The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

by Joseph Fink

  But four years into our employment, we had yet to meet anyone in the Order, save for Holger and my initial contact with Bover. I had grown wary of Holger’s influence and felt that if I were to impress the leaders of this secretive organization, I would have to take action myself.

  One stormy night in the port of Estepona, we spotted a Spanish gunboat. Under the noisy cloak of thunder and massive undulating tides we boarded the ship, disarmed the two guards, and stole nearly four tons of black powder and cannon shells. A week later, in Oran, I happened upon exactly what I was looking for: another ship bearing the labyrinth emblem upon a black flag. I was proud to bring my fellow Order members a gift, and what better gift for a violent and powerful organization than violent and powerful munitions?

  We sailed alongside the Order ship, but it did not slow. I waved and pointed to our matching flag. Two sailors on the deck of the ship noticed us. One was not tall and the other was not short. They stared at us, or at least I felt they were staring at us. Their faces were completely covered by dark hoods.

  “We have a gift for you,” I called, but the men did not react. I could not tell if they were suspicious of or annoyed by us. Would they thank us or kill us for attempting to board their ship with a gift?

  Eventually, the one who was not tall signaled to the other, and they turned their attention away from The Wasp as their ship sped away. Before they left, I had gotten a good look at the stacks of brightly lit crates on the deck of their ship. The sun was hidden behind clouds that day, and I had seen no lanterns lit. The light emanated from the crates themselves.

  This transaction with the unnamed, inscrutable ship, and its unnamed, inscrutable sailors, had befuddled me. I was without a clue how to ingratiate myself to the Order of the Labyrinth.

  So my only path upward through the Order remained with Holger. My crew and I had just stolen tons of Spanish munitions—a much greater accomplishment than the pickpocketing and produce smuggling we had previously been assigned—so with that I hoped to convince Holger to give us more responsibility and larger missions.

  Unlike Holger, I recognized the immense talents of my friends and crew, as well as their taste for action regardless of its purpose. For instance, Vlad, our boatswain, who was a mediocre administrator but a fierce and almost unstoppable fighter. He had a haunting laugh when he smelled blood that sounded like a dog being let out for a long-overdue walk. His energy and appetite for violence were boundless, and he soon took over Lora’s role of subduing anyone who needed to be subdued in the course of our business. She was bigger, but he had a true believer’s enthusiasm for it.

  “That boy is dangerous,” Lora whispered to me, after one particularly brutal job.

  “Just be glad he’s on our side,” I whispered back.

  Before our voyage back to Ca’Savio, we stocked up on goods to inspire Holger. We emptied a bank vault in Monte Carlo (a three week adventure that saw Rebekah playing two separate bank employees and a minor noble from Finland), stole fine silks from a storehouse in Tripoli (in the process of charming our way in, André had so smitten the man who owned the storehouse that he flat out offered the silks in exchange for a lifetime of companionship, but it felt wrong to take advantage of such a heartsick bargain, so we stole them fair and square), and lifted dozens of Renaissance paintings from a mansion in Rome (this was less exciting than it sounds, the place was empty due to a festival in the countryside and Lora simply put a rock through a window). We developed a taste for bigger heists, gleefully and successfully raiding larger merchant ships and well-guarded inland fortifications.

  It was the artwork from Rome that finally changed Holger’s mind. He originally wanted to burn it all, but André convinced him to sell three of the minor pieces to a dealer in Sicily, and when the payment was finalized, it was the most profitable work we had ever done for the Order. Initially, I detested Holger’s limited aspirations, but I grew to love this about him, because it made him easy to impress.

  After the lucrative art sale, Holger told us he had never been prouder of an Order of the Labyrinth crew. He thanked us for our adventurous spirits, and more importantly for our good business sense and after nearly half a decade in his employ he would put word in to his advisers about our talents.

  “Maybe the other Order ships will finally speak to us,” Lora said.

  “Why do we not wear hoods?” Rebekah interjected. “All others under the labyrinth flag wear dark hoods. Are we underdressed?”

  “You could wear hoods if you’d like,” Holger offered.

  “And what do they carry in those crates?” André jumped in.

