The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  They smelled Moldercay’s place before they saw it. An odd, almost familiar odor of stale things, mineral salts, and mold was borne along the street on a ragged plume of smoke. Three-story buildings gave way gradually to cleared lots, fenced-off enclosures, and squat, window-starved constructions that might have been warehouses, granaries, or stables.

  The last building on the street was two-storied and smart compared to its neighbors. It was the only building Ravis and Tessa had passed that was whitewashed. All the window frames and shutters were painted white too, and the roof was covered in a layer of gray white lead. A thick chimney stack swelled from the west-facing wall, and a large plot of land to the east of the building boasted freshly turned soil, spiked with white markers at regular intervals, looking, for all intents and purposes, like an oversize seed bed.

  “You didn’t tell me Moldercay kept a charnel house.” As he spoke, Ravis laid a hand against Tessa’s cheek. Feeling something he didn’t like, he pulled a small envelope from his pack. “Here, swallow this.”

  Tessa did as she was told. The envelope turned out to be some semi-liquid substance wrapped in a coating of sugar paper. The taste of sugar did little to mask the herby tang of comfrey and thyme. “Missis Wicks called Moldercay a bone keeper.”

  Ravis rapped on the door. “The two are one and the same.”

  A minute passed. Ravis helped Tessa down from the horse, and together they stood and stared at the finely painted white door. A few seconds later a panel was pulled back and a pair of extremely light gray eyes regarded them through an ornate metal grille.

  “Visitation or bereavement?”

  Tessa looked to Ravis to supply an answer. She had no idea what the question meant. “Neither,” he replied. “We’ve come to see Moldercay. This lady here is an acquaintance of his sister-in-law Missis Wicks.”

  The man whom the light gray eyes belonged to pondered this information a moment. He nodded once, pondered some more, and then drew back the bolt and let them in.

  Tessa stepped into a small, carefully lit hallway. Candles burned on waist-high sconces, sending an equal amount of shadows darting upward as well as down. The odor she had detected earlier on the street sharpened. The air was clammy and cool, and condensation dotted the walls. Seeing where Tessa’s gaze lingered, the gray-eyed man said, “It’s boiling day today, miss.”

  “Boiling day?”

  The man, who was dressed in a blue tunic with a white apron tied over it, nodded. “Yes, miss. We only dig and clean the bones once a week.”

  “Crust!” A cry sounded from somewhere within the building. “Who disturbs us at this hour?”

  “People to see you, Moldercay.” Crust regarded Tessa rather solemnly. “Acquaintances of Missis Wicks.”

  “Bring them in! Bring them in! Can’t be leaving the bones for chitchat.”

  Tessa and Ravis exchanged glances. Crust wiped his hands on his apron and guided them toward the voice. The building was a warren of whitewashed passageways. Plaster had been molded onto the corners where opposing walls met, cutting down on angles and giving a round, cavelike appearance to what were otherwise normal rooms.

  Crust led them into a large, tiled kitchen. A man stood with his back to them, tending an iron pot the size of a hip bath that was suspended on a grill above the fire. As soon as Tessa entered the room, her eyes began to sting and water. Without so much as a word to anyone, Ravis crossed over to the side door and opened it, letting the boiling fumes out and fresh air in.

  Moldercay turned on them. “What’s this! What’s this! Crust, did you give these people permission to open the door?”

  “No,” Ravis said. “He didn’t. I’ve had an aversion to harsh vapors for as long as I can remember. They make me break out in boils, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to risk aggravating such an unfortunate condition?”

  “No, sir. I would not. I thank you for speaking plainly. Crust, open the shutters and pull up some chairs near the door.”

  Ravis walked Tessa to the door, supporting her weight until the chair was in place. The fresh air began to make her feel better.

  Moldercay resumed stirring his pot. He was a small, angular man, bony and perfectly bald. Both he and his assistant, Crust, shared the same hunched shoulders and curved backs. “You don’t mind if I carry on working, do you? This last batch is nearly done. They’ll be clean as a pick before you know it. As soon as they’re finished I’ll rub them with a spot of spirits and set them to dry. Crust, bring this fine lady and gentleman some refreshments. Sage tea, perhaps, with honey and a splash of sloe gin. Let’s have some spice cakes, too. Currant ones, I think.” Moldercay turned to Tessa. “Unless the dear lady would care for candied peel?”

