Priest of Bones

by Peter McLean

  “Jochan,” I said.

  “Where the fuck is mine?” he demanded before I could say anything else. “Everyone’s paid, with silver you shouldn’t have, but not me. Not your own fucking brother, Tomas.”

  I held up a hand for peace and took five silver marks out of my robe.

  “Here’s yours, brother,” I said. “More than I paid any of the other men, so I didn’t want them to see me give it to you. That’s all.”

  He held my gaze for a long moment, then took the money from my hand.

  “Aye,” he said at last, and the anger drained out of him as it usually did.

  More than I gave any of the other men, I had said, and that was true enough. Bloody Anne was no man, after all.

  Jochan shoved the coins into his pouch and took a long swallow of his brandy. I gave another five marks to Aunt Enaid, out of respect and for her trouble. She sat there with the coins in her open hand and said nothing.

  “Where did it come from, then?” Jochan said after a moment. “You never answered me that one, Tomas.”

  “Alman’s strongbox,” I said. “I found it, and I kept it. The silver he made from my tavern is my silver.”

  “It’s funny,” Aunt Enaid said, looking up at me.

  “What is?” I asked her.

  “It’s funny that Alman had any money. This place wasn’t his, the way I heard it. He was just running it for his boss. You wouldn’t think there would have been much coin kept here.”

  I shrugged. “Then I suppose he was stealing,” I said, and I turned away to make that the end of it.

  This wasn’t going to do for long, I knew. I was going to need to spend more money soon, a lot more, to feed those streets outside my new front door. That meant I was going to have to be able to come up with an explanation for where it had come from, because Lady knew I couldn’t tell them the truth.

  There was no other way, to my mind. I was going to have to take back my businesses.

  NINE

  The next morning I called a council of war. Bloody Anne and Jochan and Aunt Enaid joined me in the largest of the three storerooms, the big windowless room where most of the men slept. I had debated with myself whether I should invite Sir Eland as well and decided against it. Part of me said I didn’t trust him and that meant I should keep him close, but the bigger part of me said that he thought too much of himself and needed reminding that he was just one of the crew. Maybe I was wrong about that.

  “We need to talk,” I told them, sitting on a bedroll in the light of a flickering oil lamp. “Jochan, you’re my brother. Bloody Anne, you’re my sergeant. Aunt Enaid, you all but raised Jochan and me after Da died. You’re the ones I trust.”

  They looked at me in that dim light, and no one said anything. I didn’t trust Jochan, not nearly as much as I should have been able to, but he was my brother. I owed him a debt from the past, one I couldn’t repay, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change that. I sighed and pulled my robe around me against the morning chill. It didn’t get warm in Ellinburg until later in the year, and it never stayed that way for long.

  “Out there,” I said, “on streets that belong to the Pious Men, there are people who don’t have anything to eat. There are people who are sick and can’t afford a doctor. On my streets, people are starving for want of work. I can’t let that pass.”

  “We grew up on those streets,” Jochan said quietly, a distant look on his face. “You chased me down those alleys, when we were lads. People went hungry then too.”

  “Aye, they did,” I said, “and when we became Pious Men we put a stop to it. My streets, my people. My responsibility.”

  “Our streets,” Jochan said.

  I gave him a look but nodded. “Our streets, then,” I said. “Pious Men streets. I lifted them up once before and I can do it again, if you’re with me.”

  I looked around at their faces. Bloody Anne had no history here, had never set foot in Ellinburg before in her life, but I knew she would be with me.

  My aunt cleared her throat.

  “The way I recall it, Tomas Piety, is that the way you lifted up these streets was to tax each house whether they liked it or not and spend the money as you saw fit on those you decided deserved it,” she said.

  That surprised me, I had to admit. She wasn’t wrong, of course, but I hadn’t expected her to voice that opinion now.

  “Aye, that’s right,” I said. “And for that they got my protection. No one robbed a house on Pious Men streets and got away with it, and after a while word got around and they stopped trying. Time was a woman couldn’t walk down these streets alone after dusk, and I put a stop to that as well. I made these streets safe.”

  “It wasn’t too safe for anyone who didn’t want to pay for your protection, though, was it?”

  I stared into Aunt Enaid’s single eye and wondered why she was going out of her way to make me angry. I was about to say something I probably shouldn’t have done when Jochan did it for me.

  “What the fuck is your point, old woman?” he demanded. “Our streets, our fucking rules!”

  “My point, Jochan, is that you can’t do it again,” she said, still holding my gaze. “You can’t tax people who have got nothing.”

  “I know that, Auntie,” I said. “I’ve come back from war, not from the madhouse. I’ve got money all over this city, tied up in businesses that have been stolen from me. Well, I’m taking them back. We’ll start with the boardinghouse up in Chandler’s Narrow. Bloody Anne showed her face in there yesterday morning and it’s not held by anyone we know. I want it back.”

  “Fucking right,” Jochan said. A slow grin spread across his face, and he slapped me on the shoulder like a real brother might have done. “Fucking right, Tomas!”

  I glanced at Anne, and she shrugged. “I’ll go where you lead,” she said.

