The Enterprise of Death Read online

  The witch was considering him, her fist between them. She did not look so young anymore, nor so slight. She was thick and made of nothing but hard angles, her dark skin making her appear more statue than woman to the artist.

  “You can kill me anytime,” Manuel said before her hand could unclench. “Please, let’s, let’s talk for a while. Please?”

  “Talk?” This broke the witch’s reverie, and she stared at him as though toads were hopping out of his mouth instead of words. “What would we talk about?”

  “You,” Manuel said, and as her face sharpened into a scowl he added, “And me? I’m an artist. You saw those sketches? Mine. And the nude I sold to Bernardo, the one you saw first, that’s mine, too.”

  “That’s mine now,” Awa said. “I like your … pictures. Tiny little shards of their spirits live in them.”

  “Ah,” said Manuel, his sudden flush of pride instantly cooled by the creepiness of her appraisal. Perhaps his old master Tiziano had been right—he should have stuck to still life. “I can sketch one of you, if—”

  “No!” Awa backed away from him. “If you try it you go back to death, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, and I won’t wake you. Understand?”

  “Of course.” Manuel nodded. “Absolutely. Whatever you—”

  “Think I’ll fall for your tricks?” Awa demanded, although she wondered if the hazy remnants she felt in the planks would be strong enough to have any influence at all over a complete spirit like hers. “I know others can do as I do, or like I do. Are you a witch, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern?”

  “No,” Manuel said, relieved that she had given him a little room. “I’m an artist, and I’m a soldier, and very often I’m a fool, if my wife or captain are to be believed, but I’m no witch. I’m a man of God.”

  “Man of God?” Awa said. “The same god that walked as a man and then returned from the dead, that god?”

  “God.” Manuel nodded, not sure what she was driving at. “The only God.”

  “Where I was born men thought the spirits were gods,” said Awa, remembering her early conversations with her tutor more than the actual faith of her mother and father. “And here men believe in a man who was a god. How do you know he was not a trickster, a necromancer? How do you know he was not my tutor, or his tutor, or some other like them? How do you know you don’t worship a monster that has deceived you, a man capable of stealing bodies, raising the dead, and living forever through sorcery?”

  “Ah,” said Manuel, not having anticipated anything so complicated as a theological debate with a witch when he had set out to earn some paint as a mercenary. At least she was sounding more like the witches he had heard about, being completely fucking heretical and all. “Well, faith, you know? Faith.”

  “Faith.” Awa crinkled her brows. “You mean belief?”

  “Well, yes,” said Manuel. “I believe God is who He is, and that He will redeem me, if I please Him.”

  “How do you please him?” Awa eyed him. “Killing his enemies? Killing the worshippers of his enemies?”

  “No,” said Manuel, deciding that he had no more to lose than his life were his honest answers to displease her, and he had already lost that once tonight without any continued ill effect. “Some think that way, but I don’t believe it. I believe we please Him by living good lives, by following His example.”

  “What is good to the fox is not good to the hare,” said Awa. “He was a soldier, then? Your god? He wore a blade and delivered witches unto their death, but only so long as his friends did not seek to rape them? This is his example?”

  “No,” said Manuel, the incongruity of his current occupation with his belief something he had gone over enough times on his own that he did not hesitate before answering. “I am not living up to His example. I was trying to, but then I went to war, and the only recent time I have done as He would was when I helped you escape and—”

  “You helped me escape?” said Awa, taking a pull of his wine. She could not remember being so happy, the fire warm and the questions bubbling out of her lips like tea-water over the side of the cauldron. Not for the first time, she wished she had wormwood close at hand. “Before you said you saved me, yet now you acknowledge that you only helped, and that, had I not fended for myself, all might have been for naught. How long, I wonder, until you admit that without my blade you would have died, that I saved you?”

  “My blade,” Manuel snapped, unwilling to let her take all the credit for his near martyrdom. “Your hand, yes, but my blade that you took from my sheath. I’d say that means we saved each other, or helped each other if you prefer.”

