The Enterprise of Death Read online

  “Well,” said Awa, “well.”

  “Wells run dry,” said Monique. “What reason that wide-mouth ’ave to bring me up?”

  “He said we had things in common, you and I.”

  “Ya look strong enough but what else? You a daughter of Barbara?”

  “No, my mother—”

  “Talkin bout Saint Barbara. She minds after us what carry cannons, so if ya pack powder you’d best learn’er name quick.”

  “Pack powder?” The more the woman talked the less sense she made to Awa.

  “If it ain’t guns, it ain’t cunt, is it?”

  “Well.” Awa was relieved her disguise covered her blushing cheeks as she looked down.

  “You mean I was right bout whatcha get up ta in the convents?” Monique seemed genuinely impressed. “Fuck me. Not now, obviously, but still. Quack says it’s the cunny an’ cock what spreads it, so ifin the nuns’ve got the pox what hope do the ’ores ’ave, eh, sister?”

  “I don’t …” Awa sighed. “I have to feed Manuel before this cools.”

  “Right, right.” Monique stepped aside. “Don’t tell’em I’m here, right?”

  “Alright.”

  “And you promised me a taste of your puddin, don’t forget.” Monique leered as Awa passed her.

  “As soon as I’m done I’ll—” Awa paused and stiffened, looking up at the giantess. “That’s … really not something to say to a stranger.”

  “I was jus talkin bout the puddin you offered,” said Monique, raising her lesion-covered palms. “An’ us what wears the same ’abit ain’t ever all-strange to one another, is we, sister?”

  “I’ll cook you something soon,” Awa decided. “But the coals are a little low for more pudding tonight.”

  “I got tinder plenty.” Monique winked as she went back toward her cot. “You jus say the word you need them coals stoked.”

  Terrifying though the pox-stricken woman surely was to most who encountered her broken-toothed visage, Awa had never been flirted with before, and the experience filled her with the same heat as Paracelsus’s schnapps. Rousing Manuel, she almost asked him about Monique when she remembered the woman’s request, and so stayed quiet on the matter as she fed her drugged friend. Through his haze of pain and alcohol, Manuel struggled to keep the food down, wondering why the hell Awa was humming happily to herself, and where she kept getting pork from.

  XVII

  The Hangman’s Sword

  “Why would a hangman have a sword?” asked Manuel. “Wouldn’t he have rope? Maybe a knife to cut the rope, but why—”

  “Sister Gloria carries a sword, and she’s a nun,” said Paracelsus. “Everyone carries swords.”

  “I—” Awa began but Paracelsus was already on his way.

  “— heard there was to be an execution, so in the name of education I endeavored to attend. My fellows were too squeamish by half, refusing to admit that we as men of medicine could learn anything from watching a man die. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that studying dead bodies is impractical, just as studying an empty stewpot is impractical if you wish to know what was had for dinner—without life a body is just so much sulfur, salt, and mercury, but that’s no reason to think watching someone actually die is worthless and morbid. The presumption of those fools, the conceit! I rode alone, my horse old but quick, and came to the hamlet just as the sun set, a boon, for this was one of those backwaters where the gates are locked at night and they won’t open until dawn for king or countryman. I found an inn and—” Paracelsus’s schnapps was better than his storytelling, but he could not speak and drink at the same time, so the three listeners were content to let him prattle on as they passed around his bottle.

  Paracelsus recounted his tale from a stool, the door to the storeroom closed to block out the hoarse screaming of the patients, and Manuel, Awa, and Monique sat on various uncomfortable cushions. It was late in the evening of the day after Manuel had been brought in, and even with the benefit of her pudding and the accompanying pleading with the spiritual residue of the dead man’s hand, Manuel’s palm still leaked blood and lymph. The good doctor could not believe the miraculous recovery, and only Monique’s arrival at the bedside had distracted Paracelsus as Manuel scrambled from the bed and threw his arms around the giantess, devastated to see the telltale lesions bulging from her face like acorns under a handkerchief.

