The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  “Heinrich,” said the priest. “We’ve been through this. It’s not as if your wife or children committed the sort of sins that would require my intercession!”

  “What did you say?” Heinrich felt chills spiraling up his legs into his bowels. “Sins requiring intercession?”

  “I said, it’s not as if they committed the sort of wickedness that might damn a soul were it not absolved by a priest. We all have our little foibles but the good Lord has-What are you doing?” The priest blinked at Heinrich, who had jumped to his feet. The grieving turnip farmer went straight to Egon’s table and snatched up a knife. The priest would have called Egon and his wife back inside the carpenter’s hovel but Heinrich had turned back around.

  “Absolution. Penance. Forgiveness.” Heinrich shook the knife at the priest, his voice cracking. “You saying there’s a way?”

  “A way? Heinrich, the knife-”

  “Oh.” Heinrich crouched and cut into his soiled leather hose heaped near the door, gritting his teeth at the exertion but watching the priest intently. “If they get to one of yours and confess and do the work, they’ll be forgiven. Is that what you’re saying to me?”

  “Ah,” said the priest. “Well…”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Heinrich stood, wrapping the blade in a strip of leather cut from his hose and dropping the knife into the single pocket of his tunic. “I’m off then, Father.”

  “What?” the priest nervously backed toward the door as Heinrich advanced. “Where are you-”

  “Think I’ll forget? Think I’ll forgive?” Heinrich glared at the priest, whose back now met the wooden door. “Excuse me, there’s work to be done.”

  Sliding out of the way, the priest waited a beat until Heinrich had flung open the door and stepped out into the daylight before following. The priest knew something had changed inside the farmer and suspected that unless he acted quickly sin might well beget sin. Egon’s eldest son bumped into the priest as he went outside and he saw Egon arguing with Heinrich in the yard, several other villagers approaching from their respective homes near the manor house.

  “What’s he on about?” the lad asked. “He looks worse than he did the day after they-”

  “Hush, boy,” said the priest, emboldened by the sun and the witnesses. “Ho, Heinrich, be still!”

  Heinrich and Egon both turned to the priest, a small crowd quickly forming. Among them were the kin of those jury members the Grossbarts had murdered on the mountainside. The priest and the farmer squared off on either side of the group, and the priest sensed his chance to shame the man into obedience.

  “I know what you are plotting.” The priest addressed the village as much as he did Heinrich. “You wish justice! Don’t we all? But you risk your soul by attempting to do the Lord’s work for Him!”

  “And you don’t try and do the Lord’s work every day?” said Heinrich, earning gasps from more than one neighbor. “I aim to do one thing, and that’s catch the Grossbarts before they can get to a priest and wash themselves clean. There’s no place in Heaven for such as them, and I’m but an instrument of God.”

  “You?! Heinrich, you are incensed with grief and rage and pride, and it is a terrible sin to call yourself such! Let the Lord work His own justice and risk not your soul!”

  “I’ll need your help.” Heinrich turned from the priest to the blanched faces surrounding him. “I’ve no horse nor blankets nor food nor weapons-they took everything. But I swear I won’t rest until I’ve sent them to their master. Hannah, your Gunter-”

  “My Gunter,” spit the snotty-faced widow, “died because of you!”

  “Me?” Heinrich felt as though the woman had punched him in the stomach. “No, I-”

  “Cried and begged and wailed, wanting your wrongs righted! You’d trusted to the Lord he’d not have gone off with the rest and been murdered by those devils!”

  “Hannah,” Heinrich pleaded. “I wanted to go with them! I know their ways more than any here and I could have…” He trailed off seeing the cold eyes of his neighbors, faces set, cheeks puffy. Lowering his head farther, Heinrich nearly choked on the “Please.”

  None spoke, several turning back to their homes.

  “Better go,” Egon hissed, and Heinrich blinked away the tears, trying to fathom how they were blaming him instead of the wicked Grossbarts. “I understand even if they don’t. I’ll ride you out as far as I can, aye?”

  “I’ll buy her,” Heinrich said as they turned away from the silent condemnation of the town. “My whole field’s yours. You know it’s more than fair.”

