The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  Snatching a handful of silver, Hegel jerked his brother’s head above water. Manfried struggled against him for a moment before blinking stupidly at his savior and vomiting water all over the both of them. His stomach jostled and sour, Hegel returned his brother’s volley with his own rush of hot sick. Together they extricated themselves from the river and lay panting on the bank, neither noticing the song had ended.

  “The Hell?” Hegel demanded, watching Manfried’s victim bob away.

  “Eh?”

  “What was you doin?”

  “What you think? Killin that bitchswine.”

  “Yeah? Needed to get a closer look?”

  “Gotta make sure.” Manfried blinked. “Others done the same?”

  “Yeah. That priest got stuck though.”

  “Badly?”

  “How should I know? I was fishin you out.”

  “I’s fit, let’s see bout the priest.”

  The arrow had embedded in Martyn’s forearm, blood pooling on the bench, and the priest moaned vengeance in his ill-gotten sleep. Hegel’s search of the two bodies not given to the river yielded nothing, but Manfried fared better down the road where four horses were tethered in a copse of trees. In a saddlebag he discovered a small wheel of cheese wrapped in the same yellow cloth as the wheel he had gotten from the inn that very morning. He led the horses back to the wagon to strategize with Hegel.

  “Think we got ratted?” Hegel asked.

  “Possible.”

  “That dingy cricket under the bridge did bear resemblance to most a them townies.”

  “I say we hoof on back, sniff round and see if we been cowarded out,” said Manfried.

  “Yeah, can’t suffer no traitorous churls to keep on bein traitorous. And sides that, priest needs that barber or he’ll bleed out by the look a his wound.”

  “True words.”

  They reached the town gate before shut-in and immediately went to the barber’s, the newly acquired horses tethered to the back of the wagon. The man’s son answered their knocking, and the scrawny teenager’s attempts to keep them at the door were thwarted. The Grossbarts carried the groaning priest inside and laid him on the table where the startled barber sat eating his dinner. The memory of their ring shone in his memory, though, so he went straight to work.

  Hegel took the Road Popes’ horses to the farrier while Manfried went to the inn. The farmers turned and silenced at his arrival, Manfried striding in with a papal hat in one hand and his mace in the other. The innkeeper hurriedly offered him a tankard, which Manfried exchanged the hat for. Draining the ale and turning to the curious men, he slammed down the cup.

  “There’s holy blood on your hands,” Manfried told them, but they did not respond until the innkeeper translated. This drew murmurs but no outright protests or admittances. After giving them another few moments to own up, “Priest might die cause a someone in this town. You give’em to us, we call it square. If not, the wrath a Mary’ll descend on all a yous.”

  The innkeeper turned scarlet but shouted Manfried’s meaning in Italian. This got them going. Several men made for Manfried but were restrained by others. The innkeeper slunk off somewhere, and, unbeknownst to all, Vittorio, the farrier’s apprentice who had tipped off his cousins to the Grossbarts’ worth, waited far out of town for his share of the profit. The innkeeper reappeared with a snarling mastiff on a rope, and shouted at Manfried.

  “Get to Hell, you crazy sonuvabitch!” The innkeeper advanced. “You’re not out quick, I put the dog on you!”

  “That’s just fine,” said Manfried, backing out into the street. “I see how it is.”

  “How it is, you stupid turnip-eater, is you crazy! No one here hurt no priest, now go back to screwing that ugly brother of yours!”

  Slamming the door, Manfried heard the innkeeper say something to the assembled and then the inn exploded in laughter and cheers. Before returning to the barber he circled the perimeter of the town’s wall, his grimace gradually tilting upward. Satisfied, he made his way through the dusty street to the barber, and caught sight of his brother returning from his task.

  “Farrier’s full a what his beasts leave,” Hegel announced. “Got some coinage out’em for them popes’ ponies. Still wouldn’t spill, though, actin like he didn’t understand me.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Course not. Anyone spend that much time around beasts’ bound to be shifty. Saw in his eye he recognized them horses.”

  “That squint-faced lad round? We could beat somethin out a him.”

