The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  The dead came howling from the sky, hundreds of spirits falling through the cart onto the necromancer before he could flee back into his circle. The dozens of black claws he sprouted to fend them off were not enough, nor were the few arcane tricks his ethereal body was capable of, and they drove him to earth. They knew his name, she had told them his name, and with it they found him and held him. A dozen or two would have been little trouble, a few score a touch difficult, but the hundreds of spirits adhering themselves to his spectral form were too much, and his voice cut through the roaring gale of the dead, a single desperate word.

  “Please!” he howled, and Awa smiled, and then they were gone.

  Awa was alone, the morning light spilling under the edge of the cart blinding, her ears ringing from the necromancer’s final scream. It would take her a very long time to fulfill all the requests the dead had made, every single fallen mercenary demanding a unique boon in exchange for his service, and each request was recorded in blood on the first page of the necromancer’s book that Awa had judiciously removed before summoning her tutor. Some of the spirits had ignored her plea, going to wherever the dead go without a backwards glance, but the legion who had postponed their journey to the realm of the dead, from which none can return without the aid of the living, had proved strong enough to drag the necromancer with them. The old cheat.

  The charred book settled, a puff of ash rising, and then it wiggled a little. Awa pulled the ruined tome off the hatched salamander, the creature waddling away out from under the cart. She gathered her bag and Monique’s gun and followed it into the light.

  The dead were everywhere, but packs of the living still clumped at the base of the wall, planning their next doomed attempt to take the earthworks. Awa went to the corpses closest to her, the light warm on her skin, and brought their bodies back. She would have preferred to ask their spirits permission but there was no time, there had not been time in quite a while, and once she had six draftees she pointed to the wall.

  “Find Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern and Monique,” she said, and unrolled the canvas Manuel had given her outside the ruins of Kahlert’s manse on the day of their reunion. Monique’s spit had dried and Awa had kept it in its leather tube so the image was nearly intact, and she pointed first to the figure of Paris, then to Juno. “Niklaus and Mo. They’re over the wall. Bring them back. Fast!”

  The arquebusiers leveled their guns at the pair of mad Swiss who had single-handedly killed eight of their number, as well as six pikemen and Sir Isengrin, which is when another half-dozen Swiss gained the wall behind them. Twenty triggers were pulled in broken unison but the dead travel fast and Monique and Manuel were both tackled by undead pikemen just as the muzzles flashed before them. The hail of shot blasted the skulls of all but one of the reanimated mercenaries, who drooled blood as he informed the prone artist,

  “Mistress wants you.”

  Monique and Manuel scrambled to their feet and fled, the crack-crack-crack of arquebusiers echoing their footsteps as order again broke down and the gunners desperately tried to shoot the two Swiss butchers. Then the pair reached the wall and jumped over the side, falling down the embankment and dislocating this ankle and that shoulder. Then Awa was there and they were limping across the field, von Stein again immaculate and unharmed at the lead of the tactical retreat, his two advisors at his shoulders, a dozen corpses shambling behind them as a meat-shield. Those who claimed to have seen von Stein back in camp were rebuked when his ruined corpse was brought in from the field much later in the day, and his advisors could not be found for questioning by a disappointed, but not entirely surprised, Vicomte de Lautrec.

  The three friends parted ways outside Bern, in front of the red millwheel they had all passed many times before. After all the possible words were said Awa and Monique rode back down the road to begin honoring the requests of the dead souls who had spirited the necromancer off to where he should have gone so many centuries before, and Manuel looked at the wheel grinding through the water, round and around. The artist smiled. It did not look like a symbol for life, nor war, nor anything else —it looked like a fucking millwheel, albeit a pretty one. It was time to try his hand at some plays instead.

  XXXVIII

  Eternity in the Tomb

  Paracelsus rapped again on the little red door, his palms damp despite the chill in the air. Wolves were moving through the underbrush, bats were winging overhead, and the doctor took a deep breath and tried the handle. It was unlocked. He went inside, leaving the door open so that the moon could provide some measure of light. Creeping into the room, he saw that a metal portal stood open over a pit, and then the door slammed shut behind him. In the blackness Paracelsus held his breath, and when he heard no other creature breathing he relaxed.