  “I’m sorry, Heinrich.” Egon stopped and stared at the dirt after they rounded his hut to where the nag stood tethered. “You know’s well as any that we’ve got a sight fewer horses than we did a few days ago, so I won’t be the only one needin this girl. But while they was…” Egon paused, cleared his throat, and wiped his eyes at the horrid memory before he was able to finish. “While those Brothers was doing their work I cut Hans and Helmut’s horses loose, so perchance we’ll come across’em on the road.”

  Heinrich nodded, understanding too well the man’s reluctance to sell the animal with planting just a winter away.

  “And if we don’t come across them horses,” Egon continued, “well, I’ll take you clear down to the highway they’re probably makin for. Gain some ground, as they cut into the mountains on the old hunting trail, try and shortcut it. But I know that little path don’t go nowhere so it’ll add days if not weeks fore they get over to the real road. Assuming they’re going south, of course.”

  Neither had anything more to say on the matter, Heinrich still trying to understand how any could fault him for everything that had transpired over the past several days. Heinrich climbed onto the horse behind his last friend and they rode back around the house toward the southern road. Egon’s son intercepted them with a sack of turnips and then they were off, but Heinrich failed to thank him properly. All the man could think of was the impossibility of catching the damned Brothers without a steed of his own.

  VI. The Teeth of a Donated Horse

  Manfried sweated and shuddered in his nightmares, his mind sensing his impending death and providing appropriate visions. The manticore stalked him through tightening caverns, his brother, his faith, and his weapons all missing. The pearls of the desert would remain buried and only his beard would grow in the grave.

  Hegel nearly dropped his sick brother a dozen times that day, sliding on moss and rot as he staggered through the dim forest. Clearly the miasma found in low-lying regions had affected Manfried, Hegel assumed, refusing to allow the possibility of manticore venom. The solution lay in reaching higher ground where the wind prevented the pestilential vapors from gathering.

  Both had nearly expired from the plague when they were ten years old and Hegel knew the cure as well as the symptoms-since Manfried had yet to sprout the buboes, clean wind and prayer might save him. Their mother had known, which is surely why she delivered them into a decayed lean-to high in the hills and abandoned them when their humours became disturbed so long ago.

  Hegel dragged Stupid’s hardened skin behind them by its former owner’s tether, but with his brother’s dead weight on his shoulders Hegel had to leave most of the meat behind. He wheezed his way up the creek, reckoning it to be the surest path to higher ground. Pausing only when it was necessitated by exhaustion, Hegel trudged onward, his injured right arm dripping more than sweat from his exertions. Midday never came in that dismal wood, evening following directly after morning. The snow fell steadier than before, and his brother’s damp body pressing against his back gave Hegel a stubborn cough.

  With the light almost gone and the forest even thicker, Hegel laid his dying brother on the ground and collapsed beside him, hacking up phlegm. He pinched Manfried’s nose and poured water down his throat and unsuccessfully attempted to force him to swallow some horse meat Hegel had chew-softened. He gathered wood but his numb fingers hampered his ability, and he glumly realized th
e smoke leaving his mouth with each breath would probably exceed what he could coax from the damp branches. Returning to his equally snow-brushed brother, Hegel began to pray.

  The pitiful fire he managed hissed and popped, and no matter how hard Hegel blew the thick pieces would not catch and the thickening snow sizzled as it smothered. As he looked up to curse the heavens, his sharp eyes caught a hint of red in the forest. Holding his breath, terrified it was only his own paltry fire reflecting off a wet leaf, he stood and stared. He took several weak-kneed steps forward, squinting. His wide grin split his cheek anew, blood dribbling into his beard.

  Hurriedly gathering their scant provisions and hoisting his brother, Hegel plowed through the underbrush, blind but for the white cloud of snow around him and the distant beacon. He broke into a clearing and stumbled onward, free of the limbs and roots that impeded his progress. Now he could make out the roof and walls, and the single window glowing through the white and black night. He had feared it to be fairyfire or worse, but Mary be praised, a cabin emerged from the snow and darkness.

  Without setting down his brother he slapped the flimsy door with his good hand, bellowing out:

  “Open up! Ill man out here, open up! Open up in the name a Mary and all the saints!”

