The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “Alright,” said Awa, though she had learned enough of the ways of men and women to avoid putting up her own substantial fortune of grave-gained treasures she had acquired over the years since leaving the mountain. “I don’t have money to spare but I’ll be your, your … I’ll tend to your girls, and I thank you for your offer.”

  “Least I kin do, right?” said Monique. “But you’ll be tellin me your real name fore we go any further, less your Infidel fuckin parents thought Gloria sounded proper in their Turk fuckin tongue.”

  Awa frowned, not having considered this condition, but of all the people she had ever met Monique seemed the least likely to exploit something as subtle as the power a name gives a person. “Awa,” said she.

  “Right enough, Awa,” said Monique, clapping her on the shoulder. “Let’s getcher gear an’ get shy of this shithole.”

  They went to the storeroom and gathered Awa’s satchel, which she had never unpacked. She had slept on the floor beside Paracelsus and with the lack of privacy had not wanted him examining her dagger or salamander eggs by leaving the unusual items lying around. As she shouldered the bag Paracelsus burst into the room behind them, his arms wrapped around a small cask.

  “And just where do you think you’re off to, my dear?” The physician panted as he set the keg down. “And look at you, madam, fully recovered in so short a span!”

  “We’re leavin,” said Monique. “An’ where we go ain’t concern of man, beast, nor nuthin betwixt’em.”

  “And when will you be back, Sister Gloria?” asked Paracelsus, straightening up and looking at Awa.

  “I …” Awa glanced at Monique, who raised her palms and took a step back. “I don’t intend to return. I thank you very much for your time, of course, and your generosity, and—”

  “My understanding, of course,” said Paracelsus, narrowing his puffy eyes. “Most people in this wide world of ours would not be so understanding, I don’t think.”

  “Of course, your—” Awa began, but he cut her off.

  “Most people would not tolerate a witch to sleep under their roof, let alone a Moor.” Paracelsus raised his eyebrows, glancing at Monique. “No, most people might balk at the idea of a woman composed of more sulfur than salt being allowed to live, let alone—”

  Which is when Monique closed the short distance between them and punched him dead in the jaw. Paracelsus seemed to hop nimbly backwards onto his table, but then all his limbs flailed about and glasses were breaking and his canisters went rolling onto the floor. Monique might have hit him again but Awa grabbed the taller woman’s arm.

  “Call’er a fuckin witch again an’ see what happens!” Monique bellowed before Paracelsus’s eyes had even come back into focus. “Say it again, ya quack, an’ I’ll drown ya in your fuckin pox-metal!”

  “I am a witch,” said Awa. “He just didn’t want you to think I wasn’t when—”

  “The fuck he had anythin but blackmail in mind,” Monique fumed. “I know when a fuckin cock’s workin a threat into ’is words, an’ that’s what he was doin. Threatenin.”

  “Monique, I am a witch. Did you hear me?” Awa squeezed her friend’s arm, unsure whether she wanted her to punch the physician again or not. He had seemed a most understanding man, albeit a peculiar one, and until this he had given her no definitive reason to think his concern for her was less than altruistic.

  “Maybe if you’d put a pox on me stead a takin one off I’d give a shit,” said Monique. “As is, I’m more’n happy ta pay ya for your wiles with more’n a spot beside me on the floor and fuckin gruel to eat like this lump’s been doin. Ya wanna fuckin tell me she’s a witch again, lump?!”

  “No.” Paracelsus dribbled a little blood as he spoke, glaring at Monique. Awa saw his eyes dart over to his sword propped against the wall, and she quickly stepped between him and it. At this his shoulders sagged, and the sullen young doctor said, “Go on then, Sister Gloria, I can see when my friendship is no longer required. I would not have exploited you, though; I would have had you for a tutor. I only hope that in time you will not allow false impressions to color the facts, that I was a man open to you in ways that those who could never understand you could, could never understand.”

  “An’ jus what the fuck is that supposed ta mean?” demanded Monique, bowing up further.

