Wicked They Say

Wicked they called her. A foolish term, lobbed by rubes at that which they do not understand. A condemnation of themselves and testament to their own backwards ignorance. The Jews reviled and persecuted the prophets. What difference, this present generation? Fear was what ruled them. Not the mercy they professed. Not the humility, the meekness, the turning of the other cheek. No. Wicked they called her. All because of a few missing cats. All because of some blood and ground-up bone sprinkled upon a few thresholds. A fetish bag or two of cured rat’s eyes. Some poppets of crow’s feathers, elm bark, and hang-dried entrails.

All because of a few missing children.

Nobody was going to want for more mouths to feed, anyhow. Not with the harvest that was had. Not with what was already shaping up to be a harsh winter. And what harvest there was they should have been thanking her for. It was her workings what did it, her conjurings and entreaties that spared the little grain that made it to the threshing. That blight blew in from the south. Come with the folk who passed through in August. Why, they had a queer look about them. She knew it. She tried telling. But did they listen?

Wicked, they said. Widowed sow who’d done lost her mind like she lost her husband. Won’t so much as poke a toe in the narthex, won’t dare catch even a sniffle of the censer smoke. A drop of holy water’d burn her like hot tongs. Touch the father’s vestments, she’s bound to burst aflame. Like to wither to husk at the sight of the Cross.

Devil-touched, they murmured, the fools. And she heard them. Every last word. Her angel made sure. The angel of the Lord who taught her spells and blessings, who took her over the hedge and showed her the morrow in the dark surface of a pail. It was a beautiful creature. Man-shaped but neither man nor woman, something betwixt. Its robes shined like fresh washed linen on a summer day. And it spake to her not in words, but visions stirred up in her wit. When it came to her, she went stiff rigid. It forced its way in through the back of her head, ran up and down her spine hot, like molten iron.

It showed her craft and workings, told her when parents were out or dead in sleep, learned her what to give babes so they wouldn’t wake when she took them or scream when she cut them open.

It showed her how to do the Lord's work, and where to hide the bodies.

The angel showed her the crypt, too. In the ground beneath the church. The pair of cellar doors round the side of the building, covered over by some shrubs in the boneyard.

Chains held the doors fast, looped through the handles. But the iron was so rusted, the links broke at hardly any trying. This she saved to do during a thunderstorm. Pouring rain. So as to not disturb any dozing folk with the racket.

Light from her lantern beat back the dark inside. She took the first steps, pulled the doors shut behind. Cold, musty air dragged at her ankles, like vengeful mer wanting to pull her into the deep of the sea.

Careful and slow, she went. Water ran and dripped from her cloak. At the bottom of the stairs, she shed the thing and tossed it aside. The chill in the earth’s bowels was bad enough. Put damp in the mix besides, and she was bound to catch her death.

She skittered like a mouse, the leather bottoms of her shoes scraping and scuffling over the flagstones. Coffins lined the walls, set on broad plinths. Some laid in recesses carved into the walls. Thick gobs of cobweb hung like banners from the ceiling, draped the walls, clung in corners. Slender stone pillars ran down the spine of the room, holding the roof. At the head was the coffin she’d come for. The one the angel leaned against. The one it had shown her earlier that eve.

A small table sat before the grand casket, a layer of dust fallen upon both it and the trinkets and offerings what littered it. She brushed free a spot, put the lantern there, and went to the coffin.

The top was heavy as sin. It took every bit of strength in her aging body to heave it, stone grinding hollow.

When she caught smell and sight of the man inside, she gasped. Wildflowers at dusk, dancing on a warm breeze. Sweet cake fresh from the fire. Scents of Heaven. And the man…He didn’t look dead at all. His vestments had rotted away to threads, sure. A priest, then. And the miter, too. A bishop? Just enough remained to tell what they were. A hundred years of decay, at the least. But his face. His hands. His beard. All was preserved, like not an hour had gone since his passing.

She never believed. Even with all the tales, the countless names, the endless sermons, she never thought saints were true.

Then again, she never thought angels were true, either.

Hers looked slack-faced down on her, from where it towered at the foot of the casket, resplendent with pale light in this place of darkness but shedding not a lick of it upon any item about.

Its head drooped slightly and came back up.

A nod.

She reached into her apron, drew out her knife.

“Hand of a saint,” she murmured, reaching, taking up the fingers, peeling the lifeless member from where it rested on the body.

She placed the edge to flesh. Breathed once. Began to saw.

It was tough work. Raw and sinewy like butchering fresh meat. She jimmied the tip of the blade in the grooves of the wrist joint to sever it. No blood ever came.

By the end, only a narrow strip of skin still bound the hand to the arm. She lofted her prize, sliced the last bit away, yanking it free.

In the selfsame instant, the thing curled up grave, an age’s wear coming upon it in a flash. The fingers folded in like a spider dying. All but one. The first stayed stiff, pointing.

Accusatory.

She squirreled the hand in her apron pocket, along with the knife. The first step of her final and most dire work done, she took the lantern, paid no further mind to the coffin lid.

Cloaked in red, lanterns ablaze, crossbows readied and swords in hand, the inquisitors were waiting when she threw open the crypt doors.

The rain had stopped.

She turned to run once more into the depths, but a hand caught her hair, jerked her back hard, making her scalp sting.

“’Twas only a matter of time,” he grumbled, drawing her the rest of the way up the stairs. “Knew we’d catch ya in the act, given time.”

 Struggle she did, but her frail might was no match to his. Another was digging in her apron before she even thought to break for the blade.

“God above,” this second one said, fishing out the hand. He crossed himself, kissed the wooden crucifix slung from his neck. “Desecration as this borders on the unpardonable. What terrible blasphemy is it you schemed to work?”

“’Tis His will,” she said. “The Lord chose me.”

“Chose you? To divy up some poor babes, and defile the sacred remains of our holy father?”

“Only I can save the village. Only I can save us all.”

“I was prepared to hear your final confession.” With a scowl, “But you can tell it to the pyre.”

With a wave of his hand signaling his retinue, he slipped her knife into his belt and, her spoils rested in a gloved palm and having taken a torch from one of his compatriots, he headed below to undo her work.

Boots slopped and sloshed in the mud as the others carried her. Wordless prayers passed her trembling lips.

She sole among them knew the Lord’s will.

She sole had been chosen.

These blasted fools had no idea everything she'd done was for their sake. Not just for the harvest, they should’ve been thanking her for all of it.

One hand over the other, pinned high above her head, her arms outstretched, a blacksmith’s hammer pounded in a blacksmith’s nail. She whimpered and writhed at the iron piercing, sinking in her flesh, shoving through bone like a boar through brush. She begged and pled silently, beseeching the envoy.

But the angel only looked on. Aglow, it loomed over the folk that had gathered, summoned from their slumbers by the tolling of the church bell. Unseen. Twice any man’s height.

“Deliver me,” she whispered. “That my work be completed. That His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Its dead visage regarded her.

Then, for the first time in her ken, the frozen mouth cracked.

The shape of a smirk.

Her angel turned. Faded. As a dream upon waking.

The flames licked upward. She screamed. Not for the pain, but for the knowing that fell on her.

The folk screamed louder.

“Wicked,” they cried, voices twining with the roar of the blaze. “Wicked!”

And she knew they spoke the truth of it.