  Holger’s face sank, a sour frown uncommon upon the face of anyone André spoke to. Holger took a swig of wine, then muttered, “Ships carry many things in crates.”

  “But these crates are different,” André protested. “They radiate like stars.”

  “And who’s in charge of the Order?” I added. Holger did not answer.

  I began to think Holger was not as high up in the complex hierarchy of the Order of the Labyrinth as I initially thought. He seemed to know less than us about the organization. I felt I had barely come closer to the vengeance I sought. I wasn’t interested anymore in the low-level life of a flunky. I wanted to find the heart of this faceless monster and tear it out with my own hands.

  At least Holger was true to his word about recognizing our talents, authorizing bigger jobs like bank and casino heists. Rebekah infiltrated these operations, disguised as employees. André played the part of a charming nobleman, moving easily through whatever crowds to scout out our entrances and exits. Lora loaded stolen cargo quickly onto our ship. Vlad broke noses when necessary, and often when unnecessary. He would return to the ship with bloody knuckles and bruises all over his body and salute me with a bellow: “Best captain I ever had!”

  These greater assignments kept us energized over the next five years, as Holger also allowed us to seize cargo from much larger ships than ours. The Wasp was too small for ramming and had limited munitions for full on attacks, but its compact size made it possible to slip in behind less agile ships and board them before they could get a shot off.

  After each mission, we would return to Ca’Savio and pay Holger his cut, and then set back out to plunder vulnerable cargo ships in accessible ports. Like any reasonable human, I do not like harming innocent people, but like any reasonable human, I do not consider the wealthy to be innocent people. Holger did not, at first, differentiate between economic classes when he sent his band of thieves to a job, so that left me to the task of getting to know who was who. It was important to me to know who we were stealing from.

  As we traveled, Rebekah embedded herself in temples, churches, banks, warehouses, and so on, learning who were the wealthiest of each region, and who were the poorest. Who was generous, and who cruel. André got similar information just by chatting up people in bars. Truly André’s onyx eyes and ivory smile transcended class. They all would tell him anything he wanted to know.

  We cultivated a list of wealthy slobs, ruthless companies, and murderous criminals to harass and rob. And we found hapless villages, poor city families, and victims of the ruling classes to donate some of our spoils to. There’s no such thing as a good pirate, but I could at least strive to be a pirate who did good.

  This is how, nine years into my captaincy of The Wasp, I had ended up with five hundred pounds of pomegranates. André knew of an orchard in Malta owned by twins named Cesare and Luka Bennetto, low-level bosses in The Duke’s Own who were notorious for monopolizing all sowable land and then hiking prices on the poorer population. The Bennetto’s produce and shipping business put them among the ten wealthiest men in Malta.

  As we anchored next to the Bennetto’s cargo ship in Valletta, I told André, Rebekah, and Lora my plan to sneak in at midnight. André would distract the two guards as Rebekah, disguised as a stevedore, would redirect fruit onto our ship. Lora would be our muscle, helping move the larger quantities of cargo and also the guards
if André proved insufficient. Then we could take that food to the west side of the island and give it to the villagers who toiled twelve hours a day in the Bennetto orchards and vineyards, for a salary that made them unable to afford the fruit they picked.

  Lora, hearing my plan, said, “Only two guards? Let’s do this now.” Before I could object, she was striding toward the dock, in open daylight, her gait much longer and thus quicker than even our sprint. Vlad was following fast behind, howling with laughter. Rebekah called out “Lora, Vlad. Wait!” But the two guards were already separated from their swords and plunged into the charcoal water below. Lora stretched her impossibly long arm up toward a crane holding a sagging net filled with pomegranates. She yanked it off the hook. With her other arm, she reached down and tucked a crate full of lemons against her hip and ran back toward us. With no faces to punch, or bellies to stab, Vlad kicked in deck doors and hacked away sail lines until Lora called back after him.

  “Let’s go!” she shouted, running full speed past us, and we all hastily followed.

