Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 23

  She glanced up the street towards the old Gestapo headquarters. It stood there, a silent hulk. Nothing about it had changed. But Magdalena had found herself walking past it daily during her lunchtime, inspecting it as she had been inspecting her supplies on the kitchen table every morning. Nothing about the building seemed out of order. She sighed in relief and made her way home.

  Upon arriving in her apartment, she ran a tubful of water for the preparatory bath she had read about in one of her books. Sprinkling a handful of thyme and then a handful of marjoram into the water (“to remove the sorrows and ills of the past,” the book had said), Magdalena then eased herself into the steaming water and lay her head back against the edge of the tub. She was so nervous and excited to be finally embarking on the Midsummer ritual she had devised to set free Madame de Thebes that she found it difficult to concentrate. But she forced herself to take several slow, deep breaths of the fragrant steam rising from the surface of the water and promised herself that she would not rush through this preparatory phase of the ritual.

  She made herself take another long, slow breath and looked at the clock on the bathroom wall. She promised she would soak in the herb-infused water for at least thirty minutes. Although the first few minutes seemed to drag along even more slowly than her first effort at meditating with her candle, she closed her eyes and practiced her meditation there rather than at the kitchen table. She listened to the sound of her own breathing, the “swish” and “swirl” of the water around her, the creaks and groans of the old building in which her apartment was located. She sank more deeply into the water and her hair floated and bobbed about on the surface as she submerged herself.

  She checked the clock only twice more before the allotted thirty minutes had passed. With difficulty, she pulled herself from the now lukewarm water, her body so at rest in the green-speckled bath. She stood and ran the shower quickly to wash away the thyme and marjoram flakes that had adhered to her skin or nestled in her hair. Pulling the plug, she stepped from the tub and toweled off in order to dress.

  She had laid out a simple white ensemble of cotton blouse, Capri pants, and sandals. “Nothing that would stand out too much or draw attention on the street,” she had thought as she had selected the clothes from her closet a week or so earlier. “But ritually appropriate. White. All white. Fresh and clean.” The last of the green-flecked water gurgled down the pipes behind her as she brushed and dried her hair.

  Making her way to the kitchen, she put a pan of water on the stove and turned the flame on. When the water began to gently bubble, she added the strands and stalk of a plant in her back garden identified in her herbal book as “dog grass” or “witchgrass.” She stood watching the pieces of the plant bounce and swirl in the boiling water momentarily and then turned the fire off so the stalks could steep.

  She poked at the concoction with a wooden spoon. “Sprinkle this witchgrass infusion around the area in which the exorcism is to be performed,” Magdalena repeated from the directions she had copied out of the herbal guide. She gathered the rest of her supplies from the kitchen table and carefully packed them into a tote bag. Returning to the stove, she took the pan of steaming water, strained the witchgrass from it and filled a thermos with the exorcism tea. Packing the thermos into her tote, she looked around one last time. Reassured that she had everything she had planned to take, she scooped up her sheaf of notes from the table and set out.

  She arrived back at the old Gestapo headquarters. Dusk had gracefully settled around the city and was giving way to night. The street on which both Magdalena’s university department office and the former Gestapo office were located was primarily businesses and not residences, so Magdalena did not expect much traffic on the street once darkness fell. There was a restaurant another block up but the old Gestapo building was set back from the street enough that Magdalena was certain she would be hidden in the shadows of the other buildings and would remain unnoticed by any restaurant-goers.

  “As long as I don’t make much noise, I should be fine,” she told herself again as she slipped into the shadows of the Nazi edifice. “It will be noise that attracts any attention. I have to keep quiet.” As the rite she had developed was primarily a series of actions, not words, she was confident her presence would remain undetected.

  She knelt down and removed the first supplies from her tote. Taking the chalk and athame she had brought, she drew the magic circle around herself as near to the front door of the building as she could. She inscribed it with the four astrological symbols—Mercury, Aquarius, Saturn, and Pisces—she had been practicing drawing and then retraced the lines with the tip of the ritual dagger.

