The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [145]
“She’s dead!” said Awa. “She’s dead dead dead!”
“Don’t listen to her, she’s trying to turn you against me,” Omorose murmured, desperately hoping he would not ask her if this was true. It had been a very careful dance she had led him on down the years, and the thought of being tripped up by her irresistible compulsion to honesty now would be worse than never having crawled out of the ground. To her relief Kahlert nodded, clearly disappointed with Awa’s confession.
“No!” Awa blubbered. “She’s dead, and I brought her back but she’ll kill me, and I never meant, I never meant—”
“All of the farriers I spoke with said it wouldn’t work,” Kahlert cut her off, wiggling the iron V in front of her. “They said it would ruin the goat’s foot, that such things were only for horses. Even still I found one who would make an appropriately shaped shoe, and having applied it to several beasts myself I assure you that it does indeed impede movement instead of aiding it. But by the fourth or fifth goat I had gotten the knack for deeply affixing the nails without splitting the hoof wide.”
Awa had not paid a great deal of attention to the hooves of the few horses she had ridden, but his meaning was clear enough and she moaned again, “I confess!”
“Well, Rose.” Kahlert turned to Omorose, who was once more exuding a sunny smile now that it appeared Awa would not be proceeding directly to the stake after all. Omorose stood without a word, and Awa felt the woman’s finger bones running up and down her calf. They dug under the manacle, and as Awa gave another low cry she felt the string tug and then come loose. Omorose came back into sight, dangling the fraying length of twine that had disguised Awa’s foot. Kahlert took it gingerly, his breathing shallow, and looked wide-eyed down the length of Awa to where her hoof stuck out from the manacle.
“Bring the hammer and nails,” Kahlert breathed, standing up and walking out of Awa’s field of vision, down to her legs.
“Please!” Awa squealed, looking to Omorose. Her former mistress was twitching all over, her nose and lips and even her eyes jarring from tiny spasms. The woman smiled, and blew Awa a kiss as she walked out of sight. Awa suddenly had to urinate very badly, and then Omorose came back before her, holding up a small hammer in one hand and a tiny bouquet of iron nails in the other. Then she smiled even wider, and went to Kahlert.
It was a cloven hoof. Kahlert giggled. He suddenly, desperately wanted to stop everything, to unshackle her and put the chains back into place, to bag her and gag her and take her without delay out of his house, out of the Empire. She must go to Rome, they must go to Rome, and then unmask her before that swamp-Pope Adrian. It would slap the Church in the face with a real, live witch, it would convince them, it would make them stop punishing the loyal and rewarding the wicked. His father would posthumously be brought back into the Church, he would be brought back into the Church, everyone would know, and then the good work could begin in earnest. This was God’s gift to him, Ashton Kahlert, Inquisitor before God, and soon, Inquisitor before Man once again.
The lady Rose stood beside him, a very curious expression on her face as she held out the hammer and nails. He took one of the nails and held it up. They would never believe him. Even if he brought this Moorish witch before them they would deny it, that was the way with the wicked, they would claim he had faked it, attached the foot himself, something. Yet here was a lamb who believed him, who believed in him, who had delivered to him this abomination, and all she wanted was justice, not a commendation by an officer of the Church, not the Pope’s blessing, just real, honest justice. She had not trusted the Church, she had trusted him, and even when the Church had turned its back on him she had believed, and now, even though he had doubted both her and himself many times over the long years, he believed, too. There must be something to this Luther’s ideas, he thought, God must be just as sickened by the Church