Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  “She can’t expect her power to prevail over that of God and the Church,” Conrad told himself, having crossed the wooden bridge and turned down the cobblestone lanes to the Old Town Square. He shivered and crossed himself as he passed the small church of St. Clement on his left. “Her power, and that of the Devil, will certainly fail—at least against me, although I cannot say the same for the rest of those in the square. Nevertheless…” He paused in his thinking. “No need to take needless risks. God, in His mercy, did provide ways to protect ourselves from demonic attack. It would be foolish of me to scorn those tools He has given us for that purpose.” He stopped in the street and looked around. There were herbs one could carry that would keep the Devil and his power at bay. He needed a sprig of dill or a small branch of holly to carry in his cassock pocket for protection.

  He saw what he was looking for. A small holly bush was growing next to a doorway down the side street from where he stood. It had been planted for the same reason he wanted it: to protect the household from black magic. His confidence regained, he strode directly to the great wooden door, and reaching down, twisted off a trefoil of the pointed leaves. He put it in his pocket and marched back to the main street and to the Old Town Square. The slight pricks of the holly leaves through his cassock were a small price to pay for the protection it guaranteed. Maybe later he would get a bunch of dill from the vegetable market. Dill would be more comfortable to carry, after all.

  “There. I’ve done what I can. God will save me from whatever that old woman intended by her curse yesterday.” He smiled up into the sky as he crossed the bustling market in the square. “The witch’s power will lose its battle against God, just as the witch herself lost her soul to the Devil in the fire yesterday. To think that she could curse me… ha! She knows better now.”

  Father Conrad went about his usual business that week. He visited the German merchants around the Ungelt courtyard who supported his parish. He had dinner with one of the richest of them, Georg von Passau, and discussed the state of the parish and the four towns.

  “Georg,” the village-born priest said, taking the liberty of addressing the older businessman by his first name, something he would never dare do if he were not a member of the clergy and, therefore, the businessman’s social equal and spiritual superior—at least in his own mind. He sipped the wine in the goblet of Bohemian crystal at the side of his fine plate laden with venison stew, thick with herbs whose fragrance hung in the air around the table. The Czech servants hung back around the edge of the dining room as Georg, his wife and four nearly grown daughters sat with the priest having dinner. “ Georg,” the priest continued, “the witch was a boil on the face of these four towns.”

  “Yes, Father,” the merchant agreed, chewing his meat slowly. “She was the Devil’s door into these people’s lives. With her burned, the Devil—or Svetovit, his pagan cohort—will have to look for a new way to work his mischief in the valley. He’ll find a new way, I’m sure. There’s no doubt of it. He always finds someone, some woman, to do his will and bring suffering and wickedness into the lives of the innocent. But at least it’s a setback for him. A delay. So we can catch our breath and reorganize ourselves to resist him.”

  “He does always prowl among us, like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” Conrad half-quoted a passage from the First Epistle of Saint Peter that was read every night during Compline. “If only the Czechs were as vigilant against Devil worship and immorality as we Germans. The battle is half-lost before we even begin, Georg, half-lost before we even begin.” He shook his head as he spoke, his mouth half-full as he chewed. He paused and took a deep breath, savoring the rich, hearty aroma rising from his plate. Even though the priest and his host were speaking German, the Czechs understood their tone and half the vocabulary as well.

  “But Father,” Georg’s eldest daughter interjected. “Do you really think that Germans are more pious, more vigilant against the Devil, than the Czechs? Surely not every German is more devout than every Bohemian? I’ve heard you and father have this conversation before. Many times. Seriously, does not the piety of many Czechs impress you? It does me. They attend Mass in the Czech parishes with attention and a sense of … of dedication, that is often lacking here in our parish of Tyn.”

  “Katrina!” her mother gasped. “You know better than to talk like that to Father Conrad! Or any priest! We raised you better than that!” She turned to the priest. “Forgive her, Father. The wine must have gone to her head.” She shot her daughter a stern glance of warning.

  Having blurted out her initial comment, Katrina charged ahead. “It’s true, Mother. You’ve complained of it yourself. People talking and looking about during Mass. They stop only to see the Host and cross themselves at the Elevation. They even walk about the church and gawk, pointing out who is wearing what and ignoring the injunction to care not for what we will eat or what we will drink or what we will wear, since even the lilies of the valley, clothed more splendidly than Solomon in all his glory, will simply be thrown into the fire.” She turned from her mother to her father and back again.

  “Thrown into the fire. Yes.” The priest jumped in. “Thrown into the fire just as all passing glory that vanishes. Worldly glory that passes away just like the power of the Devil will pass away one day in the judgment fire of the Second Coming of Christ. It is inevitable. But in the meantime… Yes, in the meantime, my child, it is the research of the German scholars that teaches us what to look for and how to recognize the presence of the Devil in the person of the witches in our midst. It is our German learning and scholarship, married to our German piety, that is superior to the simple faith of the Bohemians who are always too eager to believe the best of anyone and tolerate all manner of wicked behavior. Even the pious Czechs accept the unacceptable. Our good German parishioners might not be as attentive to the Mass as they ought,” he blushed as he said it, “but at least they know there is evil in our midst to resist. The Czechs do not.” He pushed himself back from the table and smugly deposited his linen napkin on the table in triumph.

