“Ach!” Hot wax dribbled onto his knuckles from the Hand as he dropped the purse into the chest. He scraped away the wax and sucked at his knuckles to stop the burn, holding the Hand at an odd angle to avoid setting his hair aflame.
In the flickering candlelight of the Hand, he saw some larger shadow shift in the church behind the statue. He held the Hand high above him, letting the magical candlelight wash over him and conceal him even as he peered around the statue, hoping for a glimpse of whoever was there.
“No! Stop!” Hans cried. With the noise of wood grinding against wood and timbers shattering into splinters, a sudden, crushing force wrapped itself around his forearm. He wrenched his arm backwards, sprinkling droplets of hot wax over his hair and shoulders. He stared in horror at his arm and then looked up. Panic and shock rushed through him. The fearsome statue had bent its knees and was now squatting, bringing her face to Hans.
The face of the statue was only inches from his face, the wooden visage of the Mother of God sternly searching his as if examining the thoughts behind his eyes. She had seized him, wrapping her fingers tightly around Hans’ right arm, which held high the Hand. Her grip was firm and growing firmer. He could feel his fingers quickly losing sensation and growing numb, even as the portion of his arm in her grip tingled from the constricted blood flow.
Hans wrenched around, attempting to pull himself loose. His arm slid in his jacket slightly, but the statue’s grasp only became tighter and his struggles even more futile. His eyes darted from the statue’s fingers wrapped around his arm to its eyes and then back to her fingers. The statue’s head shook slowly from side to side, expressing her disapproval of his attempted thievery. Then with the roar of splitting wood again filling Hans’ ears, the statue stood erect and assumed the pose it had held when he had first seen it standing impassively over the alms chest. Only now, Hans dangled from her left hand.
Sweat drenched his brow, stinging his eyes. His arm felt as if it were being wrenched from his shoulder. He swung himself around, hoping to either fall to the floor or support himself by clinging to her hip, like a child hoisted by its mother as she stirred a pot of soup. The magic Hand fell from his unresponsive fingers, its candles snapping and breaking as it hit the floor and rolled across the stones, plunging the church into impenetrable darkness. He could see nothing now, only feel the grip of the statue and his own weight slowly pulling his arm from its socket. He whimpered in pain and fright. Making one last effort, he twisted himself through the air, this time scrabbling against the splintery garments of the statue. He caught hold of a wrinkle in the statue’s wooden veil with his free hand. He slid one leg around the back of the statue, cocking his knee around the Mother of God’s. He extended his other leg and was able to catch the toes of one boot behind the heel of his other.
Hans hung there awkwardly, grateful that at least a portion of his weight was supported by his legs wrapped around the statue and his free hand, which clutched at the patroness of the poor and guardian of the needy, thus relieving his trapped arm of serving as his sole support. He would not be able to hang there in such a position long, he knew, but it gave him a few minutes’ reprieve. He bit his lip, trying to hold back tears, considering what to do. Another unexpected sound in the dark caught his attention. Was that the sound of the door opening again? He craned his neck, twisting about, trying to locate the source of what now seemed to be the sound of footsteps on the floorstones.
There! A pinpoint of light pricked the darkness and come towards him. He realized, as it came nearer, that a figure had plucked a candle from the base of one of the other shrines in the church and was approaching him. He heard an amused chuckle and recognized Dietrich’s voice.
“Herr Dietrich! Herr Dietrich!” Hans cried out in relief. “However you come to be here, I am grateful! Herr Dietrich, cut the hand from the statue and we can escape undiscovered!”
Dietrich chuckled quietly again, standing in the pool of light cast by the candle in his hand. He looked up at Hans, slowly studying his predicament as he made a circuit of the statue. Coming across the Hand of Glory as he circled the young man and the Mother of God, he picked it up and dropped it into a knapsack hanging from his shoulder. Hans winced, both from the pain and his regret at having used the thing unsupervised. Forgetting the wealth that had drawn him, his only concern was to escape the terrifying grip of the statue. His feet slipped and he struggled to maintain himself propped against the statue even as his limp but captive hand pointed toward the ceiling high above them.
