The Gravedigger’s Son and the Waif Girl 1 Read online

  Sam Feuerbach

  The Gravedigger’s Son and the Waif Girl – Volume One

  Translator: Tim Casey – with thanks to Erika Casey for all her inspirational help over the years

  Proof-Reader: Neil McCourt

  Special thanks to my valiant helpers Benedikt, Jasmin, Dagi and Johanna

  Cover design: Johanna Benden, bene

  Photo: @wingnutdesigns, depositphoto

  Copyright ©2017 Sam Feuerbach

  1st edition 2020 (1.0)

  German fantasy prize for the best German-language audiobook 2018

  The Saga of the Gravedigger’s Son

  Volume 1

  Volume 2 (2020)

  Volume 3 (2021)

  Volume 4 (2021)

  Contents

  the preparer of poisons

  the village

  reason

  the mole

  the hayloft

  Slimefoot

  champion

  the Anvil

  a lot of lugging about

  the arena

  who is he?

  hundred years

  the sea

  white and red

  fate

  turnips

  ambivalent

  negotiations

  training

  the castle

  burning night

  disappointment

  investigations

  the dress

  alone in the catacombs

  loyalty

  jumping for joy

  power

  the preparer of poisons

  F arin shoved the woman’s tongue back into her gaping mouth with two of his fingers. A clout of flesh, dark-blue and fissured, its appearance would doubtless have been too much for sensitive souls. The left one of the two remaining brown-stained teeth in her upper-jaw jiggled as he worked, while the sole occupant of her lower-jaw peered up from below. Her masticatory organs were undoubtedly in poor condition, but there was another reason why Farin busied himself blithely in the woman’s mouth: the dead don’t bite.

  He tied her chin up with a hemp cord. The old woman had closed her mouth for the last time. The cord helped to keep it in place. Her pale eyes looked accusingly at him although he’d had nothing to do with her passing. At least, not until this afternoon when the alderman had turned up in his horse and cart with the dead body. He had ordered him to unload the woman and have her ready for burial tomorrow evening. A wondrous occurrence – why would the head of the village be bothered with the woman, especially as he wasn’t related to her? It went completely against his notoriously stingy nature.

  Farin splayed his thumb and index finger, gently covering her eyeballs with her lids, which he glued shut with a few drops of sugar water from a small bowl. The old woman had closed her eyes for the last time. He knew her only in passing, had seen her a few times in the distance, usually frantically doing a runner. Dark rumours had grown around the woman – her life had been shrouded in mystery. Yes, shrouded in mystery – that’s what was always said about people who didn’t keep to the straight and narrow, who went off on their own strange way. But it made no difference what odyssey the old woman had been on – death is always the final destination; it brings everything to a predictable end. What was her name again? He rattled his brains in vain – the name just wouldn’t come to him.

  He took her chin firmly in his hand, turning her head, first one way, then the other. He had to remember to disguise the dark marks on her throat, one on the left and several on the right.

  The smell, the condition of her skin and the dissipating rigor mortis all suggested to him that the old woman had been dead for roughly two days. Farin sighed – it was going to be a long evening. Father would be raging if the body wasn’t immaculate and ready for the graveyard the next morning, which meant there was no time to waste. He grasped the hem of the coarse linen dress from below her knees and gingerly pulled it over her hips, chest and head. The material was caked in dirt, particularly the bottom third, on account of the bodily discharges. Although the stench of death stuck to her garment like pitch, he couldn’t just throw it onto the fire. As she had no other clothing, he would have to wash the dress and put it on the woman again. He folded it once and placed it at her feet.