  Awa had smiled at his grief, for she alone knew the woman would not die of the Great Pox. Severing the spirit of the malady and consuming it entirely had taken far more energy than Awa had expected, and she thought that Monique had almost awoken as the necromancer doubled over beside the bed gagging. Before, ingesting the spirit of infection had given her strength and warmth, but this spirit had sickened her, and she lay awake all night racked with fever. Awa was well by morning, however, and at a glance she could see that the pox was entirely removed from Monique. The more time Awa spent in the clinic the more resolute she became in the decision she had recently made—she would stay in the clinic and help alleviate the suffering, instead of accompanying Manuel to Bern when he recovered.

  “— the execution was to be held the next morning, so I was just in time, but there in the hills such a thing as an execution attracts quite an audience, and so there was no room at the inn.”

  “Stay in the manger, then?” said Manuel.

  “I stayed,” said Paracelsus, ignoring Monique’s guffaws and letting the sentence dangle long enough to quaff from the nearly empty bottle, “with the hangman!”

  “The hangman with the sword, or some other—” Manuel began.

  “The same!” Paracelsus thundered, which made Awa, who otherwise would have been able to keep it in, explode with laughter. It took the doctor’s retrieving a fresh bottle to quiet them down. When order was restored he went on: “This hangman, it seemed, had a problem that was truly diabolical, and as the priest could not relieve him I thought to pit my own mental prowess against this mystery.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Awa, “I must not have heard you, but what was the mystery again?”

  “I hadn’t told you yet,” said Paracelsus, to more laughter. “But I will! Directly! The problem was this—the town had the custom that when a man was hanged, the hangman was charged with severing his head just after his neck had snapped from the noose, and this hangman, being a consummate professional, always chopped the heads free in one swipe before the body could bounce twice.”

  “Why?” said Monique. “What purpose such a thing ’ave, stead of leavin’em ta swing?”

  “Local customs are profoundly weird,” burped Paracelsus. “Better to come to terms with this and move on than to examine the peccadilloes of peasants. Probably why they got such a good crowd. But I digress! The hangman was haunted.”

  “Haunted?” This finally interested Awa. “By who?”

  “By the heads,” said Paracelsus, turning and blowing out a few candles for better ambiance. “They would roll up the side of his house and down his chimney, and so his home was always cold, for on the nights he lit a fire they came just the same, dropping down into the hearth, and the stink of charring skin and burning hair would force him from the place. Every night they came, and so, he told me as I stood at his door after finding the inn full, he could not possibly put me up for the night, for he would suffer none to suffer as he suffered from those infernal guests.

  “But I, a doctor then in deed if not yet in title, swore to see him through the night, and break the curse beside. And so I did, and in payment he gave me his sword, which I keep ever at my side.” Paracelsus leaned back on his stool, quite pleased with himself.

  “Bullshit,” said Monique. “Lies.”

  “The Lord God knows I am no liar,” said Paracelsus.

  “But wait!” said Awa. “What about the rest of the story?”

  “What do you mean? I broke the curse, I got the sword. End of story.” Paracelsus shrugged.

  “How? How did you break the curse?” said Awa.

 
“Such things as how a magus lifts a curse are hardly the sort of topic for casual discussion,” said Paracelsus.

  “He ’asn’t made that part up yet,” said Monique.

  “Alright, then,” said Paracelsus, miffed. “Here’s what I did. First I asked when the trouble started, and he told me it came about the night after he had hanged and beheaded a warlock—the same warlock whose sword he now used. The condemned sorcerer had bequeathed it to him at the gallows, and upon retrieving the weapon from whatever farmer-with-a-barn who served as jailer in that awful place he found it to be of fine make, and all down those years it never lost its edge. So I examined the sword, found a secret compartment in the pommel, and inside the compartment was a piece of bone tied to a lodestone, with which the sorcerer had bound an imp to the sword, and by sprinkling this charm with salt and invoking the Lord’s name I forced the imp to tell me how to break the curse, which I then did, after sending the familiar, the imp, that is, back to Hell.”

  Paracelsus’s audience had grown very silent, which was how he liked it. He went on:

  “The task was simple—I had to smash each of the heads with the sword as they appeared in the hearth, which I did, and when the last desiccated skull was dashed the curse was broken. The hangman was so relieved that he gave me his sword as a gift, and that was that. The hanging I watched the following morning was, needless to say, not so interesting.”

  The silence continued for a spell longer, then Manuel said, “That makes absolutely no sense at all.”

  “Fuckin lyin quack!” Monique offered.