  “That in only a short time I have learned much from our mutual friend,” Paracelsus spat, a small rose blooming on Monique’s tunic where his bloody spittle fell. Tears were running down his cheeks as he continued, but Awa did not know if these were the result of emotion at her impending departure or being struck in the face. “That much of what we, in our ignorance, think of as medicine is actually poison, but that very poison, in the proper dosage, can be a medicine. That there is more at work than we know, and that if we but listen to the swarthy witch, the seemingly mad diabolist, we may discover more than all the wisdom of antiquity. Go if you must, Sister Gloria, but know that by doing so you shut me out, and by shutting me out you shut out all of modern medicine. You will not find another so willing to believe, to hear you out. Spirits in the mercury? Of the mercury? The world teeming with all sorts of spirits, and not divine nor diabolical but simply spirits who—”

  “I never said that!” Awa cried. “I never told you, how did you—”

  “But you did!” Paracelsus nodded. “As you slept you would mumble to yourself, and often when you were awake as well. I have transcribed some of it, and much of it is in line with what—”

  “You want me to break ’is head in?” Monique looked very seriously at Awa.

  “It’s my fault,” said Awa. “I shouldn’t have, I mean, I know I talk to myself sometimes but … Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim.”

  “Yes?” Paracelsus blinked, pleasantly surprised that someone, anyone, had remembered his full name.

  “Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, what is done is done, but I cannot have you telling people about me. Use what I have given you but trouble me no more.” Awa stepped between Monique and the physician, who tilted his head back at the sudden intensity of his nurse.

  “Trouble you? Why, I—” Awa touched his knee and he died. A little, anyway, and it was the most marvelous, exciting experience of the doctor’s life.

  “Christ!” said Monique, backing away. She knew a dead man when she saw one, and even if he had not noisily voided his bowels she would have known he was murdered.

  “Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim,” Awa said his name a third time, and leaning in, whispered in Latin, “You are dead, but I shall spare you this end so that you may help the living, so that you may use the little wisdom I have given you to change the minds of men, both about witches and about the world we all inhabit. It would be far safer for me to leave you as a corpse, but instead I give you life. Do not make me regret my decision, Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim.”

  And up he sat as she returned his life to him, only to double over again in agony as a migraine ricocheted behind his temples. By the time he had recovered enough to realize he had soiled himself, Awa and Monique were gone, as was his schnapps cask. He did not even clean himself before scribbling down the monumental experience of dying, the stench and itchiness not nearly distracting enough to delay him a moment more.

  Manuel was waiting for them by the north gate with two horses Monique had acquired for their journey, a large bay and a dappled mare hardly bigger than a pony. The rapidity and thoroughness of his palm’s recovery, as well as Monique’s drying lesions, pleased Manuel greatly, and he waved his scarred hand at them as they approached. While Monique quibbled with Manuel over the strapping of the saddles, Awa tried to calm her unhappy heart enough to recite her farewell speech to her first and best friend among the living, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern.

  “What’s this?” Manuel interrupted her before she really got the tangle of her words sorted out. “But I’m, that is, we’re sharing a horse, aren�
�t we?”

  “What?” Awa could scarcely believe it. “But we’re not going to Bern.”

  “Well, yes, but I thought I might—”

  “Earn some coin,” said Monique. “I hired us some muscle for the road, lean though it fuckin is. Bern’s got ’ores, bein a civilized spot, an’ so we’ll pop in there long the way.”

  “Really?” Awa could hardly believe it. “I can see your ladies!”

  “Ah,” said Manuel, picturing himself riding up his walk with Awa and Monique, picturing his wife and niece and servants and maybe his already disapproving father-in-law coming out to meet them. “Ahhhh. Maybe we could, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to, you know, slow you down.”

  “Don’t worry, Awa,” said Monique, swinging onto the larger horse. “There’ll be ladies aplenty soon enough, an’ ones what’ll put up with his queerness!”