“I followed you this evening, Hans,” the master offered by way of explaining his fortuitous appearance in the dark church. “I knew better than to trust the two of you—a simple apprentice and a hexenmeister who was lucky enough to stumble onto an opportunity to make a Hand of Glory without raising suspicion—as I say, I knew better than to trust the two of you with an evening’s work unsupervised. I had hoped to be proved wrong, that you would prove yourself a worthy apprentice who needed not to rely on such things as Hands of Glory for success. But you proved me right, Hans.” Dietrich resumed his circumambulation of the statue.
“No, Herr Dietrich! No!” Hans protested the judgment of the older man, even as he knew that it was true.
Dietrich shook his head. “You left the church door ajar and—wondering what was keeping you so long—I stepped in to see what had detained you. What I discover is certainly new. Never have I seen an apprentice in such a predicament.” He ran his eyes from Hans’ face up his arm and along the arm of the statue to her shoulder and then rested his gaze on her face. He seemed to bow his head slightly, acknowledging the statue as if she were a peer. “I have a small hatchet in my knapsack, Hans. I was unsure of what difficulties you and Herr Albrecht might discover yourselves in tonight but thought such a tool might be required. Shall I chop the hand from the statue, Hans?”
“Yes, yes!” Hans cried out wildly. “Chop the hand from the statue, Herr Dietrich!”
Dietrich continued to look at Hans suspended above him and then shook his head. “Know you not which guild meets to worship in this church, young Hans?”
Hans could not see why that might be important. He searched his memory. “Did not… did not Herr Albrecht mention that the butchers’ guild meets here?” He dimly recalled the detail from that first nocturnal meeting with the hexenmeister, when he had revealed the Hand for the first time.
“Yes, it is the butchers’ guild.” He studied the stones at his feet and then, without looking up, he asked another question. “Do you know which saint’s memory is to be celebrated this day?”
Hans was growing frantic. “No, I do not!” he cried. “Herr Dietrich, cut the wood and then I will study catechism all you like!”
Dietrich looked at the other shrines in the church, many of the candles at their feet winking out as what remained of the wicks fell over into the puddles of melted tallow and hot wax. “Today is the feast of St. Antony the Abbot, father of monks and hermits, dweller in the desert of Egypt.” Dietrich answered his own query. “Did you know that he is also the patron of butchers, young Hans?”
“Cut me free!” demanded Hans, falling from his perch on the statue’s hip and twisting in the air. “Cut me free, Herr Dietrich, before the butchers arrive!” The master thief stroked his chin as he considered his squeaky-voiced apprentice’s demand.
“It would be difficult for me to climb so high,” Dietrich finally announced. “The fall would be far enough that your leg could break, and then what would I do? Hoist you up and carry you back to the inn on my back? I am not strong enough for that, young Hans. Even if I were to ask Herr Albrecht to assist us, I think such a task is beyond men our ages.” He turned towards the door.
“Perhaps, though, if I could whistle through the keyhole of the church door, I could obtain some company for you. Then the vigil that you keep will be less lonely. Shall I do that for you, Hans? Whistle through the keyhole of the church door? The one who answers such a summons may even be persuaded to cut you
down and catch you. Of course, where such a one might carry you is something I could not hazard to guess.”
“No!” Hans cried out in alarm. Even he knew that a devil would be summoned by whistling through the keyhole of a church, and as terrified as he was hanging in the grasp of the Mother of God, the thought of a devil coming to carry him to damnation was even more terrifying. He clambered up the side of the statue again as if scampering to escape a devil reaching to seize him.
“I am sorry that you were not able to complete your apprenticeship with me, young Hans,” Dietrich called back across his shoulder, his body blocking the light from the candle in his hand. The small light cast erratic shadows, the shifting silhouette of the thief jumping from small to large to small again.
“No! Herr Dietrich, come back and chop the hand from the statue!” Hans cried after the master thief. “Herr Dietrich! Herr Dietrich!” There was no response. “Herr Dietrich!” The light winked out as Dietrich stepped out onto the street.