  “No, it does, it does,” said Awa thoughtfully. “Breaking the skulls would sever the spirits, and if the charm in the sword had some other spirit, a familiar or imp or what you will, then it might summon …”

  Awa realized she was talking aloud, and quickly snatched the bottle from a very interested Paracelsus. Manuel began laughing, a dreadful, strained cackle, and Monique joined in, slapping Awa on the back and nearly chipping her teeth on the lip of the bottle. This obnoxious riot continued until Manuel came up with something, which most assuredly was not much:

  “She’s … always imitating the way other people sound for a laugh, is our Sister Gloria,” Manuel said. “Pretty good, eh?”

  “Sounded just like the doctor,” agreed Monique. “Think ya’d picked up an echo, Doctor P?”

  “My dear, tell me—” Paracelsus started but Monique cut him off.

  “Now assumin for the moment ya ain’t a lyin fuckin quack, what say ya explain why ya believe in imps an’ other such devilry? Doctors not supposed ta be superstitious.”

  “Superstition is equal parts imagination and reality we don’t yet understand,” the doctor said stuffily. “The Philosopher’s Stone, for example—”

  Paracelsus rambled on for some time on matters alchemical and obscure until he had talked himself hoarse. Then Monique, who had not listened to a word he said, endeavored to explain the nuances of some of her more colorful colloquialisms to Awa, who could not make sense of most of them. Paracelsus dozed off on his stool; the man’s attention was prone to flagging when he was not at the root of the scene. Manuel had staggered off for a shit.

  “What’d I miss, then?” said Manuel as he came back in.

  “Jus a lot of prayin, nuthin ta beg your confession on.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Manuel. “I do love a little sin.”

  XVIII

  A Discharge, with Some Weeping

  “Ya got me pure of this pox,” said Monique as she finished packing her bag. “The how’ve it don’t concern me. Ya keep denyin all you want but I felt it comin outta me, woke me up from a dead sleep an’ fever an’ seen ya cuttin out away from my bed, coughin an’ all. Lyin don’t become no nun.”

  “I’m not a nun,” said Awa lamely.

  “Oh really?” Monique smirked. “Yeah, that weren’t obvious a’tall. Ya got the pox under them rags?”

  “I’m a Moor,” said Awa, and at this Monique first drew back, then leaned close, her Delft blue eyes narrowing as she peered into Awa’s copper brown ones.

  “Like, a fuckin blackamoor ?” Monique whispered, glancing around at the stained curtains boxing them in.

  “Yes,” Awa whispered, her guts twisting up into a noose to throttle her hopes of finding any kind of friendship from the woman.

  “Fuck me,” Monique exhaled.

  There it was. Awa thought about telling Monique that judging a woman by where she was born made no more sense than judging her for liking other women, or for having brown hair instead of blond. Telling never did any good, of course, but—

  “In that case I can’t very well make ya a full fuckin partner even if ya do ’ave the scratch,” said Monique thoughtfully. “But we kin work somethin out, ta be sure. How much ya got?”

  “Excuse me?” Awa blinked, the tears she had not even noticed smearing the lead makeup around her eyes.

  “I’m out, right?” Monique set her bag down. “An’ you’re the one what got me out, an’ I don’t mean to forget that, blackamoor or no. Ya kin do for others whatcha did for me?”

  “Now, what I did—”

  “Rub a little paste or somethin, yeah?”

  “Well, actually—”

  “Rub a little paste or somethin, yeah? ” Monique flashed Awa a ludicrously exaggerated wink. “What goes in that paste is the doctor’s business, not mine, an’ not the ’ores’, neither. Important thing is the nasty goes away, aye?”

  “I’m not a doctor,” Awa protested. “Did you say whores?”

  “See, that’s why I need ya, sister, cause of them wits of yours. Course we can’t call you a doctor, anyone with more’n half an eye kin see your great tits an’ call the shit on that claim at once, an’ then we’re in it for claimin ya’s a doctor when ya’s jus, I dunno, an apothecary or midwife or some such. Midwife sounds good an’ all, aye?”

  “Monique,” said Awa firmly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Talkin bout gettin ya your own practice, an’ some cunny besides, if you’re interested.”