  “What is your business?” a man’s voice said just behind him, and the physician jumped.

  “I’m an associate of Awa?” Paracelsus took a step away from the voice, then remembered the open hole in the floor and tried to orient himself in the dark.

  “She is no friend of ours.” A woman’s voice came from the other side of Paracelsus. “If she sent you here it was not for your benefit, friend of Awa.”

  “I said associate, not friend,” said Paracelsus, his right hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. His palm fell past where the pommel should have been, and he tried to maintain his composure as he pawed the empty scabbard in disbelief. “She strongly advised me against coming, in fact.”

  “Oh,” said the male voice. “Then perhaps she was a friend.”

  “More than an associate, at least,” said the woman. “We should listen to our associates. Very foolish to ignore the counsel of the learned.”

  “I came here because I wish to learn from the best,” said the doctor, his pride trumping his fear. “Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim is my name, and I have come because my associate Awa informed me there were no greater minds in the entire world than those assembled here. If such a thing were true then I should not be made to feel bullied, but instead welcomed, by the intellectual elite. Instead you wish to twist my words against me, just like those turds at the universities, instead of hearing them for what they are.”

  “Theophrastus inherited Aristotle’s school, did he not?” said the woman, her voice just behind him.

  “If you seek meaning in my name, I prefer Paracelsus,” said the doctor, the schnapps he had steadied himself with outside the door abandoning him to a sudden and dreadful sobriety.

  “Celsus, the philosopher? Para? Greater than he, are you?” The man’s voice was right in his ear but Paracelsus felt no breath stirring his long, manky hair.

  “Para celsus, as in beside Celsus, not greater than,” said he. “My detractors might have you believe otherwise, though.”

  “Well then, Herr Beside Celsus,” said the woman. “What do you bring us?”

  “What?” Paracelsus swallowed. “Why, a mind eager to unravel the cosmos and the alchemical, and a most impressive body of knowledge already accumulated.”

  “Not enough,” said the man.

  “Not nearly,” said the woman. “Too bad. I was beginning to like him.”

  “What else could I bring?” asked Paracelsus, keenly aware his voice was rising.

  “Something,” said the woman.

  “Anything,” said the man. “Save for a physical form and spongy brain. We have recently had a new addition to our society, thanks to someone’s predilections for appearances and potential.”

  “Only one of which you possess,” said the woman. “With nothing else to contribute—”

  “Wait!” Paracelsus had hoped to forestall the revealing of his prize until he was a full member of their little club, but circumstances were just that. “I do have something else.”

  “What?” said the woman.

  “Something good, I hope,” said the man.

  “Nothing less”—Paracelsus cleared his throat—“than the Philosopher’s Stone!”

  �
��Really?” said the woman, and a brilliant light flared up, blinding Paracelsus just as thoroughly as the darkness had. “Let us see.”

  “Now,” said the man.

  “Hold on,” said Paracelsus, fumbling in his pockets. He felt the pouch but kept rooting until his eyes adjusted enough to see what was happening. The man and the woman were both watching him intently, and he saw they were both completely naked and hairless. The woman held Paracelsus’s missing sword casually in her thin hand. Licking his dry lips, the doctor pulled out the pouch and held it to them. The man took it reverently and opened the drawstring, then dumped the contents into his associate’s cupped hand. A rough stone fell out, a jagged piece of gray rock.

  “Where did you come by this?” asked the man as the woman lifted the stone up to a glowing beaker that floated between them, its yellow light filling the chamber.

  “A hyena, it is called,” said Paracelsus. “I remembered my Pliny, and did a little digging in the creature’s eyes. The stone —”

  “Is a calcium deposit and nothing more,” said the woman, and the light went out. “What shall we do with you, Theophrastus Bombastus?”

  “Take him below,” said the man, and before the doctor could say another word his tale was cut off, leaving him in the clutches of those diabolical Bastards of the Schwarzwald.

