Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  She stood at the brink of the stonework, which gave the cove a gentle curve. In the daytime, there were often rowboats tied up along the cove’s edge, to take tourists through the canals of Little Venice to see the waterwheels and backs of the picturesque medieval houses along the water. She could see the inky blackness of the water stretching away from her under the bridge. This was very much the scene of the Six of Swords. One of those rowboats, just pulling away from the quay and into the smoothly flowing river, would complete the scene perfectly. The river water, rippling back from the foundations of the bridge—like sound echoing back from a mountain it had encountered—would create surface tension on one side of the boat just as the water on the other side flowed smoothly out to rejoin the liquid highway. It was the exact replica of the card’s image. She realized she had been holding her breath, tense with anticipation. She let the air out of her lungs and relaxed. She had not simply been haunted by the image of the Six of Swords. She was being driven by the image. The image of the card she had seen in New York had driven her here for a purpose; but what that purpose was, she knew not. She sat on one of the stone pilings and waited.

  It was quiet, though not entirely silent: the river lapped the stones along the edge of the cove. There was a distant creak as one of the waterwheels turned further up the canal from the bridge. No one was walking across the bridge above her, though, which was unusual. There was always a vast throng in the daytime and almost always, a lone figure could be seen crossing the bridge during the hours of the night. The stars glittered above her. She closed her eyes and leaned back, as far as she dared, balancing on the narrow stone beneath her.

  “Oh, Grandmother,” she sighed. “You used to tell me about the river here. How a troll lived under the bridge and would catch the souls of suicides who jumped from the bridge or swimmers who drowned. Or who would offer to row people across the river—before the bridge was built—and then murder them to steal their souls, dropping the bodies overboard in the middle of the river or hiding them in the rushes and grasses on the other side.” She suddenly missed her grandmother intensely, acutely aware of the old woman’s long absence. How she wished she could sit on that lap again in the rocking chair and lay her head against that bony shoulder, wrapped in her grandmother’s arms as they gently rocked together, the old woman telling the little girl her tales of the magic of Prague.

  As she leaned back there, her face to the stars, reliving those moments in her grandmother’s lap, she thought she could hear a distant but consistent plop, swish… plop, swish from the river. She opened her eyes and peered into the opaque shadows under the bridge.

  The sounds grew more distinct. It was clearly not the quiet lapping of the river along the stonework. Plop. Swish. Pause. Plop. Swish. A rowboat. She was sure of it. A rowboat was being propelled along the river, gliding a few feet between dips of the oar. It was definitely one oar, not two, that she heard breaking the water’s surface and pushing the boat forward. She stood and leaned out over the water as far as she dared, straining to see.

  Then it appeared. The boat slid around the corner of the cove from the large central portion of the river, where it must have been hugging the edge to make such a sharp turn. It was headed against the current, which meant the rowing must have been hard work. As the boat came into the cove, it seemed to come straight towards the pilings where the tourists would board during the daylight. As it came closer, Magdalena gasped. Her hand flew to cover her mouth.

  Standing in the back of the boat was a cloaked figure, holding a great oar, which swung methodically thorough the water, first on one side of the boat and then the other. It was a large figure, tall and dark against the even darker shadows. As the rowboat drew up alongside where she stood, Magdalena realized that the great hulking figure that towered above her was a woman. Seven feet tall, at least. Maybe eight. Long, tangled locks of dark hair, streaked with gray and seaweed, cascaded down her shoulders and back. Alongside the edge of the cove, in the bit of light available, her skin seemed to have an unusual pallor, even for that hour and limited light. Her cloak, which swirled as gracefully around her as she moved as the water swirled around the oar as it dipped and glided through the river, was a dark but indefinable color. Strands of seaweed seemed to be held in its creases as well. Her hands seemed strong as they gripped the long pole of the oar and the oarswoman steadied her craft by wedging the lower end of the oar in the mortar between the stones under the water’s surface. The boat bobbed up and down alongside the stonework but did not move forwards or backwards.

