The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “Well, then they killed us,” said Ysabel, glancing at Johan and shrugging.

  “What!” Awa shook her head. “How could they?! Why would they?! For what?”

  “For fucking,” said Ysabel, “though if my husband or the priest had a decent bone in their bodies they wouldn’t have. They said we were both witches, and that was that.”

  “Witches?” Awa could not believe it. “But why would they think you were witches for, for—”

  “Well, he had just blown into town dressed like a monk, and right after pissing up the priest’s leg he went over to the resident witch’s, me, I mean, and was caught with his wick in the wax, still dressed like a monk and with bones hither and yon,” explained Ysabel.

  “Ahem,” said Johan. “A-hem.”

  “Resident … you’re a witch?” Awa had never met another of her kind since leaving the mountain, but her excitement was short-lived.

  “Well, not as such,” said Ysabel. “I knew what herbs to help get rid of a babe, or help keep it, and I might’ve had one or two nights when me and some friends got into the belladonna and, you know, ridden a broom or two”—she made her hand into a fist and pumped it in front of her pelvis—“but not like, real witchery. Nothing like you, to be sure.”

  “Oh,” said Awa. “And they killed you for that?”

  “A pretext on the part of my shitty husband and that shitty priest.” Ysabel sighed. “Or maybe they thought they were doing the Lord’s business. End result’s the same.”

  “Once my foot’s better we’ll go down there.” Awa nodded slowly. “We’ll see to this priest, and we’ll see to your husband, and … what?”

  The skeletons were both looking curiously at her. Johan made a sound like he was clearing the throat that had rotted away ages ago. Ysabel had knit her finger bones and was clicking her thumbs together.

  “What?” Awa repeated. “Don’t you want revenge? I do and it wasn’t even me!”

  “Revenge is overrated,” said Johan. “It’s a drain, if nothing else, and—”

  “Don’t act pious now,” said Ysabel. “If mistress had brought us back a few centuries gone you’d be singing a different song, says I.”

  “And whose tongue did I find you but a descendant o that husband o yours, by whatever woman he took after you burned? More than like the reason we got what we did was to clear the way for him to poke some other girl.”

  “Ah,” said Awa. “I’m … I’m late, aren’t I?”

  “Better than never,” said Ysabel. “And you’ve put me at rights on that, at least.”

  “I have? On what?”

  “On witches,” said Ysabel. “I wanted to know if they were real, and if so, if they were the devil-sucking, baby-eating things that priest talked about at my trial, cause if they were I’d maybe see where he and my husband was coming from a bit keener. That’s why I wanted to come back, to see the cut of your cloth. And witch you definitely are, but don’t seem too bad for it.”

  “And a Moor besides,” said Johan, shaking his skull.

  “Thank you?” said Awa. “So … do you want to go back to the graveyard now that you know I’m not a, a baby-eating devil-sucker?”

  “Hmmm,” said Ysabel. “Maybe not here? Maybe we could find a nicer place for me to bed down, like that sailor whose heart you’ve got.”

  “That’s my aim, too, though it’s more specific, I’ll allow,” said Johan. “Switcheroo of this skull o mine with a saint’s in some churchhouse, right?”

  “I hope she trades you out for some phony head you sold them,” said Ysabel.

  They were bickering again, and Awa leaned back against the wall of the cave. So very odd to have other people around to talk to, even if they were dead. At least her hoof would be healed soon.

  They went north, and at Johan’s suggestion disguised themselves as lepers to keep anyone who might stumble upon them in the wilds at a safe enough distance to avoid revealing their cadaverous nature. Rags were obtained easily enough from fresh graves at the next few churchyards, and the wise-fingered Johan built noise-makers out of rough paddles of wood and rope. Swaddled in layers of moldering cloth they looked appropriately terrible, and clacking their paddles at the first sign of civilization worked marvelously at keeping people away. Obtaining food, fresh clothing, and other alms was actually easier now than it had been when the villagers and travelers got close enough to see that Awa was a Moor, although once an especially good-hearted priest had approached them, the old boy fainting dead away when he noticed Ysabel’s finger bones holding the edge of her cowl.