  XXXIX

  Et in Arcadia Ego

  Pity Boabdil. That is how the necromancer began Awa’s tale, and when she was alone with the moon Awa wondered what simple language might end it. She knew that whatever words were used, pity should not be one of them, but beyond that she had no earthly idea. That is the problem with telling tales about real people, she supposed, no summary can convey every truth, every facet, and what is good for the hare is not good for the fox. Do not pity Awa, she would think, and shiver to imagine the raspy voice of her tutor voicing the sentiment. Maybe when all her tales were completed a succinct conclusion would come to her, a revelation, but she rather doubted it; the real world is no romance, where all questions are answered, all conflicts resolved, all wrongs righted, all scales balanced. Nevertheless—do not pity Awa.

  One of the many tales not told here is how Awa managed to fulfill the requests of the hundreds of spirits who had saved her, or how Monique martyred herself to save her friend and lover. Nor will ink be spilled to tell of Awa’s final bargain with Carandini and the rest of the undead alchemists, or of her unexpected reunions with Doctor Paracelsus and Chloé, or of the founding of the commune on the hill where she and Monique finally settled. The only story that really needs telling is of the last trip the famed poet, playwright, painter, printmaker, and politician Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern made to a certain leper colony high in the foothills of the Alps.

  Awa was in her kitchen as the artist trudged up the steep trail below the isolated hospice, his lantern bobbing like a firefly. When the air spirit who watched the path fluttered in and informed its mistress she kept mixing her dough—he would arrive soon enough, and would no doubt appreciate the smell of baking bozolati. Wiping her hands, Awa sat down on the bench and watched Monique weeding by starlight through the window. They had never made a great deal of sense to one another, the giantess and the necromancer, but on warm spring nights like this when the fields and forests danced with countless spirits Awa was so happy to be alive and with her partner that she could almost forgive her tutor, who had set everything in motion. She had, on most nights, forgiven herself.

  “Mo!” Manuel called, spotting her in the garden. After they had embraced she led him into the small house she shared with her partner, chiding him for shouting after dark when their patients were mostly asleep. Awa could not believe how old he looked, but when she again offered him what she had secured for Monique he shook his head, just as he always did.

  “I’d just as soon not wait any longer than I have to before finding out if Luther was right,” said Manuel, taking the wine Awa offered. “And if we’re wrong, well, I’ll be waiting down in Hell whenever you two toddle in. Besides, I’ve never cared for crowns.”

  “Those Schwarzwalders won’t be doing me any more favors, so it would have to be a slow rot for you anyway,” said Awa. “A ring instead of a bastard’s headband, but that would mean a simple disguise for your condition rather than topping off from the occasional dying leper.”

  “No and no,” said Manuel. “True death, please, though not for many years, God willing. Dürer’s died, did you know? Never got a chance to meet him.”

  “I don’t imagine he gave up on ’is art to pump out propaganda,” said Monique, scratching under her iron circlet.

  “My work is not propaganda,” spluttered Manuel. “They’re stories, about men and women, and so they’re morality pieces, yes, but what of it? I’ve heard no complaints from players or audiences.”

  “Morality, eh?” said Monique. “The shakiest fuckin word I ever ’eard. This morality got somethin ta do with what I ’ear bout you outlawin ’ores in Bern?”

  “Gossip travels fast, doesn’t it,” said Manuel. “What did whores ever give you but a broken heart and the pox, eh? I’ll say it, and proud—I’m cleaning up the city, and not just the brothels—no more gambling, no more mercenary attire to start fights and show off their blood money, no more—”

  “You’re a terrible fuckin hypocrite,” said Monique sadly. “Glad I didn’t live ta see the day Manuel finally got himself sainted, ya fuckin boor.”

  “What good did it do, all that bravado, that swagger? I wrote a little something about it …” Manuel cleared his throat and shamelessly quoted himself, “ If you pay us well we’ll move against your enemy, til the very women and children cry murder ! That is what we long for and rejoice in. It’s no good for us when peace and calm rule. Or something like that, it makes more sense, is more lyrical, in context. Didn’t Bicocca show us what mercenary work really is, what good it brings? So many dead …”

  The table went quiet, but then Awa cleared her throat and poured more wine.

