Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  He slowly opened the door to the alley a crack, trying to avoid any telltale creak of wood or rasp of hinges. No stone came hurtling towards him as it had that morning. He paused. The night outside seemed still. He opened the door a bit further and leaned out, looking up and down the walkway.

  Nothing stirred save the occasional ragged cloud that eased its way across the sky. There were few shadows along this stretch of cobblestone between the door and the now-locked parish church. Conrad stepped into the street.

  It was good to be outside. He took a deep, slow breath and felt exhilarated by the scent of fresh air in a way he never had been before. He glanced about again to reassure himself no one was there. He could see most of the square to his right, bright in the moonlight and empty. He took a step that direction and then caught himself. He would be too exposed in the square, with no place to hide and too far to run back to the house if anyone appeared from one of the other streets that opened into the marketplace. It was impossible to know which windows might conceal prying Czech eyes, eager to exact their vengeance on the German cleric if he was seen wandering the market. He turned left, down the alley that skirted the apse of the church.

  The gate to the Ungelt was locked. No tariff collectors were on duty at this hour and no guard to prevent the illicit transfer of goods between the Old Town and the Ungelt as folk walked through the toll. He would have to wait until morning to hear any word from Georg.

  He continued around the apse of the church, a dark mass of stone, solid and forbidding in the night. The building blocked the moonlight, creating a safety net of shadow that Conrad could feel protected by. Of course, any one else could be there, hiding in the nooks and corners of the roadway, which became broader here to allow carts and wagons access to the market in front of the church.

  He saw the building. Ahead, on his left, just beyond the church, where the road split. One fork continued its circumambulation around the church and into the open marketplace while the other went in the opposite direction at a jaunty angle along the back side of the Ungelt buildings serving as homes, offices, and inns for the German traders. At this fork, opposite the church, stood the building where Lucrezia had lived, bathed in moonlight.

  Conrad eased closer, hugging the shadows along the church walls. He could see the window of her apartment, looking towards the marketplace. He stared up at it, afraid to be seen but unable to tear himself away.

  “This is where she met her victims,” he thought. “This is where her lust devoured the men who sought her out. So close. So close that she could have almost reached out her window and touched the holy stones of our most pure Lady’s house. The whore defiled the whole neighborhood which Our Lord and His most pure Mother sought to sanctify by the presence of this church. Now it must be destroyed, torn down because of her and her filthy acts.” He spat in the direction of the window.

  “She destroyed me as well. My life ended in that room, even though I never entered there or saw her perform her lewd enticements. My life is over because of her. That window, that room may as well be my grave.” He stood there a moment longer, enjoying the freedom to stand outdoors even as he lamented the end of the life he had anticipated and relishing the opportunity to blame Lucrezia for it all. Then, afraid that he had been there too long and might have been noticed even as he hid himself in the shadows, he scurried back to the parish house and locked the door behind him. He leaned against the timber. He heaved a sigh of relief. He was home again. Safe.

  The next morning the housekeeper delivered a note to him with his morning porridge. It was Georg’s reply to his letter. He waited until she left the room and tore open the wax seal.

  “Father Conrad,” the letter began. His eyes glanced down the page and he felt sick. He returned to the top of the page and read the letter again, slowly.

  “Father Conrad,” he began again, whispering the words as he read them. “I am afraid that what you ask is impossible. What you have done has deeply divided the Ungelt community. Even those who supported your righteous efforts to cleanse this region of evil are deeply resentful. The killing of Lucrezia, accident or not, requires an enormous expenditure, Father, that no one had anticipated. Merchants will find other markets that will be much more lucrative now that Arnošt has announced the tax to rebuild the Ungelt parish.