  “Well said, Father Conrad. Well said.” Georg agreed with his guest. “Katrina is too clever for her own good. I will have a difficult time arranging her marriage, I fear.”

  “Such as Lucrezia!” The priest suddenly sat up in his chair, his voice shriller and more angry than before. “The Czechs tolerate a girl like Lucrezia living behind the church, almost next to it, and say nothing. They allow her to remain there, not simply in the middle of the Old Town but next to the church itself, where she can snare the Bohemian men in their simplicity by her wiles. She may not bewitch them in the same way the old woman did, but Lucrezia does bewitch them.”

  “But it is not only the Czech men that visit Lucrezia,” Katrina objected, pointedly not looking at her father. “German as well as Czech men visit her. It is not only the Czechs who are happy to see her live so close to the market.”

  The priest glared across the table at her. “She is a pollution in the Old Town that must be washed away. She lives in the Old Town, not in the Ungelt, and it is the Czechs who are responsible for maintaining the order and morality of the life in the Old Town. Not the Germans. There you are mistaken, child. She is that other lion which prowls the Old Town, looking for those whom she can devour.”

  “Czechs may be responsible for maintaining the order of the Old Town, but it is the German men who both visit Lucrezia and pay the taxes that support the Old Town. If the Germans wanted Lucrezia to move, they could convince the town council to make her go elsewhere. But they want her there as much as the Czechs do.”

  Katrina pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “Excuse me, Father. I must go pray for all the men, German and Czech both, who visit Lucrezia tonight. As well as earlier this afternoon. They prowl about her house like lions looking for someone to devour even more than she prowls the Old Town looking for them.” She stalked from the dining room.

  It was rare that a parish would function with only one priest,
but for the time being, Father Conrad was the only priest in the Tyn parish. It would have been easier in some ways for him if there were other clergy stationed with him. The preaching could be shared, the burden of hearing confessions could be distributed, the more onerous of the pastoral duties (such as visiting the Czechs who were ill) could be given to others. But then there might be someone to put a brake on Conrad’s efforts to reform his backsliding, ignorant parishioners who were so unappreciative of his efforts. Except for the rare occasion when they finally warmed to and responded to his urgings to drive the evil from their hearts and from their towns. Such as when he had finally moved the crowd to seize the witch and burn her as she deserved.

  “Lust is one of the seven most deadly sins,” Father Conrad preached the next Sunday evening at Vespers. He had planned to congratulate his flock on their dedication to God in casting the Devil and his minions out of the towns but had realized that it would be dangerous to allow their zeal to flag. Better to seize the opportunity and encourage them to continue in driving the various forms of sin and evil from their midst. The congregation, however, had become accustomed to his tirades, and the German congregants often agreed with him, even if the Czechs in the congregation did not. Or at least the German congregants nodded and murmured their approval and spoke of the sermon afterwards in glowing terms. Whoever disagreed with Father Conrad’s views of sin and wickedness was assumed to have something to hide. Like the Czechs. The Germans always assumed the Czechs had something to hide.

  “Lust destroys. It destroys the communion of husband and wife—even more so if it leads to adultery or fornication, but even if a husband and wife simply pay their conjugal debt to each other,” the priest in the pulpit continued. “A man’s lust, even for his wife, destroys his ability to pray. It clouds his mind and ruins his ability to think, to concentrate, to be attentive to God. It is what contributes to every child’s birth into sin and guilt. Without the taint of lust that drives a man to succumb to the wiles of a woman, we would be born as free and innocent as Adam had been created in Paradise. But lust, burning in the heart of a man, leaves its mark on the soul of the child he begets and so perpetuates the cycle of sin that can eventually destroy the soul of the child as well.”

  The congregation mostly milled around the church. A few sat on the benches that lined the walls. There were no pews since the custom of filling the church with rows of chairs or benches had not become common yet, though some churches had more seats than others. The people stood for most of the services, or knelt at certain times, or walked about and lit candles as they venerated the statues and images along the walls and pillars of the building. Or walked about, inspecting their fellow parishioners’ clothes and commenting on them, as Katrina had pointed out at dinner the other night.

