Priest of Bones

by Peter McLean

  I shrugged and finished my brandy as the crew jostled their way through to the back to wait their turns at the shithouse and get into their bedrolls. Black Billy was on the door, his new post, and I gave him a nod.

  “You can lock up for the night now,” I told him. “Get yourself a drink, if you want one.”

  “Thanks, boss,” he said.

  He seemed pleased to have a regular posting and had taken to wearing a big wooden club at his belt that left no one in any doubt that the door was his.

  Things were starting to come together quite well, to my mind. I thought of Ailsa, asleep upstairs in the room next to mine, and I frowned. She was a Queen’s Man, and sleeping under my roof at that. What did that make me? I wondered. An informer, I knew, and the very word made my tongue curl up in my mouth like I wanted to spit at someone.

  You’ve no choice, I told myself. It’s this or hang, and that won’t help those streets outside your door. It’s just business.

  Perhaps not quite everything was coming together, but most things were.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning Bloody Anne had a sore head and dark circles of tiredness under her eyes.

  “All night I sat up, and he never screamed,” she said. “The lad slept like a fucking baby on top of that witchspike.”

  “Told you so,” I said, while Ailsa brought us mugs of small beer and hunks of black bread to break our fast.

  She had donned a clean white linen apron that put Hari’s to shame, although where hers had come from was anyone’s guess. I could only assume she had brought it with her in her bag.

  “You did,” Anne admitted. “I was wrong about him, Tomas.”

  I just shrugged. A nail from a crazy old man didn’t prove water was wet, to my mind, but if it quietened Bloody Anne down on the subject then I would take that and be grateful for it.

  “No shame in that,” I said. “Magic is a tricky thing, so I hear.”

  “We saw what we saw,” she said, and I could see she still wasn’t going to let it pass. “If he’s not a witch, then what?”

  “I don’t know, Anne. Old Kurt said to bring Billy to him, if he slept on the nail and didn’t wake, so I suppose we’ll be doing that. But not today. Today is Godsday, and I’ll be busy and so will Kurt.”

  “He’s no priest,” Anne said.

  “No, he ain’t, but he’s the closest thing a lot of folk have, especially down in the Wheels. He hears confession too. He shouldn’t, to my mind, but he does.”

  “And you’ll be taking confession today?” Anne asked. “Here, I mean?”

  “I could throw open the doors of my magnificent golden temple and do it there instead, but it’s a long fucking walk to dreamland,” I said. “Aye, I’ll be doing it here.”

  There was no temple of Our Lady in Ellinburg, but she had her shrine in the Great Temple of All Gods along with all the others. That wasn’t my place, though; I knew that. My place was here in the Stink, with my crew.

  Anne cleared her throat.

  “Aye,” she said. “I . . . I might speak to you, then.”

  “As you like,” I said. “Our Lady listens to everyone.”

  Anne had never come to me before, and I had always assumed she had some other god she held to, but perhaps not. She nodded and left me there, thinking on the day ahead.

  When I had finished my breakfast I put it about that I would be hearing confessions, and I went up to my room. I put my robe on and sat in the chair under the small window, and waited.

  Cookpot was first.

  He came into the room, looking nervous for all that he had said confession to me enough times before. Perhaps it felt more formal like this, alone in a room together on Godsday instead of in a tent behind the lines whenever the chance came up. Whatever it was, he couldn’t meet my eyes as he shuffled into the room and knelt awkwardly at my feet with his round face cast to the ground.

  “I wish to confess, Father.”

  They only used the title when I was hearing confession, but it still sounded strange in my ears. Father was Da, to my mind, and Our Lady knew I wasn’t him.

  Anything but that.

  “Speak, in the name of Our Lady,” I said.

  “I killed a man,” Cookpot said. “I never done that before, not ever. That night, here, when they came. The flashstone went off and then the door blew in right beside me and I . . . I . . .”

  He choked into silence. I waited, giving him his moment. That was how this was done. Some men found confession easy and some found it hard, and some treated it like a joke. It was all the same to me. They were speaking to Our Lady, not to me, and it was on their consciences how they went about it. Every man in his own time and his own way. That was how I held confession.

  “I ain’t a fighter,” Cookpot said at last. “I was at Abingon with everyone else, but I never killed no one. That doesn’t mean I never saw it, though, or heard it. I’m just a fucking cook, but I remember when they brought Aaron back on a stretcher with his guts hanging out all blue and slimy and him screaming for his ma. I remember when the surgeon took Donnalt’s arm off at the shoulder and he still went mad and died from the rot in his blood. I remember the noise, Tomas. The fucking noise! Them cannon, all fucking day, and the walls coming down, and the smoke and the dust.

  “When that door blew in, I just . . . I thought we was done with it, you know? I thought it was over and I weren’t dead after all and it might be all right now, but when that door came in I was right back there and Aaron was screaming again and I could hear the cannon roar and that man come through the door and I just . . . I just had to stab him. I had to, do you understand?”

  Cookpot was weeping now, and I reached out a hand and put it on his head.

