Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  “Do you still think the curse is of no consequence, Vavrinec? Someone must take steps to protect the city, both Prague altogether and the four towns individually. It may soon be too dangerous to stay anywhere near here, Vavrinec. Does not thought of all this frighten you?”

  Vavrinec shook his head. “The only thought that frightens me is that you take all this talk of curses and maleficia and the walking dead and lay it all at the feet of Svetovit and Fen’ka, holding them responsible for every tale of something strange or unusual that you hear.” He reached out and opened his palm, waiting for her to rest her hand in his. He held her hand on the tabletop and continued.

  “It is talk, Nadezda. It is only talk and gossip and tales for scaring children who will not sleep at night.”

  “It was only talk and rumor that lit the fire that burned Fen’ka; might you say as well, Vavrinec? Do you think that words and tales have no power?”

  Her husband squeezed her hand. “Yes, words and tales can kill. But not because the words of a dying woman call on Svetovit to avenge her!”

  “I wish I could be as certain, Vavrinec. Too many of the walking dead make me wonder…”

  “Did you hear, Nadezda?” Alena grasped her friend’s arm as they exited their Újezd neighborhood parish church of St. Martin after the midmorning Mass on Christmas Day. Alena, her womb growing ever larger, was expected to deliver her child in less than a month.

  “What did I hear?” Nadezda laughed, wrapped in her warm winter cloak. Had the betrothal of one of their friends been announced? Was a newlywed expecting a child? Or was a longer-married woman expecting to add to an already large family? Another possibility occurred to her. “Did Sorina give birth?” That baby’s arrival had already been delayed nearly three weeks.

  “No, silly goose! We would certainly have heard about that! Do you think I would have waited until the end of the Mass to tell you if Sorina had given birth last night? On Christmas Eve?” Alena hung on her friend’s arm as everyone around them exchanged greetings of “Happy Christmas! Vánočni stromeček!” Alena guided Nadezda to one side of the crowd, away from the bulk of the congregation who still struggled to make their way through the doors of the church onto the small square.

  “No, Nadezda.” Alena’s tone was suddenly serious. “Did you hear about the old beggar woman Božena and Anežka, the wife of the Old Town council member? They had that tremendous argument in the Old Town Square on St. Nicholas’ Day. Do you recall?”

  “Yes.” Nadezda giggled. “I wish I had been there to see it. They were ready to strike each other like serpents almost on the doorsteps of the church of St. Nicholas—and on his feast day, yet! They certainly never seem to have listened to the injunction to love their neighbors, did they?” Both women laughed.

  “No, they certainly did not. But remember—they both died last week, just before the last Sunday of Advent. Since then, they’ve both been seen circling each other exactly where they had their fight, and look ready to kill each other again if they could!” Alena eagerly continued, “Not only them, but also the two gentlemen, Aleksandr and Jiri, who died so sudden-like in November. The two gentlemen have been seen in the Old Town Square with Božena and Anežka on moonless nights. Or so I’ve been told.”

  Nadezda felt the blood drain from her face and grasped more heartily at Alena’s arm for support.

  Alena leaned close to her friend’s face. “It is too many now, is it not, Nadezda? Too much death and too many of the dead walking abroad. It is all Fen’ka’s doing, is it not?”

  Nadezda was certain of it now. Unexpected deaths were not uncommon. But there was no way Vavrinec could explain away so many otherwise inexplicable and twisted turns in the fates of these folk who had been unable to rest in their graves after Fen’ka’s ashes had been deposited in the river Vltava, swirling and lost in the water rather than resting quietly and still in a grave somewhere.

  She nodded.

  “What can we do, Nadezda? We need to protect the four towns somehow. You would know better than anyone. You remember the old ways that your grandmother taught you.” Alena’s eyes grew larger. “You are the only one who can know how to set Fen’ka’s words aside. How can we stop the curse before it consumes us all?” Nadezda could see the fear in Alena’s eyes.