  She retrieved the next items from the tote: the tarot cards of the Empress and Temperance that Madame de Thebes had given her during their encounters on Golden Alley and here on the street at the Gestapo office.

  “I have no remains or articles of Madame de Thebes to use as Professor Hron suggested,” she reasoned, “but I do have these tarot cards which she gave me. They are the only things I have that might be said to be hers to be sure the hex breaking is directed at her and not someone else the Nazis bewitched in this same building.” Magdalena had been very proud for puzzling that out, but it had been a difficult decision to not only part with the cards but also to destroy them. They were her physical, objective link to both Madame de Thebes and Fen’ka. They were the proof that she had met the shades of the dead in contemporary Prague. The two cards had been the proof that the power of the occult and the world of the supernatural were real and available to her. Using them in this Midsummer ritual had become the last step in putting her trust in herself and her own experiences. She set the cards down in front of her, on the edge of the circle closest to the building.

  Then Magdalena pulled a leek that she had gotten at the supermarket from the tote. She held the leek firmly, took a breath to prepare herself, and then bit down hard along the lower, dark-green area of the stalk. The sharp crunch sounded like thunder to her ears, but no one else in the city seemed to notice it. She spat the chunk of leek from her mouth at the tarot card.

  Pulling the thermos from the tote, she unscrewed the lid and swished around the leek stalk in her other hand in the witchgrass exorcism tea. She sprinkled as much of the tea on the card and around the circle as she could, repeatedly dipping the leek back into the thermos and using it as brush to swing the droplets of water around her.

  Setting the leek and thermos aside, she pulled a bundle of drying flowers from the tote. She clutched the bouquet of thistle and St. John’s wort and larkspur from her garden, and a few strands of willow from the market, in her fist. She held it to her face a moment, savoring the scent of the drying flowers and relishing the scratchy tips of the leaves and stalks against her cheeks. She set the bouquet aside to pull the box of kitchen matches from the tote and strike a match against the box, then took up the bouquet again. She held the match to the driest buds and blossoms. She held her breath and bit her lip.

  “Are they dry enough to burn?” she said, worried.

  The tiny flame flickered at the end of the match. It dipped and danced in the evening breeze. Magdalena was afraid to breathe or move. The fire made its way along the match towards her fingers.

  “Ouch!” A whispered exclamation burst from her lips as the fire brushed her fingertips and she dropped the match to the ground, where it flared and went out.

  “I guess I’ll have to try again,” she whispered in frustration, then realized there was another flicker in the shadows. A tiny shred of flame had caught along one of the dry branches of thistle and seemed to be taking hold of the blossom nearest it.

  “Yes!” Magdalena exclaimed. “Yes! It’s burning! Just like Professor Hron said it should! It’s burning!”

  The fire grew steady in the midst of the stalks and blossoms in Magdalena’s hand and slowly stretched out along the twigs and leaves and longer stalks. The fire curled into the air and a pungent whiff assaulted her. She wrinkled her nose.


  Carefully, holding the burning flowers away from her, she reached for the tarot cards and brought one towards the burning stalks.

  Suddenly Madame de Thebes was standing there, just outside the circle Magdalena had drawn with the chalk and dagger. The ghost seemed frantic. Shaking her head furiously but unable to look Magdalena in the face, the card reader wagged a finger at Magdalena as a stern teacher might rebuke a misbehaving student.

  “I’m doing this for you!” Magdalena whispered to the specter beside her. “I know the Nazis charmed your spirit so you cannot communicate directly with anyone, but I’m breaking the charm! See? It must be working!” Magdalena thrust the madly burning bouquet towards Madame de Thebes.

  The old woman was more agitated, biting her lips and waving both hands at Magdalena as if to keep the now billowing flames away from her.

  “If I burn the card you gave me, you’ll be free!” Magdalena promised the ghost. “I know you cannot tell me how relieved you must be that the charm will be finally broken… But when I burn the card, I’ll set you free, just as we will set Fen’ka free once the conferences begin!”