  “I am afraid that neither I, nor any of my family or household, can visit you in your confinement, as such visits will be seen as support for this tax and hurt my standing in the business community,” the letter went on. “It is risk enough that I send this letter to you by the hand of the parish housekeeper. The collection to pay the wages owed her is itself now a cause of resentment in the community. I take this risk, however, out of respect for you, your office, and the friendship we have shared. But I cannot repeat this, Father. Please do not write again, as I will not be able to respond. Please understand the position you have put us all in, Father. I regret this action is unavoidable, but there it is. I can do no more but try to insure that the church is properly rebuilt so that the parish is not left bereft. In the meantime, we shall avail ourselves of the parish of St. Jakub nearby. Perhaps you know it, the parish of the butchers’ guild.

  “I and my household shall pray for you, Father. May Our Lord have mercy on us all,” the letter concluded.

  Conrad realized he was alone. Never had he felt so isolated. He saw nothing in his future but more isolation, more estrangement from the Church and his fellow Germans. He had not anticipated this response, but he could appreciate why the merchant had answered in the way he did.

  “Maybe I shall become a hermit in the northern forests, like the hermits of the Egyptian desert,” Conrad sighed to himself. “But they at least chose that vocation freely. I am having it thrust upon me. How shall endure the cold and frost of those forest winters?” He shivered, though the stone parish house was still fairly comfortable in the late October sunshine. “I have never practiced manual labor. How can I build myself a hermitage or chapel in the woods?” His mind spun as he anticipated all the difficulties—“Yea, impossibilities,” he thought—that lay ahead of him. He felt like weeping, but could not. His encounter with the whore had truly destroyed his life.

  He was unable to sleep again that night and—after checking that the streets and marketplace were empty—returned to stand beneath the window of Lucrezia. He was mesmerized by it, its curtains drawn to hide the emptiness within.

  “Where was she buried? She must have been buried by now. I cannot ask the housekeeper for news. She never speaks to me and I doubt would ever break her silence. Who knows if she will even come again tomorrow, if her wages are in doubt,” he thought as he stared up at the casement.

  “Did Lucrezia have any family?” he wondered for the first time. “Are they here in the valley? Maybe in the Italian colony over behind the Little Town. Or maybe they are far away, in some small Italian village. Did they know what she had become? Did they abhor her wickedness and cut her off from the family? Was she a whore at home as well? Had she always been a whore or did she only become the Devil’s handmaid once she arrived here?” So many possibilities he had never considered. So many connections to humanity, whereas he had none. Even in death, she seemed more rooted in the lives of the townsfolk; even though he still breathed, he was the lonely one cut off from all the folk he had ever known.

  The window, reflecting the moonlight, hid whatever secrets it contained. After some time, Conrad turned and went back to the parish house, sighing as he walked. “It seems Lucrezia will be my constant companion now. For as long as I live.”

  It became his regular routine, this midnight walk to stand beneath Lucrezia’s window and contemplate the intertwining of their lives. He stopped trying to sleep at night and took what little rest he could during the day. Every night, he would wrap his cassock around him and—after making sure he was unseen—make his way around the east end of the church to gaze up at the Italian girl’s window. Each night was slightly chillier than the last. Winter was a
pproaching.

  Would he find himself standing outside this window in the falling snow that would soon be coming, he wondered.

  The eighth night he stood looking up at Lucrezia’s window was dark and moonless. Thick storm clouds had gathered during the day and were piled high in the sky. Shadows were everywhere. Deep, dark crevices lined the alley as the priest stole forward, each cobblestone now so familiar that he could almost walk the route blindfolded. The overbearing walls of stone that were the church were simply a dark and hulking mass on his right. He paused once and thought he heard a slight noise behind him. He listened but heard no more.

  “A cat,” he decided, dismissing the noise. “The unused church is probably full of mice. A rich hunting ground, no doubt.” He listened another moment, heard nothing, and continued forward. The window reflected no moonlight tonight and was simply a darker space on the dark wall of the building that had housed the smiling prostitute. “Will there ever again be a candle on that windowsill?” he wondered.