  “Prentice? Nah, I didn’t see’em.”

  “More’s the pity. No matter, cause I got all the answers we need from the inn.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “They’s all culpable,” pronounced Manfried.

  “Admitted?”

  “Same as. Laughed at us, threatened us, and accused us a havin relations.”

  “Well, we’s-”

  “Sexual relations.”

  “Oh. Oh! Come on then.” Hegel made for the inn.

  “Hold your wrath a touch.” Manfried diverted him toward the barber. “Judgment implies forethought in order to judge, and they’s definitely gettin some judgment on’ em tonight. Startin with that mecky barber.”

  “Reckon he’s in on it?”

  “Can’t be sure. And when you can’t, errin on the side a caution ain’t errin at all.”

  “Reckon them berries he sold us is deadly poison like he claimed?”

  “He’s a liar he’ll burn in the kilns below, and if he ain’t his reward’ll come sooner than he’s expectin,” said Manfried.

  Martyn slept on the floor beside the fire, his arms slung against his chest instilling him with a pious air his snoring might have otherwise deprived him of. Cipriano, the tall, dark-haired and doe-eyed barber, sat back to his cold meal, his equally gaunt boy Paolo wiping the blood from the floor. The priest would live, praise God, but Cipriano’s fingers were sore and shaky and Paolo was quite upset. The young man became infinitely more so when the door banged open and the Grossbarts advanced on the two of them.

  “Good news for the father,” Cipriano said, setting down his knife. Manfried punched him in the chest, knocking him off his stool while Hegel snatched Paolo by the neck and hoisted the lad onto the table. Crouching over the terrified surgeon, Manfried held up his dagger so the firelight glanced off it into Cipriano’s eyes.

  “You got more a them berries you sold us?” Manfried demanded.

  “What this about?” Cipriano managed.

  “You got’em or not?”

  “Paolo,” the barber said, followed by a string of foreign-talk. Then in proper-speak, “Let him fetch them.”

  Hegel released the frightened boy, who rooted about in a corner full of boxes and bags. From the bottom of a chest he withdrew a clay jar with a wooden stopper. Paolo brought it to his prone father but trembled so badly it slipped and shattered on the floor, dark purple berries rolling everywhere. Hegel cuffed him and gathered a handful, then guided Paolo back to a chair. He stood behind the boy, awaiting his brother’s word.

  “You have them, now leave us be!” pleaded Cipriano.

  “Thing is,” said Manfried, “this burg done sold us out. Set us up. Handed us over to bandits.”

  “Ain’t Christian,” Hegel added.

  “Wasn’t me!” Cipriano gasped.

  “Neither here nor there,” said Manfried. “See, you also sold us this so-called poison, chance lookin for a little a your own profit fore them popes got the rest?”

  “What? So-called? Popes? The belladonna didn’t work?”

  “Dunno, ain’t tried it yet. Hegel!”

  “Ready, brother.”

  “What do you mean to do?” Cipriano almost sat up but remembered the blade hovering over his face.

  “A little test,” said Manfried. “We feed your boy there some berries, and if he croaks we’s square, and if he don’t you’s munchin iron.”r />
  “What?! Please, no, I beg, I beg!” Cipriano degenerated into his native tongue, forgetting the blade and clinging to Manfried’s knife arm. His confused son also began crying at whatever he said, prompting Hegel to cuff the boy again.

  “Shit damn,” Hegel spit into Paolo’s hair. “I don’t think he’s bluffin.”

  “Me neither,” Manfried sighed. “And neither him nor the kid come at us with a blade like old Heinrich’s murder-minded wifey all them days back, so mercy it is. Quit womanin and get up, barber.”

  “Thank you,” the man blubbered. “My boy, my life, oh thank you.”

  “Hell, we ain’t bad men,” Hegel said, dumping out a sack of the doctor’s herbs and filling it with the spilled berries.

  “Now where’s that ring we exchanged you for them marks we spent?” Manfried asked, dagger still in hand.