  Madame de Thebes stamped on the ground as if to extinguish flames in some pantomime or game of charades. She shook her head as if to say no and gestured wildly at the burning flowers in Magdalena’s hand.

  “It will work… won’t it?” Magdalena was suddenly unsure. Madame de Thebes seemed beside herself, frantic to stop Magdalena. “But this has to work… Professor Hron told me everything I had to do and how to break the Nazi hex tonight! On Midsummer! This will set you free… yes?”

  The flames swirled and danced. A single tongue licked the bottom of the card Magdalena held in her other hand. It hovered a moment and then raced along the edge of the card and fire kissed Magdalena’s fingertips a second time that evening.

  “Ouch!” she snarled, in spite of her efforts to remain as quiet as possible. She dropped the card and thrust her singed fingertips into her mouth.

  The card lay on the ground, enveloped in the embrace of the fire. The other card, beneath it, remained untouched by the fire. Then the flame seemed to reach around and under the bottom card to pull it into the flame as well.

  Madame de Thebes doubled over and ground her heel into the sidewalk. “Yes,” she gasped. “The thistle and the leek… they break the Nazi charm! But…” She clutched her stomach and shuddered. “Fen’ka… you mustn’t… mustn’t….”

  “What?” Magdalena was ecstatic to hear the executed woman speak to her but frantic to know what else the Nazis’ victim had to tell her. “But… Fen’ka… mustn’t what?””

  “The larkspur and the willow and the St. John’s wort…” the dead woman gasped.

  “Yes, I added those,” Magdalena boasted. “For protection. For Midsummer luck!”

  Magdalena realized the bouquet had become an inferno in her hand. As the burning tarot cards curled and blackened on the ground, Magdalena dropped the burning bouquet atop them. Fire engulfed what remained of the stalks. A shimmer of heat and a trace of smoke rose above the fireball in the dark.

  “Girl, those blossoms drive away the dead!”

  Madame de Thebes cried out and vanished in a wave of shimmering air.

  Magdalena remained in the circle as the bouquet burned itself out on the ground in front of her.

  “The leek and the thistle broke the Nazi charm,” Magdalena repeated, watching the glowing embers of the bouquet crumble and collapse, mingling with the ashes of the tarot cards beneath them. “Those broke the charm preventing Madame de Thebes from communicating directly with the living. But… Fen’ka? What was she trying to tell me about Fen’ka?”

  Magdalena struggled to make sense of what the one executed woman had been trying to tell her about the other. “I mustn’t… must not… what?” The ashes shifted and whispered in the night breeze.

  “Larkspur and willow and St. John’s wort,” Magdalena counted off the blooms on her fingers. “I added those because they are Midsummer herbs and flowers. They bring good luck and protection… but they also drive away the dead? My herb book said nothing about that!” She shook her head in dismay. “

  She looked across to where she had last seen Madame de Thebes. “I would never have added those if I had known!” she promised the absent ghost. “I never meant to drive you away! I just wanted to set you free and break the Nazi hex that bound you! I wanted…”

  Light dawned in Magdalena’s head. “Is that what you meant, Madame de Thebes? I mustn’t use these same herbs with Fen’ka? I mustn’t drive her away as I drove you away?”

  Magdalena packed up what remained of her supplies and then stood. She smudged a portion of the chalk circle with her toe and stepped out of the magical boundary. Turning back toward the shadows, she paused before setting off for her apartment.

  “I promise you, Madame de Thebes, I will never drive Fen’ka away!”

  “Curse their casks and cellars!”

  (November–December 31, 1356)

  A

  leš stood before František in the grand house on Karlov Alley, the winding lane that led from the Old Town Square to the wooden bridge the emperor Charles IV hoped to replace with a stone bridge. Aleš, the older of the two men, clutched a small homespun pouch of coins.

  “But I was hoping you might extend me a small blessing,” Aleš said to František, his eyes cast to the floor. František, sitting behind the great desk in his parlor, studied the younger man with a cold stare.