  He stood there longer than usual, pondering the dark impression that was the window. “How soon will the archbishop convene his court to try me on these false charges?” Conrad fumed. “How much longer will my life hang in his unjust balance before he sends me out into the darkness of exile?” At least here, during his nightly walks and in his isolation in the house, he was spared the taunts and jeers and the abject humiliation that would come with the pronouncement of exile and his return to his home village in the north. However much he nursed the grudge against Arnošt, he knew this period of his life was better than whatever would come next. These few moments of freedom outdoors were sweet and he appreciated them as a small gift from God.

  He stood, shivering in the chill night air. A single raindrop hit his shoulder, and then another glanced off his forehead. The threatening clouds were about to release their burden and drench the city. He turned to head home.

  The dark outlines of two men emerged from the shadows behind him. One taller, one shorter. The shorter one held a club of some kind over his shoulder. Cloaks hung from their shoulders and hoods were pulled up, covering their heads from the coming storm even as the fabric concealed the men’s faces in yet another layer of shadow. Their faces invisible, the animosity that radiated from the men was unmistakable. Conrad glanced around him, half expecting to see a horde coalescing out of the darkness. There was not. Only these two men, who stood between him and the safety of the parish house on the other side of the church. If they were simply thieves, perhaps he could intimidate them with his priestly status. Or maybe he could turn and run, past the front—rather than the back—of the church and reach the safety of his own door that way. The three men stood there, facing each other.

  The priest spoke first. “I am a priest,” he announced in his sternest, most patriarchal tone as he pulled himself up to his full height. “I have nothing worth taking. To steal from me is to steal from God, who gives provisions to the poor, myself first among them. Let us part ways and pray for one another, my brothers.” He crossed himself and began to turn away.

  “We know who you are, priest,” one of the men growled. “We are not thieves looking to steal a few coins.” Something in the man’s tone made Conrad’s blood freeze. He turned back to face the men.

  The men stepped closer. “You are the zabiják kněz, the killer priest Conrad. I am Stefano, the bricklayer,” the taller man said. He spoke Czech, not German, and with an accent that Conrad could not immediately identify. “Lucrezia was my sister.”

  Sister! So she did have family here in the valley. Conrad felt the blood drain from his face, although it was probably too dark for the men to notice. He swallowed, and thinking to still use his clerical status to his advantage, asked, “Have you been lurking about my door? How did you come to find me here?”

  Stefano snorted. “Lurk about your door? Find you? The whole of the Old Town knows you come here every night, three or four hours before dawn, and stare at my sister’s window. It was a simple task to find you.”

  “The whole town? Everyone knows I stand here every night?” Conrad was mortified. “I’ve been so careful,” he thought. Making sure that no lights were on in any of the windows overlooking the square or the alleyway as he made his nightly pilgrimage seemed not to have helped him.

  “Many eyes have been watching you, priest,” the shorter man added. “Though the windows be dark, many of the townsfolk laugh to see how you pine here every night.”

  “Why did you kill her, priest? Had my sister scorned your attentions? Is that why you killed her in the church? Is nothing sacred to you, priest? You call yourself a man of God and yet you slink to see my sister while she was alive and still slink to see her now that you have put her in her grave.” Stefano’s voice betrayed his mounting anger.

  Conrad lost his temper. “Slink to see your sister? I never touched your sister! She could not spurn my attentions because I never offered her any such attentions! How dare you charge me with such lewd fornication!”

  “Never touched my sister? You touched her enough at Vespers, priest!”

  Stefano took another step closer. Conrad took a half-step back.

  “She was a pollution and a shame,” Conrad retorted. “A pollution and a shame on both the Old Town and your family, boy.”

  “Yes, my sister shamed our family,” Stefano answered. “My mother wept every night as she thought of what Lucrezia was doing here, across the river. But that shame does not mean I should not avenge my sister’s death. That shame does not mean I do not owe her justice. The shame she brought to us would be nothing compared to the shame I would bring on my family if I left her unavenged.”