  “It was his time to cross the river, and Our Lady forgives you,” I said. “In Our Lady’s name.”

  Truth be told, I didn’t know what Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows would have thought of that. Not much, I suspected. She had decreed that that wasn’t Cookpot’s day to die, and that had been the end of her part in the business, to my mind.

  Cookpot wiped a sleeve across his eyes and nodded, still sniffling.

  “In Our Lady’s name,” he repeated.

  He got to his feet and looked at me, snot running out of his left nostril.

  “I don’t know that I can do this,” he said. “Be a Pious Man, I mean.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Well, you think on it, Cookpot,” I said. “If you can’t, then I won’t take ill against you for it, but I’ll need to know soon.”

  “Aye,” he said. “And thank you, Father.”

  I would have to have Luka keep a close eye on him until he made his choice, I thought. Cookpot left, and I had Simple Sam after that.

  Simple Sam grinned and confessed that he had pissed in Jochan’s brandy bottle one night when Jochan had passed out, then Jochan had woken up and drank it and not noticed the difference. Simple Sam held that that was funny, but he felt he ought to confess it anyway, and I told him that I thought it was funny as well but he didn’t ought to do it again or Jochan would hurt him, and I forgave him and sent him on his way.

  Most of the others came, one after another, to confess to cheating at dice or stealing something they shouldn’t have done, and I forgave them all in Our Lady’s name. Petty crimes from petty criminals didn’t interest me, and I daresay they interested Our Lady even less.

  Grieg from my original crew confessed that he had hurt his girl last night, in the house at Chandler’s Narrow, and that was how he liked it. I stood him up, and I belted him in the face and felt his nose shatter under my knuckles.

  When he stopped choking on the blood, he admitted he didn’t like it when someone did it to him, and I forgave him and sent him on his way. I made a mental note to have Will the Woman find out which girl that had been and mak
e sure she was all right, and to pay her a week off by way of apology from me.

  That was how I held confession that day, until at the very end Bloody Anne came to my room and knelt in front of me.

  “I wish to confess, Father,” she said.

  “Speak, in the name of Our Lady,” I said.

  Anne spoke, and what she told me wasn’t what I was expecting to hear.

  “Last night I lay with a woman,” she said, and that part I had been expecting, at least.

  “I don’t think Our Lady cares who we lie with, so long as both are willing,” I said. “There’s no need to confess that, Bloody Anne.”

  Her head snapped up, and there was a look of fury on her face.

  “Don’t tell me what I need to confess!” she snarled. “A priest listens to people, so you’ll fucking well listen to me.”

  That made me blink, but I nodded. “As you will,” I said. “Confess, then.”

  Bloody Anne drew a shuddering breath and lowered her head again.

  “I grew up in a little village in some hills, northwest of here,” she said. “Nowhere you’d have heard of. We raised sheep and traded wool, and we held to the Stone Father there, not Our Lady, and we didn’t have no priest. There was just Mother Groggan.”

  I sat quiet and waited for her to work her way around to her point.

  “Mother Groggan very much cared who lay with who,” Anne went on. “One day my brother caught me and Maisy the cooper’s daughter out in Da’s barn together. He raised the gods over it, and we were both dragged in front of Mother Groggan to confess how we had sinned with each other in the Stone Father’s eyes.”

  I nodded, understanding. I didn’t know this Stone Father, but a god who had nothing better to worry about than who you might choose to fuck didn’t sound like he was worth much, to my mind.

  “It was Mother Groggan,” Anne went on, her voice going very quiet. “She was the one.”

  “The one what, Anne?”

  “The witch!” she spat. “How do you think I got this, Tomas?”

  She threw her head back and gestured angrily at the long scar on her face.

  I had never given it any thought. Anne had been at war for a year before I ever met her, and a lot of soldiers had scars. I shrugged.

  “Fighting, I’d always thought,” I said. “The road to Messia, maybe.”

  “Being held down by my own brothers and cut by a witch called Mother Groggan, when I had only sixteen years to me,” she said, and now her voice was flat and quiet. “Cut open for the crime of being in love with a girl. She cut my face, and she cut me in the other place, too. Me and Maisy, both. I was pretty once, Tomas. Can you believe that?”

  I nodded slowly. I could.

  “She cut my face so I wouldn’t be pretty enough for anyone to want me no more, and she cut me down below so I wouldn’t be tempted even if they did. She did the same to Maisy, and she put her witch’s curse on us so we wouldn’t never love again. Love another woman, Mother Groggan cursed us, and she’ll die. Only I never stopped loving my Maisy because how could I, and then her wound went bad and she died from it and that was my fault.” Anne paused to choke back tears before she could go on. “Last night I . . . it was the first time, in all those years. I lay with Rosie, from Chandler’s Narrow, because I like her a lot. I can’t . . . with a woman, or a man neither. Not since Mother Groggan cut me. But I can touch someone and take pleasure from doing it. And now I think it’s going to happen to her too, like it did to Maisy, and it will be my fault again. I shouldn’t have done it, put her at risk like that. So I’m confessing that, whether you think Our Lady cares or not.”