  In addition to the succulent pomegranates, we had a hundred pounds of lemons, which maybe the villagers would have some use for. If we had been more organized in our raid, we could have gotten eggs, maybe honey, definitely some milk. I don’t know what to do with lemons. It hurt my teeth to think of them.

  “They’re quite good in tea,” André said. “A healthy drink, too, especially with ginger.”

  “We could have taken their ginger,” Rebekah said. “If we had stuck to the plan.”

  “They didn’t have ginger. I would have smelled it,” Lora said unapologetically. “Eat the lemons. They prevent scurvy.”

  On the other side of Malta, the good people of Manikata appreciated the pomegranates, but didn’t really care for the lemons. Lora, however, had developed an appetite for them, and we kept those for her.

  After leaving Manikata, Lora handed me half of a lemon. Even though I despised the tooth-meltingly sour taste, I bit into the edge, taking skin, pit, seed, and pulp into my mouth. The lemon was sweet. It was a flavor I remembered from my youth, but tasted again decades later, the juice was a crisp sugary redemption.

  I held fast to my desire not to harm poor or small operations. This was not something I bothered to share with Holger, but I wrote regularly to Edmond on the subject and recounted our adventures to him. I missed him greatly. I wanted him to be proud of who I had become. If I had to waste my time reporting to a low-level nobody like Holger, then I was determined to spend my time developing patience with myself, discipline of body and mind, and a moral center upon which my soul could steadfastly balance.

  2

  In late summer of 1824, it appeared that our patience was paying off.

  “I have something new for you,” Holger said. “Higher priority. Higher stakes. The bosses think you’re up to it.”

  The details of the orders bothered me greatly. He wanted us to go inland to Augsburg. A young man named Max, the nephew of someone quite important within the Order (Holger would not tell us a name) had been stabbed by the constable. Max and his friends had apparently been robbing carriages. (“Such a minor little thing,” Holger sighed. “But these constables think they are little kings of their little kingdoms.”) The constable and Max got into a scuffle, during the course of which the constable had pulled Max’s knife from its hip sheath and drove it into Max’s thigh. The ensuing infection led to the amputation of Max’s right leg. (“Oh, the boss was not happy about that,” Holger said. “I’ve never heard such language from them. Usually so solemn, you know.”)

  “What do they want us to do to him?” I said.

  “Him?” Holger said. “Not just him. The leaders of the Order are clear. The constable and his family must die. Every person in that house is to be offed.” He shrugged. “Oh, and a finger from each body returned as proof. Sorry, I trust you, but this is how these things are done.”

  I felt dizzy. I tasted lemon, bitter and sharp. Could I do this? I could. I had to. I just had to look at the bigger picture.

  Leaving Lora to keep an eye on the crew, André, Rebekah, Vlad, and I traveled through the Alps and into Bavaria. I also took along Samuel, our navigator, a smallish and smart young man. He never said much, but I could always see thoughts tumbling behind his eyes. It seemed good to have a steady thinker with me on a mission of this magnitude.

  The constable lived in a modest home, tucked away from the village at the edge of the forest. We spent a few days watching from the trees. He had a wife and two children. There were no guards or other security. They were just a family, like any family. Lemons again on my tongue and in my throat, the taste repeating and repeating on me.

  Vlad, giddy at the potential for physical combat and murder, suggested that we set the house on fire and then kill each one of them as they ran out. André shook his head. “What are we even doing here?” he said to me, but I refused to meet his eyes.

  “We enter the house,” I said. “We do this cleanly, we do this simply, we do this quickly.”

  “Then we burn the house down,” Vlad said with a throaty laugh. I thought of another burning house. I thought of another father. Was it another low-level captain, just trying to prove herself, that had destroyed my life once upon a time?

  “No,” I said. “No fire.” One of the constable’s children ran out of the house, and was called back in by his mother. I made a decision. “Or you’re right. We burn the house down, but as a diversion for our escape.”

  André shook his head with disgust. Rebekah looked away. The tension between my dear friends and me was palpable to Vlad and Samuel.

  “Rebekah, Samuel, and I will execute the constable and his family, while Vlad and André stand guard,” I said.

  “But I’m the murderer,” Vlad whined. “I’m very good at it. Have I not been good enough at murdering?”

