Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  COME HELL OR HIGH WATER:

  The Complete Trilogy

  By

  Stephen Morris

  Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Michael Morris

  All rights reserved.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-9847731-7-6

  Cover design by Elliot Kreloff

  To

  Elliot and Rob,

  Without whom this trilogy would have

  never seen the light of day

  By Stephen Morris

  Come Hell or High Water, Part One: Wellspring

  Come Hell or High Water, Part Two: Rising

  Come Hell or High Water, Part Three: Deluge

  Acknowledgments

  There are many more people to whom I owe a debt of thanks than I could ever adequately thank here. First among the many, without whom the trilogy would never have been born, is Rob Fisher, who first suggested one evening as we stood on the incredible Charles Bridge in magnificent Prague, “You know the legends of Prague and the practices of medieval magic and theology—you should do something with it all!” But it was the sale of my first short story—written in response to a challenge Cal Trovato and I issued to each other—that gave me the self-confidence to begin the book that became this trilogy.

  I am grateful to Billy Dotter, Jaana Hinkkanen, Richard Myer, Marta Rojo, Jan Sedláček and Roman Sedlar, who each encouraged me and whose interest in Magdalena, Fen’ka, and the others helped sustain me when my own energy flagged. Zachary Morris provided detailed information that made its way into the description of the suffering of Bonifác in the forest outside Prague. Ivana Husakova and Blanka von Kannon also helped with Czech-English translations. Any errors that remain are my own.

  Conan Powers took me under his wing in Waterford and showed me details of the city and opened doors that would have been otherwise impossible to enter. Liam Shiely’s hospitality at Waterford’s Castle Annaghs was invaluable.

  In addition, Marta Tanrikulu was the best editor I could have asked for and working with her was a dream!

  I must also thank Lester K. Little for his marvelous 1993 book, Benedictine Maledictions, in which he describes the rites French monks would use to call down God’s wrath on the nobility who sought to steal from the monasteries. Professor Little’s descriptions of these curses first conjured the image in my mind of an old witch dying in the flames and using some of those same imprecations to curse those who were killing her.

  Finally, I would like to thank my partner Elliot Kreloff for all his help, support, and comments as he not only read each chapter and version of the manuscript(s) but also listened to my musings aloud as the story developed and who provided invaluable assistance in the final stages of the book’s production.

  Part 1 Chapters

  Prologue (September 1356)

  Chapter 1: The Moon (March 2002)

  Chapter 2: “May the sky above them be brass and the earth they walk on, iron!” (October 1356)

  Chapter 3: Five of Coins (March–April 2002)

  Chapter 4: “Let them die suddenly but go down alive into the darkness!” (St. Nicholas Day, 1356)

  Chapter 5: Queen of Wands, reversed (April–June 2002)

  Chapter 6: “Curse their casks and cellars!” (November–December 31, 1356)

  Chapter 7: Page of Swords (August 6-7, 2002)

  Chapter 8: “May they lose what they have and not gain what they want!” (January 1357)

  Chapter 9: High Priestess (August 7–8, 2002)

  Part 2 Chapters

  Chapter 1: The Magician (Thursday, August 8–Friday, August 9, 2002)

  Chapter 2: “Scatter their bones near the mouth of hell!” (October 1356)

  Chapter 3: Seven of Wands (Friday, August 9–Saturday, 10, 2002)

  Chapter 4: “Curse them eating and drinking!” (Epiphany 1357)

  Chapter 5: King of Swords (Friday, August 9–Saturday, August 10, 2002)

  Chapter 6: “Curse them going out and coming in!” (Christmas 1356)

  Chapter 7: Seven of Swords (Sunday, August 11, 2002)

  Chapter 8: “Curse them in the towns and in the castle!” (November 1356)

  Chapter 9: Queen of Cups, reversed (Sunday night, August 11, 2002)

  Part 3 Chapters

  Chapter 1: The Chariot (Sunday night, August 11, 2002)

  Chapter 2: “Curse their wives and children!” (fall–winter 1356)

  Chapter 3: Wheel of Fortune (Sunday night, August 11, 2002–Monday, August 12, 2002)

  Chapter 4: “Let the shadow of death stalk them in the night!” (January–February 1357)

  Chapter 5: Eight of Cups (Tuesday, August 13, 2002)

  Chapter 6: “Let the river swallow them up!” (early to mid-February 1357)

  Chapter 7: Nine of Swords, reversed (Tuesday, August 13, 2002)

  Chapter 8: “As this fire dies…” (mid-February 1357)

  Chapter 9: The Tower (Wednesday, August 14, 2002)

  Chapter 10: Death (Wednesday, August 14, 2002)

  PART 1: WELLSPRING

  Prologue

  (September 1356)

  T

  he four villages hugged the river in the valley the way a small child clings to its mother. The four settlements, plus the castle on the hill which overlooked them, were gradually growing into one town, one city, which could one day be called a fairy tale come to life. The spires and turrets of churches and other buildings soared in fantastic extravaganzas of stonework, both along the main squares as well as along the twisting side streets, defying all notions of gravity. The Gothic style that came to be called “Beautiful” shaped these whirling airborne snowflakes of masonry and the golden mosaics and brilliant frescoes that adorned them, inside and out. Tile roofs glinted in the sun. The squat Town Hall (finally built by the king’s permission with the money raised in a single year from the new tax on wine), across the square from Our Lady of Tyn Church, sat above a labyrinth of dungeon cells and tunnels but nevertheless also had a tower used to watch for stray fires that might threaten the town.

