Punishment Most Fine

            Despite his voca­tion, Titus Gondel­bert had no fond­ness for corpses. Every Sun­day there was a new batch: cut down from the gal­lows, behead­ed in the pub­lic square, or all those heads that were stuck on spikes out­side the gate. They had to be sent onward in cre­ative ways, in order for the pub­lic to draw the appro­pri­ate warn­ings from the exe­cu­tions. Mur­der­ers, for­ni­ca­tors, steal­ers of oth­er men’s sheep: this is what will hap­pen to you should you stray.

            It made for a mess after­ward, though, when the enter­tain­ment was over and jus­tice done. Some­one had to cut them all down, scoop up the bits, and cart the debris off for disposal.

            It was steady work.

            Titus sang a song as he drove his wag­on down the south fork. So far, none of the bod­ies had fall­en off the back, and he would arrive soon. He had begun dig­ging the grave yes­ter­day, and had planned to fin­ish it, but some­thing else had come up; he could not remem­ber pre­cise­ly what. But there would be more dig­ging today—and the sun hot, too. Prob­a­bly that was why he had quit yes­ter­day, he reflect­ed, paus­ing in his song. This heat. He had to get the hole down deep enough to hide this batch, though, or he could lose his con­tract for the work. That was the agree­ment: they had to all be under­ground by sundown.

            Dis­gust­ed, he spit into the dust at the side of the road, and then regret­ted it. He was parched, and he damned his past self for not fin­ish­ing this task yes­ter­day. Now he would not only have to dig, but dump the corpses and fill in the hole after them. He didn’t deserve this life.

            Final­ly, he pulled the horse up and set­tled the wag­on. Swear­ing, Titus took up his shov­el, and began to dig as the sun began its arc over­head. Crows gath­ered while he worked, eager to get at the things under the blan­ket on the back of the cart. They had been fol­low­ing him all day. They know me, he thought, heav­ing and sput­ter­ing as he attempt­ed to move the heavy earth. Damn all crows.

            Not an hour passed, and he looked back at the city walls, won­der­ing if they could see him from there. But sure­ly no one was watch­ing. He could afford a break—he had to break, in fact, or he would join the corpses in the hole before sun­down. Stum­bling back to the wag­on, he eased the blan­ket aside, scat­ter­ing the crows, and gin­ger­ly removed a corked jug that rest­ed close to a pale hand. Hasti­ly he cov­ered the hand, and found a tree to sit under. For an hour he rest­ed, and drank, some­times curs­ing the mag­is­trates out loud, some­times singing a beloved tune, and at times reflect­ing silently.

            The sun con­tin­ued on overhead.

            Best to get back at it, he thought, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing with some dif­fi­cul­ty. The corpses would not wait for­ev­er. Laugh­ing at that, he returned to the piti­ful hole, and for a time attacked it with renewed ener­gy. But soon he was gasp­ing for air, and using the shov­el to keep him­self upright. The crows laughed at him.

            To hell with them, he thought, crows and crim­i­nals alike.

            Stag­ger­ing back to the wag­on, he threw the blan­ket aside with effort, and, try­ing not to look, he took inven­to­ry of the bod­ies in the wag­on. Six of them: a very bad week indeed. Two small ones, he not­ed, and one old one. Those were eas­i­est and would go first. It took him half an hour more to dump them all in a heap in the hole, as the crows went mad all about him. Last to go was a well-dressed man of mid­dle years: this one was tall, healthy look­ing even in death. And handsome—Titus had to admit it. In any case, this one joined the oth­ers with­out com­plaint, as Titus stag­gered around for his shovel.

            So damned hot. Why could these fools not be sent off onto the riv­er in flam­ing barges, he thought, as had appar­ent­ly been done in times of old?

            At last the job was done. Or well enough, he thought, exhaust­ed. No one would come look­ing. Heav­ing and sput­ter­ing, he tossed the shov­el in back of the wag­on, wak­ing the old horse. For a sec­ond, Titus thought about leav­ing, but knew he could not man­age it. Not now. So instead he took up his jug again, stag­gered back into the stretch­ing shad­ows, and col­lapsed. Rolling to his side, he drank, the fiery liq­uid burn­ing his throat. Then he drank more, his sweat drench­ing the earth.

