The Enterprise of Death (40 page)

“Oh,” said Awa. “Selling them to other priests?”

“Exactly! And the random noble what’d stay at the sort o inns I did. Got myself a monk robe, made a box for the bones, and that was that. Thing is, not everyone believed I was the last brother o this order or that trying to find a proper reliquary for beloved James’s hand in exchange for some funds to save the abbey. Some uncharitable souls, and I’m talking clergy’s well as gentry here, didn’t believe the hand was even his.”

“Imagine that!” said Ysabel. “I wish you’d seen him with his skin on, mistress, the old villain looked like Reynard himself, red as the devil and twice as shifty.”

“I was handsome, is what she’s getting at,” said Johan.

“Is that so?” Now Ysabel crossed her arms.

“Sooo.” Johan turned back to Awa. “You see where my mind started going next?”

“I do?”

“You don’t.” Johan sighed.

“Sinning don’t come natural as breathing to some folk,” said Ysabel. “He starts thinking if those who buy his relics take it on faith they’re real, maybe like-minded honest souls’ll take it on faith any old bones a priest tells them is holy is just as holy as the real relics, even if they come from any old barrow. That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it? Exploit them who believe a priest?”

“Less eloquent than I would’ve put it,” said Johan. “But true for the coarseness.”

“Coarse, am I? Well, that’s a touch coarser yourself than last you commented on my texture, you—”

“Ysabel,” said Awa. “I think I understand what Johan was up to. Now, what happened when you met him?”

“I was passing by when the old priest run this fox off, and I took pity on him, being far from in that particular rooster’s good graces myself. I come down from a Waldensian upbringing and
my husband of course tells the priest, who’s none too fond to hear it, especially with me tending to women up at my place without his holy ears hearing the specifics. So I invited this cheat back to my house, which was a ways out of town, so I thought none would be the wiser of me taking in a scrawny ne’er-do-well out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Goodness of your heart,” said Johan, “or a lusty thought to poach my eel and eggs? We’ll get the truth out you yet!”

Ysabel made a low groan, then said, “ … I thought him fair for being a rascal, and my husband had moved back in with his mother the next town over, and he and I, my husband, I mean, we were about done with each other, or at least I was done with him and … I thought I might get something from the ginger goat.”

“And get it she did!” said Johan, then ducked as Ysabel threw a stone at him.

“So he lays his dirty bag of bones out on my table, and starts laying in his lies as we eat, and the whole time he’s coming off fishier and fishier, cause I’m country but I’m not stupid, and finally I tell him if he’s sport we might have a game to play, if only to shut him up. So in we get to it, his bone the shakiest of the lot—”

“Hey! No call—”

“And my husband decides this is the time to get the priest’s help in patching things up twixt me and him, so up they come as I’m doing the same, and that’s that,” said Ysabel.

“That it was.” Johan nodded. “Got myself done in for doing an old woman a favor.”

“Favor? Old?” Ysabel was feeling on the ground for another rock.

“What do you mean, that was that?” asked Awa. “The priest and your husband discovered you? Then what?”

“Well, then they killed us,” said Ysabel, glancing at Johan and shrugging.

“What!” Awa shook her head. “How could they?! Why would they?! For what?”

“For fucking,” said Ysabel, “though if my husband or the priest had a decent bone in their bodies they wouldn’t have. They said we were both witches, and that was that.”

“Witches?” Awa could not believe it. “But why would they think you were witches for, for—”

“Well, he had just blown into town dressed like a monk, and right after pissing up the priest’s leg he went over to the resident witch’s, me, I mean, and was caught with his wick in the wax, still dressed like a monk and with bones hither and yon,” explained Ysabel.

“Ahem,” said Johan. “A-hem.”

“Resident … you’re a witch?” Awa had never met another of her kind since leaving the mountain, but her excitement was short-lived.

“Well, not as such,” said Ysabel. “I knew what herbs to help get rid of a babe, or help keep it, and I might’ve had one or two nights when me and some friends got into the belladonna and, you know, ridden a broom or two”—she made her hand into a fist and pumped it in front of her pelvis—“but not like, real witchery. Nothing like you, to be sure.”