  The royal cloister of the St. Agnes housed the nuns next to the river who prayed for the city day and night. Across the river, the monks in the Strahov Monastery up on Petřín Hill next to the castle sang the liturgy in Latin while the monks of St. Procopius offered the services in Old Church Slavonic, as they had for hundreds of years.

  The king’s new university was rapidly becoming the educational center of the realm, its great wooden doors and graceful arches both protecting the students and scholars within while inviting the world to enter and reap the benefits of their learning. The king had also recently begun planning a great stone bridge, the longest in Europe, once again spanning the river after Queen Judith’s ancient bridge had been washed away by floods. The bridge, springing from near the church of the Knights Hospitaller on the castle side of the river, would be elegant in its simplicity and would (the king hoped) become famous throughout the world in the centuries to come.

  Fen’ka was herded across the town square. The sun hung low in the late afternoon sky, its slanting rays quickly obscured by thunderclouds gathering as the wind began to blow, scattering the dead leaves of autumn across the cobblestones. The crowd around Fen’ka jeered and taunted as they pulled and pushed her towards the waiting stake.

  “Witch!” they shouted. “Try to hurt us now!” some cried. “You’re getting what you deserve!” screamed others. Men, women, children
—they all wanted to touch her, to scream at her, and dart away before she could retaliate. “Witch!”

  It had all started… when? Years ago, when she first moved to the edge of the forest across the river. Even in her younger days, they had come to her, asking for advice and medicine, hoping she could help the cows to grow fat, the girls to find husbands, women to give birth and survive. The men wanted charms to bring success in hunting and the boys wanted ways to look more handsome and to be stronger than they had even dreamed of. They all wanted the secrets she knew, the herbs she grew, the power she had access to. But they were also scared of her. Even then. Little boys would come as near her house as they dared and shout names at her: “Hag!” “Ugly old cow!” they had shouted, even though she was not much older than some of their sisters and some men would have even called her pretty. “Whore!” But the name they finally settled on was both scary and exciting: “Witch!” The youngsters thought themselves very brave to stand under her window, shout the epithet—the worst they could think of—and dart away before she could come to the sill to see who it was.

  Then the adults had begun to whisper about her in the pubs around the Old Town and in the Little Town across the bridge. Although they still came to her when they thought no one else was looking and would never dare call her such names to her face, they discussed the possibilities over their beer at night: “Do you think it’s true?” “Could she know such things, do such things without the assistance of either God or the Devil?” “Do you think she could really be a witch?” She was alone, she was different, she was strange. Clearly she couldn’t do the things she did with God’s help. He would never be on the side of a woman who never came to church. She must have made some pact with the Prince of Darkness.

  Finally, even the people who thought they knew better, the people who didn’t really think there were such things as witches, began to believe the whispers. “Dark things happen there at night, on the edge of the forest,” they told each other. They had seen bonfires in the dark, and figures dancing in the flickering shadows. “I saw her dance with a goat,” said a man. “I heard her singing to the Devil,” said another. “I saw her fly across the moon last night,” said one woman, hungry for the attention such an assertion would bring. But still people came creeping out to her house, mostly asking her to help them. But on rare occasions someone wanted her to hurt someone else—a rival for a young man’s fancy, another hunter who was getting too proud and boastful and irritating, a new merchant in town who had set up his booth too close by—and she had always refused. “No. Go away and leave me alone,” Fen’ka would always say, turning her face away from her nervous visitor—nervous to stand so close to a woman who had reputedly had sex with the Devil, nervous they would be seen coming or going from the cottage, nervous she would say “no” and nervous she would say “yes,” scared she would do to them what they had asked her to do to others.

  It had all started more publicly, more recently, when Kryštof had asked her to bless his prize heifer. The heifer was not only beautiful but was also growing strong and healthy and would soon have its first calf. Kryštof wanted to be sure she would keep growing and produce not just this calf but a whole herd of strong, beautiful cows and bulls just like her. “Give me something to bless my heifer,” Kryštof had begged her. “Something to help her calve safely. Something to keep her strong.”

  “Here,” Fen’ka—now older and more wizened than she had ever thought she’d be—had said, giving him a handful of dried sticks and herbs. “Burn these near your heifer in the light of the full moon. Let her breathe the smoke and she will be strong and healthy, fertile and safe.”

  He took them in his hands gratefully, bowing and scraping, unsure of himself and unsure of how to act towards her. This was the first time he had come to see her, although his neighbors had all made their way here many times before. But he was grateful and gave her the coin his neighbors had told him to give her.

  Kryštof burned the sticks and herbs as she had said. He put them in a ceramic pot with coals and brought them to the heifer on the night of the next full moon. He left the door of the barn—if you could call the hut he kept the heifer in a barn—open, so the moonlight would fall on the pot with the burning herbs. He brought the cow close by, to ensure that she would breathe the fragrant smoke deeply and derive all the benefits promised by the old woman.