  The rain began pattering on the roof of the small canopy. Father and he had prudently repaired it during the summer. Now he was standing in the three-sided hut and was dry. The old woman was lying at the gable end, in front of him and on the long workbench. He stepped back and looked at her. What was he dealing with here? A body – was that all? A piece of dead meat that nature had given, only to take it away again? It could also be an empty body that God had given, only to take away again, one whose soul had departed from it, in order to float away to a better world. Regardless of with or without body, the Lord must have set down strict rules, otherwise there would be an unseemly scramble over there. The Plague had carried off three-quarters of the villagers seven years previously. His mother too had been one of its victims. First there was the fever, then the terrible boils all over the body and two days later, the Black Death. It had all happened so quickly, not even time to say goodbye. Mother was burned along with twenty other plague victims, all piled together. Father and he had dealt with the bodies, day in, day out, but neither had been infected.

  "Even the Plague gives the gravedigger and his son a wide berth," was the conclusion the villagers reached.

  How could Farin define it? Luck? That wasn’t right, for the loss of his mother was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. None of the healer’s measures had been effective. On the contrary – Farin had noticed that the excessive bloodletting especially had only weakened the people further. Hoping against hope for recovery had been totally useless.

  It had been several years since he’d stopped paying attention to the village priest’s sermons. A certain pragmatism had crept up on him, a bitter, practical orientation that hardly harmonised with the religious digressions on heaven and earth. Was he in danger of becoming a disbeliever? He blessed himself quickly just in case. Whatever the case, there was one thing he knew: every birth led to a corpse. It was only a matter of time.

  Farin pressed his lips together. He would never forget the first time he had to prepare the body of a child. A three-year-old girl, an innocent thing, who’d kicked the bucket on account of some mysterious bug. The tears had streamed down his face as he’d cleaned the child. And then there were her relatives, praying and praying and praying. Luckily, the priest had a comforting explanation at the ready during the funeral service: "The Lord moves in mysterious ways."

  Oh, right!

  Instead of doing his work, he was thinking of God only knows – at this rate he wouldn’t be finished by midnight. He took a cloth from the hook, dunked it in the big water-bowl beside him and wrung it out. "Washing of the body begins with the arms", his father had taught him. Farin took hold of the woman’s right arm. He slowly wiped upwards along the withered skin of her forearm and stopped suddenly. He stared at the old woman’s chest in disbelief. A perpendicular line, encrusted with blood, ran from her bellybutton to the base of her neck, a crossbeam stretched across under her breasts. It was the shape of a large cross made up of ridged scars caused by countless cuts and wounds. Most of them old, a few fresh. He ran his fingertips along the bulges and craters. She really had taken her signs of the cross too literally. She must have been cutting the Sign of the Lord into her body with a crude knife for years.

  "Never speculate about the deceased while you’re working." That was another thing his father had taught him. Farin shook his head and set to work. He’d make sure that she’d m
eet her Maker clean, and her nearest and dearest would remember their last viewing of the deceased fondly. People never forget the last viewing.

  When he was finished with her arms and legs, he carefully cleaned her upper and lower body. He rinsed the cloth in the bowl several times, the water becoming grey as the skies above. It was still raining, but he urgently needed to get fresh water from the stream because the rotten base of the rain barrel was no longer watertight. His father and he lived at the end of the world – or so the little homestead where Farin worked was referred to by the villagers. It was apt really – at the end of the stream, at the end of the village, at the end of the world. Anyone who made themselves comfortable on the workbench in this open shed really had reached the end. From here on there was nothing – except for a heavy heart, undrinkable water downstream, and contaminated air all around.

  The autumn wind drove the low clouds before it in the failing light; it didn’t look as if the rain would stop before nightfall. And so Farin took his washbowl, left the protection of the canopy, and stomped a few yards out into the yard. Some of the stinking brew splashed onto his trousers in the process.

  "Oh, shit!" cursed Farin. This wasn’t the first time it had happened to him. Once again, he’d carelessly overfilled the bowl. A bucket would be much more practical, but father couldn’t add it to the bill – in contrast to the traditional washbowl. He threw the dirty water, as always, into the bushes a few yards away from his workplace. It didn’t seem to bother the pink hawthorn. On the contrary: the plant would bloom and flourish like no other in the surroundings – the branches had grown taller than his head long ago. Farin ran to the stream with the empty bowl. He was still annoyed at himself because he was going to have to wash his trousers and dry them over the fire, as they were the only ones he possessed. What did he possess, anyway? Nothing, if he thought about it. Nothing except his name. He was one up on God in that respect.