“Oh,” said Awa. “And they killed you for that?”

“A pretext on the part of my shitty husband and that shitty priest.” Ysabel sighed. “Or maybe they thought they were doing the Lord’s business. End result’s the same.”

“Once my foot’s better we’ll go down there.” Awa nodded slowly. “We’ll see to this priest, and we’ll see to your husband, and … what?”

The skeletons were both looking curiously at her. Johan made a sound like he was clearing the throat that had rotted away ages ago. Ysabel had knit her finger bones and was clicking her thumbs together.

“What?” Awa repeated. “Don’t you want revenge? I do and it wasn’t even me!”

“Revenge is overrated,” said Johan. “It’s a drain, if nothing else, and—”

“Don’t act pious now,” said Ysabel. “If mistress had brought us back a few centuries gone you’d be singing a different song, says I.”

“And whose tongue did I find you but a descendant o that husband o yours, by whatever woman he took after you burned? More than like the reason we got what we did was to clear the way for him to poke some other girl.”

“Ah,” said Awa. “I’m … I’m late, aren’t I?”

“Better than never,” said Ysabel. “And you’ve put me at rights on that, at least.”

“I have? On what?”

“On witches,” said Ysabel. “I wanted to know if they were real, and if so, if they were the devil-sucking, baby-eating things that priest talked about at my trial, cause if they were I’d maybe see where he and my husband was coming from a bit keener. That’s why I wanted to come back, to see the cut of your cloth. And witch you definitely are, but don’t seem too bad for it.”

“And a Moor besides,” said Johan, shaking his skull.

“Thank you?” said Awa. “So … do you want to go back to the graveyard now that you know I’m not a, a baby-eating devil-sucker?”

“Hmmm,” said Ysabel. “Maybe not here? Maybe we could find a nicer place for me to bed down, like that sailor whose heart you’ve got.”

“That’s my aim, too, though it’s more specific, I’ll allow,” said Johan. “Switcheroo of this skull o mine with a saint’s in some churchhouse, right?”

“I hope she trades you out for some phony head you sold them,” said Ysabel.

They were bickering again, and Awa leaned back against the wall of the cave. So very odd to have other people around to talk to, even if they were dead. At least her hoof would be healed soon.

They went north, and at Johan’s suggestion disguised themselves as lepers to keep anyone who might stumble upon them in the wilds at a safe enough distance to avoid revealing their cadaverous nature. Rags were obtained easily enough from fresh graves at the next few churchyards, and the wise-fingered Johan built noise-makers out of rough paddles of wood and rope. Swaddled in layers of moldering cloth they looked appropriately terrible, and clacking their paddles at the first sign of civilization worked marvelously at keeping people away. Obtaining food, fresh clothing, and other alms was actually easier now than it had been when the villagers and travelers got close enough to see that Awa was a Moor, although once an especially good-hearted priest had approached them, the old boy fainting dead away when he noticed Ysabel’s finger bones holding the edge of her cowl.

The heart of the unnamed sailor was cast from the cliffs of Gascony into the Atlantic before the trio changed direction. Awa had unburdened herself to the two skeletons, who strongly approved of her quest to find the book and thwart the necromancer. The skeletons offered to help her as best they could until finding their idyllic resting place, and as each monastery and church with a reliquary that they passed was not quite what Johan had in mind, and each scenic glade they camped in was not quite right for Ysabel, the three eventually wandered farther into France and then down to the blood-soaked hills of Lombardy.

Fulfilling the requests of the random unquiet dead that they heard in the churchyards along the way stopped seeming like a chore to Awa, and with Ysabel and Johan to stand guard over
her she slept better than she had in years. She missed her little bonebird but did not make another—it seemed disrespectful to even consider it. No trace was seen of the hyena, thankfully, but no sign of the hunted tome was found, either.