  Tessa shook her head. Eating was the last thing on her mind. “Currants will be fine.”

  “Excellent! Crust, set them to warm on the griddle, would you?” Moldercay began stirring his pot with renewed vigor. Boiling water frothed and bubbled, belching out huge gasps of steam to the chimney above.

  “You boil people’s bodies?” Tessa found she could no longer contain herself. She had to know what was going on in that pot.

  Moldercay slapped his free hand to his chest. “Good grief, no, miss. I boil the bones, not the bodies. Unless they’re heretics or murderers, of course.” Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted the puzzled expression on Tessa’s face. “I can’t speak from where you are from, miss, but here in Maribane no one who is an unbeliever or a murderer can have their bodies raised from the earth once they’ve been placed there. Just isn’t fitting.”

  “Not fitting at all,” chimed in Crust from the far side of the kitchen.

  “You raise the bodies from the earth?” Tessa was aware of Ravis sending her a cautionary glance, warning her that she was asking about things she should already know, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “My companion here was raised in a convent.” Ravis spoke in a condescending voice. “She knows little of the outside world and its customs.”

  Moldercay nodded knowingly. “Indeed! Indeed! Well, miss, Crust and I take the bodies from the bereaved—”

  “In a cart,” interrupted Crust.

  “Yes, in a cart, bring them here, wash and prepare them, then bury their remains in our garden of peace.”

  “With quicklime packed around their bodies,” added Crust. “To make ’em rot faster.”

  Tessa suppressed a shiver. The plot of land on the east side of the building must be where Moldercay and Crust buried the bodies.

  “We never use quicklime on holy men, of course,” Moldercay said. “Men of God are allowed the privilege of staying in the earth for as long as the process naturally takes. Up to half a year in winter. When a body’s been limed, though, it’s usually ready within a month. Crust here pulls them up for me and we clean and bleach the bones in my pot. Lye for normal folks. Ashes and calf urine for men of God.”

  Tessa nodded. She had learned a little of such matters from Emith, who used lye to remove flesh from hides. “What do you do with the bones when they’re done?” she asked. “Give them back to the families?”

  “Sometimes, my dear lady. Mostly, though, we keep them here, with us.”

  “That’s what we like best,” said Crust.

  “We keep them in the catacombs that run beneath the house, the road, and the grounds. Crust keeps track of whose bones are where, how long they’ve been interred, and so forth. These days I can’t remember a thing for myself. As soon as a fact’s in my head, then poof! it’s out again the other side.” Finished with his pot, Moldercay called Crust over and together they moved it from the flames, setting it on the tiled floor. The water was murky and gelatinous, and Tessa was glad she couldn’t see what was in it.

  “How’s your long-term memory, Moldercay?” Ravis asked. “Do you still recall your time on the Anointed Isle?”

  “Take these outside and drain them for me, Crust,” Moldercay said, tapping the side of the pot. “I’ll be out a little later to wash them dow
n.” He waited until Crust had dragged the pot away before answering Ravis’ question. Scrubbing his hands with a wet brush, he said, “I don’t like to talk of the Anointed Isle in front of Crust, you understand. It might upset him. He’s Bellhaven born and bred, and everyone in this town grows up believing that once those holy fathers have got their claws into a man, they hate to let him go. Crust thinks that one day I’ll be dragged kicking and screaming across the causeway and confined to a high tower or low dungeon, never to be heard of again.”

  “They kept Brother Avaccus in a cave,” Tessa said. “In the dark, alone, for twenty-one years.”

  Moldercay nodded. “Yes, it was so. The holy fathers feared him. He was too clever by far with his paintbrush and his ink. The things he could draw! Beautiful, they were. But worrying. Very worrying. Avaccus could learn things from them, they said. He must be a very wise man by now.”