  The heart of the unnamed sailor was cast from the cliffs of Gascony into the Atlantic before the trio changed direction. Awa had unburdened herself to the two skeletons, who strongly approved of her quest to find the book and thwart the necromancer. The skeletons offered to help her as best they could until finding their idyllic resting place, and as each monastery and church with a reliquary that they passed was not quite what Johan had in mind, and each scenic glade they camped in was not quite right for Ysabel, the three eventually wandered farther into France and then down to the blood-soaked hills of Lombardy.

  Fulfilling the requests of the random unquiet dead that they heard in the churchyards along the way stopped seeming like a chore to Awa, and with Ysabel and Johan to stand guard over her she slept better than she had in years. She missed her little bonebird but did not make another—it seemed disrespectful to even consider it. No trace was seen of the hyena, thankfully, but no sign of the hunted tome was found, either.

  “I’m telling you, Awa,” Johan insisted as they passed along a wooded ridge overlooking a small town a year after they had met, “go down in there and find a parish, bring in this pinky finger o mine, and tell the priest they come from Johnny Baptist by way o Armenia. Stake my bottom rib that’s us into a bottle or two o wine.”

  “And what would you do with wine?” asked Ysabel. It took a skilled eye to notice when a lipless skull intended a grin, but Awa caught Ysabel’s smile and winked back at her friend.

  In their travels, the two skeletons talked a great deal about what they had seen of the world so long ago. They explained customs and beliefs and jokes, until Awa wished she could wash the color right off her skin, stride into a town, and have a hot meal and a good talk with the guests at an inn, or hear a mass, or see any one of the marvelous cities Johan described. Her two friends talked more and more of her finding decent folk who might overlook a Moor in their midst, if she did not behave in too witchy a fashion, but Awa would hear none of it and the skeletons held their own counsel when she slept. Finally they had an intervention, and when that did not take they staged another one, their joviality fading and their demeanor hardening as again and again Awa refused to listen.

  “If I don’t find the book, he will destroy me,” she said, exasperated with them, but even more exasperated at herself for knowing they were right but refusing to give up. “Not kill me, but, I don’t even know, end me, take away everything! How can I stop!?”

  “All the more reason to pack it in,” said Johan. “If I thought there was the slightest chance, I’d say, Alright, Awa, let’s find it, and help you look til Judgment. But you got what, five years? And no way of knowing if it’s even in a graveyard, which is where you’ve been looking exclusive-like, yeah?”

  “He’s right, Awa,” said Ysabel. “We’ve been over this enough times you know it by heart, but let’s have you hear it again —spending your last bit of time on God’s grand earth prowling about in churchyards, dealing with the dead—it’s not right. You should enjoy life, not hide from it.”

  “Thank you for that,” said Awa, knowing what was coming next. “And I should take up prayer to your god, too, yes?”

  “He forgave me, He’ll forgive you,” said Johan.

  “How do you know?” demanded Awa. “You don’t! You don’t know where your soul goes when it’s not tied to your bones out of some, some sick obsession with a, with a switcheroo! Or some need to justify your husb
and murdering you, waiting around in hopes a witch will come along and dig you up!”

  “But dig us up you did,” Ysabel pointed out. “You’re right, we don’t know, but we believe, and what greater proof can there be than your ability?”

  “No more proselytizing,” said Awa. “Please. I’m tired of all this! You don’t think I’m tired of going to one graveyard after another, always wondering if some dog’s about to bite my ass, if someone’s going to see and try to string me up! I’m tired! Tired!”

  “Then pack it in,” said Johan. “Ysabel and me, we talked it over, and we think maybe it’d help encourage you to, I dunno, do something else with your life if we weren’t, if we weren’t …”

  “What?” said Awa, looking away from them. Through the trees she could see the river they had been following faintly glowing in the sunlight. She knew what they were going to say, and she knew they were right, and still the tears came.

  “This looks like a good spot for me,” said Ysabel firmly.

  “Me.” Johan made a swallowing noise. “Me too.”