  Manuel turned a very deep shade of crimson, arousing Awa’s curiosity, but when she asked him about it later he muttered something about being an artist and having responsibilities to his craft. In the meantime, he simply blushed and got onto the smaller horse. Awa had never been so close to one of the beasts, let alone ridden one, and was more than a little reluctant. Her insistence that she walk along beside them was met with derisive laughter from Monique, who wasted no time in hoisting Awa onto the saddle before her.

  “You’re a fuckin big girl, right enough,” Monique breathed in Awa’s ear. “Fit enough ta wrestle me down, maybe, and sure enough wrestle down a Manuel or two. You like wrestlin, Awa?”

  “I’m not …” Awa began, but then Monique nudged the horse into a canter and whatever words Awa had on the matter escaped along with her breath. They were moving far too fast for the necromancer’s liking, but Monique’s burly arms anchored her reasonably well, meaty hands holding the reins in Awa’s lap. They were on the road and making good time, Manuel trying to keep up on the little horse, and once she triumphed over her motion sickness and vertigo Awa leaned back into Monique’s solid chest and tried to enjoy the ride.

  XIX

  The Smith’s Guns

  Awa and Monique fucked twice before arriving in Bern. The first time Manuel had insisted on sleeping in a tavern’s common room because he claimed his back would never sit right again if he did not have one honest night’s sleep on a pallet, please, and as Monique was more frugal with her money she camped in the foothills outside the hamlet’s walls with Awa. Dusk drifted down through the grove of red willows as Monique and Awa washed the road dust, grime, and sweat from themselves in the frigid stream running beside their camp, both women growing less and less subtle in the glances they took of each other’s shivering bodies.

  “Your nips’re pink enough, for a blackamoor,” observed Monique as she squatted in the stream, gasping as the current struck the warmest part of her body.

  “Thank … thank you?” Awa scrambled over the rocks to quit the stream when Monique grabbed her arm, tight but not unwelcomely so.

  “Why doncha rinse like I done?” The seriousness in Monique’s eyes made Awa turn away.

  “It’s cold, and—”

  “Ya wanna fuck, Awa?”

  “What?” Awa blinked at the dripping, scarred mercenary, Monique’s freckled face and beech hair glistening in the twilight.

  “Not sayin I wanna make ya my sweetin, Awa, I’m jus askin if ya wanna ’ave a nice little fuck while Manuel’s off cryin ta himself in the tavern. Ya don’t like what I’m doin call it off, an’ if ya do ya throw me some face, aye?”

  “Just … just fuck each other?” Awa swallowed.

  “Never fucked a—yeah, jus fuck each other. Do. You. Wanna. Fuck?”

  Awa did, unreservedly, though the Dutch giantess was a far cry from what she had previously considered beautiful. Monique was, however, a tremendous amount of fun in bed, or would have been if they had a bed to employ. They built up the fire then went deeper into the grove lest a traveler come upon them, and Monique proceeded to give Awa something she had been lacking for years. The woman’s hands and lips were no softer than the rest of her but the strength in them felt wonderful to Awa, the feeling of breath on her neck and ears and breasts and stomach and everywhere else a novel sensation, and a welcome one. The warmth of Monique seemed to burn Awa as her partner reached her destination and began running her scalding tongue up the sides of Awa’s labia, and when that slick, blazing tongue gently spread Awa open and took its time reaching her clit the younger woman began to buck uncontrollably. Fingers and tongue rhythmically pressing toward one another with only Awa’s most sensitive region between them, Monique finished her partner with aplomb.

  “That storm a yours’ been brewin awhile, yeah?” Monique grinned as she crawled up beside Awa, who stared at her wide-eyed and awed. Then Awa burst into tears and threw her arms around Monique, who awkwardly tried to soothe her so she might find some recompense sooner rather than later. When she finally got her settled into place between her thighs Monique found Awa every bit as enthusiastic as she was clumsy and inexperienced, but eventually Awa brought her friend to an occasion, the woman nearly tearing out a patch of Awa’s scalp as she gripped her hair and ground against her face and fingers.