  “Yes.” Awa nodded. “That’s true, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of—”

  “Manuel,” said he, “is what I’m called. There’s no need to say it all like that.”

  “Oh,” said Awa, a little embarrassed.

  “But we were talking about God,” said Manuel, and as the words left his lips he started to giggle. She looked at him curiously but he could not stop himself, and soon he was howling with laughter. Witches were real, the dead could walk, and here he was explaining his most private thoughts on faith to a strange woman, a Moor, who had performed a miracle comparable to the Lord’s resurrection, and upon his own flesh. For fuck’s sake.

  “What’s so funny?” Awa asked, worried that she had broken the man’s mind. She hoped not, for already she liked him more than any living person she could remember. That perhaps was not so remarkable in her case as it would have been in another’s, but there it was. If she had driven him mad with her tricks she would be very annoyed with herself.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Manuel managed, the realization that the witch was watching him a sobering one. He had to keep her entertained or she would kill him, or worse. Perhaps if he kept her talking until dawn she would—It was the middle of the day, he realized, the slackening rain revealing not night-shrouded darkness beyond the cave but a dreary afternoon. Fuck.

  “Are you mad?” Awa asked.

  “No.” Manuel shook his head. “I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “Are you hungry? Or thirsty?”

  “Yes,” said Manuel, realizing how famished and parched he was. “Very much so.”

  “Eat,” said Awa, motioning to Werner’s stewpot that simmered over the fire. She was pleased the restorative soup would not go to waste. “And this is your wine, I believe.”

  “Thank you,” said Manuel, taking his lightened skin and draining it in one long, sloshing guzzle. Quite tipsy herself, Awa switched to water and watched him scoot around to get at the stew.

  Every time Manuel glanced up she was smiling at him, which did little to assuage his worry. Maybe he was mad, he thought, or consumed with fever, or simply dreaming. Then he wondered where she had gotten pork for the stew, and concluded that one of the other mercenaries must have been holding out on him. He shook his head. He, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, gobbling up the tastiest meal he had eaten in months directly from a witch’s cauldron!

  “You said that before you went to war you were trying to live like your god,” prompted Awa when he had finished. “Were you a priest, then? A monk or some other holy man?”

  “No,” said Manuel, the wine soothing his panic. “Between the two of us, I very much doubt many monks or priests are living as He would like. Through a friend of a friend I was able to read a treatise by this Italian fellow, Niccolò Muck … Niccolò Mack … Niccolò. This Niccolò, he wonders if any ruler can practice what they preach to their subjects and remain in power, and though he was talking about lay leaders the point could, and maybe should, be applied to the Church as well. Maybe the clergy couldn’t stay in power if they expressly followed His tenets, but the whole point is living just lives, not maintaining the power you’ve inherited, which seems at odds with pardoners and all the rest.”

  Very good, thought Manuel, since you’re dining with a witch why don’t you go and voice some blasphemies while you’re at it? Maybe later the two of you could eat a baby or something. Did wi
tches eat babies? Manuel had not given any heed to stories about witches once he had grown up, and so found himself unsure of what she might be capable of.

  “You don’t think all of your holy men are just?” Awa could not believe her luck in finding an actual breathing person critical of the world around him, another person who thought instead of blindly believing. Such had prevented her from making many —or any, she corrected herself—friends among the living. She could account for faith, though she did not share it, but not the unquestioning obedience that brought about the horrors of the Inquisition that she had almost experienced firsthand.

  “No,” said Manuel, resigned to let his wine-whetted tongue run its course. It was rather liberating, for she seemed quite interested in what he had to say. Of course she does, he thought ruefully, she’s a witch, and you’re speaking her language now, alright. “Men lose their way, just like sheep, no matter how careful the shepherd. It’s not the shepherd’s fault, for even the best shepherd will, when his flock becomes large, rely on his dog, and if his dog is not dependable then sheep will be lost. Our Shepherd has a flock that requires a great many dogs to tend it, but dogs are hungry animals, and when there are tasty morsels everywhere to distract them the dogs—”

  “What are you talking about, Manuel?” Awa interrupted. “Dogs or priests?”