  Aunt Enaid slipped a finger under her eyepatch and scratched for a moment, sucking her teeth. She couldn’t have looked less like a nun if she had tried, and it occurred to me that we’d need to get her some different clothes before anyone could see her in public.

  “Do what you think is best, Tomas,” she said after a moment.

  “Right then,” I said. “That’s good. Anne, get ten of the men together, and make sure the rest know they’re to hold this place while we’re about it. We’ll go tonight.”

  “Aye,” Anne said, and got to her feet.

  She left us, and Jochan followed her a moment later. My aunt fixed me with that steel-hard glare of hers.

  “This fucking tavern,” she said quietly, “wasn’t making a copper and you know it. You had that silver stashed somewhere, Tomas Piety, and don’t you try to tell me otherwise. Your brother might be a fool, but I’m not. Is there more where that came from?”

  “That’s my business,” I said.

  “If you’ve got money and you want to help those people, then just spend your bloody money,” she hissed.

  Truth be told, there was enough gold hidden behind that wall to feed my streets for a year or more, but that was no more Enaid’s business than it was Jochan’s. If I had started spending gold I would have faced hard questions about where it had come from, and I couldn’t risk that. The gold had to stay my business and no one else’s.

  “I haven’t got any more money,” I said. “And even if I had, what would I do when it ran out? If people start to depend on me to feed them, I have to be able to keep feeding them, and that won’t do. I need to give them work, not handouts, and to do that I need income. As you say, I’ll not be taking it in tax for a good long while to come, so I need those businesses back. And I’m going to go out and fucking take them.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Enaid didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day, not even when I had Cookpot go out and buy her a woolen kirtle to replace her nun’s habit. It was used, of course, but there
would be time enough later to have new clothes made up for her. I was glad when night fell and I joined Bloody Anne and Jochan in putting our mail on, and Sir Eland and Fat Luka and Will the Woman and five of the others. Will was the only one of Jochan’s old crew who looked to be coming with us, but that suited me fine.

  “My aunt is in charge until we get back,” I told the others. “No more drinking. I need this place held and held firm, understand me?”

  There were nods and mutters, and I led my ten out through the new front door and into the street. We had only four horses between us, and they would have been in the way anyway, up in the Narrows. We went on foot.

  It was full dark by then, and when we got to the top of the steps the chandler’s shop was closed. The courtyard was thick with shadow, the only light coming from a single lantern hanging above the door of the boardinghouse.

  “How do we do this?” Bloody Anne asked me.

  “We do it like Pious Men,” Jochan said, and before I could reply he lifted his axe and kicked the door in.

  It looked like that was how we were doing it, then.

  The others bundled in after Jochan, all except Bloody Anne and me. I kept a hand on her arm to hold her back, letting the crew follow Jochan’s reckless charge.

  “When you lead, Anne,” I told her, “sometimes the front isn’t the right place to be.”

  I heard glass shatter inside, followed by a scream. There was a crash, and the sound of boots thundering up poorly made wooden stairs. I pulled Anne back into the doorway of the chandler’s shop, and sure enough a moment later one of the second-floor windows exploded into the courtyard in a shower of glass and broken lead as a body was thrown through it.

  Whoever it was hit the cobbles in front of us with a wet thump. I could feel Anne’s eyes on me, in the gloom.

  “Are we not fighting, then?” she asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “Not tonight,” I said. “Tonight we are making a fucking entrance.”

  I gave it another five minutes, until the sounds of chaos and violence had subsided. I could hear voices from the lobby of the boardinghouse, someone with a strange accent begging for his life. Now it was time.

  “Come on,” I said, and stepped over the pool of blood that was leaking from the broken body on the cobbles.

  I walked through the doorway with Bloody Anne at my side, my priest’s robes drawn closed over my mail. There were three of them on their knees in there, and blood and broken glass everywhere. Two men were dead that I could see, and neither of them were mine.

  Jochan was standing behind his three prisoners with a mad grin on his face and his axe clutched in his hand, dripping blood on the floor.

  “That’s done then,” he said.

  I nodded and looked at the three kneeling men. I didn’t recognize any of them, but one of them was definitely not native to Ellinburg. He was too pale and too tall to have been from these parts, and he wore his hair long in a dirty blond plait. No Ellinburg man had long hair.

  “My name is Tomas Piety,” I said, addressing them. “This is Bloody Anne. And this, my friends, is my fucking boardinghouse.”

  The tall, pale man spat at me, and I kicked him in the face. Jochan’s blade was at his throat a moment later, the broad shape of the axe forcing his chin up.

  “How many of them did you kill?” I asked my brother.

  “Four, in all.”

  I nodded.

  “Seven men,” I said to the pale man. “Seven men to guard a boardinghouse. That seems like a lot.”

  “Someone killed our bookkeeper yesterday,” he said, his voice sounding thick through his split lips.

  “So they did,” I said. “Now, you’re not from this city, so I’ll do you the courtesy of explaining something to you. We are the Pious Men, and we’re in charge. You’re in one of my businesses, and I’m throwing you out. But first you’re going to tell me who you work for.”