  The fire had burned low but they built it back up, drinking and talking and smiling at one another, Monique occasionally pinching or throwing her arm around Awa. Late in the evening Monique withdrew one of her matchlock pistols at Awa’s request and passed her the weapon. “Aye, I ’ad the same look in my eye, Lord’ll vouch, first time I got close enough ta see what they was an’ what they was bout. See, ta tell it right it went like this …”

  The girl grew up amidst the estuaries of what had been the Groote Waard before the Flood of Saint Elizabeth transformed fertile countryside and village alike into an inland sea of sweet, brown water. On the newly formed banks willows grew, and on the islands that had once been hillocks many leagues from any stream or pond more willows grew, and the girl grew up on these banks, on these islands. They cut the willows, the girl and her mother and father and brothers and sisters, and they sold the willow bark, which was good for doctors, who ground it up with their mortars and pestles for their medicines, and they sold the willow wood, which was good for everyone else, as it smelled sweet and burned slow and hot, and they sold the baskets they wove from the willow boughs, which were good for doctor and farmer alike, being light but strong and sturdy.

  The girl was named Monique, and her parents sold the willow, and when times grew lean they sold Monique. She was stronger than all her brothers and sisters, and so the man who needed bellows worked thought himself fortunate, for in addition to being an ox Monique was also a woman, and so there would be no risk of her pursuing more recompense than her master gave her. This man was a smith of small arms, and he knew the family because he found the willow ash to be the best for making powder, and like any good smith he tested everything before selling it, and testing guns meant using powder, and that meant either buying it or making it, and there was nothing the smith would buy if he could make it himself—that both his wife and would-be heir died in childbirth was the only reason he sought outside help in working his works.

  Monique worked very, very hard for the smith in his shop in Rotterdam, and guarded his forge when he went off to broker deals or simply get out for a little while, and being far from stupid she paid much mind to what the smith did to build his guns. When he was out she examined the castings, the tools, and the pictures in the manuals she could not read, and as years passed and the smith grew older she unobtrusively began helping more and more with finer and finer details of the smithing process, until quite without his knowing it she was as good an apprentice as any craftsman could seek.

  When the smith decided to sell his shop, having made enough coin from the French sojourns into Lombardy politics and the accompanying need for lots and lots of guns and powder, he tearfully dismissed Monique with a few coins and the clothes on her back. When her request for a letter certifying her skill at smithing was laughingly r
ebuked, she asked what exactly she was meant to do with her life, and he suggested whoring. The guns she took with her would have afforded her a comfortable purse had she sold them, but Monique had no intention of parting with them, especially as they might prove useful if the smith recovered from the drubbing she had given him and sent men after her.

  She knew the guns she had helped make had always gone south, and so did she, hoping to find one willing to overlook her gender and employ her in a smithy. None did, not in Burgundy and not in France and certainly not in northern Spain and not in the Empire and not in the Swiss Confederacy, but there at last she found some work that enabled her to earn coin while working with guns. During the years of traveling and seeking out wealth she had found herself in many, many dangerous circumstances, and had been in countless fights, and one evening in a tavern, after she beat three disrespectful Swiss mercenaries to a pulp, their captain, a brute named von Stein, hired her on the spot.

  Monique was so overjoyed to find someone willing to take her on despite her being a woman that she did not even realize what she was hired for until the next day, when she was sober and enlisted. If anyone asked she was supposed to tell them she was an unfortunately feminine-looking man, but usually the willow-cutter’s daughter simply responded by pistol-whipping the offending party in the mouth, and that seemed to get the job done well enough. She recognized better than most the limited capabilities of her preferred weapon and, courtesy of von Stein, received dispensation to occasionally act in a more traditional mercenary capacity while still carrying her guns, instead of always being left behind with the rest of the often ineffectual gunners.