Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  As the wood splintered and shattered under his blows, a crowd of children gathered behind him, jumping and squealing with delight. Some of the children’s parents, the neighbors of Bartolomeo and Daniela, also gathered. Reaching through the splintering timbers, Stefano pulled the door open and stepped across the doorsill.

  The room was dark and quiet. The faces of the children all hovered around the door, peering over and around each other, obviously hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever mystery lay within. One of their parents, another member of the masons’ guild, stepped to the door and followed Stefano inside.

  “Bartolomeo?” Stefano called. “Daniela?” No response.

  The laughter and the pushing and the arguing of the children behind him fell silent. Even the youngest knew that something was very wrong within the house. Stefano stepped into the sleeping room, followed by the neighbor-mason.

  Great splashes of blood had dried on the walls about the room. The sheets on the bed were stiff with dried blood. Small gray chips splattered the wall immediately behind the bed and one of the pillows, gray chips that the masons recognized as dry brain material, something they had seen as apprentices and then master masons as a result of the terrible accidents that can plague any construction site. But the bed was empty. Where Stefano would have expected a body to lie in the midst of the bloody carnage were only empty, tangled sheets stiff with the dried or drying blood. Stefano stepped around the side of the bed.

  Daniela sat there on the floor, slumped against the wall. She stared ahead, unseeing, her lips moving slightly but no sound coming forth. A thread of saliva stretched from one corner of her mouth down her front. Blood and brains spattered her face and arms while a great mallet, similar to the one Stefano had used to break into the house, lay wrapped in her limp fingers on her lap.

  “Daniela.” Stefano said her name firmly, neither a request nor a command. Simply a statement. “Daniela.” She continued to stare ahead, unaware of him. A drop of spit slid down the thread of saliva from her mouth. She swallowed. Stefano knelt before her and gently touched her cheek. She started, but continued to stare around or through him, uncomprehending.

  “Daniela. I am Stefano.” He tipped her chin so that her eyes were pointed towards his. “Where is Bartolomeo? What happened here today?”

  She seemed deaf and simply stared in whatever direction her face was pointed. She gasped for breath in small spurts, as if she had been running a great distance. The other mason behind Stefano was about to repeat his questions when she suddenly looked about her and then looked Stefano in the eyes. There was a flash of recognition. Then it was gone. “Bartolomeo?” she repeated her husband’s name as if it were new to her, a word she had never heard before.

  She looked at Stefano and then at the bed and then uttered the longest, most animal-like shriek that Stefano had ever heard escape a human mouth. She shrieked again and again. It was unending. Other women, wives from up and down the street who had congregated outside, waiting for some word of what the men had discovered in the house, tumbled through the door into the sleeping room. Stefano pressed against one wall to allow one of the women to pass him and reach Daniela. Together, they pulled Daniela to her feet as she continued to wail, seemingly without the need to pause or take a breath. They guided her past the bed and gently pulled the mallet from her fingers, dropping the heavy thing on the spattered coverlet. Still screaming but verging now on sobbing, Daniela allowed herself to be guided out of the house and to a neighbor’s kitchen.

  Someone ladled out a bowl of soup and placed it before her. She took no notice of it, sitting with her hands folded in her lap as she rocked quietly. Eventually another woman sat with her and fed her the soup, slow spoonful by slow spoonful, wiping the spills with the edge of the spoon and talking to Daniela as a mother speaks to an infant she is feeding with a spoon for the first time.

  As Daniela sat in the neighbor’s house, alternately sobbing or shrieking, Stefano left to accompany the other men scattered throughout the neighborhood searching for Bartolomeo. Anyone who had not been present at the grisly discoveries of the bedroom quickly learned of what Stefano had found and of the madness which had overwhelmed Daniela.

