A Poor Day For Digging Graves:
Part One:
The Dead cannot cry out for justice. It is the duty of the living to do so for them.
-Lois McMaster Bujold
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It was a poor day for digging graves. Too wet for it, by half. A wild storm had blown in from the south-lands, bringing ill omens and black deeds alongside the darkened skies. The winds had whipped their way through the Pewhoasil Desert, then the verdant foothills of Anacsot, before scaling the craggy peaks of Edral pushing dark clouds further and further north as they went. The storm clawed up moisture as it went, gathering gallon upon gallon to itself, just to drop all the damn water right here, at the most inconvenient of times. Aye, it was a poor day for digging graves. Too damnably wet for it, by half.
The man who called himself Narm was having a rather bad day, as he reckoned things. The grizzled gravedigger had already had to dig three of the damned holes today, and there was yet more to do besides. The black woolen vest that marked him as a senior undertaker was stained with mud, and streaked with grime, in addition to being soaked through.
Ah well, it could always be worse, Narm supposed. He could have a white vest like those of Jeremy and Daniel, the two junior undertakers unfortunate enough to be working with him on this very fine, exceptionally beautiful, damnably wet morning. Narm certainly wouldn’t swap places with either of the young lads. Count Murphy was willing to provide lodging for junior undertakers, providing they didn’t mind bunking two to a bed in a barracks with twenty other men. Narm, however, was entirely too old for any of that nonsense, naturally, and was in possession of his own quarters, being that he was a senior undertaker and all.
Being a senior undertaker entitled him to innumerable privileges. Privileges like his own personal hammock, a washbasin that he needn’t share with forty other people, and the shiniest, least rusted shovel and pick-axe in the pile each morning. Those privileges, unfortunately, did not extend to his not needing to participate in the construction of the final residences for the unfortunately misplaced souls belonging to the former citizens of Goldstern.
Narm was currently pacing under the eaves of the main office building of the mortuary, trying his damndest to stay as dry as possible. It was an effort which he suspected to be largely futile in nature, but personal pride demanded he make an attempt, regardless of the inevitable outcome. Narm could hear the sound of Countess Isabelle’s twin baby girls complaining inside, raising their wails of anger and anguish to Reaper, the lost souls of the Boneyard, and anyone else with ears. They had both become colicky simultaneously, much to the Murphy’s dismay. Count Isaac was desperately trying to keep them quiet while doing paperwork, and praying to the Reaper that his wife’s headache would go away soon. Narm grinned to himself as the muffled prayers and cursing intermingled, becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart over time.
His chest and arms were heavily muscled, in the way that only soldiers and working men could cultivate. Scars, some large, some small, cris-crossed that chest and those arms, pulling at his movements in ways he had long grown accustomed to as he paced back and forth. Over his left eye, a patch rested, a deep X carved through both sides of his left brow and down onto the cheekbone below. He remaining eye was a deep, dark green, and it glinted with a grim light, even as he grinned.
Narm moved with an easy flowing grace, despite a slight limp, and what little light there was reflected off his bald head, which was shining with perspiration and damp from the rain. His soggy beard was trimmed in the traditional style of Whoid Strian men, shaved on the chin, and full everywhere else, and he held a smoking pipe tightly in his teeth. Narm’s grin would appear a wolfish thing to anyone who didn’t know him, a baring of teeth meant to cow. He looked a man five or six years past his prime, his beard more salt than pepper, and his stride more old man’s mosey and ramble than young man’s swagger or saunter. Despite these things, it would take an exceptionally brave man-or a particularly foolish one- to pick a fight with the man who called himself Narm.
Narm was pacing because the wagon with the weekly supplies was taking forever to arrive. Not surprising considering the access road leading off the main causeway was probably gone to sludge at this point. Not, surprising perhaps, but that didn’t change the fact that he had five headstones to put in today, and he would have to supervise Jeremy and Daniel putting one in each. All of the tombstones were on that cart. The sooner that cart got there, the sooner he could get the tombstones installed, and the sooner he could do that, the sooner he could go inside and sit down.
He found himself looking forward to that more and more these days, and it was beginning to become necessary, especially with that thrice threshed knee of his. He could remember a time, not even ten years ago, when he could’ve done twice as much as he did now, in half the time, and still had energy to go drinking in the evening. Those days were gone now, dust in the wind floating ever further away. Now Narm was lucky if he could summon the energy for much more than pleasant conversation and a smoke with Count Isaac, followed perhaps by a game of stones with Countess Isabelle. Isaac was exceptionally terrible at stones. Narm’s attention was pulled away from his idle musings by a loud squelching sound.