  “So that’s it,” Awa said, knowing she was being petulant but unable to stop herself. “After all this it’s just, Goodbye, Awa? Good luck? Hope the immortal evil doesn’t get you?”

  “You need to stop chasing clouds,” said Ysabel. “Enjoy yourself. Make friends that aren’t dead. Live, Awa.”

  “Live.” The word felt mealy on her tongue, but through her disappointment and loss a little spark of excitement was building in Awa, of an end to the monotony of graveyard on top of graveyard. “Live.”

  “There’s places Moors don’t have it so bad as Spain and all, probably,” said Johan.

  “And what about the skull swap, eh?” said Awa, and both skeletons’ sets of shoulder blades relaxed at the smile on her tear-streaked face. “Given up on sainthood?”

  “This is a prettier spot than them churches,” said Johan, though he was looking at Ysabel instead of the sun-dappled, sandy clearing. “My bones’ll rest easier here, knowing no entrepreneurs never going to steal’em away to a rival city.”

  “It’s not that we don’t want to help, or we don’t think you deserve—” Ysabel began, but then she picked up on Awa’s thoughts and went respectfully silent as her mistress approached her and Johan. She hugged them until their ribs groaned and Johan’s clavicles popped out of their sockets, and then released them.

  “Let’s get you both tucked in, then.” Awa smiled, and the three friends dug two graves by the river.

  “Wait!” said Johan just before Awa released their spirits, and, clawing at the side of his grave, he soon dug his way through to Ysabel’s. He stuck his arm through and they joined hands. “Right. If you need some relics you know where to dig.”

  “Goodbye, Awa,” Ysabel said. “Live.”

  Then they were gone, so much bone in a shallow grave. Awa let herself sob then as she filled in the holes, terrible, painful sobs, for the two of them and Alvarez the bandit chief and Halim the eunuch and Omorose and her little bonebird and the heartless sailor and especially herself, who was again alone, alive but alone. The very notion of her finding living people who could understand her, or even want to, was ludicrous, but she nevertheless made ready to free the last creatures she carried with her.

  She built a huge pile of brush, and after dumping the salamander eggs in the center tossed down the box and cracked her knuckles. Her tutor had told her there were almost none left, that if they hatched finding more would be impossible, and that made her smile. He would find her, and he would destroy her, but he would not have these six innocents to warm his kettle with. First, though, she stripped off all of her clothes, so that as soon as the inferno was ignited and her skin warmed she could leap into the shallow river and wash away the fear and frustration of the last few years.

  Awa opened her mouth to address them all, to be their mother and ignite them and set them loose into the world, but then a branch snapped behind her. Before she could spin around someone tackled her into the brushpile, the sharp branches slashing and stabbing her as she flailed. A hairy arm was around her waist and she grabbed it, his spirit fat and stupid and right there to sever, but while it recoiled from her touch like a large rat struck by a small viper it did not fade immediately, and she heard metal sliding on metal as the man latched the iron chain in place around her waist.

  She struggled and his meaty fist was punching her in the back of the head. Then his hand was over her mouth, his fingers pinching her nose, and as she began to swoon Awa wondered if the necromancer would not have a living body to take after all. As she went limp the mercenary Wim clumsily slid the sack over her head and down her body, wrenching it underneath the chain around her waist and fitting a second chain around her neck. The man had not believed in witches until she had touched him but now he felt feverish and queasy, a black lump rising on his arm. He dared not disturb the witch’s belongings, lest they be cursed.

  Wim spit on the half-conscious Moor. “Von Swine didn’t pay extra for you kickin I’d gutcher wicked belly, bitch. I don’t doubt killin you’d make the angels sing.”

  XXVIII

  A Happy Reunion

  “She needs our ’elp, ya fuckin lump!” said Monique, and Manuel reddened to hear her preferred term for true degenerates fired at him.

  “We’ve given her more help than Moses gave the Hebrews,” said Manuel. “She’s more than capable of looking after herself.”

  “Maybe fore she fell in with us,” said Monique. “You ain’t seen her since ya painted’er naked in the park with us, an’ that’s years past—lose interest once you’ve seen some ass, Manuel? Friends stop meanin more’n coin once you gander their bush, lump?”