  It was difficult for the men to imagine what had happened in that house. The door had been locked and yet the body of Bartolomeo was missing. He was too large for Daniela to have carried away. Had she used the mallet to fend off an intruder or had she struck Bartolomeo with it? Had intruders attacked the couple and then carried away Bartolomeo’s body, leaving Daniela behind and alone? Had she then locked the door behind them as they departed with Bartolomeo? Had she hired thieves or killers to rid her of a now-unwanted husband and both allowed them entrance and then locked the door behind them? If someone had carried away Bartolomeo’s body, why had no one seen them do so? He was too bulky a man for even a group of other strong men to hide quickly or quietly. There were too many strange details and too many possible alternative explanations for any of them to make sense.

  Daniela was never again able to speak a word or feed herself. Sitting alone and rocking, sometimes sobbing and shrieking or sometimes as silent as a newborn, she would sit unaware of who else was near her. Her hair disheveled, wild and unkempt, her eyes burning with the strange light common to all the mad, and the drool spilling down the front of the white shift she was always dressed in conspired to make it difficult to remember that she had once been one of the most beautiful of the wives who had come to Prague from the Italian peninsula.

  Angelina had heard the terrible news of Bartolomeo’s disappearance and Daniela’s madness as soon as the men came to her family’s home to ask her father to aid in the search. They were going to look throughout the Italian neighborhood of the Little Town, though they had no great hopes of making any further discoveries that night.

  “Our only real hope is if Daniela’s mind recovers enough for her to tell us what happened,” they told her father as the rest of the family hovered about. As soon as her father went out with them, Angelina threw on a cloak to go out also. Her mother raised no objection, as the streets were filled with men and boys with clubs and lanterns all searching for Bartolomeo or for some hint to his whereabouts. She raced to Guendalina’s house, who was alone with the baby, as her husband had joined the search.

  Angelina burst into the house in a rage. “You promised! You promised that it would only stop her loving Bartolomeo! Do you not see what we have done? We have destroyed Daniela and I have lost Bartolomeo! No one even knows where he is!” It was with difficulty that she stopped herself from screaming at her cousin, lest any of the search parties hear her and investigate her allegations.

  “Destroyed Daniela? We have done no such thing.” Guendalina dismissed Angelina’s rage-filled accusations as a parent dismisses the ranting of a child. She rocked the baby on her lap as he smiled at her and waved his hands happily. She blinked her eyes at him in return and made strange noises in the back of her throat.

  “How can you say that we have done no such thing?” demanded Angelina. “Have you not heard that she has gone mad and raves like a diavolessa?” Guendalina continued to make voices at her baby, who crowed with glee. Angelina was growing more and more frustrated by her cousin’s preoccupation with the baby and dismissive attitude toward the lives they had ruined by playing with stregoneria. “Is there nothing we can do to save her?” Angelina was nearly beside herself.

  Guendalina looked up at her cousin’s face. “No. I think not.” Her voice conveyed no remorse, no hesitation, no concern. “I helped you get what you wanted. My hands are clean of whatever else may have come to pass. It was your desire for Bartolomeo, your hardhearted spurning of your father’s choice of a husband for you, your own stubborn will to choose a man for yourself that caused whatever may have come to pass tonight. I’ve done with stregoneria. Do not come asking for me to do you any favors in the future.” Guendalina looked back down at her son and made another funny face. He giggled. She looked at Angelina again.

&n
bsp; “If you think of making any accusations of stregoneria, Angelina, just remember that it was you who gave the mirror to Bartolomeo and you that spilled the broth on the doorstep to wither Daniela’s love for him. If it comes to that, you were the one who added urine to a broth I was making of the chicken heart and you were the one who made it into a brew to punish Daniela.” Guendalina said it as if it was a statement of fact, but Angelina knew it was a threat as much as a warning. “The only stregoneria that was perpetrated was by you, outside my house. Or in my kitchen without my permission. Remember that.” Guendalina looked back at her infant in his swaddling bands and made another face at him, causing him to nearly cry with gleeful abandon.

  Angelina stood there, unable to move, tears welling up in her eyes. She bit her lip. Unable to think of anything else to say, she fled into the streets.

