Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  The next day, Katrina found Lucrezia in the fruit and vegetable market in the New Town. Lucrezia was holding up an apple, its skin glistening in the midmorning sunlight. The rosy-hued apple seemed a reflection of the young Italian woman’s rose colored blouse, amply filled with firm breasts. A clean white apron covered the front of her Bohemian-style patchwork skirt, and her dark hair cascaded down her back in curls and ringlets as she laughed and joked with the apple seller behind his cart. She took three of the apples and placed them in her basket, next to the small beets she had already purchased.

  “Lucrezia!” Katrina hugged her friend spontaneously. Though they came from such different backgrounds and lived such different lives, they had quickly become friends when they had first met in the Old Town Square marketplace and now made a point of talking with each other at least twice a week. In any other place, a girl of Katrina’s position could never have been able to speak with—let alone become friends with—a girl of Lucrezia’s profession. But the Czechs were much more forgiving and sympathetic than most and few seemed to notice the friendship between the German and Italian young women. Katrina could safely talk with Lucrezia, at least until her parents discovered their friendship. Katrina knew her parents would be furious to discover that she was a friend of the famous prostitute. But until their friendship was discovered and forbidden by Katrina’s father, the two young women eagerly found opportunities to talk and laugh together.

  “Katrina!” Lucrezia hugged her back, nearly spilling the contents of her basket as she flung her arms around Katrina’s shoulders. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in—well, nearly a week!” They both laughed and stepped away from the apple seller’s cart so as to not block another woman with two little boys in tow who was trying to look at the apples available that morning.

  Katrina and Lucrezia stepped back from each other. Katrina looked her friend in the eye.

  “Katrina, what’s wrong? Have you been hiding from me for some reason?” Lucrezia’s eyes sparkled.

  “Lucrezia, I’m scared for you.” Katrina reached out and held her friend’s shoulders. “Worried. Father Conrad came to dinner last week. He started talking about how prostitution is as dangerous to a town as witchcraft. He said that girls like you were as wicked as witches and in league with the Devil. Now that Fen’ka is gone, he needs a new target for his hatred. I’m afraid he’s selected you for his next burning.”

  “Oh, Katrina.” Lucrezia laughed. She shook her friend’s hands off her shoulders. “You worry too much. Father Conrad likes to talk and make grand pronouncements but he’ll never be able to get anyone else burned again. Didn’t you hear? The archbishop called him in to reprimand him and the emperor has stationed more soldiers to patrol the Old Town to be sure nothing like that happens again. The mob won’t get half a chance the next time Father Conrad tries to rile them up. The archbishop would have sent him away except men like your father support him and the emperor wants to keep the market busy to keep collecting the taxes from the Ungelt gate. But they’ll never let him get away with murdering an old woman again.” Lucrezia looked up into the sunlight and closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth. Katrina almost could believe Lucrezia and join her carefree lightheartedness.

  “But last night at Vespers.” Katrina couldn’t get the priest’s sermon out of her head. “At Vespers, he preached how lust destroys men and that women are responsible for inflaming the lust in men’s hearts. At dinner, he said you are a lion, seeking men to devour.” Her words tumbled out and she surprised herself as she felt about to burst into tears. “You need to know what he’s planning. Maybe go away from here. For at least a while. Don’t let him do to you what he did to that old woman in the square.” She swallowed hard. “I needed to warn you.”

  Lucrezia looked serious for a moment. “I appreciate your warning. He can be a dangerous man, Katrina. You’re right. He kept hammering away in his sermons about witches until he got the people ready to burn old Fen’ka and then did everything but light the fire. Even with the archbishop and the emperor looking at him, he’ll wait until he thinks they’ve blinked and then he’ll pounce. Too bad he’s never been to see me in my rooms!” Both women smiled at the idea of the priest going to Lucrezia as a client. “Although he’s so scrawny, I’m not sure I could stand to have him touch me.” They both laughed. “If he’d been to see me, he wouldn’t be so quick to judge.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Lucrezia,” Katrina told her. “That might make him more anxious to be rid of you. Since any sin he committed with you would have been your fault, not his, he would feel more justified in getting rid of you to get rid of the evidence of his sin.”

  “Maybe,” Lucrezia answered. “But if he has his weapons against sin in this battle he seems so intent on, I might have a weapon or two myself up my sleeve.” She looked down a moment and then glanced at Katrina and grinned.

  “Oh, Lucrezia! What do you think you can do to him?” Katrina held her friend’s hand tightly. The idea of standing up to Father Conrad and fighting back seemed both very exciting and very dangerous. “What weapon or two can you possibly have?”

  “Oh, I’ll think of something.” Lucrezia twirled in a circle with her basket as the crowd milled around the edge of the marketplace. She stopped her little dance and faced Katrina.

  “Maybe I’ll just tell him the truth.”