  “Priests,” said Manuel, “but the metaphor—”

  “Your priests are hungry? You seem clever enough to speak in clearer terms than dogs and shepherds. There are many followers of your god, and so your god has many priests, yes? After that I could no longer follow you.”

  “Yes,” said Manuel. “The priests, well, the priests have become distracted by the world, I think, by material rewards instead of spiritual ones. Follow?”

  “No,” said Awa.

  “Look,” said Manuel, “I’m no Erasmus but I’ll see if I can’t explain. Priests are supposed to be concerned with God, and with helping we mortals follow God. Yet in the time between the foundation of the Church and today, right now, much of the clergy has stopped doing so selflessly, instead demanding payment for their service to God. Men no longer need to live just lives, but instead can be as corrupt as they wish so long as they pay the Church to forgive them. Sins, wicked acts that displease God, are forgiven by the Church in exchange for wealth, instead of the acts of contrition and penance that God had stated was the only way to be restored to His graces.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Awa.

  “From what I’ve seen, and what I’ve heard and read.” Manuel shrugged. “And not all priests are like that, of course, but enough to give one pause.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you were living like your god before you became a soldier.”

  “No. And I said I was trying to live like God, not that I was succeeding. You asked me if God was a soldier, and I said no. He kills, yes, and we servants of He are soldiers when we have to be, yes, but He is not a soldier Himself, for soldiers follow orders and He—”

  “So you had to be a soldier?”

  “No,” said Manuel with more guilt than he was accustomed to feeling about the matter. “I became a soldier to feed myself and my wife and niece and maybe one day my children, and to better serve Him in my own humble fashion—through my art, through the pictures you liked. I do not think God is a soldier, but I do think He is an artist.”

  “You have not struck me as humble,” said Awa. “But I don’t know if you should be. Your god is an artist?”

  “Yes,” said Manuel. “He made this world, did He not? It is a beautiful place, and no living man may match His skill in creating. Look around you at this realm, and the creatures that populate it. Yet I struggle to emulate Him, to create beauty, to venerate Him through my art.”

  “And you seek to do this outside of your god’s church, which you consider corrupt?”

  “Well,” Manuel sighed, looking at his charcoal-stained digits. “Most of my paying jobs are done for churches and abbeys.”

  “You’re a hypocrite, then,” said Awa, quite pleased. She was a hypocrite, too.

  “No,” said Manuel. “Well, maybe a little. I take their money, it’s true, but it’s all to serve Him, and I turn a little coin glassblowing on the side. You see—”

  And on they went, until the sun set, and they ate cold meat and drank warm wine, and talked on until Awa began to yawn and blink and Manuel had almost forgotten that he was keeping company with a sorceress. He remembered sure enough when she went outside to relieve herself and killed him on her way out, those fingers stopping his heart as abruptly as a bandit’s breaking-pole stopping the spokes of a wagon. He lay on the floor of the cave, unable to move or speak or breathe, terror and panic driving his mind to the threshold of sanity, and then she returned and addressed him.

  “Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, I know you can hear me despite being a dead man. I like you more alive than dead, but I also prefer being alive myself and know that I cannot trust you, for your fear of me is as obvious as it is justified. However, I also know you will never trust me so long as I keep killing you every time I take a piss or a nap, so we must agree that a better solution is needed. Get up.”

  Manuel did not vomit this time but his head still pounded and he glared up at her. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

  A fair question, and one Awa had not considered. The answer came of its own volition. “You saved me, this is true. Yet it is also true that you took me away from where I was. Therefore I want you to escort me back to where I was before we met, and then we may part ways.”