            At some point he must have dozed, because when he opened his eyes again it was dark. The crows were gone, the moon was over­head, and the air was cold. A fog had rolled in from some­where, and Titus sat up sharply, cer­tain he had heard a sound. The wagon—where was it? Rolling and flail­ing, he rose to his feet, star­ing about, his sud­den pant­i­ng drown­ing out what­ev­er sound had wak­ened him. An ani­mal, come to nose about the grave …

            It came again, from close by. Slow­ly, know­ing where he had to look, he turned his head toward the small mound of dirt he had left ear­li­er. But there was noth­ing there, no slaver­ing crea­ture dig­ging in the pit in the moon­light. Yet, that was where the sound had come from. He heard it again, a groan­ing of some sort, and he thought he could feel it through his boots.

            Yes, it was com­ing from the pit. He froze, and felt a sen­sa­tion like sliv­ers of ice shoot­ing through his veins as he stared. The earth stirred, like a crea­ture bur­row­ing. Some­thing was push­ing its way upward, and as he watched, a hand emerged from the ground, pale and white; it flexed and grasped, slen­der fin­gers mov­ing. Then anoth­er hand, reach­ing sky­ward. So alive.

            Titus ran. For­get­ting the horse and wag­on he pound­ed off down the road, scream­ing, not look­ing back. It was two miles to town. Could he run so far? Not like­ly, but he would make an excep­tion tonight. Pray­ing silent­ly, he sprint­ed onward, trip­ping and stum­bling in the dark before he had gone even a dozen steps. From behind him he heard a long cry, like a wail and a sob, and he screamed aloud in ter­ror, know­ing that it was already too late.

                                    #                      #                      #

            This is not pre­cise­ly how it hap­pened, of course, but it is dra­mat­ic, to begin that way. I have added some col­or, as needed—the crows, the drunk­en grave-dig­ger. I can­not be cer­tain about all of that, you under­stand, because it was me who dug his way out of the ground that night. You saw me first in the back of the wag­on: tall, hand­some even in death, with fin­gers long and fine like an artist.

            And yes, the grave-dig­ger made it back to town—or made it some­where. I did not eat him, if that is what you imag­ine. I was too busy claw­ing my way out of the ground—yet again—in order to return here for break­fast with the jail­er. I must have been a sight mak­ing my way through town, all cov­ered in dirt and my neck still pur­ple from the hang­ing. Even­tu­al­ly I made it back though, and drew up a nice bath to clean the dirt off, before don­ning clean clothes. It gets bloody exhaust­ing, all this exe­cu­tion­ing busi­ness, I can tell you.

            Edmuir had the chess board wait­ing when I returned, and with­out com­ment I sat down to play the white side. My army was miss­ing three pieces: one knight had been stomped through a grate in the cell floor, a rook fired out a win­dow on a sep­a­rate occa­sion, and one pawn sim­ply con­fis­cat­ed. This did not make the match quite even, how­ev­er, and I took up my lute, think­ing to com­pose while we played.

            A dark, haunt­ing melody filled the lit­tle jail cell, as Edmuir made his first two moves. This was the agreed rule: one move for me, for each two for him, and he was allowed to reverse those moves when nec­es­sary. Watch­ing only from the cor­ner of my eye, I could not help grimacing.

            “The bish­op can only move diag­o­nal­ly,” I said gen­tly. “The move you have made seems to com­bine the move­ment of a rook with that of a knight. It is noth­ing known to man, Edmuir. Or will we call that both of your two moves?”

            Silent­ly he pulled his over­sized hat low­er onto his head, but said noth­ing. I strummed a minor chord.

            “What do you feel best rhymes with ‘dead man’, Edmuir?” I inquired, but was brought up short by a shape in the door­way before the verse could con­tin­ue. Rec­og­niz­ing one of the mag­is­trates, I stilled the lute but kept it on my lap.