  The doctor stumbled over beside the fire, lifted a loose stone, and withdrew the jewelry. Meanwhile Manfried retrieved the barber’s small pouch of coins from a nearby shelf, from which Cipriano had paid them for the ring in the first place. Manfried tucked it into his own bag. Then the Grossbarts tied father and son together on the floor, the younger shuddering and gaping, the elder issuing gratitude on top of gratitude.

  “Startin now,” Hegel announced, “you’s straight with the Grossbarts. How much we owe you for the priest?”

  “Eh?” Cipriano blinked up at them and named a small figure.

  “Done. And them berries?”

  He named another, slightly higher, figure.

  “Done twice. Pay’em, Manfried.”

  Manfried withdrew the same purse he had pocketed, counted out the coins on the table, and held up one extra. “This is for bein honest with us. And this,” he jingled the pouch before dumping the rest of its contents on the table, “is for bein honest with those what come after lookin to run down the Grossbart name. We ain’t thieves and we ain’t killers, we’s just good men been done wrong.”

  “You gave us a price yesterday for this.” Hegel held the ring up to the light. “Was it fair, or was it a little light?”

  “Fair,” Cipriano gasped, his mind unable to process what was unfolding.

  “Good.” Hegel put the ring back under the stone while Manfried counted the appropriate number of coins back into the pouch.

  “You’d do best by mindin your business tonight,” Manfried informed them. “Gather some buckets for your own roof stead a tendin others.”

  “He’s talkin for real, like,” Hegel explained, hoisting Martyn over his shoulder. “And if we find out after you’s runnin lies or them berries ain’t proper, wager on seein us again fore the devils do.”

  “Mind your father,” Manfried said, gently kicking Paolo’s chin. “Honest man’s rarer than what’s under that hearthstone.”

  The portly militiaman wasted no time in opening the gate for them, being engaged in discourse with one of the farmers from the inn when they rode out. They stopped the wagon a ways up the road and led it off into the grass behind a hill, where they tethered the horses to a stump and crept back in the thickening dusk. Moving around the wall, they came to the spot behind the inn’s stable that Manfried had marked by sliding a stick between the slats, and here Hegel helped raise his brother.

  The mud of the pigpen broke Manfried’s fall and he quickly threw the rope over to his brother. Hegel had reached the top of the wall when someone approached through the gloom with a rushlight. The lad caught a glimpse of silver beard before the owner’s mace bashed him between the eyes. Saving the spitting light from the mud, Manfried gave the stableboy a kick for good measure before creeping behind the inn with the little oil they had left.

  Hegel darted across the thoroughfare, the nape of his neck telling him he had not been seen. The farrier’s building had no lights lit, which suited the grave-eyed Grossbart fine. Splashing oil liberally on the wooden door, he applied even more to the stable. He would have preferred to do the farrier himself but it could not be helped. He chipped away at his flint for several minutes, sweating as the straw refused to catch. When it did the fire leaped up the walls of the building so quickly he barely had time to dash across the street before the cry went up.

  The rushlight made Manfried’s task far easier, and when he saw Hegel’s smiling in the dark he touched off the inn. It went up even faster, and before the Grossbarts scrambled up the pig-fence and over the wall the whole town had come alive with screams. They ran fire-blinded to the road, tripping and stumbling the entire way back to the wagon. Martyn had awoken and gave a shout when they appeared before they pelted him with reprimands.

  Regaining the road took time in the dark but when they rounded the hill the glow of the burning village showed them the way. Martyn shook his head to clear it, and looked curiously at the Brothers. They said nothing but their smiles told a dark tale indeed. Too muddled of mind to comprehend anything other than that his right arm now hurt far worse than his left, he asked for spirits instead of answers. Manfried held a bottle of schnapps to the priest’s lips until he gagged and spit booze on the three of them. The Brothers joined him, the wagon sporadically drifting off the road. Midnight found them crossing the papal bridge, toasting the memory of Formosus.