  “You think you can escape the judgment of God, priest?” the shorter man asked. “Even if you escape the judgment of men, you will face the judgment of God someday.”

  “Yes, this is true,” Conrad agreed. “But the judgment of God is just, whereas the judgment of men is often flawed. The judgment of God will vindicate my actions. Your sister’s death was nothing but an unfortunate accident, my son.” The shorter man took a half-step from Stefano’s side and a half-step forward towards the man in the cassock.

  “Do not call me ‘son,’ priest!” Stefano spat the words out. “Accident? My sister’s death was no accident. You threw her against the pillar in front of the whole congregation. Everyone saw you. The judgment of men is flawed? The Church, and Archbishop Arnošt, move too slowly to be just. That is how the judgment of men is flawed.” Stefano paused. “In our village back home in Tuscany, justice would be much more swift than it is here in these cold countries of the Czechs and the Germans.”

  “Then the justice of Tuscany is flawed, just as it is here, if you would condemn a priest who strives only to uphold the law of God!” Conrad spat the words back at Stefano and his accomplice.

  “You may argue with God about whose justice is just.” Although his face was invisible, Conrad could almost hear the bricklayer’s lip curl in a sneer.

  “One does not argue with God,” the priest retorted. “His judgment alone is just.”

  “But we are the justice of God,” the shorter man interjected, jumping forward. “Why then do you argue with us?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Conrad saw the man swing his club. He felt the wood smash the side of his face once, and then a second blow across his shoulders. He lost track of the blows that rained down on him as he stumbled and fell beneath Lucrezia’s windowsill. He never felt the sharp toes of Stefano’s boots as the whore’s brother kicked Conrad’s torso on the ground or the long hunting knife Stefano slipped between his ribs.

  Conrad woke in the pelting rain. He pushed himself up from the cobblestones and was amazed that he did not feel more sore from sleeping on them. He shook his head to clear his senses and breathed the air of the early dawn. Although the dark storm clouds hid the rising sun, he could still smell the difference in the air as the sun began to climb into the sky behind the rain. He paused and then stood fully upright and stretched
; even the customary creaks of his bones upon waking seemed to have been washed away by the rain.

  “How was it that I came to be sleeping here in the street, in the rain?” Conrad asked himself. He looked around and noticed a rumpled shadow in the street not far from him, apparently a beggar whose black cloak, now in tatters, was wrapped about his twisted body.

  “A drunk Czech, collapsed in the street as he made his way home,” decided Conrad, backing away from the prone figure. He turned and walked into the almost empty square, where a few people were making their way on early morning errands. He glanced back over his shoulder at the drunk in the street, strangely puzzled. How could he, a priest loyal to the precepts of God and never drunk, have been lying in the street near such a disreputable creature? He walked across the front of the church, crossing himself as he passed the front doors.

  He heard shouting behind him. People running. Then a shriek from around the corner from where he had just come.

  “Dead!” He heard the one word clearly. “He’s dead!” another voice echoed.

  Conrad stopped. Even a drunken Czech needed to receive the last rites of the Church if he was to find peace with God. Even as he recollected his suspension from celebrating the sacraments and his inability to enter the church to retrieve the sacramental oil and Host, he knew he owed it to this man to offer what solace he could. He turned and retraced his steps.

  A small crowd was forming around the body of the man in the street. Conrad tried to get near him. “Let me thorough. I’m a priest,” he kept repeating. No one paid any attention to him. “How can you not know me?” he demanded of one apprentice who seemed particularly oblivious to his presence.

  “It’s the priest, Conrad!” someone exclaimed.

  “Finally,” he thought. “Someone recognizes me and will let me through.”

  “It’s the killer priest! He’s dead!”

  What did they mean, the killer-priest was dead? He slipped through the last wall of people standing next to the body and it was as if Conrad had run into a brick wall. A burly German was kneeling in the rain on the cobblestones and turned the body over. Conrad looked down into his own face.