  “Lust can topple the most pious man if he allows himself one moment’s rest in his struggle against it. The power to seduce a man is one of the most basic tools the Devil gives to women in his rush to overthrow God and His Church. A woman, weak and given to sensuality, is unable to help herself. But she drags men down to perdition with her and ruins them even as she was ruined by heeding the serpent’s lies in the garden.” Conrad’s preaching became more animated, his voice more shrill, and he clutched the edge of the pulpit so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

  He looked down across the people gathered in the church before him, the dusky light filtering through the doors in the back. Here there was safety and protection. God and the saints were here. Out there, outside the doors, was temptation and danger. The people were dependent on him to warn them, to teach them, to guide them away from danger and towards the haven of the Church. Even if they did not realize how dangerous it was outside these walls. Especially if they did not realize how dangerous it was outside these walls. He felt pity for these folk listening to him. Pity, but also anger. He was angry they did not always heed his warnings. They were obstinate in their waywardness. Stiff-necked. Like the Jews following Moses in the desert for forty years as they traveled to the Promised Land after the Exodus from Egypt. Both groups, the Jews with Moses and the Czechs here (and even, though the priest was reluctant to admit the truth of Katrina’s words, more than a few of his German flock), were deaf to the words of their guide and insisted on clinging to the sin they were so comfortable and familiar with. He always preached in Czech, not German, so as to reduce the opportunity of his mixed flock to say they hadn’t understood his admonitions. The Czechs were less likely to know German than the Germans were to know Czech. Moses had been able to bring his people to the border of the Promised Land, finally, after forty years; Conrad wondered if forty years would be enough to bring his recalcitrant flock to righteousness.

  “Woman, beginning with Eve, is the Devil’s doorway into the world. Always more likely to hasten to do his bidding. So a woman is by nature likely to bring a man down to destruction, even if she has no intention of doing so. It is simply in her nature. Her guilt remains, though it is negligible. But if she intends to seduce a man and to fan those coals of lust into a full, burning fire… Why, then her guilt is unforgivable.” He caught himself. That was a slight exaggeration. Seduction, lust, even adultery and fornication were not unforgivable if the person repented and turned away from the sin. But how likely was it that such a woman would repent of willfully leading a man astray? Why confuse the people by trying to correct what was, after all, a very small error on his part? He swallowed and continued.

  “Though it is only fornication and not adultery for a man to have carnal knowledge of an unmarried woman other than his wife, even fornication should be avoided. Fornication is already the triumph of lust. If a woman deliberately leads a man into adultery, that will cause God to judge her and cast her soul into the eternal fires with the Devil and his host of fallen angels. But a woman who seduces a man into committing fornication is even more insidious. She is more insidious because her victim might think to himself, ‘It is not so serious. She is not married. It is only fornication.’ Worse, he might say to himself, ‘It is even a natural act. Surely there cannot be so stern a judgment against so natural a deed.’ But he would be wrong. Even though he convince himself, and maybe win a less severe punishment from God because he did not intend to commit so foul an act, he would be gravely sinning nonetheless. The sin of the woman who led him astray and who encouraged him in such thinking, however, would be compounded. Such a woman would be such a liar, so deceitful that she would be compounding her sin threefold: she is lustful, a fornicator, and a liar. She will be condemned on three counts while her victim is condemned on only one or two.”

  The congregation rustled as some nodded, some shook their heads, and others simply closed their eyes. Though Lucrezia was not present in the church, her presence was palpable. Father Conrad did not need to name her, the beautiful and popular young woman who resided around the back of the church and who lived off the lust of the men in the valley. Even though Lucrezia had always been popular—her laugh, her smile, her kind words and generosity quickly winning over even the most stern of her other critics—there was a shift that rippled through the congregation. Wives cast sidelong glances at each other.

  The priest in the pulpit continued, his eyes growing brighter as he described the sin he condemned with such enthusiasm. He set aside his prepared text and spoke excitedly. “Our Lord,” said Father Conrad, “told the people, in the Sermon on the Mount which Saint Matthew recounts for us, that in the commandments of the Old Testament, God ordered that we should not commit adultery. But now that the Holy Spirit has come to strengthen virtue and perfection in us, Christ gives us a new commandment. He tells us in the Gospel, ‘Every man who looks at a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery with her.’ Whose fault is it that a man looks at a woman with lust in his heart and thus stands already condemned? Surely it is the fault of she who inspires such thoughts in a man’s heart. The lustful thought would not be there were it not planted by the Devil and then watered and cultivated by the woman w
ho seeks to lead the man astray. Were it not for that temptation, there would be no sin. Thus the man, already guilty of adultery in his heart even though he has not touched the woman who so enflames his desire, stands condemned and his seductress even more so. She is like an anchor that drags a damaged boat to the bottom of the sea; here she drags a spiritually wounded man with her to the depths of the abyss of perdition, where is found Satan and all his minions burning in the eternal flames.

  “Thus it ever was. Eve, created by God to be Adam’s companion in Paradise and the mother of mankind, listened to the lying serpent and led Adam astray. She tempted him to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree just as she had. Without her seduction, he would not have stretched out his hand to take what he knew he ought not touch. Her name, ‘Eve,’ means ‘mother of the living,’ but instead she became the mother of all the dead since all her children are born corrupted by guilt and sin, subject to death. She brought all wickedness into the world and Adam bore the guilt of the sin which she lured him to commit. Thus it was in Paradise and thus it still is everywhere in the world: a man’s lust is fanned by woman and he is condemned because of her allurements.”