  Tessa felt a stab of pain in her back. Moldercay didn’t know Avaccus was dead. She closed her eyes. Why hadn’t she managed to save him? Why hadn’t she moved faster? Been stronger? Something touched her arm. She opened her eyes, looked down. It was Ravis’ hand. Although he never seemed to, he always watched her closely.

  “You were a scribe, weren’t you, Moldercay,” he said. “A record keeper?”

  Finished with scrubbing his hands, Moldercay crossed to the kitchen and picked up a tray filled with steaming bowls and plates of hot spice cakes. “I was never an illuminator of manuscripts like Avaccus. No, indeed. No. I was a copyist. Chosen for my neat script and quickness of hand.” He pulled up another chair next to Tessa and laid the tray upon it. “I was charged with copying all the old scrolls onto new vellum. They had been stored below sea level for centuries, you see, and were badly damaged. They’d fall apart in my hands as soon as I picked them up. Terrible to behold it was: all that old knowledge grown over with mold, ruined by salt air, water-stained by the damp.”

  While Moldercay spoke, Ravis handed Tessa a bowl of sage tea and a plate of spice cakes. Tessa hadn’t wanted to eat or drink anything, but the toasty, buttery aroma of the spice cakes broke down her resistance, and she soon found herself munching and drinking. The tea was sweet with honey and bitter with sloe gin, and it made Tessa’s toes tingle. Soon, she no longer thought it strange at all that she was sitting in a charnel house, having tea.

  Moldercay continued speaking. “The holy fathers made me work down in the cellar. They didn’t want to risk moving the manuscripts upstairs to the scriptorium—the parchment was just too frail to be exposed to daylight. It suited me well enough at the time, I must say. Alone most of the day and a good portion of the night, no one looking over my shoulder except the good Lord himself. Brother Pettifar was supposed to come down each morning and sit with me, but between his bad knee and his fondness for gin-soaked oatcakes, he barely made it down the stairs once a week.” Moldercay smiled fondly. “Those were the days.

  “Of course, in the end the whole thing was a waste of time. The holy fathers took my newly copied manuscripts, packed them in open crates, and ordered them to be stored high aboveground in the west tower. One year later they sent in Brother Boddering to bind the loose leaves into codices. Boddering had been sewing books for thirty years, and no one could match his eye for detail on matters of kettle stitches and cording, but when it came to spotting obstacles from a distance he was as blind as a bat. Poor man tripped on an uneven timber the minute he stepped in the room. His candle went one way, he went the other, and by the time he righted himself the first of the four boxes was alight.” Moldercay shook his head gravely. “Everything went up in smoke.”

  “What about the originals?” Ravis said. “Weren’t they still in the cellar?”

  “They’d been left to the devil. I never packed them away in crates. All it took was one damp winter for wet rot to take them. Three years of copying wasted.”

  Tessa put down her bowl. “Did you ever copy a manuscript written by Brother Ilfaylen’s clerical assistant?”

  Moldercay thought. He stroked his face, pursed his lips, pointed his chin one way and then the other. “I cannot say as I did, dear lady.”

  “It would have been very old. Illuminations may have been mentioned in it.”

  Moldercay looked blank but regretful.

  Tessa stood up. “Think,” she said, as much to herself as Moldercay. “It would have mentioned a journey, first by sea, then overland. Veizach would probably be named in it”—Tessa struggled—“Veizach, Rhaize. Bay’Zell.”

  Moldercay’s chin came up. “Bay’Zell, you say?”

  “Yes, yes. Ilfaylen and his assistant went on a journey to Veizach. On their way home they stayed in Bay’Zell.”

  “Come to think of it, I do remember reading something similar now. The scribe never mentioned Ilfaylen’s name, though. He just wrote my master, or my brother in God.” Moldercay was now circling the kitchen, nodding to himself. “Some of the leaves were badly damaged and the colophon was unreadable—”

  “Colophon?”

  “The inscription page, where the scribe would have recorded the date and details of the manuscript, given it a title, and so forth. When the colophon was lost, so was I. I was reduced to copying blindly with no sense of what I wrote.”

  Feeling her chest beginning to ache, Tessa sat down. She didn’t want to risk another attack like the one earlier. Not now. “So, you do recall the manuscript mentioned Bay’Zell?”