  Katrina couldn’t imagine confronting Father Conrad in public. Arguing with him at her family dinner table was one thing. She knew her father was more generous than most in allowing her to speak her mind, at least in family matters in the privacy of their own home. He would be furious if she dared to argue with his favorite priest in public. She couldn’t count on the support or sympathy of anyone else in the congregation, either. Even if anyone did agree with her—and she suspected more than a few did—they would most likely fear being associated with her in her opposition to the priest. No one wanted to be thought impious (or worse, a nonbeliever!) or stupid, compared to the Germanic book learning and academic theology personified by Father Conrad. No one would risk the ire of the mob, which might turn on them as it had turned on Fen’ka.

  As Katrina went about her errands that week, she would see Lucrezia in the town and the two would exchange conspiratorial smiles. They didn’t stop to chat but went about their business. Katrina also saw the priest as he went about his daily rounds and she was sure the tirade of the previous Sunday evening had done nothing to staunch the line of men who came to Lucrezia’s rooms at night. In fact, the priest may have increased her business by giving the men the perfect excuse: their behavior was all Lucrezia’s fault anyway, so why feel guilty? Even if they were bothered with guilt, they need only confess their misbehavior to a priest in confession, though no one was eager to confess anything to Father Conrad. The penances he assigned were known to be daunting and made him an unpopular confessor, though he was the only priest in the parish.

  The next Sunday morning Katrina attended the Mass at the Tyn parish with her family. Everyone from the Ungelt business community was there, as were many of the Czechs who lived on the east side of the Old Town. As she adored the Host, raised high by Father Conrad in his hands (almost as pale as the Host itself), she wondered how the priest could treat the Body of Christ with such familiarity and yet be so unforgiving. Nevertheless, as she passed out of the western doors of the church after the Mass, she realized the butterflies that filled her stomach all week were gone. Maybe she had been overly concerned about Lucrezia and Father Conrad’s obsession with her and her profession. Nothing had happened since his sermon at Vespers last Sunday evening and she hadn’t heard him make any incendiary remarks in the marketplaces or public squares. She breathed a sigh of relief and headed home to help her mother with the large dinner traditional for Sunday afternoon following the Mass.

  Katrina returned alone to the church for Vespers in the late afternoon. The church was not nearly as full as it had been in the morning but was far from empty. Folk milled around in th
e shadows of the building as they venerated the statues of the saints, said their prayers or lit their candles at the shrines along the walls and bases of some of the thick stone columns supporting the ceiling. Wax and grease sputtered in the dusky light and the pinpoints of candlelight twinkled like stars in the autumnal dusk. The golden stars painted on the church ceiling, indicative of the company of saints gathered ’round the Throne of God like courtiers standing on either side of the emperor’s throne in his castle on the hill, glinted in the light from the candles below.

  Clouds of incense swirled through the congregation as well. The choir was singing the Magnificat of the Mother of God:

  Magnificat anima mea Dominum: et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo… Et misericordia eius a progenie timentibus eum… Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles… Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritu Sancto…

  Katrina breathed deep. The sweet fragrance tickled her nose but brought a deep sense of peace as it filled her lungs. “Truly, God is in this place,” she thought, half-consciously quoting the scripture from Genesis that was commonly understood to refer to both a church building and the Holy Virgin. The anxiety she had felt earlier in the week receded further. “At least for now,” she told herself, “I can forget that the priest is Father Conrad.” She glanced around. “At least here, the Germans and Czechs get along and act like Christian brothers and sisters. And not worry about other peoples’ sins.”

  Following the concluding benediction, however, Father Conrad mounted the pulpit. People gathered from the various places in the building they had been standing or sitting in order to hear him preach. Katrina held her breath, her reverie broken. Would he repeat his attack against Lucrezia? He had preached about witchcraft and the Devil for months until he had the people ready to attack that old woman. Was he about to subject the congregation to another such round of preaching, hammering away at his chosen topic (and against his chosen target) again and again and again until he was able to whip the town into the frenzy he hoped would drive the Devil from their midst?

  “Beloved brethren,” the priest began. “We are told by the Apostle Paul that long hair is the glory of a woman and the shame of a man. In his first epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle asks us in the eleventh chapter, “Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her pride? Her hair is given to her for a covering.” We know that long hair shames a man, humiliates him because it is an emblem of sin. We read in the scriptures how Absalom, murderer and rebel, was killed by his heavy head of hair. Because of it, he was caught in the thicket of the branches of a tree and it dragged him down into Hell. If he had repented, he would have been saved. If he had shorn his sin, he would have found grace and pardon. If he had allowed Our Lord Jesus Christ to apply the razor of contrition to his head as a barber uses a razor to cut the tangled locks presented to him, then Absalom would be welcome in the company of the saints, as is his father, King David. But, no! Absalom kept his hair long and allowed his sin to grow, becoming more wicked and tangled in the clutches of the Devil until he was destroyed by God’s most just judgment.”

  “Where is this sermon going?” Katrina wondered. She was afraid she knew already.

  “But a woman—ah, a woman’s tresses are likewise the revelation of her sin. Her head is marked by her hair as her body is marked by the pain of childbirth, both given by God as her punishment for leading her poor husband Adam astray. Her long hair serves as a warning to men to heed her words not, for she is a liar and a deceiver. She is given to luxuria, to wanton self-indulgence, as she seeks to satisfy herself with the good things of this world and not yearn for the righteousness of God. She hungers and thirsts, not for the Kingdom of God, but for the kingdom of this world, which is the dominion of the Father of Lies.”