  “I’ve been busy, as have you and she, else you might have called on me instead, yes?” said Manuel, only mildly more angry at her than at himself. “As you point out, I was the last to visit, meaning custom would dictate that you and she come here.”

  “Fuck your custom, Manuel, I’ve a business ta run!”

  “And I don’t?” said Manuel, keenly aware that the sketch he was in the middle of copying was no longer receiving as much of his attention as it really ought to command—one of the corners he had secured with a nail had torn slightly and now the whole damn thing might be off-center. Worse still, his apprentice was gone for the day so he could not simply pass it over to the boy. “And I very much doubt a few years of brothel life has wholly removed her, her witchcraft, which proved more than a match for me or four stout mercenaries back in—”

  “Don’t be callin her a witch, Niklaus,” said Monique. “Don’t want your precious studio havin an accident, do ya? Lots a powder in my purse, an’—”

  “Don’t you fucking threaten me!” Manuel finally set his stylus down. “Our friend, Awa, is a witch. I’ve seen what she can do, I’ve felt what she can do, so don’t you act like you didn’t know! Did I say she was wicked, Mo? Did I? The fuck I did. But she’s a witch, a real fucking witch, and—”

  “What the fuck is that?” Monique shoved past him, and he gave a little yelp as she knocked his arm into an easel. Steadying it and turning, he saw what she had pulled the rest of the way out from under a stack of planks and his stomach rolled. For a moment he considered calling for a servant but then he saw that her face was hurt, not angry. She looked up from the paper, and said in a voice far quieter than he had ever heard her use, “You knew.”

  “That was ages ago,” said Manuel, glancing at the closed door over her shoulder. “Katharina told them she’d gone to Muscovy.”

  “You fuckin knew an’ let me go on bout this.” The stupid confusion on her face was maddening, as if it were difficult to understand. How the illiterate had even recognized the bill for what it was he could not fathom, though he supposed the men who had come to her brothel must have delivered a similar poster. The sketch of Awa on it was pure amateur work, a black head with distinctly European features, and—

  The clicking of his teeth as she punched him in the chin wa
s somehow louder than the easels toppling, the planks clattering, the pots and glasses shattering, and then he landed on his back. She did not strike him again but went back to staring at the poster, perhaps puzzling over the different squiggles underneath the image. Hers would have been in the French vernacular if the author had any sense, and he must have a little if his men had found both artist and gunner, whereas the bill Monique now held was in German. Manuel winced as he flexed his jaw, then he saw the paint spreading across his floor, the scattered planks and tipped canvases, and he winced again. Monique crumpled the bill in her hand and looked down at Manuel with the expression of one who has just realized that the meal they were in the midst of enjoying was seasoned with rat droppings.

  “I thought you was different, Manuel, an’ so did she. You’re just like’em, though, aye? Von Wine, them Lombardy mayors, all of’em. How much ya sell me one of your kids for, Manuel? How much ya sell me your wife for? How much’ll it cost me ta watch ya fuck a pig, you little shit?”

  “Look,” said Manuel, his voice cracking as he looked up at her, “they came here when I was out with Margaretha and Lydie, two men came here. To my fucking house. Tomas, the servant, Tomas wasn’t going to let them in but they forced the door, and one held him and the other found Katharina with, with Hieronymus, with my little boy. He was on her tit and they just barged in. They didn’t talk long, just enough. Katharina was terrified—”

  “An’ ya didn’t fuckin tell me.” Monique was shaking her head. “Ya didn’t tell me first thing when I come in the door. Ages ago, aye? An’ ya didn’t even send fuckin word?!” She slapped another canvas over, and that brought Manuel to his feet.

  “Kat knew who they were fucking after, Mo, and she stalled and cried until she thought she sounded convincing, and then she told them Awa had stayed a night and then gone to Muscovy. Muscovy, Mo, how much farther from Paris can you fucking get?! And you ask why I didn’t send someone from my fucking house directly to where she was, you ignorant pimp?! Did it ever cross your mind that my house might’ve been watched?!”