  Moldercay took a deep breath and smiled. For a moment his short, bony body was transformed, and Tessa got a brief glimpse of what he might have looked like in his youth. “Oh yes. Bay’Zell. Franny loved me to tell her stories about faraway places. She liked to hear all the details of what people ate, how they lived, what they wore, and so on. She said that just because her body was stuck in one place, it didn’t mean her mind had to be as well.”

  “Franny was the woman you left the brotherhood for?” Ravis said, asking a question man to man.

  “Yes. I was quietly courting her all the years I spent copying in the cellar. Seeing how she loved to hear tales of distant places, I’d hunt out manuscripts that mentioned foreign cities and customs and recite the details back to her when we were alone.” Moldercay smiled again, this time to himself. “Some women like to be wooed with gold trinkets and flowers. Not my Franny. She liked words.”

  “Did the manuscript mention Veizach?” Tessa was beginning to get frustrated. Ravis’ hand was back on her arm, warning her to stay calm.

  “I’m not sure,” Moldercay said. “Parts of the manuscript were unreadable. Mostly I remember the details of Bay’Zell. The scribe’s master was sick, if my recollections serve me, that’s why they couldn’t make the crossing back to Maribane. So while his master recovered his strength, the scribe went out and about in Bay’Zell, making notes on customs and habits, talking with the locals. Franny liked the journal because the scribe had an eye for women’s fashions. He pronounced them scandalous, of course, but not before he’d described just how low cut their dresses—”

  “Does it not strike you as odd,” Ravis said, flicking his hand upward to silence Moldercay, “that with his master sick, the scribe went out and about every day in the city? Surely his first duty would be to look after his master?”

  Moldercay shook his head. “I believe his master insisted he go out. Perhaps he was the sort of man who preferred to be alone in his illness.”

  Ravis made a soft, clicking sound with his tongue. “Perhaps.”

  “What about Ilfaylen’s work in Veizach?” Tessa said, stepping in to fill the silence Ravis had caused. “Can you recall any mention of an illumination?”

  Moldercay pulled on his lower lip. Boiling the bones had bleached his hands, and he looked as if he were wearing white gloves. “I believe the scribe did mention something about a pattern. He mentioned that his master was working hard day and night. Said he went through six bone styluses in a single day.”

  “Styluses. That meant he was using wax tablets, drafting out the details
before he started work on the illumination.” Tessa felt like grabbing Moldercay around the throat and forcing the information out of him. “What about the actual parchment itself? Can you remember anything about it? Its size, color. Anything. Think. Think.”

  Hearing the change in Tessa’s voice, Moldercay glanced nervously at Ravis.

  Ravis shrugged. “Convent girls,” he said.

  Moldercay accepted this explanation with a solemn nod of his head. “Indeed.” He walked over to the door and peered out into the early evening shadows. “Crust, don’t let those bones dry out before I’ve had chance to rub them down. I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  Thinking she had gone too far, Tessa went to apologize, but Moldercay chose that instant to swing around from the door. “You know,” he said, “I think there was something about an illumination after all. Quite strange it was, really, now I come to think of it. I remember a page badly eaten by mold. I could only catch one word in half a dozen, but there was some kind of warning. Something about the scribe being . . .” Moldercay scratched his chin. “How did he put it now? Ah, yes. Bound to silence.”

  “Yes,” Tessa said, excited. “Avaccus said that both Ilfaylen and his assistant swore an oath to Hierac, vowing never to speak of the designs on the pattern. Did the journal mention anything else?”

  Moldercay shrugged. “Nothing that I can recall. He spoke a little about the vellum—its preparation and finishing.”

  Leaning forward in her chair, Tessa said, “Can you remember exactly what he wrote?”

  “Just the usual things every scribe knows and takes for granted. How the vellum was bleached, scrubbed, painted, glazed, then pounced. Nothing remarkable.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “I don’t think so.” Moldercay began to clear away the bowls and plates. “The rest of the section was ruined by mold, and the next thing I remember mention of was the master’s illness. The scribe believed his master first caught a chill on the day he completed his work, as his master complained of being cold and requested that a shawl be brought for his shoulders.”