  I swallowed. I had never known, never even suspected, what Bloody Anne had been through. She was my second and my friend, and I had never had the slightest idea. I found that I didn’t have any words to say to her, and that shamed me.

  “I never,” Anne said, like she had to fill the silence somehow. “I never lay with anyone else, after Maisy, not until last night. I was a long time healing from what Mother Groggan did to me. Once I was healed I went back to the fields and I watched the sheep like I was supposed to, but I was dead inside just like my Maisy was dead, because what right did I have to be alive when she wasn’t? Even with my scar, a boy from the village tried to court me, once, very properly, and I said I’d kill him if he touched me and I meant it and he knew I did. When the recruiters came through our village I almost begged them to take me off to war.”

  “Did you expect to die, in Abingon?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you hope to?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. To start with. But you see things, in war. I don’t have to tell you, Father, you were there. Among all the pain and the suffering, you see things that give you hope.”

  You did, at that. I remembered witnessing acts of bravery and of kindness that you’d never see in Ellinburg if you lived there your whole life. I just nodded. That wasn’t something we needed to talk about, I knew.

  “So you found hope,” I said. “And you came back to life.”

  “I did,” Anne said. “I came back to life, and I came back to the world, and then I saw witchcraft in our own fucking crew and then I broke my promise to myself and I lay with Rosie. Now I’m terrified I’ve brought it down on her too, what happened to Maisy.”

  I reached out and put my hand on Bloody Anne’s head.

  “What happened to Maisy wasn’t your fault, and it won’t happen to Rosie,” I said. “I promise, Anne. Our Lady forgives you your guilt. In Our Lady’s name.”

  Bloody Anne looked up at me, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “And that makes it right, does it?”

  “No, Anne,” I had to admit. “It doesn’t, but it’s all I have to offer.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Bloody Anne’s confession was the hardest I’d ever heard, and I’d heard confession from rapists and murderers and men so battle-shocked they couldn’t do more than stare into space and cry. I could see now why she was scared of Billy the Boy, but I knew the lad wasn’t a witch. Not the way Anne thought of witches, anyway. If he could do magic, and perhaps he could, then he wasn’t doing it in the name of any cruel god who wanted to maim and mutilate folk for who they loved.

  I thought that one day, once I had time and money and resources again, I might find out where Anne had been born and head up there with her and some well-armed men. I thought Mother Groggan and I might have some points of theological difference to discuss, priest to witch. I thought Bloody Anne might like to settle those points.

  All told I was glad Anne’s was the last confession I heard that Godsday.

  It doesn’t sound difficult, being a priest of Our Lady, not when the captain knows he needs a replacement and he’s talking you into it. Listen and lead, the captain said, and he never said care. He never said it but sometimes I did, whatever Jochan might think of me. Not often, no, but sometimes. If I had been hearing the confession of strangers in a temple, then no, he was right.

  I wouldn’t have cared.

  Why would I care about people I didn’t know? But these were my crew and some of them were my friends, like Bloody Anne. Some like Cookpot I had known most of my life, and if we weren’t friends then we were at least a part of each other’s lives. That goes a way to building a trust, to my mind, if not necessarily a friendship.

  I took off my priest’s robe and hung it up, and only then did it occur to me that Fat Luka hadn’t come to say his confession. That was his affair and I never insisted any of the men came to me, Godsday or otherwise, but Luka had often knelt in front of me in Our Lady’s name before. Not today, it seemed.

  I shrugged off the thought and headed down to the common room, where Pawl the tailor was just finishing taking measurements while his boy made notes of who wanted what. The tavern was open by then, open to the public for the first time since I had kicked Do
ndas Alman and his boys out into the street and put his “important friends” to the sword. Trade was slow, as might be expected after that, but there were a few folk in there from the surrounding streets. No one had much coin to spend, I knew, and I had Hari selling beer below cost just to get bodies through the door. I was still selling Alman’s stock, of course, so I could do that for a while and not show a loss, but I knew it wouldn’t do forever. Not at the rate my own lads were getting through the taproom it wouldn’t, anyway.

  Black Billy was on the door how he should be, and I could see Mika at a table in the far corner with two walls at his shoulders where he could keep a watchful eye over the whole room. Ailsa was a vision behind the bar in her clean white apron, smiling and flirting and sweeping coppers into the lockbox as she served mugs of beer and the occasional glass of brandy. I kept an eye on those who were buying brandy. They were the ones who had coin to spend, and on these streets that made them conspicuous.

  Hari limped out of the kitchen on his stick and smiled at folk, shaking the hands of those he didn’t know and introducing himself. He looked the part as the tavern keeper, and word soon got around who he was and who he worked for.

  When I made my entrance and Ailsa brought me a brandy I didn’t pay for, everyone in there knew exactly who I was.

  It might be Godsday but everyone who was likely to visit a temple and say their confession would have already done so by then, and I had put away my priest’s robes for the day. Father Tomas was done, for now, and now it was time to be Tomas Piety again. I stood up, the glass in my hand, and cleared my throat.