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When Philip was twelve, Amos Mathers skipped church three weeks in a row. Philip never knew why, not that any reason would have been good enough, but he did see him nailed to the stock on a chill November day. He had been kneeling, there, when Philip hurried through town towards the Joiners’, who despite their name kept cows. Caleb had been unwell, and Philip had taken it upon himself to go out for cheese; he was determined to get there and back before the sun got too low and the day got colder still.
Amos’s head had been pressed back against the wood, his face contorted, his breath a white cloud in front of his face. Philip had approached a little, curiously, and had seen how his left ear had been nailed to the stock, blood still dripping down it even though he’d been there all day. That was the tension in his face, Philip had realized— the more he moved his head, the more it would tear. He had to keep still. Smart.
He’d considered going the rest of the way over there and talking to him. Asking if he’d learnt his lesson, if he’d be godly from now on, but he didn’t. He did, however, hurry on to the Joiners’, come home with the cheese (and a message of good luck and quick recovery for Caleb from Prudence Joiner, which he didn’t pass on; Prudence really shouldn’t be so familiar with a young man), and then wrapped himself up even warmer and hurried out to the stock at sunset to watch him be cut free.
Amos had screamed when the constable had cut his ear, a neat straight line from the top curve where it met his face out to the middle of the helix. Amos’s mother had hurried up with a clean bandage and pressed it to his ear, held him in her arms, rocking him as he whimpered, and Philip screwed up his nose. If she’d been a good mother, she’d have raised a son who didn’t skip church, so this all felt like unnecessary theatrics. Amos was Caleb’s age, after all, and Caleb didn’t skip church. Caleb was up and dressed well before dawn every day, Caleb kept the house in order. Caleb was a brother, but he was mother and father in one, for Philip, and he worked hard, and he was godly. Not like Amos, who was sobbing like a child, the red blood soaking his mother’s bandage, barely listening to the constable’s lecture.
After they’d cleared out, Philip had snuck up to the stocks, where the top half of Amos’s ear remained nailed to the wood. It had stopped bleeding by then— only so much blood in a nub of cartilage the size of a carrot slice— but the streak that ran down the board was dark and sticky. He’d prodded it, carefully, with the tip of one finger, felt the skin give under his touch. It felt just like his own ear, even though it wasn’t attached to a body anymore.
That had seemed right, to him— you couldn’t tell the good from the evil just by the body, at least not as it had been when the Lord gave it to you. A man’s actions could mar him, like a drunkard’s red nose, like how Amos would now go through his life with half an ear, but underneath it all humans were all the same, really. What mattered was repentance, what mattered was faith. By devoting oneself to work and prayer, one could almost deserve the grace God gave to the chosen.
Caleb was the greatest example Philip knew; he worked from before dawn til after dusk, splitting and riving great trunks to make plank board while the light was good, whittling tool-handles and spindles and knitting needles by the fire once it had gone dark. Caleb had played with Philip some, when he was a boy and didn’t know better, indulgently, but even then they’d always played good, godly games. Caleb liked reciting verses; Philip liked playing witch-hunters. Now that Philip was older, Caleb had returned to work, helping build houses for new arrivals in town, mending the pews at church. He devoted his life to the community, and by the community, to God. Caleb was a good man.
Well. That was how Philip had thought about it then.
Caleb had been a good man, back then. Caleb had been a good man, and it was Philip’s duty to reform him, to teach him to be grateful for the salvation he must have been given— must have been given, because even after everything he’d done, Philip couldn’t seem to believe that Caleb wasn’t one of the chosen. He had to return him to the way he was before he had been corrupted and forgotten repentance, before he had fallen into the clutches of hedonism and fornication and foolishness.
(”Philip, I wanted to ask you—“)
Foolishness.
Philip peered at himself in the mirror. His hair had gone startlingly pale after he made contact with the Collector, strange little star child, and the scar that marred his nose had started to fester, but besides that and some marks of age his face was still his own. He could see, in his own blue eyes, the little boy that had laughed when Cain said “Am I a brother-keeper?”. He could see the innocent.
There were things for which he had to repent. He had not been in a real church in years, for God’s house was nowhere to be found in this hell. Years! He thought of Amos, his three weeks, and almost laughed. He had circumstances, of course; he was here to do the Lord’s work, to rescue a human soul, to destroy the forces of Hell, but circumstances were not excuses, and no matter how fervently he prayed he could feel none of the holy light that had blessed him as a boy, kneeling by the small straw bed where he would sleep in his brother’s arms. Hell, of course, was a place away from God. Here, he could not make himself heard. Here, he was almost damned, despite the grace he knew awaited him.
(“Evelyn and I, we got married; I was so happy but I still thought the whole time how much I wished you were there to be my best man, I’m so glad you’re here with us now—“)
He had a few followers, these days, witches who’d bought his speeches on purity as though they could ever be pure. He’d installed himself in a great stone building that had been abandoned, amused by its stained-glass window— he thought he’d maintain that aesthetic, as he progressed; it had certainly done well at reeling in the indulgent Catholics, so it would surely work for witches as well. It meant that he spent less time alone, though, and his current Grimwalker, Hale, had started asking to see his face. He’d destroyed the last one for the same question, but with the change in circumstances it seemed like doffing the mask now and then would be necessary, at least in private. With his Guard, with a few close officials. He could maintain dramatic anonymity with most witches, and use the seeming vulnerability of revealing his visage to a few to his advantage.
But for that to work, he needed to pass for a witch.
The Grimwalkers came out with pointed ears no matter what he did, which pained him; he’d cut the first few back into curves but eventually decided the witches’ ears on a face almost like his brother’s were a good reminder of the dangers of this place.