  Before the large female figure with the oar, another form huddled in the rowboat. In the shadows, it was hard to tell more than that a figure was there, but Magdalena could hear the wooden seat creak as the smaller figure shifted its weight. The figure’s feet moved slightly, causing a hollow “thud” to echo under the bridge.

  “Hello, dear.” The person in the front of the boat spoke. It was a woman’s voice. An old woman, with a voice thin and reedy. Not loud. In fact, barely audible above the sound of the river lapping the stones and the boat gently rocking on the small waves. The boat shifted slightly in the gloom and Magdalena could see the woman who spoke to her.

  She was small, huddled over in the boat, her head twisted at an odd angle as she looked up at Magdalena standing on the edge of the quay. A scarf covered her head and an apron covered the front of her dress. A matted curl of hair hung out from the right side of her scarf, although it was impossible to see any real colors in the night under the bridge. The dress and hair seemed to be dark, though; Magdalena could tell that much. The apron was white (or at least a much lighter color), and the scarf was an indeterminate halfway-in-between color. Magdalena could see a shimmer of water, reflecting what light there was, in the bottom of the boat under the woman’s boots. Was the boat slowly leaking or was the woman herself wet, river water dripping off her clothing into the bottom of the boat?

  The old woman spoke again. “Magdalena. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Magdalena gasped as her heart leapt into her throat. How did this shadowy woman of the night in her strange boat with her even stranger companion know who she as? How long had they been waiting?

  “Magdalena, I’ve been waiting for you,” the old woman repeated. “I’ve needed your assistance for quite some time. I’m glad you’ve finally come.”

  Magdalena was finally able to swallow and find her voice, but unable to speak much more loudly than the woman who addressed her. “What can I do for you? How long have you been waiting?” She paused and forced herself to take a deep breath. “Who are you?” she added.

  “My, my, child. So many questions. So little time.” The woman leaned forward in the boat towards where Magdalena was standing. Magdalena could see now that the old woman on the river was missing several teeth and seemed to be squinting as she looked up. Were the street lights next to the restaurant windows behind Magdalena that bright? She glanced over her shoulder to check, but the woman’s voice snapped her attention back to the scene before her.

  “Magdalena, I need your help. I need you to get justice for me.”

  “Justice for you? How? For what?” Magdalena was intrigued.

  The rowboat bobbed up and down at Magdalena’s feet, held in position by the large oarswoman who kept her oar wedged in the stonework. A thought flitted through Magdalena’s mind: “That can’t be easy.” The oarswoman stood there silently, gazing slowly back and forth from her passenger to Magdalena on dry land. The long tresses hid most of her face in shadow, but Magdalena guessed that the woman was probably neither young nor beautiful. The smaller passenger continued her tale.

  “I lived here, in what was countryside across the river in those days, although now it has been swallowed by the city. I lived alone. I had lived alone most of my life, away from the prying eyes of strangers. I had one friend as we were growing up together in the Old Town, but she married and had a family and would sometimes bring her children—or later, grandchildren—to visit, but she
died and then no one came.” The crone seemed almost wistful as she paused and bit her lip, glancing away from Magdalena and looking into the corners of the shadows dancing along the river’s surface toward the back of the cove.

  “But others did come. Not to visit but because they wanted something. Always wanting favors, they did. Always asking for something. ‘Help me with this, Fen’ka,’ they said. ‘Fen’ka, help me with that.’ It was deafening, always listening to the cries for help, begging for assistance. And did they ever ask, ‘What can we do for you, Fen’ka? Fen’ka, what do you need?’ No, that never crossed their lips or even occurred to them. Only took from me, they did. Every one of them a lupič, a robber. Every one of them.”

  Fen’ka, for that was apparently her name, looked back at Magdalena.

  “And were they grateful, Magdalena? No, child. No lupič ever shows any gratitude for what they have been given. When I couldn’t give them what they wanted, they came to kill me. Tied me up and threw me in the river, they did. Threw me in the water to see if I was a čarodějka, they did. And when I wouldn’t drown, they took me to the square and burned me as a čarodějnice! Imagine—me, a čarodějnice! Those foolish townspeople didn’t know what they were doing. All led on by that German priest, they were. Father Conrad!” She spat in the water with disgust as she said his name.