  Awa took a step back. “Now, I’m … I’m flattered, but—”

  “Not me, you chit!” Monique laughed. “I’m talkin bout the ’ores! Sure, most of’em don’t have the willin or want ta go lappin tween our legs, an’ of those that will a fair sight less will go down ta blackest Afrik, sure, but the ’ores I got in mind are the dirtiest of the dirty, an’ we’ll find us a choice chicken or two for ya ta pluck if you’ll say yes, sister. Say yes, sister!”

  “You want to go get whores,” Awa said carefully, sure she had missed something and trying not to take the woman’s offensiveness personally. “And you want me to go along to, to tend to these whores, so that you don’t get another malady?”

  “Sister Gloria,” said Monique, “an’ we will have ta getcha a new title an’ clothes, cause keepin some ’abits at hand for clergy or whoever ta wear or put on they girls is one thing, an’ havin a fuckin blackamoor nun sittin bout a brothel all day is somethin else. But I got waylaid—point is—I fuckin love ’ores. I love fuckin’em, I love drinkin with’em, I love eatin with’em, I love jus sittin bout talkin with’em. Love ’ores, I do, an’ ya kin ask Manuel if that ain’t the Lord’s truth. So down all these days stead a puttin way funds for some of them fillygreed matchlocks I’ve been keepin on with my old guns instead, an’ squirrelin away every coin I get, excludin the occasional bottle or piece of mink from one of said obligin girlies. Kin ya guess why?”

  Awa could not.

  “To open my own brothel,” Monique whispered conspiratorially. “An’ with this last bonus a von Wine’s I’m set. Got me a beard named Dario, a game little dandy who’ll sign the papers an’ lease an’ all, an’ o’er my travels I planted enough seeds in the heads of enough ’ores that ifin we stop in a few towns along the way ta the new digs we’ll ’ave us a regular caravan of cunt rollin into Cathar Country, an’ then we’re set. I pony up the cost so I run the show, Dario’s the frontman an’ gets a s
mall take an’ a room for his part, ’ores get a bigger cut than they’s accustomed ta keep’em ’appy, an’ you, Sister Gloria—”

  “Me?” Awa was not sure if this was the worst idea she had ever heard, or the greatest. “Me?”

  “You, Sister Gloria,” said Monique, “are resident cunt-cleaner. See, I got it all worked out—ifin my ’ores is clean all the time, an’ I mean, really clean, word’ll spread, and that’ll give us the edge to justify payin the ’ores better, an’ any other costs we might incur by dent a bein a real classy fuckin venture.”

  “But Paracelsus says that most people don’t know the pox comes from, from that, they thinks it’s the water or the gods or—”

  “Word’ll spread on all counts, mark me there, an’ then my ’ores legs’ll be spreadin like brains on bread.” Monique licked her lips at the thought. “Sides, havin a house wholly free of the pox’ll be good for morale an’ establishin a certain, whataya … ambiance. A certain fuckin poxless ambiance. Ifin ya got capital ta help start us off I’ll give ya a cut of the cunny-money, an’ even if ya don’t you’ll have private fuckin chambers, three meals a day, four bottles of wine or two of stronger stuff a week, an’ the free ass of any ’ore willin to give it. An’ mind what I said—I’ll assure ya got a choice of no less than three different obligin fannies, kind of girlies what’d teach the devil’s own stable how ta properly service everythin from blackamoors to blacksnakes.”

  “I … don’t … I.” Awa had never considered anything remotely like what Monique was suggesting, and told herself that any interest she might possess had everything to do with gainful employment far removed from Paracelsus—who grew creepier by the day —and not the promise of carnal relations with women who drew little distinction between her and a serpent. Awa had wanted to find a way to distract herself for the next few years, to enjoy life instead of surrounding herself with death, and to restore any tipped internal balance in the event the nigh-forgotten beliefs of her mother came to be true. While she had decided tending to the afflicted pox victims would be a more fitting and fulfilling occupation than washing Manuel’s laundry in Bern, it sounded like in purpose working for Monique would be essentially the same as working for Paracelsus, only with a rotating choice of women and drink. This seemed more and more appealing as the young necromancer considered it. A wet shriek came from just beyond the curtain to her left, the sound deteriorating into a gurgle as the patient gagged and vomited on the stench of his own putrefying body, and that settled it.