  She needed to weep, to grieve, to mourn for her lost Bartolomeo and for what she had wrought with the evil brew that had destroyed not only Daniela’s love for him but also her mind and soul. All the streets that she knew so well in the daylight looked ominously different at night. Groups of men were continuing to search for Bartolomeo or his body, and she could hear some calling his name, hoping to hear him respond to their cries. Unable to see clearly through her tears, she ran down a side alleyway. Not paying attention to where she was or where she was going, she kept running and gasping for breath between sobs. Lost and in anguish, she collapsed against a stone wall and wailed hysterically. The stones were rough against her wet cheeks and she could taste blood mingled with her salty tears as she scraped the side of her face raw in her wild grieving. In a dim corner of her mind, she realized that she must look like one of the elderly women hired as professional mourners at funerals.

  She heard steps coming up behind her. She closed her eyes and pressed her face against the stones with even more determination as she wept alone in the dark. “Go away,” she whispered toward whoever was approaching her. “Go search somewhere else.”

  “Angelina.” She heard the voice speak her name but continued to wail.

  “Angelina! Stop wailing!” There was a tone of such authority in the voice that she could not help but turn and acknowledge the man who stood there.

  She choked on her own tears and fell back against the wall, gasping for breath and digging her fingertips into the mortar between the stones behind her to support herself. She shook her head and wiped one hand across her face.

  Bartolomeo stood before her, streaks of dark, dried blood running down his face and the bedclothes he was still garbed with. A great iron nail, such as any carpenter might use, protruded from his forehead, and it was this wound that the old blood ran down from, and a fresh, bright red drop seeped from the wound even as she watched. His hair looked as if he had just awakened and sleep clung to his eyelids.

  “Bartolomeo! Half the town is searching for you! They think you dead! How is it that you are alive?” Angelina stammered her questions, her tongue unable to keep pace with her racing thoughts. She yearned to hold him and yet was terrified to draw any nearer to her beloved.

  His eyes pierced hers and she felt naked, as exposed as if she stood in the Little Town Square with no clothing. Every flaw or imperfection of her body was visible to him, she knew. More than that, every flaw or imperfection of her soul was laid bare to his gaze. She trembled, unable to bear his scrutiny as he examined her. Not one word passed between them, and yet he knew all there was to know. She cringed and pressed her back against the wall, wishing desperately that she might slink away behind it and escape Bartolomeo’s eyes.

  Finally her beloved spoke. “Do you see what you have done, amore mio Angelina? What you and your cousin Guendalina have done together, perhaps, but at your instigation.” His voice was harsh and cold, not the hot and passionate voice of a man deeply smitten with her as he had been at their last meeting. “You promised you would find a way to convince Daniela to leave me of her own accord. You said that you might know a way to destroy her love for me, but in destroying her love, you have destroyed her mind as well. Your wicked fattucheria has seen to that!” His voice grew loud and his face more angry than she could have thought possible.

  Angelina whimpered, closing her eyes and turning her face aside.

  “Look at me, my love!” Bartolomeo demanded. Tears sliding down her cheeks again, Angelina slowly opened her eyes and turned her face just enough to obey his command.

  “You ask how it is that I stand here and how it is that I am alive when half the town thinks me dead. Filthy puttana, neither am I truly dead nor do I truly live. Your vile broth that wasted Daniela’s soul filled her mind with knowledge of the dark arts and drove her to destroy me in vengeance for the slights that she imagined I had committed against her!” He wailed now, crying and nearly doubling over in grief at the tale he was forced to relate. His were no mere cries or weeping but roars of distress, and Angelina wondered how it was that no one heard them and came running.

  At last his heaving grief subsided and he spoke again. “She took this nail and coated it with the most powerful herbs likely to impart their natural properties to it. She rubbed yew against it and sage, she coated it with nettles and belladonna. Do you know the properties those plants command? Amore mio, do you know how they are used and what havoc they can wreak when used together in such a way?”

  Angelina, afraid to look away and unable to speak, simply shook her head and whimpered. She had no idea what magic any one of those plants could achieve, let alone all of them together.