“Herr Dietrich!” Hans wailed one last time. The unlatched church door swung open, revealing the early morning light beginning to creep along the cobblestones.
Hans did not have to wait long before the first of the butchers arrived for the Mass to mark the feast day of their patron saint. A group of about a dozen men, suspicious of the open door, entered the church hesitantly, knives drawn and makeshift clubs ready to beat whomever they found within. Expecting to discover a thief or runaway apprentice hiding behind a pillar or a statue, they did not look up. Hans held his breath and closed his eyes, hoping against hope that the men would not discover him. Then his feet latched around the statue gave way and he fell again, crying out at the shock of the pain as his arm was wrenched again from his shoulder, tendons stretching and cartilage tearing.
“Look at the young vermin caught hanging there for his life!” called one of the butchers, pointing to Hans hanging from the grasp of the Mother of God. They all swarmed around the statue and quickly realized from the open alms box that Hans had been apprehended by the stern, unsentimental statue of the Queen of Heaven and Mother of the Sun of Justice in the very act of stealing the alms. As Dietrich had taken the Hand of Glory with him, and none of the locks or chains had been damaged, it seemed obvious that Hans had simply picked the locks of both the door and the padlock.
“What shall we do with the thief, Frederick?” one loudly called to the largest of the men, who seemed to be the leader of the whole guild.
More butchers had begun to arrive and the church was full of voices demanding, “What is happening here?” or explaining to newcomers what the first of the arriving butchers had discovered or taunting Hans or simply calling others to come see the rat caught in the grip of the Mother of God. Soon it became impossible for any man to even hear his neighbor over the noise of the catcalls and insults roaring like a flooded stream overrushing its bounds and pouring down the streets of a doomed village.
Hans kept attempting to support himself against the statue but it was becoming more and more difficult to do so. Not only were his limbs aching and tired, but some of the apprentices had started to jump and grab at his feet, even hanging on them before dropping back to the floor. The agony of the weight on his captured arm was excruciating. He wept and cried to them, “Mercy, masters and brethren! Mercy!” but to no avail.
“What shall we do with him?” finally became the chorus of the guild assembled in the church. “What can we do with him?” called out Frederick, a short and rather obese man, slamming shut the lid of the alms chest by jumping on it. “Take him to the constable? How can we do that? The statue is too heavy to bring!” An idea struck him. “Shall we cut him down?” A cacophony of cheering broke out.
“Yes! Cut him down! Cut the rat down! Cut the thief loose and take him to the constable!” Hans wept at the words and clutched with his free arm at the arm by which he hung suspended over the crowd. Another butcher, taller and thinner than Frederick, jumped atop the alms chest with him, brandishing a knife. “Where shall we slice, my brother butchers?” he called out over the crowd. “His wrist?”
“No good! All we would have to take to the constable is the hand! No good! No good!” replied the crowd, laughing and jeering at the idea of having only the hand of a thief to take to the constable.
“His elbow?” asked the knife wielder of the guild members.
“Better that than his wrist!” shouted back the crowd. “His elbow! His elbow! Cut him free at the elbow!”
“Wait!” cried another voice from the crowd, a man pushing and shoving his way to the front. “There’ll be too much bone and cartilage at the elbow for that knife you’ve got there, Lukas! More bone than meat! You should know that!” The man on the floor turned to the crowd. “Cut him down at the shoulder!” he cried.
The roar of approval deafened Hans, who nearly fainted in fright as he hung there, trying to hold onto the now-impervious statue’s wrist with his free hand and hoist himself higher than the crowd could reach.
Another guild member raised a large blade that he had pulled from his jacket. “I have just the blade for it!” Hans felt cold sweat on his forehead even as hot tremors rippled through his body. He felt as if he were about to vomit.
“The shoulder! The shoulder!” The crowd cheered, cheerily pushing the newcomer with the large knife towards the statue.
“Wait!” A voice from the back of the church called out. It was an apprentice, a young man Hans recognized from the marketplace, pushing his way to the base of the statue. “What if he dies?” the apprentice butcher demanded. “If the thief dies in the church, it will be shut and torn down! The guild will be held accountable for his death! The guild can ill afford such an extravagance!” He looked wildly from face to face, hoping to stop the sacrilege and possible death of the man hanging from the grasp of the statue.