(”See, I mean, I’m sure you’ve guessed it, you saw Evvie, but we’re going to have a baby—“)
He deserved it, in any case. He hadn’t been to church in years. His mission was vital, and once he’d seen it through, he would be a good man again. This was the work, this was how he devoted his life— more than one life; how old was he now? He hardly knew— to God. But that didn’t change that in the here and now, he was in Hell.
Right side first, because the left would be easier, knife in his right hand. He’d do the hard one before he was in as much pain. Awkwardly wrapping his left arm over his head to hold his ear in place, he settled the blade against the underside of the curve, where lobe gave way to helix. A good straight cut upwards, vertical rather than the horizontal one that had freed Amos, and there would be a facsimile of a point, enough to fool a witch.
His hand didn’t want to move; the frailty of the flesh. He bit down the reluctance, just like he did when he carved his skin; no matter how much practice he had, there was still a natural twitch away from violating his own body. Every time, every circle he’d carefully incised in his flesh, splitting the skin and watching the blood seep up and smear, every time his heart trembled, just the slightest bit. Human weakness.
Only once had he wielded this knife without trepidation, without reluctance.
Gritting his teeth, he jammed the knife upwards, a single, sudden movement. A cry tore itself from his lungs, but he kept his lips pressed tight together to muffle it; blood coursed down his jaw as he flung the sliver of cartilage into the bowl in front of him, the same bowl he used to hold shaving-cream. He gasped for breath, hair falling into his face, ear throbbing. He could feel the pounding of his heart forcing more blood to fall, and his ear burned as though he’d put it to the fire. It hurt more than when he cut his skin, much more; heat rushed through his head and left him feeling sick, faint, weak.
The sliver of his ear, before him, retained its shape, its curl. It was seeping blood into the basin, and it hadn’t had hours out in an American November to chill, but it looked so like the one nailed to the stock when he was a boy. Unlike Amos, though, Philip knew he deserved what he got. He wouldn’t go crying to a mother, not even if he had one. He’d take the pain like a good, godly man, and he would throw himself into the work.
He leaned over the basin for much longer than he’d planned to, just breathing, waiting for the pain to ebb. It wouldn’t, not enough for his hands to stop shaking, and when he raised his head enough to look in the mirror again he saw the blood streaked across his face by the pained tilting of his head, the swinging of his long hair. It had collected in every line on his face, drawing them all the deeper, the creases of age and the hairline trails all skin had, the little scar below his lip where he’d nicked himself shaving as a young man, trying to show off to Caleb that he could do it on his own. He wiped some of it away with his hand, leaving sickly yellowish smears behind, and he took a slow, careful breath before turning to his bucket of water, dipping his shaving towel in it, and washing his face slowly. It was a waste of time— he’d be covered in blood again in a moment— but it helped him to screw his courage back up.
Philip whispered an unanswerable prayer, dropped the bloodied cloth to the side, and held his left ear still to cut.
From above to below, this time; that made more sense with the angle and left it less likely he’d jam the knife into his palm at the end of the cut. Again, he gritted his teeth; again, he cut hard.
As though his body anticipated the pain before it had any right to come, his head jerked involuntarily to the side as he jammed the knife down, and he lost his grip. The weight of the knife itself, without his hand behind it, wasn’t enough to continue the cut but it was enough to twist it off-course, a chunk tearing off his ear as it clattered to the ground. He screamed aloud, dropped to his knees, and there was a pounding on the door.
(“Evvie went to the midwife and she says it’s a boy, at least for now. We’re going to have a son, Pip, you’re going to have a nephew!”)
“Sir— sir! Was that you? Are you all right?”
Hale. So concerned for his well-being. This one might actually last a while.
“Fine,” he managed to reply, voice as even as he could make it. “It’s nothing.”
“Sir, if there’s anything I can help with—“
“Leave me be. I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Yes, sir,” Hale said, his voice so close to right, so close to how it should be. His voice and his care were the only real successes, of this one, who was physically quite a failure— small and frail, lips fuller and more cherubic than Caleb’s, nose not strong enough, chin a little too pointed. Pitiful. His nose had looked a little better since he broke it for him, but still.
The voice, though, was the most successful thus far.
Philip picked up the little nub that had torn off his ear, got shakily to his feet, and looked in the mirror. It wasn’t a clean cut, not at all; the twist of the knife had curved back in towards his face. He’d have to start the cut over again, but even then there would be an incision he couldn’t trim away; he’d have to make do with a notch.
As though he’d been nailed to the stocks and just slit free, rather than cut off.
Philip sighed, held his knife so tightly that his hand felt as though it would never unfold. He took the cut slowly, this time, angling it in to make the slit into a triangular notch before shaving off another sliver. A false point, with a mangle in it. Another thing to blame the wild witches for, and not even inaccurately— if it hadn’t been for them, if it hadn’t been for witches, if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t be here at all. He wouldn’t need to carve his ears into points, cut sigils into his giving flesh, put away his godly name in favour of a dramatic, intimidating alias.
(“Philip, we wanted to name him after you.”)
“You may come in, Hale,” he said, letting just a hint of the weakness he felt into his voice. Hale was caring, for all his faults, and he’d treasure the opportunity to wash his lord’s wounds, daub upon them some of the potion against infections they’d picked up in the last town, tenderly bandage them, look after him the way Caleb had looked after him when they were both small. He’d likely be too stunned by being honoured with his lord’s face to realize the purpose of the cuts, realize what shape his ears had been beforehand, but if he did, oh well.
He was going to need to start over again soon anyway.