The Diary of Caspar Kruse III, Executioner: Goslar, April 22, 1638 – Ficke Steinhauer – The Beggar Woman with the Blood in Her Hair

 She had lain for three days in the cell beneath the Rathaus. She spoke to the wall. She bit into her own arm. And when the gaoler brought her food, she smeared her face with the porridge. No one knew where she came from. Her name — Ficke Steinhauer — appeared only in the register of the poor, marked as a “pitiful case” under the supervision of the city pastor.

They found her at the end of Mauerstraße, screaming at a tree.
She had blood in her hair.
Whose, no one knew.
She wore a rabbit’s foot on a string around her neck, and in her pockets were eggshells, bone meal, and ash.
The pastor said: “She is a vessel of demonry. The Devil seeks weak vessels.”
The council said: “If even her madness is full of horror, that is enough.”

I fetched her from the cell myself.
She laughed when she saw me.
“You have eyes of iron,” she said.
“They will burn, you know that?”
I led her to the Ulrich Chapel.
She walked skipping, like a child.
I laid her on the bench. She did not struggle. She whispered:
“When I am quiet, he comes.”
I asked:
“Who?”
“He with the wings of leather.”

I began with the shin roller. Her skin was thin as parchment. The first turn burst a vein.
She screamed.
And laughed at the same time.
“He says you must do this! That this is the true dance!”
I clamped her thumbs in the wheel.
She screamed again.
“He came in the night! He laid his hand on my belly! And everything grew warm!”
The preacher leaned forward.
“What did he say?”
“He said that I am the fire.”

I held the iron before her face. She sniffed at it like a dog.
Then she began to sing. Not off-key. Not pretty. But pure.
An old melody I knew from my childhood.
A lullaby.
“Sleep, my child, the heavens close…”
“…the angel bends toward you so.”
I stood frozen.
The theologian whispered: “She is lost.”
I wrote:
Vision, song, possessed behavior. Confession in madness.

Note (evening):
I still hear her singing.
Even now, with the windows closed.
Even now, with my hands washed.
The porridge in her hair carried the scent of motherhood.
Or madness. Or both.




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