  Nothing. No sound at all, save the Brothers’ labored breathing. Manfried moaned in his sleep, and Hegel banged again.

  “Open up or I’ll knock it down,” Hegel roared. “Give us our sanctuary or by Mary’s Will I’ll take it!”

  A shuffling came toward the door. A voice, faint enough to be almost drowned out by Manfried’s whimpering, floated through. Hegel could not say if it belonged to man or woman, child or parent.

  “Your word first,” flitted out. “You’ll do no evil, lest your soul be blackened for all time.”

  Impatient beyond reckoning, Hegel yelled even louder. “Course I ain’t evil! Open up!”

  “And you’ll try no mischief, nor do no harm?”

  “There’ll be mischief plenty if you don’t let us in!”

  “Your word.”

  “My word, yes, and my brother’s, and Mary’s, and her moon-fruit boy’s if you open up!”

  “What was that about the Christ?”

  “What? Nuthin!”

  “Calm yourself, and remember your word,” and wood slid on wood, and the door pushed out. Blinded by the glare, Hegel stumbled inside, knocking over a small table. Stamping his feet, Hegel set Manfried on the ground. A smell of spoiled milk and sour sweat filled the thick, greasy air of the hut. The door closed behind them and the board slid back in place. Hegel whirled to confront the person who had possibly murdered his brother by forcing him to wait out in the snow on the verge of death.

  The oldest person Hegel had ever seen stared back at him, a woman sixty years old if she was a day. He could be sure of her sex only by her lack of beard, her taut yet cracked face offering no other markers. Bald save for specters of white hair and swathed in rags, her bulbous body contrasted her emaciated countenance. The manticore-slayer and dog-breaker Hegel took a step back from the fearsome crone.

  She grinned, black-toothed and scab-gummed. “Welcome, welcome.”

  “Uh, thank you,” said Hegel.

  “Hard night for traveling?” Her eyes shone in the firelight.

  “Had worse. My brother’s in a bad way, though.”

  “So I see.” Yet she did not remove her eyes from Hegel.

  “Caught’em a touch a the pest out in the wood.” Hegel’s body hummed, either from the change in climate or her presence, he could not be sure which.

  “Oh did he? Found a pest in the forest?” she asked.

  “No, er, the pestilence. You know, buboes?”

  “He’s got the black bulges, does he?”

  “Not yet, he-” Hegel stopped short when the woman darted out a hand and poked his wounded face. He snatched for his sword, but the look in her eye held it in its sheath. He stared aghast as she licked the blood from her finger, appraisingly.

  “Not out there,” she muttered, “no, no, caught a different case of death, I’d wager.”

  “He ain’t dead yet,” said Hegel, turning to Manfried.

  The walls of the cramped interior bulged with cluttered shelves containing bottles, jars, and heaps of bones and feathers, and from the ceiling hung a hundred different bundles of drying plants and strips of cloth. The firepit in the rear filled the room with a pungent, piney haze that masked the sickly smell of the crone, a small, snowmelt-dripping hole in the roof failing to accommodate all the smoke. An empty chair sat before the firepit and one corner held a heap of rags, the other a small woodpile.

  Hegel dragged his brother onto the hearthstones. Manfried had grown pale but his skin burned, his body wracked with spasms. The crone leaned over them both, clucking softly.

  “Caught a case right enough, a case of the comeuppance!” she jeered.

  Hegel’s hand again reached for his sword but her tongue intercepted him.

  “Calm, calm, Grossbart, remember your promise.”

  “Slag,” Hegel hissed, “you watch yourself.”

  She cackled in a manner only the elderly can master.

  “Wait a tic.” Hegel swallowed, neck-hairs reaching for the roof. “How’d you know our name?”

  “You look like long-beards to me,” she replied. “Don’t you call a thing by what it most resembles? Call a dog a dog, a beast a beast, eh?”

  “Suppose so,” Hegel allowed, not convinced.

  “Your brother’s dying,” she said, her voice lacking the solemnity Hegel felt the situation deserved.

  “Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t. You don’t look like no barber, so maybe you should mind your mouth.”