            “Jus­tice Crow,” I greet­ed him. For his part, Crow just grunt­ed, and I saw that he was study­ing my recent­ly bro­ken neck through the bars of the cell. “Join us, please,” I said polite­ly, grow­ing uncom­fort­able under his study. “The door is open.” He blinked in sur­prise and pushed at the door of the jail cell, which swung open obligingly.

            “This is not an ide­al way to con­tain the pris­on­ers, Edmuir,” he stat­ed reprov­ing­ly, but Edmuir ignored him.

            “He is busy with the chess game,” I explained, ges­tur­ing. “You are well, I trust, Jus­tice Crow?”

            “I am,” he replied, cir­cling the table war­i­ly. “And I see you are, as well, Mis­ter de Vere. Your neck looks quite fine, in fact—somewhat pur­ple, alas, but not bro­ken in two any longer. Very much in one piece, I would say.”

            “Yes, and thank you for notic­ing,” I said self-con­scious­ly, resist­ing the urge to pull my col­lar up. The bruis­es would be appalling for a day or two, and I must con­fess I am a vain man. “Would you like to hear a song, Justice?”

            “Assured­ly not. No, I have come about this sit­u­a­tion of yours, de Vere. It can­not go on. It is most upsetting—embarrassing, even. You under­stand that, while you are walk­ing around freely, it appears to the towns­folk as though we are inca­pable of pro­tect­ing them. And they will ask why you, crea­ture that you are, are sit­ting here safe­ly in their jail, eat­ing food they have paid for while being watched over by guards at night. Soon, they will won­der why they are pay­ing tax­es at all, you under­stand, and we can’t have that—that is the last thing we can have, in fact.”

            “I quite under­stand,” I said agree­ably, know­ing where this was going.

            “What I don’t under­stand,” he con­tin­ued, “is why you can­not sim­ply stay dead, like the rest of them.” He shook his head, and I saw that he was tru­ly baf­fled, and I had to resist the urge to enlight­en him. “We have hanged you three times this month alone, Mis­ter de Vere. The pre­vi­ous record for hang­ings by one indi­vid­ual was only two, and that was an unfor­tu­nate acci­dent. In Lan­cashire, you were behead­ed; upcoun­try, you were boiled in acid; while the fish­er­men off the coast stretched you on a makeshift rack and hurled your corpse out into the ocean from a cat­a­pult. I would imag­ine you would have been eat­en by sharks once in the ocean. Fur­ther, I have con­sult­ed the his­tor­i­cal record and dis­cov­ered that in pre­vi­ous cen­turies you were dis­em­bow­elled, crushed to death under boul­ders, drowned, and set on fire—mostly on sep­a­rate occa­sions, but not in all cas­es. The set­ting on fire occurred when you were exposed to sun­light, and spon­ta­neous­ly burst into flame on your own, appar­ent­ly. Yet you appeared two days lat­er, at a coun­try fair, with noth­ing worse than a mild sun­burn to show for it. It is most dis­turb­ing, Mis­ter de Vere.”

            “And not just for you,” I agreed sin­cere­ly. “There have been oth­er occur­rences, but they are too numer­ous to list, real­ly, and I think you have the gist of it there. I also am not hap­py with the sit­u­a­tion, Jus­tice, you can be sure of that.”

            “Under­stand­able,” he nod­ded. “And yet you insist on get­ting your­self into fur­ther trou­ble, each time you have been unsuc­cess­ful­ly … dis­posed of. Throw­ing bod­ies onto spikes seems to be a favorite pas­time of yours, as is the mur­der of live­stock, not to men­tion your fond­ness for the women here­abouts. Farm­ers daugh­ters, maid­ens, good­wives, widows—is there noth­ing you will stop at, sir?”

            I strummed a chord thought­ful­ly. “The wid­ows, at least, must be fair game?” I sug­gest­ed at last. “The goats I will not argue about, but sure­ly the wid­ows can speak for themselves?”

