The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  “None of your concern, be assured,” Ennio said with a frown at the returning Alphonse.

  “Maybe yeah, maybe nah,” Manfried said, removing the stew from the fire and setting it on a bench. Hegel wasted no time in setting to, dipping his bowl whenever his brother was not slurping directly from the pot. The three foreigners cooked and ate their porridge in jealous silence.

  With their stew gone, the Grossbarts gazed at the porridge. Permission was stated by Hegel rather than requested, and they ate the rest of that, too. Pleasantly bloated, the Brothers sipped their schnapps and reclined by the fire. Even Alphonse and Giacomo appeared to have forgotten the altercation, whispering to each other and smiling drunkenly. In view of the porridge, the Brothers let it slide. Ennio disappeared through the rear hall and soon returned with a fresh bit of frost on his hat. He resumed his seat with a sigh.

  “The snow has stopped,” Ennio finally said, “and the moon is near full, you can actually see about.”

  “Well, that’s somethin, I guess, or you would a stayed quiet,” Manfried said.

  “No lights.” Ennio rolled a bottle from hand to hand. “Not so queer if everyone is here, but they are not.”

  “What about that monastery?” Manfried said.

  “Black. But it can be seen in the moonlight. Usually some lights at those, especially if they have a feast or festival or other reason why town has gone there.” Ennio sipped on his bottle, Alphonse’s pattern of listening and whispering implying he translated for Giacomo.

  Alcohol had blunted Hegel’s anxiety about the town but it still twisted in his brain and heart and he brooded in silence. He knew what came next, and did not want to hear it. Something about the unseen woman in the rear also itched at his nerves. He wanted to lay eyes on her to see if that helped, although he suspected it would not.

  “So we go out and look around, bang on some doors to ensure, and hike up to the monastery. Even in snow it is close.” Ennio set his bottle on the floor and stood, looking at the four doubtful men.

  Hegel broke the silence with a laugh, surprised his brother did not join in. Regaining himself, he wiped his eyes. “Have fun! Me and Manfried’ll make sure nuthin goes amiss round here.”

  “Grossbarts,” Ennio patiently explained. “We must discover where everyone has gone. Their absence is unnatural. Whole towns do not disappear without reason.”

  “So? Ain’t gonna make no difference where they at. Can’t drive them ponies by moonlight on these roads, so we’s here til cockcrow at the soonest.” Hegel sipped his drink, unable to remember a time when he would less fancy a moonlit stroll.

  “Hegel-” Ennio began, but Manfried cut him off.

  “Any princes or lords round here?” Manfried said.

  “No,” Ennio said, not seeing the relevance.

  “How’d that monastery get built?” Manfried pressed.

  “Looks more of a keep or fortress than a church, so mayhap a duke or count lived there. But that would be long ago, I suppose, or else the monks would not be there now. You think someone ordered the absence of the village?” Ennio perked up, unsure what Manfried implied.

  “Nah,” Manfried said, “but seein’s how you’s been so kind’s to let us ride, the least me and my humble family can do is spot around the town with you.”

  “The Devil, Manfried, we ain’t…” Seeing the gleam in his brother’s eye, Hegel trailed off. The familiar look on Manfried’s face clued Hegel in, drunken excitement besting his worry. Cursing his own obtuseness, Hegel said, “Yeah, you’s right. I was bein selfish. Right uncharitable a me.”

  “That’s right, brother,” Manfried chided. “We’s here to do the work a Mary. And She clear as Hell wants us to lend a hand to our friends.” Then shifting to their brotherly cant, he added, “And sides, monks’ more liable to be decent folk than your average priest. Most a them’s shit, sure, but always err on the side a helpin’em out, case they’s in good with the Virgin.”

  Ennio shrugged and made ready to leave, wise enough to recognize that while the Grossbarts were certainly working an angle, there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, if they had murder on their minds then Alphonse and Giacomo would have already been dead and they would have gone after him without pretext. The cousins were tickled to be left behind, wanting nothing to do with the Grossbarts in a desolate town under a fat moon.

  No wind or snow disturbed their march but the chill worked into their beards. They brought rushlights but these stayed cold in their belts, the moon reflecting eerily off the snow. Every time Ennio called out into the stillness or rapped on a door the Grossbarts had to suppress the urge to club the idiot. The town consisted of less than a dozen buildings on each side of the road but the knee-deep drifts slowed their progress. The high stone wall circling the houses ended in another wooden gate, and rather than forcing it they climbed a convenient stile and hopped over the side.

  Here the road switchbacked up the face of a stern mountain and they could see the silhouette of the monastery several bends away. They did not speak, slowly tramping through the snow until they rounded the final curve and broke off onto the path leading to the black structure. The road fell away on the side overlooking the town, the moon so bright they made out the alehouse, the town walls, and the mountains they had journeyed through.