  “Oswald, the old abbot?” Seeing Manuel blankly stare at her, Awa continued. “He comes here sometimes, to check in on the lepers and make sure we’re not holding our own mass or anything, and he told me you’re going after the Church, too. I mentioned that I knew you and he spit.”

  “Saint Manuel, the pious playwright what makes the priest spit,” guffawed Monique.

  “Oswald!” Manuel cried, remembering the name at last. “That crooked old bird was a Borgia apologist, the wanker!”

  “Aye, cause wankin’s such a terrible crime.” Monique rolled her eyes. The reformed Manuel was a bit of a twat, by her estimation.

  “I’m going after them, yes,” said Manuel. “But it’s a cover to get rid of all the pictures I did. Of you, Awa, remember those sketches I did in the cemetery? I transferred them, painted them, and did quite a few more, for the churches and monasteries and such, but we can’t have all that idolatrous nonsense anymore, can we? So I clean it up, and in the process scrub away any trace of a certain young Moor cavorting with the dead. It’s for your benefit, Awa!”

  “I never asked you to,” said Awa. “How could you destroy your work, Manuel, how could you? It was gorgeous!”

  “I don’t need to defend myself to you,” said Manuel, crossing his arms. “I get enough at home, thank you very much. And I keep the less obvious stuff, though I tell people it was done earlier or later than it actually was, keep them off the trail. You don’t know what it’s like down there. The Inquisition’s stronger than ever, and even with some of the papists getting run out Bern’s still catching witch fever. Suppressing the Church means suppressing the Inquisition, the witch trials!”

  “And ’ow long after ya start turnin a profit til you lot start burnin witches, too?” asked Monique, but before the red-faced politician could respond Awa had retrieved another bottle and winked at her partner over the top of Manuel’s head.

  “Fuck it,” said Monique and, winking back at Awa, added, “How’s Katharina and the family, then?”
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  “Everyone’s good, I suppose,” said Manuel, and on they talked into the night, the tenants of Awa and Monique’s community sleeping peacefully. The disease that had wasted their flesh was arrested by Sister Gloria’s ministrations, though they did not realize the true cause, and so even if she was a Moor, and even if Sister Monique did only come out at night, the lepers were happy enough to live away from the world that so despised and feared them. Awa felt the same, and she and Monique and Manuel went back to the garden just before dawn with a bundle of wood and four little stones.

  “You’re sure?” said Awa. “We’ve got a while yet, you and I, and if you think you might need them—”

  “Nah,” said Monique. “They saved me enough down the days I owe’em this, an’ doin it while Manuel’s ’ere to watch seems fine an’ all. The three of us together, jus’ like the ol’ days.”

  “But your pistols—”

  “I’ll pick up some matchlocks ifin I get the hanker ta blow some shit up,” Monique said with a shrug, and they built up a small woodpile beside the midden heap. When the eggs were all in place they stepped a few feet back, smiling at one another like children about to resume a game left uncompleted the summer past.

  “Fire,” said Awa, and the first egg burst into flames.

  “Fire,” said Monique, and the second caught.

  “Fire,” said Manuel, the firelight reflecting his grin. He, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, practicing witchcraft—ludicrous!

  “Fire,” said Awa, and the last egg ignited.

  Dawn kept its distance, and as the birth-pyre collapsed on itself and the four salamanders wriggled out of the ash they could see the tiny creatures glowing faintly in the darkness. The salamanders cooled quickly and soon the night took them, and Awa, Monique, and Manuel went back inside to finally take their rest.

  The next few days they spent together were the happiest the trio had enjoyed in years—Manuel and Awa took long walks through the hills, and even after all this time he smiled to see her left foot leave cloven tracks. One night when the artist drunkenly snored by the fire Monique dug out Awa’s old nun’s habit and the novice-no-more led her partner on a shorter hike into a pine grove that smelled almost of oranges, and they did not return to the house until the east had turned as pink as a blushing virgin.