            “Nor­mal­ly I would agree,” he con­ced­ed. “But not when they are drained of all the blood in their bod­ies and left out for the neigh­bors to find. That is most inde­cent. The com­mu­ni­ty expects bet­ter of you, you realize.”

            “Yes, yes,” I mut­tered. There was no point argu­ing this, though I could not see where he was going with the whole discussion.

            “This is out of my hands now, de Vere,” the Jus­tice con­clud­ed. “It is beyond earth­ly pow­ers entire­ly, in fact. The church has been consulted—their best exor­cists know of you, and have refused to come here. So we have called upon some­one high­er up. A saint, no less.”

            Edmuir slid a pawn six squares diag­o­nal­ly across the board, then made hop­ping motions with it, mov­ing it four squares to the right. “Check­mate,” he said.

            Some­thing chilled me, though no blood moved through my ancient veins.

            “What saint is this you speak of?” I asked with a voice that sound­ed shaky.

            A voice came from the shad­ows beyond the cell door.

            “Saint Genevieve, of the Berkshereshire.”

            She had been hid­ing there in the shad­ows, and despite my abil­i­ty to see in the dark I had not noticed her. It seemed impos­si­ble that I, great lord of dark­ness, had failed to sense her pres­ence. Yet I saw her now, this child Genevieve. She must have been only a dozen years old. (Young, for a saint, I will grant). She would have been adorable if not for the saint­ly part.

            “I will be leav­ing here,” I told them both. “Imme­di­ate­ly. I have served my punishment—you said so your­self. You have no busi­ness hang­ing me a fourth time, or what­ev­er it is that this child has planned. Sure­ly there is some statute of lim­i­ta­tions on my crimes, after all? I can­not die, Jus­tice. And you will all regret it if I am detained any longer. Tonight after dark I will take on the form of a cloud of poi­so­nous gas—”

            He slipped out the door, and locked it. Unfor­tu­nate, as I knew that Edmuir did not car­ry a key with him.

            “Tomor­row,” Saint Genevieve said calm­ly. “We will come for you at dawn, and you will be moved to the cel­lar below this build­ing. There you will be stripped down to your under­wear, and strapped to a table that we have pre­pared for you. You will be bound, and the rit­u­al per­formed. Rest well, crea­ture. This is your final night in the shadows.”

            I drew myself up to my full height. “I am one of the twelve lords of dark­ness. I can nev­er be bound, nor stripped to my under­wear, and the likes of you will nev­er strap me to any table. You are warned.”

                                                #                      #                      #

            The next morn­ing found me in the cel­lar, stripped to my under­wear, and strapped to an enor­mous wood­en table. Much pro­fan­i­ty issued from my lips, as they tied me. Their moth­ers were cursed and their fathers den­i­grat­ed in the foulest of terms—even dis­tant rel­a­tives were accused of obscene and unlike­ly acts. Threats were issued. Dire threats, of twist­ed and unheard of pun­ish­ments. My revenge would be a hor­ri­ble thing. They must untie me if they wished to avoid those outcomes.

             When they ignored me, I turned to beg­ging. They must release me, I told them; there was good I could do in this world. Would do. Sure­ly they could see that, and did their god not preach it as well?

            Still they ignored me, the three of them, even Edmuir, who I admit I count­ed as my clos­est friend in the world at that time. The saint in par­tic­u­lar was unmoved by my pleas, and I cursed her anew.

            Serene, in saint­ly silence, she took a seat beside the table, and closed her eyes.

            Of the rit­u­al, I remem­ber lit­tle, and some of what I do recall only shames me. I can­not bring myself to tran­scribe it all here. But I under­stand well enough what hap­pened, and will explain it as much as I can so the record will remain truthful.