  “I do not know. Why do you say that only I can set Fen’ka’s curse aside?” Surely Alena was wrong to place so much trust in her. “There must be someone who knows the old ways better than I. Or surely one of the priests knows how to stop such a thing, or one of the theologians at the new university. They would know how to prevent a curse.”

  Alena shook her head. “No, they would not, Nadezda, and you know that. Only someone who knows how Fen’ka would use the old ways could know how to set them aside.”

  “No,” Nadezda countered quietly. “That makes no sense, Alena. You are frightened and fear feeds on itself. Go home and forget all this. Go home and celebrate Christmas. Let me speak with Vavrinec and discover what he thinks now about all these things. I will share his thoughts with you before the New Year comes.”

  Alena looked at Nadezda and Nadezda could see that Alena’s fears were not calmed.

  “I promise, Alena.”

  “Such things are not uncommon among the dead plagued by jealousy and the desire for vengeance. You know that, Nadezda,” Vavrinec pointed out to her on the night after Christmas, in the pause between their first and second sleep, when she brought up her discussion after the Mass with Alena. “Need I remind you of these things?”

  “No, Vavrinec. If it were simply that Božena and Anežka were seen in the Old Town Square, refusing to lay down their feud, I would agree. If it were only Božena and Anežka with Aleksandr and Jiri, I would be willing to say that the two men were somehow caught up in the women’s feud and leave it at that. But I have heard in the market that the moneylender František, the miser who lived near the Little Square, burnt to death trying to escape his burning house, and he has also been seen at night running through the streets of the Old Town, still aflame and clutching his coins. Do you remember the Tuscan bricklayer who has been seen wandering near the castle and in the Little Town, asking people to pull the nail from his head so that he can rest among the dead? So very many will not rest in their graves since Fen’ka’s curse, and there were few, so very few before that. This is not natural,” Nadezda insisted. “Fen’ka’s curse and Svetovit must have had a hand in shaping the demise and torment of all these people. If I only knew enough about what exactly Fen’ka uttered as she burned and could see how her words were played out in the lives of these folk—the priest Conrad, the miser František, that bricklayer from Tuscany and his mad wife, now Božena, Anežka, Jiri, and Aleksandr—then I could determine if it is really her curse that is driving these events or if it is simply an unusual confluence of jealousy, anger, and divine judgment. Do you not see that, Vavrinec?”

  Vavrinec sat in bed, his arms crossed across his chest, and pouted in the dark.

  Nadezda groaned with frustration. “You would rather insist these events were all driven by anything else rather than admit that Fen’ka’s curse is slowly working itself out here in the midst of Prague. Why, Vavrinec, why? Why could Fen’ka’s curse not lie behind all these events?”

  Vavrinec turned to his wife. “Why, you ask? Because if I agree with you, that Fen’ka and her curse are responsible, then you will take it upon yourself to chase her down—even though she is dead. You will force her hand in some way to remove the curse—or will die in the attempt!” His eyes glistened as he spoke. “You would drive yourself to your death in the attempt to save Prague, and that I could never bear, Nadezda.” One tear streaked down his cheek and he swallowed hard to stop any further tears from coursing down his face.

  She realized the truth of his words even as they spilled from his lips. While she was sure that Vavrinec would bear up under his grief and eventually find some measure of happiness, it would not be fair to either Petr or Milos. Her brother Petr had already l
ost their parents and now relied only on her to see him safely to adulthood, and she knew from experience and from watching Petr how cruel it would be to knowingly deprive her son Milos of his mother at such a young age.

  She took Vavrinec in her arms and stroked his hair gently, as he had so often done for her. “That will never happen, Vavrinec,” she promised in a whisper. “Never.”

  It was almost New Year’s Eve when Nadezda was able to find time to speak with Alena. They were in the marketplace of the Old Town Square examining some of the beautiful wares still available as gifts for Epiphany, coming in exactly one week. Although most of their gift-giving had taken place on either St. Nicholas’ Day or Christmas Day among their families or their husbands’ places of work, it was still the custom to give gifts throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, which would culminate on Epiphany.

