Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  “No, that one goes there,” Florina corrected Seïa, moving one coin to the stack next to where Seïa had put it. Seïa scowled at her friend in mock indignation as she carefully placed the next one in its correct stack. Florina picked up one of the uncounted coins and looked at it as Seïa went on counting and sorting.

  “This coin is not from Prague,” Florina announced finally after completing her examination. She turned it around in her hand once more and then offered it to Seïa for inspection. Seïa took it and turned it around in her fingertips a few times, squinting at it in the gathering gloom.

  “It’s counterfeit!” she exclaimed. “This isn’t a coin from somewhere else, Florina! It’s meant to look like one of the emperor’s coins but it isn’t real—it’s a fake!”

  “Who would do that?” demanded Florina. “Give a counterfeit coin as alms to the nuns? That’s wicked!” She paused. “Or stupid. Don’t they look at the coins in their purses before they give them away?”

  “No, it wasn’t stupid,” Seïa decided. “It was wicked. Definitely wicked. She did look at the coin before giving it to me.” She recalled the stout maid and told Florina that the woman had buried the coin amongst the others in Seïa’s hands so that she could not identify it.

  “How dare she!” exclaimed Florina, forgetting for an instant the need to be quiet. “Doesn’t she think that God will see and punish such wickedness?”

  “Hush! Florina!” Seïa hissed. “Keep your voice down or we will be found out and then it is we—not the maid—who will be punished!”

  Florina felt herself blush. “You’re right, Seïa. I’m sorry,” she whispered. She knit her brows in thought.

  “I know!” she whispered in excitement, jumping up. “I remember how my nurse, when I was little, would tell me that if someone offends you or is spiteful and you want them to make it right, to stand and say—what was it? Oh, Seïa! I remember, I remember! She said to say—!” Florina stamped her left foot, turned and spat over her left shoulder, and exclaimed, “Staniž se! Make it so!”

  “What is your word, mistress?”

  Florina and Seïa both jumped against the wall behind them in shock and stifled a scream. Just behind Florina and to her left stood a bowlegged, hunchbacked imp that stood nearly waist-high to them. He had a long hooked nose that nearly reached his slavering lower lip and large pointed ears standing out from his wrinkled face. A red stocking cap covered his apparently bald head and his scrawny, bony arms would have hung down nearly to the floor if he had not been pawing the air before him with his oversized, pockmarked hands. A tattered sackcloth shift hung about his scrawny frame down to its knobby knees and large wart-covered feet with long, sharp yellow nails.

  The imp eyed the two girls, one bushy eyebrow cocked inquisitively. “What is your word, mistress?” he repeated, bowing his head, his raspy voice hanging in the air. Neither Florina nor Seïa could do more than stammer in response. The imp looked from one to the other of them, one large finger with its thick, uncut yellow nail resting lazily on his lip, before settling his beady gaze on Florina.

  “Wh–what are you doing here? Wh-who are you?” Florina was finally able to ask.

  “My name is unimportant, mistress,” the imp coughed. “What is important is that you have called me and that I have answered the summons, one that I have not heard on this hilltop for many, many long years.” His voice became wistful. “Long have I served the god who is worshipped on this hill, longer than any mortal can remember. Long have I served him—and whoever summoned me.” He bowed low again, sweeping his arm in a grand gesture before him. “I await your instructions. What is your word, mistress, which you would have made true?”

  Florina wasn’t sure if he was being sincere or sarcastic in his seeming humility and eagerness to serve. If he served the god who was worshipped on this hill, why had none of the nuns ever mentioned such a creature? She racked her brain. Was it true that the simple country charm her nurse had told her about—stamping, spitting, exclaiming—had summoned this creature from wherever he had lived since last hearing such a summons? Why had she summoned him after all?

  “Ah, ah—’ she stuttered. The creature’s lips curled into a kind of grin, squinting at the novices who were so clearly at a loss as to what to do.

  Seïa slid her hand towards Florina and pressed the counterfeit coin into Florina’s hand. In a daze, Florina slowly brought the coin to her face and stared at it. She shook herself, as if waking from a dream, and held the coin towards the imp.