  Magdalena’s head whirled. “Threw you in the river? A čarodějnice? What are you talking about? Burned you?” None of this made any sense to her.

  Fen’ka recovered her composure and swallowed. “Yes, child. Burned me at the stake in Staromestské namesti, the Old Town Square—right there on the square they did!” Seeing Magdalena’s perplexed stare, she paused and her voice lost its harsh, angry edge. She reached over the edge of the boat and trailed her hand in the water, lazily drawing a circle or two in the river. “Yes, child. It’s true. They killed me. I am dead. Then they threw my ashes in the river here, near where the Jewish Quarter comes down to the riverbank.” She pulled her hand from the river and Magdalena gasped.

  The hand of the old woman had vanished in the water. Her arm ended in a stump just beyond her sleeve and water dripped from the charred flesh. Greasy ashes swirled in the river where the woman had been drawing circles not a moment before. Then, as Magdalena watched, the hand grew slowly back from the burned and broken bone and flesh. She shook the remaining drops of water from her hand and pulled it back inside the boat. “That’s when Jarnvithja met me.” Fen’ka nodded to the oarswoman, who turned to Magdalena and nodded.

  Magdalena’s skin crawled. Who was this she was speaking with? Could it truly be a woman who had been burned as a witch sometime in the Middle Ages? If Fen’ka was a dead witch, who was Jarnvithja? “But they never burned witches here, in Bohemia,” Magdalena finally sputtered.

  Fen’ka seemed to understand what was going through Magdalena’s mind. “It was in 1356,” she said. “September, 1356. It wasn’t a trial, with lawyers and judges and a sentence. It was a mob, riled up by that German priest”—she spat in the river again—“that did it. The king tried to stop it, but the soldiers were too late. That is why there are no records of it, child. Officially, it never happened. In reality, people walk over the place of my murder every day. But now, no one remembers. Even then, they tried to make themselves forget….” Her voice trailed off again.

  A moment later she continued. “You know who Jarnvithja is, child. You may not know her name. Your grandmother may not have known her name. But your grandmother knew Jarnvithja and told you about her, child.”

  Magdalena racked her brain. What stories had her grandmother told her that might be about this creature before her?

  “You mean…” Magdalena began, half conscious of the thought forming itself in her mind. “You mean that Jarnvithja is the troll that hides under the bridge? How can that be? Trolls are little old men!”

  Fen’ka laughed. “That is what they tell you nowadays, now that the oldest of the old stories have been forgotten and the truest of the old truths branded lies. The trolls were great women, nearly goddesses who simply tried to protect themselves—and what was theirs. Jarnvithja has been responsible for those who died in the river, either while swimming or who drowned when a boat capsized, since before Queen Judith built the first bridge here. Because my ashes were thrown into the river, the townspeople gave me over into Jarnvithja’s domain. I have traveled with her ever since, watching the city grow and change, and biding my time. Waiting for justice. That time has come. Justice will finally be done to those who conspired to murder me.”

  “Now? How do you know? What makes you think that? Why is now different from any other time?” She didn’t even have time to consider how Fen’ka’s version of Jarnvithja’s activities differed from her grandmother’s tales.

  “How do I know? Because you are here, child. Because you heard the call, and you answered it. You are one of the few in this town who have ever been capable of hearing the cries for justice from beyond the river and across the graves and—of those few—you are the only one willing to respond. You came here. Tonight. So my waiting has come to an end.” Fen’ka seemed to almost smile at Magdalena.

  “Me? Listen?” She hadn’t listened to a cry for justice. She had been unable to ignore that image of a woman in the rowboat from the tarot deck. Now that scene from the card had come to life. Not just in the sense of a female passenger in a rowboat on the river, under the bridge. Wraiths from the dead had materialized and were waiting for her assistance to deliver them from the sorrow and injustice they had been trapped by for several hundred years.