  The priest pressed on. “Mary Magdalene, who washed Our Lord’s feet, dried them with her abundant hair, which flowed as freely as her sin and depravity. She is the beata peccatrix, the blessed sinner, whose hair cascaded to show her sin, and after her conversion it still cascaded as a sign of penitence, reminding herself and us of the sinful life from which she turned and the grace which she received. After her conversion, she fled into the wilderness to live as a hermit and repent of her life of sin. She prayed for salvation day and night, fasting and weeping, her rich clothing finally falling away in tatters from her physical frame. But her nakedness was still a danger to herself and those men who might encounter her in her retreat, and she was able to hide her naked body beneath her unkempt, uncut hair, which had continued growing even as she struggled against her yearning to return to the ways of this world. Even in her conversion, she could never completely escape her past.”

  Father Conrad had chosen not to confuse the congregation by pointing out that certain preachers had also identified a woman’s long hair as a powerful magical talisman against the power of the Devil rather than a sign of her cooperation with the powers of darkness. According to these preachers, the wiles and snares of the enemy of mankind are overthrown as these demons and temptations are not able to even approach a woman adorned with long hair, which is the emblem of humility and confidence in God. Conrad thought is best not to present divergent views in a sermon that needed to be simple so that his simple flock could grasp his message. Evil was too powerful and salvation too important to trifle and play with by confusing his parishioners.

  A candle sputtered at the feet of the statue of the Apostle Paul near the pulpit and went out.

  “We are told by the apostle”—the priest glanced toward the statue to look for the source of the noise that momentarily distracted him—“that long hair is the pride and glory of a woman, because if she repents of her sin, her long hair is a testimony to her conversion and the grace which she has been counted worthy of receiving. If she does not repent, then her hair serves as a sign and warning to us that we must turn from our self-indulgence and our embracing of luxuria even as she does not, and thus, her perdition might serve for the salvation of others.

  “But we know,” the preacher’s words tumbled from his lips as his excitement mounted, “we know that women, by nature fickle and weak, are so given to luxuria and sin that it is hard for even the best of them to repent. A woman becomes proud of what should shame her, the hair which is the sign of such luxuria and wastefulness, and will be condemned for the vices she believes, in her error and mistaken ways, to be her virtues.”

  Another sound caught the attention of the priest. A door creaked, a not uncommon thing, as people came and went during the service, although the priest thought this was simply one more indication of his flock’s need to take his admonitions more seriously. The congregation, already quiet except for the occasional cough, grew much quieter as a hush rippled through the church and the congregation held its collective breath. A woman walked into the back of the church and people stepped away from her. The preacher squinted. It was Lucrezia.

  She stood in church a moment, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the building’s interior light. She tossed her head, the long tresses rippled, and the people’s trepidation was palpable.

  Lucrezia moved towards the pillar in the back of the church, on the right, near the doors. She seemed to move slightly awkwardly, unlike the way anyone had ever seen her move before. She stood beside the pillar, and the congregation shifted again, as no one seemed to want to be seen standing too close to her. Her sin was like a contagion that no one wanted to catch. At least not while Father Conrad was watching.

  The priest’s blood boiled in his veins. His breath was trapped in his lungs momentarily, stunned that Lucrezia would enter the building at all, let alone at this moment in his sermon.

  “How dare you?” he shouted. He had meant to continue his sermon but found himself addressing the girl rather than the congregation.

  “How dare you?” he continued. “How dare you bring the disease of your sin into God’s house and pollute His Holy Church? Do you think to find absolution here
without repentance? Do you hope to find mercy without contrition? Purify yourself, girl, before you think yourself worthy of standing in God’s house and finding God’s love here!”

  Lucrezia blinked, staring at the priest shouting at her from the pulpit.

  “Well?” the priest demanded.

  “I have come to defy you and your words of venom, priest!” Lucrezia shot back at him. “I defy you, not God!” Her words echoed around the tops of the pillars in the arching vaults of the ceiling.

  “Me? You cannot defy me,” Conrad called across the congregation to her. “I am only God’s priest, his servant and his mouthpiece to teach the people the error of their ways and guide them back to their true master and Lord!”

  “I defy you, Father,” Lucrezia repeated. “You preached against Fen’ka until you had her killed. I will not stand idly by and allow you to do the same to me!”

  That was the last straw. The priest strode down the steps of the pulpit and charged across the nave to where she stood.

  “That witch had, at least, not the audacity to dare stand in the house of God!” he cried, his nose inches from her face. “She did not dare to come into the house of God unworthily and seek to justify her sin or seek forgiveness without…” he took a breath finally, “without…”

  He continued before Lucrezia could respond. “But you, you dare to come here in all your sinful pride and shame, vain girl, to seek what you have no right to hope for! Get out and take your sin away from this holy place. Do not think to fill this abode of God’s light with the filth of your twisted darkness!”