  “See this? See this coin?” she demanded of the imp. “It was given to us as alms, but it is worthless, a counterfeit. A wicked, wicked counterfeit. Can you do something to punish the maid who gave it to us?”

  “Punish the one who gave you the counterfeit coin?” repeated the imp. He gazed at the ceiling momentarily before his face lit up. “Why, yes. Yes. I could do that for you, mistress.” He reached towards Florina’s hand.

  “Good.” Florina released the coin into the imp’s palm. “Then do it.”

  “Immediately, mistress. Before this night is out.” He turned as if to walk down the hallway before turning back and leaning towards Florina. “Of course, mistress, there is a price for all services. Even a poor servant deserves some token of gratitude from his mistress.”

  “Payment? Why should you get any payment before you have fulfilled your mistress’ request?” hissed Seïa at the imp. “How can you be paid before doing as you’ve been told?”

  The imp turned and regarded Seïa a moment, running his eyes up and down her frame as if only now discovering her. Then he turned back to Florina and answered, “Even a poor, undependable, unwelcome servant”—he paused and licked his lips—“even such a poor servant as myself might deserve some small pledge of his mistress’ goodwill in anticipation of a job well done. Mightn’t he?” He twisted his grinning face up at her, reaching his other, empty hand toward her.

  Florina thought wildly. What small thing could she give this creature before her, this pitiful creature begging some token from her, this creature that she had summoned—however inadvertently?

  “Some small alms?” he pleaded. A small tear slipped from the corner of one eye.

  “How can I refuse him alms?” Florina turned to Seïa. “We were hoping for alms today, and how can we deny them to this poor creature?”

  Seïa’s opposition wavered. “Well, maybe…” she began thoughtfully.

  “Fruit!” exclaimed Florina. “An apple! Is an apple token enough?” She pulled a small apple from a pocket deep in her novice’s habit, feeling her face flush. “I took this from dinner yesterday, thinking I would need to eat it today while we were asking for alms,” she confided to Seïa.

  The imp eyed the apple in Florina’s hand. “The fruit would be a wonderful gift, a token much appreciated by any servant who received it from the hand of his new mistress,” he purred, reaching for the apple. He licked his lips, eyes opening wide in anticipation.

  Florina dropped the apple into his open palm and, after the imp smelled it and drew his rough, slime-coated tongue along one side of it, he hid it within the shift he wore. “Thank you, mistress. Servant thanks you, mistress, for your alms.” He stepped back from the girls.

  “Your word will be true before the night is out.” The imp was gone.

  The girls collapsed against each other and gasped. They stared at each other, open-mouthed, and finally burst into nervous gales of laughter.

  “Did you see that?” Florina demanded. “That creature? That imp? Did you see what it looked like?”

  “Its tongue—it was forked, I think!” said Seïa.

  “He was so happy to get that apple—can you believe it? So happy to get a little apple!” Florina added.

  But sobriety swept over them a moment later. “What do you think it will do to that maid?” Florina asked Seïa. “I never said exactly how to punish her.”

  “It seems like such a small imp,” Seïa considered. “It doesn’t seem capable of doing much.
Probably tangle her hair in her sleep or pinch her toes in the night. Something irritating and spiteful like that.”

  “Is that all, do you think?” Florina persisted.

  “I’m sure of it. Anything more than that would need a much bigger payment, a more serious token or pledge,” Seïa reasoned aloud.

  “You are right. As always,” Florina conceded. The girls laughed again, and scooping up the coins from the floor, hurried back towards the convent dormitories. “Can you imagine the look on that maid’s face when the imp pinches her toes? She’ll never give counterfeit coins as alms again, will she?”

  The next morning, after Prime and the Great Silence were concluded, Florina sought out Seïa. “How do you think we’ll find out how the imp accomplished his task? Shall we summon him again?”

  “I think he will find a way to let us know,” Seïa answered. “He won’t want his mistress angry with it, now will it?” She shrugged and giggled. “But I hope we don’t have to wait long! Tell me as soon as you hear anything!”