  “You’re very good at murder,” I reassured him.

  “You got to murder that banker last time,” André said, his hand reassuring on Vlad’s shoulder. “Remember, in Florence?”

  Even Vlad was not immune to André. He nodded, placated. “You are right. Fair is fair. Others can do the murder tonight.”

  After nightfall, we left behind Vlad and André, and slipped into the house. We woke the family and moved them at knifepoint into the parlor. Rebekah went from one to the next gagging them. Only she knew what I planned to do next. I couldn’t have hidden it from her if I wanted to.

  I considered Samuel, the only member of the team I did not usually bring ashore for these kinds of things. He was Holger’s man, most likely. Samuel was slight, sly, and wickedly smart, but he had a softness to him. I did not suspect him of being a high-ranking official of the Order, but then I had not suspected Señora Bover, either. I would need to be wary of anyone who was not André, Rebekah, Lora, or Edmond.

  “Samuel,” I said. “Help Vlad gather brush for the fire.” He saluted and left.

  I waited until I was sure he was gone. “If you want to live, listen carefully to what I have to say, and don’t argue,” I told the terrified family. On my instructions, I placed each of their left hands on the kitchen table. I took a hatchet from the corner, looked the constable in his eyes, and took off his pinky finger. I can still hear the dull thud of the blade against the wood table and the strained screams of him and his family. The same for his wife. The constable groaned as I moved to his children, but it couldn’t be helped. The older sister bit down so hard her teeth tore through the gag and she nearly choked. When I went to cut her younger brother’s hand, the girl weakly gestured with her good hand and whispered, “No. Take another of mine instead.”

  And I did. I hated myself.

  Rebekah untied them, as I stood ready with the axe in case they gathered their wits to fight. “My men are behind the tree line in front of your house,” I said. “You will need to run out the back. Do not do it until you hear me slam the front door. If any of us see you, we will kill you. Run out the back of the house toward your neigh
bor’s barn. You are no longer constable, and you are no longer welcome in Augsburg. Rebekah will lead you to your new home in Innsbruck. It’s not safe for you here.”

  I yelled the okay for Samuel to light the fire and ran out the front, slamming the door hard behind me. I could see the shadows of the constable’s family and Rebekah through the smoke. Behind them was another figure. The figure lurched stiffly, slowly. I could only see a silhouette, but I knew that familiar face twisted into an unscreamed scream, that shirt covered in blood, that dry mouth muttering “Why? Why?” A figure I had seen since I was a little girl. Who was this phantom that had haunted me my whole life? I turned away, grabbed Samuel, and we ran toward Vlad and André.

  “Let me see!” Vlad demanded, and I showed him my satchel full of fingers. He cooed like a child seeing ice for the first time.

  “We’ve got to go. Now!” I shouted.

  “Where’s Rebekah?” André asked, truly frantic. It was better with him to not tell him the plan. He could charm, but complicated plans bored and irritated him. I would explain to him later so that he would not have to carry any fabricated murders on his conscience.

  “She’s guarding the rear door, making sure they don’t escape,” I said. “She’ll catch up. Go!”

  It’s too complex to save every innocent life, but when we could, we did. Revenge superseded Samaritan deeds. I sought to find the heart of the Order and pluck it out. If I did harm along the way, then I would have to take that up with whatever god would be waiting for me after I died.

  When Vlad, Samuel, André, and I arrived back at The Wasp, Rebekah was already there, as I knew she would be, playing cards with Lora. In lieu of a cribbage board, they were using knives on a plank of wood Lora had crafted out of a tree trunk.

  In our absence, Nathan, the first mate, had whipped the rest of the crew into a cleaning frenzy, and the ship shone like a royal jewel. Señora Bover had insisted that Nathan was one of the brightest young men in all of the Order, an admiral in the making. Nathan was rigid but dutiful. I disliked him, but some evils are necessary. During downtime, most of the crew took to laziness and booze. First mate Nathan was an exception. He took care of his body, ate healthily when he could. His shirts were smooth and white, his boots polished. He kept detailed notes in his log, of meetings, of dinners, of activities.