  “Why might I extend such a blessing to you, Aleš?” František finally asked, his voice icy with contempt. “Many have asked for a blessing and I have denied them all. Why should I answer your request in a different manner?” He stroked his prematurely silver beard and wrinkled his nose.

  “I… I was hoping for a small blessing so that I might p-put a coin aside for the midwife,” Aleš stammered. “We are sure to call her in the next few weeks—you recall, sir, that my wife is expecting another child soon—and I fear that I shall not otherwise be able to give the midwife what she asks. If I cannot offer the midwife the usual coin…” Aleš swallowed and left the words hanging in the air.

  František shook his head slowly. “Aleš, Aleš,” he answered quietly. “I am sorry for your late wife’s death in the spring before last. I truly am. I understand your desire for companionship and that your children by your first wife need a mother. But it was foolish to make a new child with your new wife when you cannot even properly care for the children you have already. Why should your need for a coin cheat me of the coin you owe me? Why is your need for a coin to give the midwife any concern of mine?”

  “I do not mean to cheat you, sir,” Aleš protested, the tremor in his voice hinting at the tears about to run down his cheeks. “I only mean to take a little more time to pay you what I owe. I do not ask you to forgive the debt or forget the loan. Not at all, good sir. I only need a little more time to pay you what we agreed would forgive the debt.”

  “But if I were to give you more time to repay your debt, good Aleš, then all those who borrow from me will expect me to extend the terms of their credit,” František explained in the tone most folk used when speaking to simpletons and fools. “If everyone did not repay me according to the terms of their contract, then I would soon have nothing to lend those who—like yourself—come hoping for a small loan. Now, I ask you, Aleš: is that any way to conduct my affairs? I should soon not only be unable to make loans to men such as yourself but I should soon be unable to pay my own bills as well.”

  František saw Aleš turn pale but pressed on. “If I cannot pay the butcher and the washerwoman and the baker or the miller, then they should soon be unable to feed their children. Where would they all be then? I will tell you, Aleš. They would all be living in the street and be forced to beg for a living. That is where the whole of the Old Town would soon be if I allowed men like you to extend the repayment of their debt because they have others to whom they would prefer to offer a coin.” František sneered at
the carpenter.

  He pointed to the surface of the desk in front of him.

  “Count out the coins there, Aleš,” the moneylender instructed. “Count out the coins from your pouch and if the tally is correct, I shall tear in two your debt to me.” He pulled a small parchment from the stack of scrolls and sheets beside his elbow. “Or would you rather I contact the jailor and have you thrown into the debtor’s prison cells in the dungeons below the Old Town Hall?”

  František could see that Aleš realized his cause was lost. Aleš looked into the face of the moneylender and slowly counted out the coins from the pouch he had been clutching with desperation.

  After Aleš had gone, František counted the coins on the desk again. Then he counted them one more time before placing them one by one into the soft leather pouch he kept in the desk. Pulling the pouch’s drawstring taut, he pushed himself back from the desk and stood. It was only midafternoon on a Saturday, but the room was already filling with shadows, as it was mid-November. He lit a taper from the coals in the fireplace and then opened a narrow wooden door that stood in one corner of the parlor, hidden behind the luxurious tapestry that depicted the Judgment of Midas. František descended the narrow, winding steps behind the door and entered the warren of cellars beneath his house on Karlova. Shadows danced on the rough stone walls in the candlelight as he made his way down the stairway.

  Some of the cellars were full of bottles of wine and racks of sausage and bacon as well as sacks of grain. Those cellars full of kitchen stores were beneath the kitchen at the other end of the house and could either be reached from a stairway from the kitchen or from the cellar in which František now stood by going through a series of tight, serpentine tunnels. Those tunnels connected to a series of other tunnels that connected to other cellars beneath other houses in the Old Town. Some of the tunnels even connected to the dungeons and prison cells below the Old Town Hall. But heavy iron gates and thick wooden doors that František kept locked made it impossible for anyone to enter his cellars, as the only keys to those locks were kept on the large key ring he always wore on his belt.