  “I know you want to help, child. You are a good girl. A woman of valor. Compassion. A woman who seeks after what is right. But you do not understand how to accomplish these things. I understand that. It seems like a large and difficult task.

  “But you are humble, modest. You underestimate your strengths and skills. You do not know your own capabilities. It is a large and difficult task, but I do not ask you to attempt this by yourself. You will need help, assistance. Never be afraid to ask for a pomocník, someone to assist you.”

  Magdalena did feel compassion for this specter, this woman unjustly lynched by the mob so many centuries ago. Magdalena felt ashamed to be descended from citizens of this beautiful city who could do such a thing to a helpless old woman. Magdalena did want to vindicate Fen’ka and accomplish justice for her.

  “Where can I turn for help?” Magdalena was truly at a loss. Who would believe her story of a woman burned for witchcraft by a mob in the Old Town Square in 1356 and whom she had met on the river under the bridge one night? The whole story was too fantastic to expect anyone else to believe. If it hadn’t happened to her, Magdalena was sure that not even she would have believed it.

  “Help? Turn to Halphas and Flauros. They will show you who you can trust, who will be able and willing to get justice done for poor old Fen’ka.” Jarnvithja shifted her shoulders and pushed the rowboat away from the stones Magdalena stood on.

  “Halphas? Flauros? Who are they? Where do I find them?” Magdalena did not recognize those names. How would she find them in a city of more than a million people? She almost stepped forward to catch the rowboat and make Jarnvithja wait a moment, but caught herself just as she was about to step out from the quay and fall into the river.

  The boat turned in the water to head back out into the open river. Fen’ka shifted, turning slightly and speaking to Magdalena a moment longer.

  “Flauros and Halphas will answer your questions. If I had not been so headstrong and had been willing to ask for help, I might not have been attacked in the way that I was. Thank you, Magdalena. Thank you, child, for answering the call and coming to the aid of an old woman.”

  “Fen’ka.” Magdalena spoke the old woman’s name for the first time. “Will I see you again here?” she called across the water as loudly as she dared. The river lapped against the stones and her voice echoed slightly under the bridge.

  Fen’ka shifted her weight in the rowboat
and the boat rocked gently in the water. She raised her hand, the one that had dissolved into ashes in the water before, and waved towards Magdalena. Jarnvithja propelled the boat forward with a few powerful strokes of the oar. Plop. Swish. The boat swung around the great stone supports of the bridge and was gone.

  “May the sky above them be brass and the earth they walk on, iron!”

  (October 1356)

  F

  ather Conrad stood before the front doors of his parish church, Our Lady of Tyn, looking out across the Old Town Square. The sun was bright and warm, much like yesterday morning when the crowd set out for the old witch’s house across the river. The ancient stone of the old Romanesque church, which had presided over the square for almost two hundred and fifty years, glowed warmly in the morning light. Very different from the sudden storm that swept across the square the afternoon the witch was burned, shouting her foul, malignant imprecations at the honest, God-fearing townsfolk. What had she shouted at him? Something about the sky being brass and the earth he walked on, iron. Very strange. He had done his duty as a priest of the God Most High, though. These local Bohemians were much too easy-going and he had led the people to understand the danger they were in by allowing the old witch to continue living in their midst. He had shown them how to dunk her and test her for witchcraft, even revealing the Devil’s mark on her buttocks for the whole town to see. There had been no doubt that she was a witch and he had led the town in ridding the world of one more of Satan’s minions. Yesterday was a day’s work of which he was justifiably proud.

  The merchants from Tynsky, also known as the Ungelt (the neighborhood behind the church)—primarily those Germans who had supported Father Conrad in his campaign to eradicate the witch from the town—were just setting up their market stalls in the square. The remnants of the witch’s execution were still in the square: a great pile of ashes, littered with scraps of wood and charred bone, was mostly piled up where the execution had taken place, but the wind had also scattered sooty streaks of ash and some of the smaller pieces of debris from the pyre across the square. The Old Town jailer, who had shackled the old hag to the stake, was walking across the square with a small handful of assistants pushing wheelbarrows toward the execution site.