The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [126]
“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.