He looked up, already knowing it was the wagon coming around the bend. Over these past five years of being an undertaker, Narm had learned what the daily shipment wagons sounded like in any given weather. In the deep dryness of summer, the wheels rattled and hissed as they kicked up clouds of brown-gray dust. In the deep winter, they cracked and creaked over the deeply frozen ground. In autumn, the wheels would rustle and crackle through the inevitable sea of gold and red leaves. And on a wet, late spring day like this? Well, the wheels squelched.
Narm looked up, expecting to see the wagon driver smiling his gap-toothed grin, and to call out his traditional greeting. The wagon driver, whose name Narm had never bothered learning, despite almost five years of daily contact, always, without fail, greeted the undertaker’s on duty with a wide grin proceeded by a ‘Ho Thar, gravediggers’. He did neither this morn. As the wagon finally pulled up in front of the building, the man who called himself Narm smelled something he had hoped to never smell again. Blood. Death.
Narm stepped up and looked down into the bed of the wagon and winced at the sight of the mangled bodies. One of the apprentice undertakers retched behind him, but Narm had seen worse in his 49 years of life. Hell, he'd done worse.
Not much worse though. He admitted to himself.
The man’s body was in what remained of a nightshirt, stained pink, red, and brown with bodily fluids. His face was a mass of broken bones and cut and mangled flesh. His two eyes peered out of a mouth full of broken teeth, and Narm thought he could see a hint of other flesh that didn’t belong in the mouth. If Narm had to guess, he would say that the man was not completely whole under that nightshirt. The man, despite his appearance, was not what made Narm wince though, it was the woman. The woman was naked, and her face was comparatively whole to the man’s features. Her body, however, had been mutilated in ways that Narm had rarely seen. Whoever did this had made it slow, and probably taken pleasure in it. The only mutilation to the woman’s face was the removal of her eyes. Even with that missing, Narm recognized her. High lady Sherin, wife to Dougal Donovan, City lord of Goldstern, and Duke of the Sea. If he had to guess, he would say that the man found in the back of the wagon was Dougal.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The wagon driver was stumbling out of the seat, and Jeremy, the apprentice on duty who hadn’t puked was harassing him.
“Bloody hell man,” he swore his coastal accent thick with fright, “What happened? Who are they? What’s That you got there?” Narm walked up and clapped Jeremy on the shoulder.
Jeremy rarely spoke, so this rapid gush was most probably a sign of his shock. When he spoke, Narm’s voice belied his appearance as a powerfully built working man with scarred hands and one blind eye covered by a patch. His voice sounded smooth, deep, and rich, like it belonged in a palace and not a graveyard.
“Journeyman Jeremy,” He said gently, “Go and get something to cover them.” the young man blanched at the thought of approaching the bodies, and Narm added, even more quietly, “I will cover them Journeyman, just get me something to do it with.” Jeremy looked grateful, and quickly ducked inside, followed by the other Journeyman, Daniel, who looked on the verge of throwing up again. Narm turned his attention to the wagon driver, angry words straining to fly and batter the man like a thousand arrows at full draw. His anger faltered and died when he saw the man’s face.
The wagon driver looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept in days and knew he wouldn’t for several more. His face was as pale as bleached bone, and as blank as the ground of an unmarked grave. In short, he had the look of a man who had lost his will to live and was just doing so now because he hadn’t yet thought to do otherwise. Narm was almost certain that the man would be dead within the week, whether from his own hand, or from starvation, or maybe even the strange sickness of the soul that can simply cause a person’s heart to stop. Narm had seen all these things happen before, and to look at the man made him want to wince again. The wagon driver finally spoke, his accented whisper marking him as a resident of the lower dock’s region of the city.
“I be… I be seeing things… things no man should be seeing. No man! Ya hear me gravedigger! No man…”
His voice trailed off into murmuring phrases about how no man should see such things, and how he needed a drink, and how he didn’t know what to think about nothing anymore. He didn’t even notice when Narm gently extracted the bundle from his arms and looked down into the amber eyed, auburn-haired face of what could only be Dougal and Sherin’s child, Caj. The baby wriggled uncomfortably in his grasp, gurgling complaining sounds about the rain. Caj did not cry though, in fact, his eyes seemed at odds with his wriggling and comfortability, as if to say, ‘I’m a babe now, but someday I will be a Duke. A Duke isn’t afraid of a little rain.’
His father was like that too, Narm thought distantly, never crying, always dangerous. He looked up at the Wagon driver who had lapsed into silence. When he spoke, his voice sounded almost regal in tone, and it demanded an answer, as the Reaper demanded death.
“What happened?” the wagon-driver’s head came up and he scratched at his wet beard.
“The man…” he gulped and seemed to wheeze with strain, “The man that do be doing this thing.” He gestured over his shoulder at the cart, “He do be having a whole pack o’ Crimson Keepers wit’ ‘im. A pack! Like filthy dogs, they was, Gravedigger, laughin’ at the dead like it weren’t but a holiday, smiling at their screams…” The old man shuddered. “ I thought it wa fer certain sure that they was just pretendin’ o’course. ‘Fter all, what manner of King’s man would be like ta do such a thing, and with such pride?”