  "Farin!" he said loudly.

  That was something, anyway.

  Farin loved the stream for many reasons. Its gurgling sounded friendly and calming, its cool water was always refreshing, and he always fund it easiest to think about things when sitting on one of the enormous boulders scattered around in the stream. His thoughts would float longingly downstream. The current would wind its way around bend after bend in the forest, plummet down a sudden waterfall, run across a meadow until if finally flowed into a large river. It would get bigger and bigger, making its inexorable way through the Worldly Kingdom in its constant search for the sea.

  The sea! They said it consisted of an endless supply of water, and that its waves crashed against the shore, never growing tired.

  Is there somebody trying to carry a gigantic bowl there too? I want to see the sea. Just once, dreamed Farin.

  He carried the bowl, filled to the brim, carefully back to the shed. Why don’t I bring the water in a bucket and then pour it into the bowl? Farin asked himself, not for the first time. Because father taught me differently and that’s the way he wanted it, was the all-explaining answer.

  He set to work again with the fresh water. Having finished with the body, he started preparing the head. He washed her hair with a concoction of egg-yolk, camomile, nettle-juice, burdock-root stock and plenty of water. Then he cut it – a tedious undertaking, which was more down to the clunky scissors than to the woman’s thin strands of hair.

  "The hands are very important", his father always stressed. After all, they lay respectfully folded on the chest of the deceased person during the ceremony. Or, to be more precise, his father would beat these rules into him with his cane – his preferred teaching method. Then Farin took care of her fingernails. He didn’t need to use the heavy scissors for this, thanks be to God, but he could cut the nails with a small pliers.

  His father had bought the pliers two years previously, after Farin’s mishap with the big scissors. That time he had cut off a deceased person’s finger by mistake. It hadn’t bothered the corpse, but the relatives were quite put out, unimpressed by the peacefully crossed nine fingers on the chest, accompanied by a bloody stump. Unfortunately, all the relatives had been convinced that the deceased had worn an expensive ring on the missing finger – after all, that was why it was called the ring finger. The piece of jewellery was nowhere to be found. The mourning relatives had made a serious complaint, not at the graveside, but before the alderman, and then everyone got their just deserts – his father got no payment for his work and Farin was paid double in the form of an extra sound beating.

  Thanks to the pliers, all the fingers were safe this time. Then he cleaned the nails with a short knife. He got rid of the black behind the fingernails, but also some bits of skin that were stuck behind the nails of her right hand.

  "Nobody looks at the feet," his father had taught him, drumming it in with an encouraging slap on the face. Still, Farin attended to the ten toenails with as much diligence as he had to her fingernails.

  Maybe God looks at the feet.

  Just like every other evening, the daylight disappeared slowly but surely. Farin lit an oil-lamp and placed it on a board positioned on the workbench. Yes indeed, this contraption was called a workbench. Once, when he was a little boy, he had used it as a table by mistake, which had made father livid.

  "THAT’S THE WORKBENCH!" he’d roared. "You don’t put dead people on tables!"

  Overwhelmed by so much piety, and strengthened by a sound educational beating, Farin had never forgotten his lesson.

  Shit, he should have taken and washed the filthy dress when he’d collected the fresh water. Now he’d have to make do with the remaining water in the bowl because he really didn’t fancy going to the stream again in the dark. Still, the material looked dirtier than the water so it might get a little bit cleaner. He soaked the linen garment in the bowl with both hands, then squeezed the brown water out of it. Limited success. No, that wasn’t going to work. He’d bring the dress to the flowing water the next morning and wash it a second time. He turned to the dead woman again with a sigh. There was a blinding flash of lightning, and the accompanying clap of thunder made him shiver.

  Don’t be afraid, you idiot! It’s only a thunderstorm.