“Dead? The church locked? The guild charged for the construction of a new parish?” Realization of the possible consequences of their actions rippled through the crowd. “We are all responsible for a share of the demolition and reconstruction of Our Lady of Tyn!” one voice called out. “We cannot afford to construct a new parish for St. Jakub, too!”
The crowd paused, at a loss how to resolve their difficulty. Another idea then struck Frederick.
“Cut swiftly and then rush him into the street!” the guild master suggested. “If he dies then, it will be in the gutter and not in the church! The most we will be guilty of is bloodshed in the church, not a death, and blood can be washed away and the place blessed with holy water!”
“Take him to the street! Let him die in the gutter, not the church!” The solution was a stroke of genius.
Hans screamed and kicked at the swarm of men that rushed to hold his feet and steady him for the knife. No one could make out any of his words, given the noise of the crowd and the hysteria of both the butchers and the thief. Was the thief crying out the name of his accomplice? No one could be sure. Did he hope for rescue even as a ladder was fetched for the knife-wielding Klaus to reach Hans’ shoulder? Someone else, impatient with the fetching of the ladder, tried to climb the statue with his knife between his teeth and lean out across the statue’s shoulder to reach Hans, but the would-be dresser of human flesh lost his grip on the painted wood. He screamed, the knife slipping into his eye as he fell and hit the floor.
Hans, his feet bound and held by a handful of butchers, looked Klaus in the eye as the butcher climbed the ladder when it finally appeared, pleading without words for mercy. Returning Hans’ gaze, Klaus paused a moment but then shook his head and reached to steady Hans, who struck back with his free hand. More shouting broke out, and in the tumult, a length of rope appeared and the men at his feet lashed Hans’ free hand to his thigh.
Tears dribbled from his tightly shut eyes as snot and saliva dripped from his face. He was about to lose everything he had ever wanted: wealth, a trade, a good life. They were all about to be cut away as his arm was sundered from his shoulder.
He screamed a
nd fainted, his blood splashing across the face of the Mother of God, speculum justitiae and terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata.
Dietrich was in a coach departing from Prague by the time Hans, now missing his right arm, was rushed into the gutter outside St. Jakub’s Church. Herr Dietrich’s trunk, lashed with the baggage of the other passengers in the coach atop the conveyance, held the fruits of his labor in the Bohemian capital—including the Hand of Glory. “A dangerous thing to leave about,” he mused, “as one never knows who might find it and what they might do with such a terrible thing.” He was headed south, to Italy, where he had heard that the plague had run its course, and such a thing as the Hand might prove useful in whatever city he found himself next.
Much to the surprise of the butchers, Hans survived. Thanks in large part to the rags and bunting one of the butchers had run to fetch, the bleeding was staunched and the gaping wound eventually healed. Unable to work or do much else besides hold a cup and ask for alms, he wandered the realms of Bohemia and Bavaria before dying of the plague in the port city of Lübeck to the north.
Herr Albrecht, having heard of the goings-on at the butchers’ parish of St. Jakub on the feast day of their patron, also fled Prague before Hans regained consciousness and could cause him difficulties. Leaving most of the magical tools and implements in his shop, he took his hoard of coins and made his way to Köln, where he quietly plied his trade as a hexenmeister before taking on an apprentice in hopes of passing on his admittedly limited occult skills.
After the celebratory Mass of St. Anthony, patron of butchers, the statue had been washed clean, and the friars who served at St. Jakub’s had sprinkled holy water and consecrated salt where Hans had hung above the alms chest. The scent of frankincense wafted away the stench of sweat and fright that had permeated the air. In time, the arm withered even as it was still held fast by the statue in her unyielding grip and eventually it could be delicately removed after slathering with oil to make it easier to slide out. The withered arm was hung in the church by the butchers’ guild as a warning to potential thieves to beware the power and justice of God and His most pure Mother. It also hung there, although none of the butchers realized this, as a testimony to the power of Fen’ka and her curse.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 36