  To their left the monastery wall terminated in a cliff face that rose up into its own shadow, nullifying the need for additional fortifications on that end, and to their right the barrier skirted the drop-off on the other side of the natural shelf and blotted out the view of Rouseberg below. The keep abutted the sheer mountainside, and a wide gap between the edifice’s right flank and the encircling wall indicated the monastery grounds continued behind the looming central structure. Ignoring the small wooden buildings annexed along the wall, Ennio stepped forward and cupped his hands around his mouth to hail the monks when Hegel boxed his ear.

  “Keep that hole shut,” shushed Hegel.

  “Where’s the churchyard?” Manfried whispered.

  “Eh?” Ennio glanced from one to the other.

  “The cemetery,” said Hegel. “Boneyard? Graveyard? Burial ground? Like a potter’s field, only with markers.”

  “A necropolis?” Ennio’s chestnut eyes narrowed to almonds. “What business have you there?”

  “Our own,” Manfried shot back.

  “But what could we find in such a place?” said Ennio with a shudder.

  “All questions are answered in the grave,” Hegel sagely stated.

  “I do not know where it is,” Ennio said. “If it was once a castle they might have a crypt in the cellar.”

  “That’s a risk we gotta chance,” Manfried said, seeing the concern on Hegel’s face. The witch-chills had returned to Hegel, stronger than what he had felt in the town.

  “Maybe we oughta just call it done,” Hegel said, peering around nervously.

  “First we must check the door and try to gain the inside,” said Ennio, relieved Hegel had sided with him. Sane men do not poke around graves in the best of times, let alone under a full moon in a suspiciously vacated town deep in the winter-gripped mountains.

  “Rot,” Manfried snarled. “We check the back, see if it’s there. If it ain’t, then we pry a window and find the cellar. Don’t forget yourself on me, Hegel Grossbart.”

  Hegel’s resolve strengthened at hearing his full name. The spoils were waiting and he had suggested leaving them for the dirt. He shoved past Ennio, reckoning the man’s cowardice had rubbed off on him.

  Ennio sullenly followed the Grossbarts, cutting between a wooden building and the side of the monastery proper. They were in shadow again, the outer wall and the side of the abbey conspiring to blot out the moon, the crunching snow the only sound. Emerging back into the moonlight, they were in another large courtyard with a single outbuilding set against the rear of the wall where the fortification curved back into the cliff. The trio made for a small doorway in the wall beside the building.

  A warm br
eeze chilled their nerve at the door, a fetid wind blowing from behind. Turning as one, they saw nothing but the rear of the monastery and their own footprints trailing off into darkness. The pungent stench burned their eyes, and all three instantly knew it to be the odor of rotting meat. The draft faded but the stink remained. Ennio had taken a step toward the abbey when Manfried whistled softly.

  Beyond the small wooden door a churchyard stretched along the stone shelf, cliffs rising up on one side and dropping from the other until the tapering plateau faded into the face of the mountain. Crosses and other markers jutted out of the snow like wreckage in a flood, and several pale hummocks towered beside the largest mound. To anyone else it would have appeared another vague lump in the powder but the Grossbarts instantly recognized it for a crypt. They hurried through the cemetery, banging their boots and knees on submerged tombstones, Ennio stumbling after.

  The stone door had clearly stood undisturbed for ages, and Ennio leaned against it. He covetously watched Hegel withdraw a bottle from his bag and take a pull, then pass it to his brother. Manfried swigged it and planted it in the snow at his feet. While the Brothers inspected the door and counseled in their private dialect Ennio retrieved their schnapps in what he hoped appeared to be a casual manner and crouched in the snow rather than sit on a tomb.

  Taking a long pull of the drink, Ennio thought of a certain lady in Venezia who would make him forget all about mysterious towns, strange passengers, and frigid necropoli. He thought of her olive skin and green eyes, of the sweet way she would tease him when he pretended to have left his purse at home. Then he saw Hegel remove a prybar from his bag and jam it into the door of the crypt, and Ennio choked on his drink.

  “What you do this?” Ennio coughed.

  “Pipe down,” said Manfried.

  “Ain’t doin,” Hegel muttered, red-faced and white-knuckled.

  “You mean to enter it?” Ennio gasped.

  “Course we do,” Manfried said, digging the snow out from the bottom of the door.

  “Got it?” Hegel asked, setting down the prybar.

  “Yeah,” Manfried sighed, “but they got us good, too. What you make a this?”

  Hegel hunkered beside his brother. Thick stones and masonry sealed the bottom of the door. The Grossbarts had encountered worse. They dug in their bags while Ennio paced, staring aghast at them.

  “What could the inside tell us of the town? Or that stink by the gate?” Ennio demanded.

