agnes Bauer, who had mysteriously vanished; and Greta Aldrich, who he now knew learned to measure death as precisely as he could.

Greta watched her husband sway, satisfaction settling in her chest like perfectly apportioned saffron. She lifted Matthias’s prized scales, letting them balance perfectly on one finger. "You taught me well, husband. Everything must be weighed—grief against profits, justice against appearances, poison against poison.”

She laid out the evidence on the table one piece at a time: Jakob's sworn testament (Slovenian cousins can be very persuasive), the purchase records, letters from Christina speaking of her fears about Matthias. Below, the bell rang and the great doors of their burgher house creaked opened. Magda greeted the guild masters—their rising steps as measured as a funeral march. Magda would lead them directly to the kitchen as planned, ensuring they witnessed the scene Greta had orchestrated.

The last light of day fell through the bull's-eye glass, casting circles like gold guilders across the floor where Matthias knelt. By tomorrow, Greta would be a wealthy widow, her madness explained away as the desperate attempts of a wife trying to expose her husband's crimes. The guild wives who had humored Greta's "confused" ramblings would recount every detail of Matthias's suspicious behavior, and the Fuggers themselves would praise Greta's courage in bringing a murderer to justice.

The spice trade would continue under Greta's guidance—after all, who better to manage goods than someone who understands the precise nature and measures of malice?

Matthias collapsed to the floor. And as the kitchen door creaked open, and Magda entered with the guild masters in tow, Greta shouted out, "Oh, my dear Matthias. Whatever’s the matter?!"