As the man trailed of hopelessly into silence, Narm reckoned that he could personally think of several ‘King’s Men’ he’d known in his time that would ‘be like to do such a thing’, but he kept his mouth shut. After all, Narm the Undertaker had no business knowing what any member of the King’s own spoke of- good or ill.
He looked again at the eyes of both the Dougal and Sharon, the missing spheres that belonged there. This time, he noted the ragged, bloody cut that marked those eyes. An X, carved deep. The fingers of his left hand flicked up to his face, while his right held the squirming heir to house Donovan. Those fingers lightly traced the X that partially covered by the patch over his eye, shaking, ever so slightly. He snatched his hand down to his side like he had been burned, and did his best to focus on the moment. Damn it if he wasn’t going soft. A few years digging graves and all sense completely deserted him. He’d have to work on that.
A sound of a clearing throat broke the silence that had ensued as Narm thought. Journeyman Jeremy was back outside, with two long sections of old, stained sheets that were usually used to set bodies on as they were being prepared for burial. Unfortunately, the Priests of the Reaper were off duty today, as they hadn’t been expecting any bodies to be processed at this outpost of the Boneyard today. The lad, and that’s really what he was, twenty summers and a scruffy beard or no, spoke softly, uncertain.
“Senior Undertaker Narm sir, I uh, I brought out a couple o’ sheets for ‘em…” He trailed of nervously. And just like that, Narm was back. He had a job to do, and he couldn’t do that if he was so caught up in old pains.
I have no pain. I know no pain. There is no pain. Pain is naught but an illusion.
He repeated an old mantra, one learned from a man he had once loved like a brother. He forced his eyes not to flick to the remains of that man, resting in the back of a cart not ten paces away.
“Thank you Jeremy.” Narm said, simply.
When he spoke, one might have though there was nothing amiss, from the steadiness of his tone. One could’ve surmised, in fact, that Narm found the sight of two mutilated corpses to be of no more concern than a little light rain. But that was fine. That was good. He was old unflappable Narm the Undertaker, the man who was never surprised, and always unfailing in the course of his duties. And that was all he would ever let any of the Junior Undertakers, and the Senior ones too for that matter, see. A loud, tenor voice in an accent not dissimilar to Narms sounded from the patio behind them.
“Burn my eyes and let the Reaper take my soul!” Count Isaac swore loudly. Narm turned looking upon his employer and friend.
Isaac was a relatively young man, in his late twenties, with a set of wire-rimmed spectacles that seemed perpetually in danger of sliding off of his nose. His black hairline had already receded back about halfway atop his skull, and his face sported not but a thin mustache in only the loosest parody of horseshoe mustache that was typical for men of his age in Whoid Stria. Typically, the man looked bookish, and ever curious. Now, he looked like he would like nothing more than to erase what it was he just saw. And that was probably the case. The Count looked at Narm and seemed ready to babble. That wouldn’t do, as far as Narm was concerned. When one babbled, it was easy to say something that one ought not to.
“Isaac!” Narm barked sharply, and the man stiffened, and Caj began to cry.
Count Isaac Murphey hadn’t been a soldier for long, and it had been half a decade since that thin frame of his bore a uniform. As a Scribe he’d never seen action, but he still knew what that tone meant. He marshalled himself without thought, in the way trained men are wont to do under the gaze of a sergeant. Narm nodded sharply to him, and he nodded shakily back. That was good enough. Silence ensued following the barked order, as tension slowly eased. The pause lasted for another second before the old wagon-driver cleared his throat, and scrubbed surreptitiously at one of his sunken old eyes.
“He gave me the babe he did. Told me ta figure out what ta do wit’ ‘im. Me! Gravedigger, I ain’t never had a child in nigh on 70 summers. The man seemed on the verge of panic and he started to mumble fiercely to himself. “I don’t know what to do with one. What do they eat? What do they-” Narm shut the man out as he peered down into young Caj’s face. He looked into the babe’s eyes that seemed to be claiming that he was nobility. He had a sad thought then.
No one will ever teach him to be noble now, or anything else a young lordling should know.
“Well then,” he murmured to the babe in his arms, “I suppose I will do it myself.” The babe, as if delighted by his words began to laugh, a high, gurgling laugh. The babe laughed, and Narm laughed with him, with reckless abandon, as if the bodies of Dougal and Sherin Donovan, the family third in line to the throne of Whoid Stria, were not mere paces away. He laughed, and the junior undertakers looked at him like all the world as though he were mad. So it was that Caj Donovan came to reside with the undertaker who called himself Narm of the Fallen Oak Mortuary, Largest Mortuary on the continent of Fleigula, and more commonly referred to as “The Bone Yard”.