  XVI. The Gaze of the Abyss

  Blubbering and mewling to itself, the pestilential spirit the Brothers had burned out of Ennio paced in the rat hole, the rodent it wore like an exceptionally filthy hairshirt wringing its paws in frustration. Providence had guided its drifting form to the rat it now possessed but the agony of the flames had diminished its power too much for it to make another immediate attempt to enter one of the Grossbarts. Worse yet, the dispicable Brothers somehow seemed immune to its pestilence, and now they were gone, fled, beyond reach. What men would linger in such a place, after all? With the rat already fading and winter driving any other potential hosts to ground save for the few fleas likewise riding the rodent the demon knew it would soon be alone again, and then-it dared not think it, squeaking with fear and fury.

  That first night in the rat it had spent digging even deeper into the hole lest the wicked orb penetrate its sanctuary, but now it looked up into the darkness, proceeding with caution up the tunnel. It smelled the ethereal smoke of starfire and tasted the shine of moonlight, and then it ran, ran as fast as it could, out of the hole and out of the house and into the winter-smothered town. It made for the blackened, desiccated remains of the alehouse but of course they were gone, fled, beyond reach, and the tiniest sigh left its snout. It had known they would run, clearly they were not that stupid, they…

  They had not run. They were that stupid. The demon saw the faint glow of a campfire behind the monastery, in the very churchyard where they had first seen one another. It could not believe its luck and rolled in the snow, cheeping with delight. The short road from town to cemetery would seem many leagues under its current legs, however, and so it quickly hopped up and set to trotting back the way it had come the night before when it had possessed the hog, jumping from hoofprint to hoofprint wherever it could.

  The horses whinnied but it paid them no mind, intent on its purpose, and then it saw him, a Grossbart sitting before a fire. It charged, its teeth bared in an approximation of a grin, and then Nicolette snatched it up. The demon felt fingers close around its rat, and before it could escape the rodent the ground vanished and the stars swirled as it hurtled through the cold air, dragged by an invisible arm high above the clouds. Biting and scratching at nothing, it could not fathom what had happened and squeaked its frustration into the blackness. The moon sank and the night waned and it knew dawn would soon arrive, and the demon was afraid.

  Then trees appeared below it, and a small field, and a hut. The rat crashed into a snowdrift and felt the spectral fingers release it. Nicolette shuddered as she slipped back into her skin, every bone and muscle sore from a night locked in reverie beside the sleeping farmer as her secret self flew uninhibited by flesh and bone. Shaking out her limbs, she hurried to the door to welcome the
guest she had spirited away over the mountains.

  The witch stepped outside, where the first streaks of light began catching in the snow. Planting herself before the door, she smiled and fished in her rags for the bottle. The rat scurried toward her but before it pounced she raised her arms with an oath and the creature scurried back as if struck, pacing on its hind legs and staring at the door behind her.

  “No soul’s lost if it isn’t given,” she hissed. “I won’t have you wearing him like a simple glove. I’ve read of you and yours, and know no skin but that what carries a soul will keep you when the darkness goes. Deep as the wood be, dare you risk a stray beam touching your tail? Or I might go in after, and drag you into the light from whatever hole you’ve crept into. No birds sing and no beasts scamper, only the snow and you and I and he inside, who hates them as much as the both of us.”

  The rat squealed with rage but trailed off as light brushed the laden branches of the wood behind them.

  “Quick as sin, make yourself into this.” Nicolette held the bottle toward the creature, who hesitated no longer. The rat rolled on its back, a hazy miasma escaping its ass and mouth as it spasmed. The yellow mist coalesced on its belly, a final frosty breath leaving its snout. Then the smoke appeared to suck into the fur, leaving not a trace on the wind. The tiny flea hurtled toward the witch but Nicolette expected this and caught it in the bottle, jamming a wax stopper into place.

  Heinrich awoke at sunset, his guts and legs and skin and even his lanky hair sore and weak. She sat humming beside him, and in the firelight he saw how swollen she was of belly and breast. She tossed another handful of herbs into the blaze, making the room fill with noxious smoke.

  “They’ll be out of the mountains within a week, and they’ve met another enemy of yours,” Nicolette murmured, tapping the bottle balanced atop her belly.

  Heinrich rubbed his eyes. “I have no other enemies.”