            They took me back in time. One minute I was watch­ing the saint cry over me, and the next, when her tears con­tact­ed my body, I was removed some­how from that lit­tle room under the jail. I saw again my aris­to­crat­ic father, and my moth­er who was lit­tle more than a hostage to him. I saw myself, as well, and it was this last per­son that I did not rec­og­nize. Cen­turies had passed, I will grant, but it was not just that. Where I had become used to a dead, col­or­less world, these mem­o­ries and ghosts were alive some­how. Blood had coursed through my veins, in those days of my child­hood, and it dis­ori­ent­ed my mind to see it again. To live it again.

            But it did not last.

            The plague came to that world as I watched, and took away my par­ents, and for a time I remained in the great house, alone with them while they decayed. But then I also became ill, and removed myself to bed to die. A priest came before that could hap­pen, and nursed me back to health. He per­formed strange rit­u­als over me, that holy man, some sort of dark mag­ic which my mind had long since for­got­ten. He spoke a lan­guage I could not recall, and strange, hoofed crea­tures danced about the room, walk­ing on two feet. Even­tu­al­ly I recov­ered, and lay thin and starv­ing in the bed, alone with the priest in the mansion.

            I said I would not tell it all, but you might guess what hap­pened next. I did, in fact, mur­der the priest, once I real­ized that he was not a priest at all. I did it by dri­ving a dag­ger into his neck, and he was a long while in dying. I saw again the look of aston­ish­ment on his aged face, as I strug­gled to force the knife into him, and his glassy eyes as he watched me lick­ing up the blood. Should I be ashamed of that now? I am no longer sure.

            As I watched all this, the saint also watched.

            It was with that first taste of blood that the col­or began to drain out of the world. The vil­lage below had been dec­i­mat­ed by plague, and there were corpses lying in the streets and in the yards when I vis­it­ed there. I knocked on doors and entered homes, and found the fall­en on the floors, or sit­ting life­less at tables and bed­sides. Final­ly I met a young girl (still alive), and she asked my help. I told her to vis­it me at the man­sion, and I see now that I did not actu­al­ly mean her harm at that time. I was scared myself, and planned to aid her in some way, though that is not what hap­pened. I cried when the col­or drained out of the girl, both on that day long ago, and also in the room below the jail.

            Saint Genevieve cried also.

            After a time I left the emp­ty man­sion and the vil­lage, and I wan­dered. The plague had been every­where, and the coun­try­side was an apoc­a­lypse. This is when I first fed on livestock—that crime that the jail­er had men­tioned. I hat­ed it; it shamed me even back then, when I was dirty and mat­ted and starv­ing. But it was nec­es­sary if I was not to feed on the peo­ple, and I became used to it, and took no care to hide myself. Soon I was hunt­ed, and learned how to defend myself. I hat­ed the farm­ers, for what they forced me to do to them.

            Again and again.

            There were oth­ers after the girl—too many to count. Some I knew, some I pre­ferred not to know, but I fed and wan­dered and hid. Seen in that way, the years rolling past, I watched the col­or and the life go out of the world until every­thing became a life­less shad­ow-play. I real­ized final­ly that I was dead, some­how, yet stub­born­ly refused to actu­al­ly die. I turned myself in to local author­i­ties, con­fessed my sins, and paid the price for it. I was hung, beheaded—well, there is no need to repeat that part of the story.

            But always I would find myself crawl­ing out of a grave, or from some bon­fire; the great lord of the damned, dead but still alive. It exhaust­ed me to see it all again, and I was embar­rassed even to think that once I had thought I could end all this myself, at the end of the headman’s axe.

            I railed at the lit­tle girl, in the cel­lar. Called her names. This sto­ry was mine, and she was liv­ing it now, and it humil­i­at­ed me to have her see the truth of it all. What right had she to judge me? But when I looked at her face, all I saw there was a ques­tion that I could not under­stand or answer.

                                                #                      #                      #

            Jus­tice Crow stayed with me until I woke again in the cel­lar. Saint Genevieve was gone.

            “It failed?” was the first thing I said, though I knew that some­thing had changed. “I am free to return to my cell, I presume?”

