Europe, 1795
The tiny old figure, clad completely in tattered black sackcloth, had become a familiar figure around certain parts of town. She tottered unsteadily about, never speaking, unspoken to, and because of her thick black veil, unrecognized. Most people didn’t spare her a second glance, thinking that she must be from a gypsy wagon on the edge of town. Because of her black garb and inexplicable behavior, those who gestured toward her as they sat in a café generally remarked that she must be an ancient widow driven mad by grief or perhaps just advanced age. Then they returned to their coffee and more pressing conversations.
The woman had haunted the center of town, as well as certain other areas, for years. When the new gallows was built, she seemed to be ever in the background, watching. When the gallows was first used, before the mess from its construction was even cleaned up, she was there. The crowd’s attention, of course, was upward to the condemned; it went unnoticed that the woman surreptitiously gathered some brick dust, which she secreted within her black cloak. Later, when the body of the condemned lay for a time in a wagon beside the gallows, the laborers charged with carting it away trudged off to first shore up their spirits with some beer. When they returned, one asked the other whether the body had been wearing a shirt. The other shrugged, followed by the first. No matter; the man had no need of a shirt any more. They began to drive the cart away, and if they passed an old woman all in black, carrying a small bundle as she tottered along, who was to notice?
She was often in attendance at funerals as well, usually unnoticed as she stayed well back in the shadows. She often arrived early and stayed later than everyone else, and if at the end of the day a funereal candle or two went missing, who was to say why?
If anyone had traced the woman’s steps, or even noticed where she went, they would have been unsurprised to notice a certain association with death and dying. She visited the town’s two cemeteries, but usually just when a grave had been newly dug, or when an old grave was being emptied. It was common practice, of course, for the dead to lie in the cemetery only for a a number of years, after which they would be exhumed and removed to the ossuary after the family became unable or unwilling to pay the subscription fee. This happened in a similar way in most families; there would be a year when the bill came due and a short discussion ensued:
“Do you remember great uncle Milos?”
“No, who is he?”
“Not ‘is’, ‘was’. We’re still paying the church for his resting place.”
“Where does he lie?”
“I don’t know. Grandmother took us to visit his grave when I was a child, but I haven’t been in years.”
“Why are we still paying, in that case?”
After the church was informed, gently or tentatively or abruptly, depending on the family’s ways (and memory, if any, of their own ‘Uncle Milo”), the grave was emptied to make room for a newer occupant, and the bones were placed in the town’s ossuary.
The ossuary was centuries old. An ancient tomb had been built into a hillside, and the back of it opened into a cave that wound its way into the earth. Over the many years it had been enlarged and reinforced several times as they made more room for storing the bones that always, in the end, were carried there by acolytes. It was thought that at first there had been a ritual attached to shifting the remains from their temporary residence in the cemetery to the more final (and cheaper) cave, but perhaps that was just an idea that made people more comfortable with a detail they preferred not to dwell on too often or too long. In fact there was no ceremony or ritual. If the coffin was not too rotted, it was used as a means of transport, but left just outside the tomb while the acolytes carried the bones the rest of the way. If anything extraneous was stored in the ossuary, after all, it would just mean more back-breaking labor eventually, to dig out more rooms and sepulchers within. The coffin wood would be collected on the way back. Even the rotted ones sometimes yielded some serviceable firewood, and the newer ones were sometimes sold back to the coffin builder and quietly reused, either as pieces or as a whole.
The old woman was often there when the acolytes opened the ossuary. If a few pieces of coffin wood or a nail or two went missing, who was to say why? As for the bones, especially the oldest ones nearest the entrance, who knew how many there were or just how they were stacked? The ossuary door, while very heavy, had no lock, after all. People avoided the place and frightened their children with stories about what happened there, especially at midnight on certain nights of the year. Surely no one would enter unless it was necessary, and disturbing the bones — even taking one or two — was unthinkable.
The town had two churches, and the old woman visited both of them frequently. She was always in the back, sometimes seated, sometimes standing in the shadows. Her visits did not correspond to when Masses were held, or funerals, and certainly not weddings. She never spoke; just remained quietly in attendance.
The town’s churches were not wealthy. There were still tales in the town about the glorious cathedral that had stood there many years before. It was said that the cathedral, exceptionally rich and visited by pilgrims from afar, had been looted and burned during what had come to be called the Thirty-Years’ War. The empty shell had stood for decades, its stones slowly being taken to build a house, or a wall, or even, as the stories went, the gaol. The town had slowly grown around and over the site where the cathedral had stood until today only a few could say with any certainty where it had been at all. And those who did say with certainty did not all agree, certain or not.
Most people repeated for their children the stories of the cathedral and the great riches it was supposed to have contained. But they didn’t really believe it. Theirs was a poor town with just two humble churches, and even the modest trappings and appurtenances in those sometimes disappeared. A consecrated hand bell had disappeared from one without a trace. From the other, the priest had discovered that a holy relic that had supposedly been secreted in a hidden drawer at the base of the altar had been removed — or perhaps had never been there at all (he was an old priest and had few illusions left).