  “Yew is for death and the dying and sage is for immortality. She chose nettles to confound the man who had become her enemy and the poison belladonna to seal the whole concoction.” Bartolomeo pointed to the nail in his forehead. “Thanks to the yew, I hover near the gates of death but the sage keeps me forever alive. Being neither alive nor dead, my flesh is that of a ghost and able to melt through walls and earth, but I am unable to grasp or hold anything of my own accord. I can swallow neither food nor drink but I do thirst and grow hungry. I can wear no garments other than these but am always plagued by heat and cold. Poisoned, yet confounded, I suffer as few could ever imagine in their worst nightmares.” He cried out again and this time shook his fists at the heavens above. Clouds scudded across the stars.

  “She hammered it into my skull with my own mallet, my love, and when I rose up and cried out in despair, she saw what she had done and fell into madness.” He came closer and Angelina could hardly dare to draw a breath. “Dolce Angelina, as long as this nail remains lodged in my skull, I can neither rest among the dead nor walk among the living. The shattered shards of my own skull pierce my brain and my skin, and the pain remains intolerable. But I will find no peace until the nail is pulled from where she has hammered it in. Yet, knowing the source of all my pain and the only way to find relief, I am unable to grasp the thing in my own hand and needs must ask another to pull it for me.” His voice, filled with such despair that she could not imagine living with such a burden, made her blood run cold.

  Angelina shook her head. She moaned in fear and trembled lest he try to guide her hand up to pull the nail from his skull. Try as she might, as much as she loved him and had ached to feel his touch, she could not bring herself to reach out to this half-dead, this undead, this odioso and repellente thing, this povera creatura that stood before her.

  “You must pull the nail from my skull for me, Angelina! Despite all that has happened, I am still in thrall to you and love you with all my heart. I need your touch and this is the one gift you can bestow on me now, Angelina. This is the one favor I ask of you. Pluck the nail from my skull and grant me rest!” he pleaded.

  Angelina shrank back against the stone wall. She could not do it. The Bartolomeo that had been her ardent suitor and the target of her infatuation was not this Bartolomeo that so horrified her. She understood that lovers quarrel and a man might rail against his most dear love and call her vile names like puttana, but this was not the same. How dare he demand that she serve
him in this way as he reviled her for what she had done to win his love?

  “No!” she cried. “No! I cannot do it! I will not do it! Ask another girl, Bartolomeo! Go ask Daniela! Perhaps she can grant you the rest she has taken from you! Go ask anyone but me!” Blinded by fear and anger, Angelina pushed herself away from the wall and ran up the alleyway in a direction she hoped would take her back to where the men were searching. “No! Il diavolo del naso storto take you, Bartolomeo! The devil with the crooked nose!” Her voice echoed along the alleyway behind her.

  Bartolomeo stared after her in disbelief and agony before he collapsed onto the road and wept, certain that in his rage he had destroyed her love for him as certainly as she had destroyed Daniela’s love for him. His shoulders heaved and heaved as he sobbed and then finally sagged against the same stones where Angelina had stood, more afraid of his touch than he had feared Daniela’s.

  Now the only he thing he wanted, the thing he needed more than anything, was the touch of anyone who was willing to pull the nail from the throbbing wound in his head. At last, he pulled himself to his feet, unsteady and unsure of what to do next. He had put all his trust in Angelina and she had fled. He lifted back his head, wailing and howling like a wolf caught in a trap, waiting for the hunters he knows are coming. But unknown to Bartolomeo, the teeth of the trap which had caught him—Fen’ka’s curse—were sharper than the teeth of any wolf-trap and the hunters—Fen’ka’s malicious words—had already arrived.

  Bartolomeo walked slowly back up the alleyway towards the castle and the Little Town.

  In the days that became weeks and then months that flowed into years and decades and even centuries following that terrible week, Bartolomeo was to be seen on occasion as he wandered the streets of the Little Town or the broad, steep roadway that led up into the castle complex where he had labored as a mason. He continued searching for someone willing to grant him this one, last favor and pull out the nail, which would at last allow him to lapse into the final rest of the dead.