“I’m telling you, Awa,” Johan insisted as they passed along a wooded ridge overlooking a small town a year after they had met, “go down in there and find a parish, bring in this pinky finger o mine, and tell the priest they come from Johnny Baptist by way o Armenia. Stake my bottom rib that’s us into a bottle or two o wine.”

“And what would you do with wine?” asked Ysabel. It took a skilled eye to notice when a lipless skull intended a grin, but Awa caught Ysabel’s smile and winked back at her friend.

In their travels, the two skeletons talked a great deal about what they had seen of the world so long ago. They explained customs and beliefs and jokes, until Awa wished she could wash the color right off her skin, stride into a town, and have a hot meal and a good talk with the guests at an inn, or hear a mass, or see any one of the marvelous cities Johan described. Her two friends talked more and more of her finding decent folk who might overlook a Moor in their midst, if she did not behave in too witchy a fashion, but Awa would hear none of it and the skeletons held their own counsel when she slept. Finally they had an intervention, and when that did not take they staged another one, their joviality fading and their demeanor hardening as again and again Awa refused to listen.

“If I don’t find the book, he will destroy me,” she said, exasperated with them, but even more exasperated at herself for knowing they were right but refusing to give up. “Not kill me, but, I don’t even know, end me, take away everything! How can I stop!?”

“All the more reason to pack it in,” said Johan. “If I thought there was the slightest chance, I’d say,
Alright, Awa, let’s find it
, and
help you look til Judgment. But you got what, five years? And no way of knowing if it’s even in a graveyard, which is where you’ve been looking exclusive-like, yeah?”

“He’s right, Awa,” said Ysabel. “We’ve been over this enough times you know it by heart, but let’s have you hear it again —spending your last bit of time on God’s grand earth prowling about in churchyards, dealing with the dead—it’s not right. You should enjoy life, not hide from it.”

“Thank you for that,” said Awa, knowing what was coming next. “And I should take up prayer to your god, too, yes?”

“He forgave me, He’ll forgive you,” said Johan.

“How do you know?” demanded Awa. “You don’t! You don’t know where your soul goes when it’s not tied to your bones out of some, some sick obsession with a, with a switcheroo! Or some need to justify your husband murdering you, waiting around in hopes a witch will come along and dig you up!”

“But dig us up you did,” Ysabel pointed out. “You’re right, we don’t
know
, but we believe, and what greater proof can there be than your ability?”

“No more proselytizing,” said Awa. “Please. I’m tired of all this! You don’t think I’m tired of going to one graveyard after another, always wondering if some dog’s about to bite my ass, if someone’s going to see and try to string me up! I’m tired! Tired!”

“Then pack it in,” said Johan. “Ysabel and me, we talked it over, and we think maybe it’d help encourage you to, I dunno, do something else with your life if we weren’t, if we weren’t …”

“What?” said Awa, looking away from them. Through the trees she could see the river they had been following faintly glowing in the sunlight. She knew what they were going to say, and she knew they were right, and still the tears came.

“This looks like a good spot for me,” said Ysabel firmly.

“Me.” Johan made a swallowing noise. “Me too.”

“So that’s it,” Awa said, knowing she was being petulant but unable to stop herself. “After all this it’s just,
Goodbye, Awa
?
Good luck
?
Hope the immortal evil doesn’t get you
?”

“You need to stop chasing clouds,” said Ysabel. “Enjoy yourself. Make friends that aren’t dead.
Live
, Awa.”

“Live.” The word felt mealy on her tongue, but through her disappointment and loss a little spark of excitement was building in Awa, of an end to the monotony of graveyard on top of graveyard. “Live.”

“There’s places Moors don’t have it so bad as Spain and all, probably,” said Johan.

“And what about the skull swap, eh?” said Awa, and both skeletons’ sets of shoulder blades relaxed at the smile on her tear-streaked face. “Given up on sainthood?”

“This is a prettier spot than them churches,” said Johan, though he was looking at Ysabel instead of the sun-dappled, sandy clearing. “My bones’ll rest easier here, knowing no entrepreneurs never going to steal’em away to a rival city.”