  “Likewise!” Florina said. The girls parted to go about their assigned morning duties.

  When Florina and Seïa entered the hall the next day for the daily lessons, the other novices were all giddy with excitement. Florina and Seïa had gone all morning and afternoon the day before waiting for some word from the imp, but there had been no news of how—or even whether—he had accomplished his assigned task. They had been unable to escape from Vespers unnoticed last evening and so had been unable to summon the creature. Seïa had suggested to Florina that he had simply taken Florina’s apple and run away.

  “Did you hear?” one of the other novices exclaimed to them as they entered the hall. “Did you hear what Jeschua heard?”

  “No, what?” Florina bounded toward the other novices, all clustered around Jeschua, who was sitting in her usual place along the edge of the third row of benches.

  “Start over, start over again, Jeschua,” urged the earlier-arrived novices, eager to hear the tale again.

  “Well,” Jeschua began, “I was helping Sister Hyanthé oversee the delivery of the barrels of wine to the convent yesterday afternoon. The vintner and his apprentices were unloading the barrels from the cart and one of the apprentices was holding the horses steady, talking sweetly to them and feeding them carrots so they wouldn’t be frightened by the clattering of the barrels.”

  Jeschua swallowed and the others waited breathlessly. Happy for all the attention, Jeschua paused before resuming her tale. “He gave me another carrot to feed the horses, and that’s when he told me.”

  “Told you what?” Florina asked.

  “Well,” Jeschua began again, “The apprentice leaned over to me very quietly and said, ‘Did you hear about the maid at the Czernin house in the Little Town? They say her room is bewitched and all the servants are terrified that their rooms may be next. They want to leave for the country estate and have sent word to the count and countess in the country.’

  “‘Bewitched?’ I asked.” Jeschua reported her part of the conversation. “‘Why do they think the house is bewitched?’ ‘Because,’ he told me, ‘the maid was found stone-cold dead in her bed this morning, with the brand of a counterfeit coin burned into her forehead!”

  Florina glanced at Seïa, who looked like she was about to be sick.

  “Have you ever heard of such a thing?” Jeschua continued. “At first they all thought it was the brand of an honest coin on her forehead but when they looked more closely, the steward recognized it and said that it was a counterfeit.”

  “Could it have been a gang of thieves who broke into the room and branded her, though? A gang of thieves with false coins?” one of the other novices wondered.

  “No, because he said some of them had thought that as well,” Jeschua informed the novice with the air and tone of an older, wiser woman. “There had been no sound all night, no one heard anything, and so it must have been bewitchment. If it wasn’t, she would have screamed so loud that the whole house would have awakened. Wouldn’t she? How could a maid not scream as she was branded if it was only mortal thieves?”

  Florina realized what had happened. The imp had done his work, and done it well. Before the night was out, he had promised. The maid would be punished for giving a counterfeit coin to the nuns and she had certainly been punished. The imp had presumably even used the same coin the maid had given Seïa and then Florina had given to the imp, making it clear—to Florina and Seïa, at least—it was for that offense the maid was now lying cold and dead in her nightclothes, her corpse unwashed and untended by the other servants.

  The novice mistress entered the hall and all the novices scattered to their seats for the lessons to begin. Florina had even more difficulty than usual in following the lessons. She was concerned about Seïa; although she managed to not become sick, even the novice mistress remarked that she looked unwell that morning.

  “We should summon the imp and tell him he went too far, that he shouldn’t have killed that maid,” Florina whispered to Seïa. The two girls were sitting together during the meal that afternoon, hoping that no one would hear them as the sister reading during the otherwise silent meal droned on from the lectern near the door of the refectory.

  “Summon him? I never want to see that creature again!” hissed Seïa. “We told it to do one thing and it twisted that to mean something else completely. We can’t trust it! Ever! Don’t speak to it, Florina, or things will only get worse! Do you understand me? Don’t ever summon it again or it could ruin us all.”

