The Shifting Tallow

Mutton fat carried an unmistakable reek when the cold weather settled over the inland canals. Tymen van der Meer drew his curved iron scraper along the hem of Saint Gertrude’s habit, paring a paper-thin ribbon of yellow tallow into his calloused palm. He rolled the shaving between his thumb and forefinger. It snapped with the dry crack of pine kindling rather than smearing. The early frost had penetrated the drafty nave of the Abbey of Saint Jude, hardening forty stones of rendered sheep fat into the stubborn density of horn.

The sacristan had granted him three hours before compline to clean away the soot grime, scrape the dead moth husks from the drapery, and fill the wick-burns on the seven choir effigies. It was quiet, unglamorous employment, the sort of commission an artisan accepted when the municipal guild houses had no roof timbers to carve and the abbey chapter still had silver to spend on looking devout. In the vast, vaulted stillness of the church, every draft carried the sour odor of river mud, stagnant water from the crypt drains, and the greasy undertone of hundreds of votive figures slowly solidifying in the damp cold.

Saint Gertrude stood in the north transept, bathed in the dull pewter wash of twilight falling through the uncolored lancet windows. Her willow-lath frame bore five inches of molded sheep grease, heavily scented with crushed cloves and bitter almond oil to spare the canons the reminder that their venerated patroness was, beneath her gilding and linen cowl, an enormous loaf of slaughterhouse fat. Tymen had carved her himself, boiling the tallow three times with alum and vinegar until it took on the pale translucence of marble, then shaving each fold of her mantle with a heated knife.

He rested his scraper on his thigh and pressed his palm against the oak plinth to work the stiffness from his lower back. As he leaned into the timber base, his fingertips brushed the corner where his workshop reference notch ought to have met the edge of his leather apron.

His knuckles found empty air.

He paused, squinting through the gathering gloom. Three summers ago, when the abbey chapter commissioned the figure to celebrate a bountiful harvest and quiet the grumbling guild masters, Tymen had chiseled a neat triangular mark into the northern face of the pedestal. The saint’s outer mantle was designed to fall half an inch over that exact notch, concealing the mortise joint where the oak base was spiked down into the limestone floor.

Now the trailing hem of the tallow drapery hung over the western chamfer. The reference notch stood bare, pale and exposed in the cold aisle.

Tymen stepped down from the dais into the central walkway, the iron tacks in his boot heels clicking softly against the flagstones. He took his brass-hinged bone caliper from the deep pocket of his apron. Opening the compass legs with a twist of the thumbscrew, he set one polished tip against the bridge of Saint Gertrude’s molded nose and swung the opposing point toward the fluted stone pillar behind her right shoulder.

The span was six inches wider than his workshop templates allowed.

A figure of pure tallow could warp under certain conditions. If July heat gathered under the lead roof and hung stagnant for weeks, a heavy effigy might list slightly toward the sun, softening until its chin rested on its collarbone and its waxen tears ran down into its lap. But November had arrived with teeth. When frozen animal fat failed under its own weight, it did not twist gracefully; it sheared along the internal timber spine, splitting open in jagged gray fractures that looked like dry beef marrow.

Saint Gertrude’s skin remained flawless. Her neck rose straight from her mantle, smooth and unblemished as boiled cream.

She had rotated on her perch without shedding a single grain of plaster.

Tymen climbed the two timber risers back onto the dais. The air around the shrine was thick with the chill of dead tallow and old beeswax. He rested his cheek against the saint’s left shoulder, peering down into the dark fold where the head join met the cowl. No split marred the seam. He reached beneath the stiff drape of her wool-lined skirt, working his forearm up past the horsehair padding until his knuckles found the primary ash-wood upright at the hip.

His fingertips met cold, smooth iron where there should have been only rough wooden framing and split-oak pegs.

He pulled back his leather sleeve, knelt on the worn floorboards of the dais, and worked his hand deeper into the hollow core of the effigy. His nails scraped a vertical cylindrical shaft. Probing lower, he traced a heavy ring of forged iron bolted directly into the oak plinth with four square-headed spikes. The metal felt slick, coated not in the stiff, clove-scented mutton tallow of the outer figure, but in fresh, greasy hog lard that left a slick film on his skin.

At the base of the collar, his fingers found a small horizontal pin with a knurled head.

Tymen took a steady breath, gripped the pin between his index and middle fingers, and pulled. It resisted for an instant, then slid out of its sleeve with a faint click that echoed sharply through the empty transept.

He drew his arm out and held the object up to the dying gray light of the window.

It was three inches of unpitted iron, turned cleanly on a mechanic’s lathe. Four narrow ratchet notches were filed into the shaft at precise intervals. It smelled faintly of canal silt, turnip oil, and blacksmith’s scale, carrying none of the church’s incense.

Someone had cored out the ash armature of the statue, fitted it with a mechanical sleeve, and greased the seat with soft lard so that forty stone of sheep fat could swivel silently in the dark.

Tymen slipped the iron pin into his pocket. He wiped his lard-slicked fingers on his apron and stepped off the dais, standing in the middle of the nave directly beneath the saint’s raised right hand.

In her traditional posture, Saint Gertrude’s arm was lifted in a gesture of sacred guidance, her stiff tallow index finger pointing east toward the golden reliquary box behind the high altar. But with her torso shifted forty degrees westward, the extended finger pointed elsewhere.

Tymen closed one eye and sighted along the line of the white wax finger.

The gesture cut across the empty choir stalls, passing the heavy oak lectern and the row of unlit vigil stands. It aimed straight toward the shadowy alcove under the north gallery stairs. There, half-hidden beneath decades of discarded floor-rushes, dry tallow scrapings, and limestone sweepings, sat the heavy iron grating of an abandoned municipal drainage culvert.