  He hung the dress from a beam and turned his attention to the old woman’s face.

  "The face is even more important than the hands", his father had drummed into him. Farin had known that already. Dead or not, people always first sought out the eyes of their fellows, and when it came to dead people, their eyes were still in the middle of their faces. He examined the woman’s cheeks and nose. The blood had had settled at the back of her head and so her skin looked as pale as goat’s milk. The wrinkled skin over her cheekbones and chin hung down in folds. Sorrow, care and affliction had chiselled a grimace into her features. As if paralysed, Farin stared at her face. What was it that was bothering him? There was something else in the features of the dead woman. Something intangible, something evil, scornful. He shivered again.

  An unfamiliar sound made him spin around. It had become completely dark behind him and it took his eyes some time to become accustomed to the blackness. Was that a shadow moving there? There were goose pimples on his arms, he felt he was being watched.

  "Is there anybody there?" he called out and was shocked by the thinness in his voice.

  Nobody answered – what had he expected? He chided himself for being so chicken-hearted, but still had a queasy feeling as he turned back to the workbench.

  Don’t let yourself be distracted, Farin. Nobody comes here of their own free-will, stands out there in the darkness and watches as you wash a corpse.

  His new-found courage didn’t last long. He felt as if a bucket of freezing water was being thrown over him. Her eyes – wide-open – were staring at him. He let out a short scream. He could have sworn that the eyes were alive. Hadn’t he just seen a glimmer of light in the pupils, as if somebody with a lantern had just run past a window? Dumbstruck, he stared at the dead woman’s face.

  If she b
links now, I’m going to collapse. He had only just gently closed the eyes of the old woman and glued them. His heart was pounding as he repeated the procedure. It’s not unusual for the lids to spring open again as the rigor mortis disappears, he reassured himself.

  He turned around abruptly – nothing but darkness behind him, everything as normal. His body slowly began to warm up again. What was wrong with him at all?

  A washer of corpses who gets the creeps, he thought with a crooked grin, is like a butcher who’s afraid of the sight of blood. Come on, Farin, do your work professionally.

  "Now, my dear...eh, what’s your name again?" he asked the deceased, but she didn’t answer.

  Something with "G" or "K" at the start. Farin looked again at the deceased’s body. He leaped backwards a yard as if somebody was yanking him with a rope.

  There was something else on the old woman’s chest. Something shiny, something round. Anyway, something that hadn’t been there a moment ago. He glanced around him, his heart hammering. Nobody apart from himself could have been close to the corpse. So where did this thing come from? He slowly tiptoed closer. He pressed his lips as closely together as possible so he wouldn’t scream. Unable to blink, he stared at the dead woman’s chest, just where her heart had once beaten. A pendant was lying there, or an amulet. Very carefully, as if he feared his hands might turn to dust at any moment, he reached out to the jewel with his fingers and grasped it. It felt warm and it looked like a coin without an impression: round, plain, and smooth on both sides. Only a hole near the edge, obviously for attaching a chain. It had a yellowish sheen in the lamplight. He felt its weight with his outstretched arm – too light for gold. He carefully bit into it. His teeth left no marks. He’d never seen a metal like that. Was he imagining things, or did he get the faint taste of garlic in his mouth? What should he do with his find? Not having a box, he threaded a length of hemp cord through it and lifted it over his head, the amulet disappearing like a necklace under his linen shirt. He would give the piece of jewellery to her family before the funeral, but he would have to keep it safe from his father in the meantime. His old man would be guaranteed to hold onto it until a bit of grass had grown over the grave. Then he’d sell it in a village far away and get drunk on the money. His father had all too often cashed in the contents of dead people’s pockets, thereby confirming the prejudices towards, as well as the poor reputation of, the gravediggers’ guild. His old man was good – at nursing his bad reputation. Farin did not want to be like his father. On no account. Was that why he was honest? How would he have turned out if his father had always behaved righteously and impeccably? Would Farin now be a scoundrel, one who never missed an opportunity of enriching himself at the expense of others?