  “Back to the camp?” said Manuel. “But—”

  “What? No, to where I was before that, a day and a half northwest of there, I believe, beside a stream. My belongings are still there, I hope.”

  “What, ah, happened there?” Manuel asked, sitting up. “The man who captured you, Wim, died the morning of the battle, before von Swine gave you to me.”

  “I was stupid,” said Awa harshly. “Careless. Feeling sorry for myself. I—” She looked up sharply but seeing that Manuel was not smiling at her expense she cleared her throat. “He threw the chain around me. This Inquisition must have told your master how to bind me, and he told the man. Before he tightened the iron I touched him, but the chain must have already dampened me enough that instead of dying at once he persisted long—”

  The witch broke off, her eyes widening, and Manuel nervously glanced over his shoulder to make sure some worse horror was not approaching. Awa could not believe how stupid she was, detailing to Manuel her principal weakness. Most men were not versed in witchcraft, especially not the minutiae of debilitating a necromancer, yet here she had gone telling him the last thing he needed to know. Her fingers twitched and she almost killed him again before appreciating just how confused he looked.

  “So we journey back toward the camp, which isn’t even there anymore, and then you go your way and I go mine?” said Manuel carefully, his eyes on her quivering left hand.

  “Yes,” said Awa, adding quickly, “Unless you’d like my help with your master.”

  “Who, von Stein?”

  “He’s threatened your family,” said Awa, her brown eyes stabbing into his. “I know about serving masters we despise, and I think you will need to kill him for your family to be safe.”

  “Yes,” Manuel said numbly, although already he was imagining how he could get her back into her sack and safely to the Inquisition. She was a real goddamn witch, after all, so it wasn’t like she was some innocent he would be turning over. What had she said about iron binding her?

  “I am going to sleep now, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, and we both know the only way I can ensure you do not try to kill or capture me is for you to die.”

  “Wait, no—” Manuel put his hands up.

  “Shut up,” she said, her face suddenly looking very young and sad. “You listen to me, and then you speak. You did not think I was a witch, and that is why you freed me. You thought I was a madwoman, you told yo
ur master, and you pitied me as such. Your god and his servants do not pity witches—I know this, and your master threatening your family certainly does not compel you to help one whom you consider wicked by nature. But I’m not wicked, even if your church thinks that I am. I have done things I regret, it is true, but who has not?”

  “I wouldn’t …” Manuel began but she looked at him and he knew she had more to say, and so he let her.

  “I had a master, and he would have me kill to save myself. I will not do this, because it is what he wants and because I do not believe innocents should suffer so that I may live. Instead I sought to free myself, but in the years I’ve searched for a way to thwart him I’ve found no escape, no alternative but to do as he bids, to slaughter children to lift the curse he put upon me.”

  The flat tone of voice and the despondent expression on her young face magnified the horror of her words, and Manuel felt lightheaded. She was speaking of the devil, of course, and could he doubt her after all he had seen and experienced that day? He leaned closer as she continued.

  “Yet I will not. When I was captured I had just put the last of the dead I had raised into the ground, and I intended to desert my quest. I decided to try and live as a simple woman instead of a necromancer, to find some place in this world where I could exist for a few quiet years. I was content to wait for my death, my oblivion, and so I will be hard-pressed to begrudge you if I wake up and find myself wrapped in chains, a sack over my head, a gag in my mouth. Think of your family, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern.”

  And with that Awa went to the fire, lay down, and went to sleep, the wrapped-up portrait she had taken clutched to her chest. Manuel waited until her breathing evened out and then fled the cave, stumbling through the darkness back to the scene of the morning’s altercation. By the light of the moon he eventually found the discarded chain and the stinking sack they had bound her with, and he took them back to the cave, approaching the dark mouth much more slowly and cautiously than he had left it. She still slept beside the dying fire, and Manuel stood over her, the iron chain gripped in both hands.