  “Well, Grossbart,” she said, “tis true I’m no barber-I’m better than one. Barber couldn’t do anything for that man, just put him on the cart for the crows. I might help him, if I was so inclined.”

  Hegel stepped toward her, dried belladonna brushing his hair. “If I was you, I’d incline myself with the quickness.”

  “Menacing words, menacing eyes.”

  “You-”

  “Careful. I’ll mend your brother, and you besides, if you do as I say.”

  “What we got that you want?”

  “Oh, nothing special, nothing unique. Just that thing all men got, the tail we feeble women lack.”

  It took a moment for her meaning to sink in, but when it did Hegel recoiled. “I couldn’t give you that even if I was a mind to.”

  “No? Even for your brother?”

  Hegel chewed his lip, considered slaying the woman, thought better of it, spit twice and said, “See, I’s chaste-”

  “Even better!”

  “I wouldn’t know how-”

  “I can teach you, it’s simply done.”

  “I-”

  “You?”

  “After you fix’em up.”

  She brayed again. “Think I trust you, Grossbart? Think I don’t know what you’re thinking? Don’t worry, it’ll be done soon, and might not be as bad as you think.”

  “I doubt that. What guarantee I got you can even heal’em?”

  “Guarantee’s my oath, just like yours. I can sweeten his wounds, same as I can make it sweet for you.” She lasciviously hiked her rags up around her thighs, revealing complicated networks of veins bulging under the pruned skin. Hegel smelled a stronger, acidic scent overpowering the burning wood and felt his horse meat rise in his throat but choked it down.

  “Like I said,” he managed through his disgust, “I would if I could, but I can’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

  She had turned and rooted through an array of jars on a shelf, her backside thrown out toward him. She turned back triumphantly with a dusty vessel, its rag stopper half-rotten. Withdrawing the rag she offered it to Hegel.

  “Knock this into that gut of yours.” Her eyes glittered.

  “Give me your word it ain’t poison.”

  “Given, given,” she replied dismiss
ively.

  “What is it?”

  “Something good. Something that’ll make you able. Hell, it’ll make you eager.”

  He stared hard into the bottle, his intuition goading him to cast it in the fire and run her through regardless of Manfried’s condition. He had no doubt his brother’s soul would make it to Heaven, it was his own body he felt concern for. In the end his pride would not allow him to walk a coward’s road, and so with a prayer to Mary he downed the contents, the stuff filling his mouth with the taste of putrid mushrooms.

  The room spun and the bottle broke on the stones, a yellow mist clouding his vision. Hegel turned to his hostess to inform her that no way no how would a little fungus water make him willing when his breath caught in his throat and tremors radiated outward from his groin. She reclined in the chair but had set one foot on an upended bucket, the firelight illuminating a thigh the color of goat cream. The pouty turn of her thin lips, the vulnerable want in her milky eyes, the gnarly fingers now snaking between her legs, the reedy sigh as she pushed her bottom forward on the chair to meet her digits-Hegel felt an almost-pain in his breeches, and his hands dropped to his waist to relieve the source of his discomfort.

  The crone appeared no different from before Hegel had taken the draught, but he no longer remembered such simple things as his faith’s prohibition of carnal pleasures or his society’s scorn and disgust for women more than a decade into puberty. He simply saw her for the beauty she was, albeit a beauty of remarkably advanced years. Dropping to his knees in a show of contrition, Hegel crawled toward his host, who spread her legs farther on the chair to accommodate her guest. A pleasant chevre odor wafting from between her curd-textured, indigo-marbled thighs tickled the bulbous nose that soon tickled her mound, and his left hand hoisted her rags out of the way while its twin fumbled with his belt.

  Cold as her outer skin felt, Hegel’s tongue nearly stuck to her frigid folds and the white wisps drifting from his full mouth mingled with the pale cloud itching his nostrils. She patiently coached him until he set off a trembling gush, refreshing, brisk wetness cooling his hot throat even as she squirmed off of the chair and pushed him onto his back. Tasting herself in his kiss, she settled onto his trowel and he worked her furrow, his rough hands surprisingly gentle as she guided his fingers from breasts to mouth to rear and back again.