  Tears stung Florina’s eyes. “O course, he went too far in killing that maid but she did deserve it in a way, didn’t she? She gave a counterfeit coin as alms and she was branded by that coin at her death. She should have thought that lying to nuns and giving false alms would not go unpunished. Even if she had lived a long life and ended her days in peace, do you think God would have ever admitted her to His presence if she hadn’t repented of her attempt to defraud us?”

  Some of the other novices around them glared a silent warning to stop talking. Seïa chewed her bread and blew on the spoonful of hot soup before her lips.

  “I don’t know, Florina,” she finally whispered back. “But it worries me. I think that imp is dangerous.”

  Days passed. The novices heard no more of the bewitched house in the Little Town or of the maid that had died there, her fault blazed across her forehead for the entire world to see. Seïa had become much more serious, being more attentive during her lessons and prayers, and though they never spoke of it, Florina was sure it was because of their encounter with the imp. The two girls still had the coins they had collected that afternoon in the Little Town Square but were afraid to go out and plead for more, unsure of the consequences of another afternoon of alms-begging.

  St. Andrew’s Day came nearly two weeks later, and the girls decided the time had come to give the coins they had collected to the convent. They made their way to Sister Hyanthé’s cell, bringing the small sack of coins with them.

  “We can leave them outside her door and let her find them,” Seïa had suggested after they debated the best approach. A small grin, the first Florina had seen in the past two weeks, bloomed on Seïa’s cheeks.

  “Can you imagine the look on her face when she opens the door and finds a sackful of coins? She will be so grateful,” Florina agreed. “If she doesn’t see us, she may even think it is a miracle!” The two giggled, relaxed and unafraid, their old selves again.

  They reached Sister Hyanthé’s cell door and paused. It was ajar and they could hear voices inside. They stood there, unable to step away—as they knew they should—and afraid to knock, interrupting the conversation inside.

  “I noticed it missing this morning, Sister Hyanthé,” a voice said. “I checked twice, after the Mass was concluded, to be sure.”

  Silence. Finally Hyanthé’s voice punctured the air. “You come to me because…?”

  “I am ashamed to say, sister, but when I mentioned this to Sister Mahel
a, our sacristan, she told me that you led a group of sisters this past week in cleaning and organizing some items in the sacristy and that it had probably been moved during the cleaning. I was hoping you might recall seeing where it might have been put.”

  Hyanthé sighed deeply. “No, sister, I am afraid that I cannot recall seeing where the reliquary might have been placed. It is unusual that it was not replaced with the others after it was polished, but though it’s beautifully inlaid with gems and enamels, it’s small and easily mislaid. Such a beautiful reliquary,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “for a saint so important to monastics but so little regarded by lay folk.”

  The other voice paused. “It was of concern to Sister Mahela that we locate the reliquary as quickly, and with as little fuss, as possible. Some of the nuns have been discovered gossiping about the convent’s apparent lack of resources, and if the reliquary is not available for veneration on St. Sabbas’ feast on December fifth, it might give credence to those rumors if some of the nuns think it has been sold—or worse, stolen.”

  Florina gasped at the same time as Seïa. A possibly stolen reliquary?

  “I will mention it in my prayers, sister. I too have heard these rumors and hope that the reliquary can be located and displayed for veneration next week so that the fires of gossip and suspicion are not fanned by its loss,” Hyanthé promised the nun.

  “Thank you, Sister Hyanthé. I will report all this to Sister Mahela. She may ask you to help her search for it if it is not discovered in the next few days. She also wanted me to ask you to remember who might have been the nun polishing that reliquary, in particular. If it was stolen, that would be the most likely nun to have taken it.” There was no response. The interview clearly was concluded. “Your blessing, sister.” Florina and Seïa could hear the rustling of the nun’s habit as she must have bowed her head to kiss the elder Hyanthé’s knuckles.

  Florina set the coins she carried on the floor beside Hyanthé’s door quickly, and as quietly as she could, and then moved rapidly down the hall, joined by Seïa, who hastened to catch up with her. The girls rounded a corner and ducked down a stairway.