  The blond man shook his head. One of his fellows looked like he was about to speak, then thought better of it.

  “Well?” Jochan demanded.

  He held his red blade to the kneeling man’s throat but got no answer. Jochan growled and yanked the man’s head back by his long plait of hair, the axe-head digging into his neck and drawing a trickle of blood.

  “We can’t,” one of the others said. “Our families, please . . . he’ll kill our families if we talk!”

  “Shut up,” the blond one gasped. “Say nothing!”

  “Let him go,” I said, and Jochan reluctantly withdrew his axe from the man’s neck. “If that’s the lay of things, then I understand. You’re brave men, but know that you’ve crossed me. I’m not going to kill you, not tonight, but if I see you again I will. Do you understand me?”

  The long-haired man gave me a sullen nod.

  “Kick them out,” I told Jochan, “and start making the place secure.”

  “Aye, Tomas,” Jochan said.

  Anne pulled me aside as the three men were booted out into the alley.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked me quietly.

  “Let them live?” I asked. “Same as the one at the Tanner’s—so that they can spread the word.”

  “Not that,” she said. “You come in like death walking, making your entrance like you said, and you gave your name and mine. You never mentioned Jochan, Tomas. You never named your own brother.”

  “You’re my second, not him,” I said. “If he starts to realize that for himself, nice and slowly, maybe it’s gentler than flat-out telling him.”

  “And when he does?”

  I looked at her and shrugged. It would be how it would be, to my mind.

  Jochan blundered out of one of the back rooms just then, a bottle of brandy in his hand and his other arm around a half-naked woman with a yellow cord knotted on her left shoulder.

  “There’s new whores, Tomas.” He grinned at me. “We ain’t killing them, I fucking hope!”

  “No, we ain’t,” I said, “but we ain’t taking advantage either. Round them up in the parlor.”

  Anne gave me a look, but I ignored her. Business was business. A few minutes later I went in to address them. There were seven women in total, most of them with no more than eighteen or nineteen years to them. They wore anything from thin shifts to demure kirtles, I supposed depending on what they had been doing when we burst in, but each one wore the bawd’s knot on her left shoulder in yellow cord. There were city ordinances about that, after all, and any licensed whore had to show the knot. A couple of them saw my priest’s robes and dipped clumsy curtseys. A redhead who looked to have a year or two more than the others laughed at them.

  “He’s no fucking priest,” she sneered. “He’s just another gangster.”

  “I am a priest,” I corrected her, “and I’m a businessman as well. You all worked here, and I assume you lived here as well?”

  There were nods among the women, and some of them looked worried at my use of the past tense. That was good. That was the point I was making.

  “My name is Tomas Piety,” I said, and I could see that more than a few of them knew that name. “This was my stew, before the war, and now it’s my stew again. Those that want to stay here and keep working are welcome to. Those who want to leave, leave.”

  “Where would we go?” the redhead challenged me. “We’re not street scrubs, we’re better than that. We all wear the knot, here.”

  I shrugged.

  “That’s your affair,” I said.

  I could see I was going to have to keep an eye on her. She was obviously the boss of them, and she had the look of trouble about her. She scratched her ribs idly and flicked her dirty hair out of her face, her insolent gaze finding Bloody Anne standing beside me.

  “You his woman?”

  “No,” Anne rasped. “I’m my own woman.”

 
The redhead nodded, as though the answer pleased her.

  “What terms?” she asked me.

  Truth be told, Aunt Enaid had always run this side of Pious Men business, but she wasn’t there and I was. I didn’t know how high my terms of commission should be. I was about to say something to stall her when Will the Woman spoke up.

  “I’ll take care of it if you want, boss,” he said. “I used to run a bawdy house back home, before the war. I know how it’s done.”

  I gave him a nod. I wasn’t too sure how far I could trust Will, not yet anyway, but he had fought for me and when Black Billy had beaten him at the arm wrestling he had taken it good-naturedly enough. Those things went a way toward building that trust, to my mind.

  “Aye,” I said. “This is Will. He’s the boss here, now. You do what he says, and everyone will get along.”

  I left the men to get acquainted with the Chandler’s Narrow girls and walked back out into the courtyard. One of the lads would have to stay there with Will, of course, to keep the place guarded. I was sure none of them would have minded that duty, but Sir Eland would be ideal for it. He might give the place a bit of fake class, for one thing, and more importantly I knew he didn’t like women in that way so at least he would leave the girls alone. The duty would keep his sneer out of my face as well, if nothing else.

  I stood in the gloomy courtyard and stretched my back under the weight of my mail. That body would need shifting before long, I thought. I was aware of Bloody Anne standing beside me.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I glanced at her. “For what?”

  “For not assuming I know how to run a bloody bawdy house, just because I’m a woman,” she said. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  I shrugged. It had never crossed my mind that she would. “Help me with this?”

  Anne nodded, and between us we dragged the body back into the boardinghouse and threw it in a corner with the others. As my memory served, there was a dirt-floored cellar under the building. Some of the lads would be digging graves down there tonight.