  Alena was still not convinced to set aside her fears for Prague. “Surely you would have enough sense to find some way to undo the curse without it costing your own life,” she argued with Nadezda. “I think Vavrinec is being unreasonable to think that saving Prague necessarily comes at the cost of dying.”

  “He does make the point, though, Alena,” Nadezda defended her husband’s view, “that jealousy and anger can drive the dead to walk, as can unrequited love—if Father Conrad was in love with that Italian girl—or some other, unrelated hex.” She thought of the Italian mason and his wife, the one who asked passersby to pluck the nail from his head that he might rest in his grave. “All these events may simply be coincidence and… and… Why, Alena, you might even see the hand of Fen’ka in the disappearance of that novice from St. George’s Convent that Petr heard ran away on Christmas Day. Do you think that Fen’ka’s curse drives everything that happens in Prague?”

  Alena finally had to agree that she was too willing to see the hand of Fen’ka everywhere. “It does seem extreme,” she said sheepishly, and blushed. “I would have thought the curse responsible for the disappearance of that novice if I had heard it first, from someone else. But if you put it like that…” She hugged Nadezda.

  “So, on New Year’s Day, what will my godson be wearing when you come to eat at our house?” Alena asked, her former bubbling, happy self. Nadezda happily lapsed into her own previous, pre-curse self as well, and described the new garments Milos had received on Christmas.

  For several days after Epiphany, it was nearly impossible to find anyone willing to discuss anything other than the transformation of the banquet guests into animals that had occurred at Jan Capek’s inn in the Little Town. Mad dogs, squirrels, geese, serpents, donkeys, even peacocks—the guests had been transformed as they had begun to eat the stew the innkeeper’s cook was famous for. Even one of the serving girls had been transformed as she had begun to taste the stew herself afterwards. This was unmistakably a work of magic, and all Nadezda’s suspicions of Svetovit and Fen’ka raged again. She knew better than to raise them with Vavrinec, though. She resolved to keep her eyes and ears open for the least suggestion of anything gone amiss that any of her neighbors or the people in the markets might be willing to talk about. Even the missing novice from the convent near the new cathedral. The missing novice had probably simply run home to her family, but Nadezda had heard a whisper that perhaps the girl had been seized by an imp conjured by one of the other novices.

  “An imp that she had conjured because of Fen’ka’s curse!” Nadezda suspected when she heard the tale. There was nothing Nadezda was not willing to hold Svetovit and Fen’ka responsible for.

  Alena saw the change in Nadezda and joined her in collecting news of the goings-on in Prague that could possibly be construed as the result of Fen’ka and her curse. What surprised them both was the eagerness of some to also lay these events at the feet of Fen’ka and the disbelief of others who refused to consider the possibility that her dying words might have the power to work her will even from beyond her watery grave.

  “It seems that Vavrinec was hiding the talk of all the taverns from me for months!” Nadezda declared to Alena. “I was at the bakery for bread yesterday and asking some of the apprentices what the latest news might be in the taverns, and they said everyone was talking of Fen’ka again, just as they had after Fr. Conrad’s death and that Tuscan mason—Bartolomeo. They all said that Fen’ka’s curse must be responsible and must also be behind the transformations at the inn. One of them even reminded everyone else that she had cried out, ‘Curse them eating and drinking!’ If that doesn’t describe what happened at the inn, what does?”

  Alena agreed. Her husband had finally told her a similar tale. “He said that he hadn’t told me before because he knew that I would tell you, and that Vavrinec did not want to encourage you to see Fen’ka’s curse as the power responsible for all these things. But he also says that many of the men laugh at the suggestion that Fen’ka might have truly been a witch. Even the men who were there and had a hand in burning her at the stake. Now they all say such things are nonsense, the delusions of old women and children, and that there are no such things as witches.” She paused. “But they never say what Fen’ka was burned for if she was not the witch they all claimed she was.”