  But the cow did not continue to grow strong and healthy. She did not give birth to a whole herd of strong and beautiful cattle like herself. She had died, growing sick and thin so quickly that none of the other farmers could believe it. She was gone before the moon had even completed half of that month’s course across the nighttime sky. Because she was so sick and so scrawny, he could not even sell a little bit of the meat in the market. Everything Kryštof had spent on her—the time and energy he had invested, to say nothing of all the money to care for her (including the coin he had given old Fen’ka across the river)—had been for naught. He had loved that cow. She had been his pride and joy. Now he had nothing. Nothing.

  Although his neighbors had told Kryštof to see Fen’ka to get a blessing for his cow, none of them had known if he had done it or not. So it was a surprise when, in his grief, he blurted out, “I should never have gone to get her help. I should have never asked her for her blessing. I should never have made that smoke in the moonlight as she told me!”

  The news spread like wildfire. Old Town, Little Town, New Town, Castle Town. Everyone in the four villages that had sprouted along the river flowing through the valley heard that Kryštof had gone across the river and bought a charm meant to bless but instead bringing death. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The floodgates of gossip burst, overwhelming the towns with twisted memories and malicious tales.

  “Remember the time I asked her to help my sister keep her husband? Told me she’d be better off without him, she did! Refused to help, selfish old bitch!”

  “There was the time I asked her to save my cousin’s boy from the dropsy. Laughed in my face, she did. Finally gave me something to make a tea for him to drink. He got better, but never completely well. Laughed in my face, she did!”

  “I recall now—when was it? Must have been right after she first moved out there to that God-forsaken cabin she calls home—I recall how one time all the fields went fallow and nothing grew. Right after we asked her to do something to help bring in the harvest. Remember that year? A hard winter it was, because nothing had grown the spring and summer before. After we asked her to help! But she expected us to pay her so much! How could anyone expect us to give her what she wanted?”

  “She gave me a candle once. I’m sorry I never told any of you about it ’til now. But she gave me a candle. Told me to burn it, and when it was used up, that awful boy would stop pestering me. You know the one—my husband now. He was terrible as a youngster. Told me to burn the candle, she did, and he would leave me alone. Don’t remember now if I ever really did finish burning that candle. But the boy never did leave me alone and my father ended up marrying me off to him. Almost knocked my head off the last time he was drunk, he did. I could hardly walk for weeks. Told me to burn that candle, she did.”

  These stories and a hundred more like them whistled down the streets between the pubs at night. Everyone knew someone or knew someone-who-knew-someone who had suffered some misfortune that was Fen’ka’s fault. Witch. The stories weren’t whispered anymore. They were said out loud. Full voice. She was a witch.

  Then came the new priest. The Germans and other foreign merchants, living out past the town proper in that neighborhood called Ungelt, had been given a church on the Old Town Square and had brought a new priest, Father Conrad, with them. He was a young man, thin and even verging on scrawny because of his ascetic fervor, born the seventh son in a family from a large town back home. His uncle had convinced his fellow businessmen to invite him to serve the growing community of Germans in this thriving market town. He had come, anxious to show the benighted locals the ne
w, sophisticated ways of city life and city learning now that they were taking their place on the world stage. It was difficult work, serving as priest for both the richer, better educated immigrant merchants he liked and the poorer, less educated townspeople he did not care for. There was much the townsfolk seemed ignorant of, basic biblical commandments as well as newer formulations of doctrine he needed to teach them. “’Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’” he preached one Sunday evening at Vespers in his shrill voice, quoting from Exodus. “You shall not allow such a woman to live, God tells us. Not allow her to live in town, near town, not live at all. If such a woman were to walk into this very church, I would come down out of this fine pulpit to box her on the ears and ask how she thinks God could ever hear the prayer of such a one as herself. Not allow her in the church, not allow her in the town. Not allow her to live!”

  The final nightmare had begun that late September morning. Fen’ka was in her garden, tending the herbs and trying to keep the weeds at bay when she heard a large crowd headed up the path to her house. “Get the witch!” she heard a woman scream. “My Václav! Dead! For no reason! She struck him dead she did, last night! My husband!” the voice trailed off into an inarticulate wail of agony.

  For a moment, she was frozen in her garden. Her eyes darted everywhere. Where could she hide? The mob was only a moment away. Where could she go? She dashed into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  “Get the witch!” roared the mob as it swarmed into the clearing around her cottage. “Murderess! Devil’s whore!” The mob spilled into the garden and into the woods on the other side, looking for her.

  “She must be in the house,” cried one man, pointing to the trail of smoke climbing lazily from the chimney top. “In the house!” Men threw their shoulders against the door. Rocks crashed through the windows. Glass shattered inwards as the wooden door cracked under the weight of all those men crashing into it. Tables were turned over, pots thrown to the floor, coals from the fireplace scattered around the principal room of the cottage. They found her trying to bolt the door of the tiny back room. They seized her and dragged her through the ruins of her own house, demolished in a few moments of ransacking as they had looked for her.