            He looked at me curi­ous­ly. “You are,” he said. “But only to say good­bye to Edmuir. Then you must leave. Your pun­ish­ment has been car­ried out; my job was to hang you, and that is done. Saint Genevieve says you can be safe­ly freed now, so I sug­gest you go, Mis­ter de Vere.”

            This was not what I had expect­ed. I had been exor­cised pre­vi­ous­ly, of course, but those had usu­al­ly end­ed with me eat­ing the exor­cist and assem­bled do-good­ers. So it was with some trep­i­da­tion that I left the cel­lar and walked up to my lit­tle jail cell on the main floor. Edmuir was mop­ing in the cell, star­ing down at the assem­bled chess pieces. It took me sec­onds to col­lect my things for leaving.

            “I owe you this,” Edmuir said sud­den­ly, as I paused in the door­way. He held out coins. “Your win­nings, for cards.”

            “I cheat­ed,” I admit­ted. “You owe me nothing.”

            “You cheat­ed?” he repeat­ed dumbly.

            “Yes. I am a cheater, Edmuir. Hadn’t you noticed?”

            He grunt­ed, but con­tin­ued to offer the mon­ey. “Take it any­way,” he said. “You’ll need it out there.”

            Slow­ly I accept­ed the coins, strange­ly touched by this man who I had come to view almost as a sort of pet dur­ing my stay in the jail. “I’ll return,” I said slow­ly, but he laughed.

            “I hope not.”

            “Well.”

            When I reached the door of the jail cell, I paused, but could not read his expres­sion and so said noth­ing more. As I turned away, I swung the cell door shut, as a sort of joke, and left him stand­ing there alone inside the lit­tle cell.

                                                #                      #                      #

            I was not rec­og­nized when I walked out into the town. And I did not rec­og­nize the town, either, though I had been there count­less times before my most recent hang­ings. Some­thing was dif­fer­ent, and though I could not put my fin­ger on it at first, I knew I had the saint to blame for it. It came to me at last when I passed a street ven­dor, who was smok­ing some god­for­sak­en lump of meat over a flame and shout­ing into the crowd. When I real­ized that I could smell the smoke, I stopped, and looked back. Mis­tak­ing this for inter­est, the man shout­ed and called after me, pok­ing at the smok­ing meat with a stick. I could smell the meat, also, I real­ized then.

            Mov­ing on, uncer­tain now and frown­ing, I put some dis­tance between myself and the ven­dor. But I smelled oth­er things. Worse, I could see things that I could not remem­ber see­ing before. The col­or of a person’s eyes, the expres­sion on their face, the blow­ing wisps of a child’s hair as she crossed across the street in front of me. The peo­ple were alive again. I had seen this before—long ago. A woman stepped aside in front of me, and I not­ed the col­or in her cheek as she nod­ded at me. I nod­ded back, astounded.

            Some­how my sen­tence, at last, had been served. How could that be? It was impos­si­ble that the scales had been bal­anced, after so long and all I had done. The saint had seen it, and must have known: I could nev­er be redeemed. Yet one thing was clear: I was alive again. They had sen­tenced me to death at least a hun­dred times, and to most of those I had gone will­ing­ly, but some­how now I had been sen­tenced to some­thing else. To life. Which pun­ish­ment was worse? It fright­ened me, I must admit, to know that the only exis­tence I could remem­ber was now over. Where oth­ers feared death, it seemed I feared living.

            Dazed, I walked on, breath­ing it in. There was blood mov­ing in me; my heart beat in my chest again.

            I was alive. What would I do with it this time?

            I stopped when I saw a small shrine beside the road, not­ed the flow­ers, some scat­tered coins, the carv­ing of Saint Genevieve. Humbly, I reached into my pock­et for the coins Edmuir had giv­en me, and I dropped them into the lit­tle tray.

            A road led out of town, and I could see a wag­on mak­ing its way down the path, and the sound of some­one singing reach­ing me from even so far away. Anoth­er road ran off beside a riv­er, and there was a sound like music in the rush­ing water. I could make my own way now, I thought. These roads were all mine to chose from.

            And then, whistling a lit­tle tune of my own, I went on my way.