  Not long after Epiphany, more news reached Nadezda’s ears. A German youth was found in the butcher’s parish of St. Jakub on the morning of their patronal feast day, his hand grasped firmly in the fist of the statue of the Mother of God.

  “It seems he had broken into the church and unlocked the alms chest in some manner, even though he had no tools for picking locks on him when they went through his pockets later,” Vavrinec admitted to Nadezda when she asked him what the news in the tavern had been that night. “The hand of the thief was held so tightly by the statue that he hung there, his feet unable to reach the floor, dislocating his shoulder. Finally, the only way to get him down was to cut his arm off at the shoulder and leave it in the grip of the statue.”

  Nadezda was banking the fire for the night, listening to her husband, and she nodded as she tidied the coals and arranged them as she always did. He sipped at a final mug of ale as he sat at the table and watched her. Realizing that she would discover what she wanted to know from other sources, such as Petr or the other apprentices at the bakery, or even strangers she might happen to speak to in the markets, he saw no point in concealing the happenings in the town or the conjectures of the men in the taverns.

  “Another act of justice, many say. The statue of the Mother of God apprehended a thief about to steal the alms given for the relief of the poor,” Vavrinec reported. “Justice such as one might hope for or expect from God and His saints to protect the poor and the needy. But others say…”

  “Yes? What do others say?” Nadezda prodded.

  “Others say that something must have gone wrong, terribly wrong, with the young thief’s plan or he would never have dared enter the church in the first place. Whatever went wrong, whatever drove him into the church and made him so overconfident as to dare open the alms chest, right there at the feet of the Mother of God, was the result of…” He hesitated to say the final words but finally coughed out the witch’s name. “…Fen’ka’s curse.”

  Nadezda sat back and surveyed her work in the fireplace. “That sounds like a witch’s curse to me. Drive a young man to desperation, promise him success, and then withdraw whatever assured him that he could succeed with his plans.” She searched her memory. What had Vavrinec told her that afternoon in September when Fen’ka had died in the fire? She quoted her husband’s words back to him. “She invoked old Svetovit and demanded that he… take away what people want as well as what they have.” Yes, that was it! “Take away both what they want and what they have. The thief found in St. Jakub’s Church has certainly lost everything he wanted as well as what he already had—his arm,” she pointed out.

  She continued to gaze into the fireplace and think. Streaks of red laced through the ashes, twisting and glimmering like snakes, connecting still-smoldering bits of wood or chips of coals that would not last the night. It w
as not always evident how the heat connected each straggling coal to another but the glowing trail was there, hidden under ash or soot. “Just as Fen’ka’s curse underlies and connects all these events since her burning, even if the trail is not always evident or visible.” She considered Vavrinec’s concern that her pursuit of the truth about Fen’ka’s dealings with Svetovit and the probable consequences for Prague would prove her undoing.

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Behold, Vavrinec. I have simply begun to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I have not destroyed myself yet.” He smiled at her in return, looked into his ale, and continued smiling.

  “Every curse has a key,” she continued, staring into the fireplace, “a clause that is central to it and which must be fulfilled before the full weight of the curse is unleashed and the victim bears the brunt of it. Like the tale of Sipkova Ruzenkaye, the beautiful princess who slept for one hundred years.” Nadezda was thinking aloud as she arranged the puzzle pieces of Fen’ka’s curse in her mind. “The key, the necessary clause of the curse, was that the princess prick her finger on the spindle. The last of the godmothers could then rewrite, though not eradicate, the curse. Though the princess had then to still prick her finger, the prick resulted in a century-long sleep rather than death as the original curse had insisted.”

  Vavrinec nodded to show he understood the logic of Nadezda’s thought. “If I can sort out the puzzle pieces and discover the central key, we can rewrite it, Vavrinec, and save us all before anything worse comes to pass. All we have to do,” Nadezda murmured, “is put the pieces of the puzzle together and find the key that unlocks Fen’ka’s curse.”

  Wheel of Fortune