  “Nuthin,” Hegel said, pulling out Manfried’s hammer and chisel.

  “Less than,” said Manfried. “Inside a graves only tell the future, not the past.”

  “Common misconception,” Hegel agreed, setting the chisel in place.

  “What?” Ennio’s head swam. “What nonsense are you speaking?”

  “Well,” Manfried said, raising his hammer. “The content a this here stone-house’ll tell us what’s to come. If it’s full a riches, then we’s rich, and if it ain’t, we ain’t.”

  “Course there’s a deeper meanin,” Hegel said, pulling his own chisel out and using the flat end of his pick in lieu of a hammer. “And even if it’s empty we’s needin all the practice we can get fore hittin up them what the Infidel’s got. Heard they’s specially tricksome to get into.”

  Both struck at the same time, the metal ringing out in the stillness. They shared a smile, the familiar sound a balm to ward off the chill of weather and witch alike. A faint echo returned, and at this they struck again, stone splintering off the crypt.

  Ennio let fly a string of foreign curses, then remembered himself. “You intend theft from the dead? You’re defilers of graves!”

  “Ennis-” Manfried began.

  “Ennio,” Hegel corrected, smashing more masonry.

  “Ennio,” Manfried continued, “even a half-wit knows it ain’t stealin if they’s dead.”

  “Like rape won’t take away virginity,” Hegel said excitedly, sure his violation at the hands of Nicolette qualified.

  “Exactly.” Manfried’s hammer fell again.

  “You damn yourselves!” Ennio spluttered. “This sin cannot be undone!”

  “We tithe,” Hegel explained.

  “Doin Mary’s Will.” Manfried blasted off more stone.

  Ennio turned. “We part paths here and now. Sleep in there, for we will not permit you to enter our shelter.”

  “You’s drawin lines,” Manfried said, not looking away from his task.

  “Never smart,” Hegel grunted, struggling with an obstinate piece of stone.

  “Cause then we gotta cross’em,” Manfried finished. Many years had passed since the mortar was laid, evidenced by the ease with which it splintered. Further proof of Her Grace.

  Ennio cursed them as he tramped toward the monastery gates. The tolling of their iron made him wince. Fifty paces from the door to the abbey grounds, Ennio saw the wooden gate swing inward. No wind followed yet the stink again permeated the calm air and he paused, peering into the black hole in the wall.

  A man floated out of the doorway, his naked skin glowing in the moonlight. From the waist down a bestial form propelled him, snorting menacingly, and Ennio stumbled back through the graveyard, begging his unwilling voice to cry out for the Brothers Grossbart.

  X. Fresh Paths and Good Intentions

  Heinrich stumbled through the snow, his frostbitten feet gone from cold to numb to searing. Of course they had not stumbled across any free-roaming horses, and of course Egon had turned back upon delivering Heinrich to the frost-blasted boulders where the road entered the mountains proper. Heinrich’s memory of his friend’s hopeless face had faded as if their parting had been years instead of days before. Egon had begged him to turn back, winter coming on far too quickly to risk the mountain passes, but Heinrich would not relent.

  Stalactites of frozen sweat, tears, and snot swayed from the yeoman’s mustache but he willed himself forward, even as he realized the setting sun likely heralded his demise. He had to catch them before he froze. He had to.

  The storm grew rather than abated, and the hazy orb lighting his way grew less distinct as it slipped lower between the peaks on his right. He had enough of the turnips he so despised to feed himself for another week but without wood for his tinder he held out little hope, even with his blankets. Yet Providence had brought him this far, and his continuous prayers that the villains would appear on the road ahead did not fail, even if they were growing less particular in their destination.

  Then, through the shroud of snow and twilight, he made out a shadow sitting on a boulder. Rubbing his bloodshot eyes, he staggered toward it and drew his long dagger. Considering they had left him to suffer in solitude perhaps it was intended he only murder one of them, placing the other in Heinrich’s own miserable and solitary state. Heinrich tried to charge but his legs refused to do more than shuffle over the icy stones.

  Then he stopped, vision blurring with grief, and he fell to his knees. The figure had turned and he could no longer delude himself, for the swaddled old woman certainly bore no resemblance to either Grossbart. His exhausted wits did not consider why she would be sitting on a rock so far from anything save a frigid death; all he cared about was his own failure. The sun dipped behind the mountains, and Heinrich somehow found the strength to stand and march onward.

  “Ho,” the crone said as he brushed past her, “there’s nothing for leagues save the dens of wolves, and even those will be occupied on such a night. Why not abandon the road and help an old lady to her hovel?”

  Heinrich swayed drunkenly but his grief-addled mind refused to allow the intrusion of logic. If he pressed on through the growing dark he would spy their campfire and take them unawares. Only a little farther, surely.

  “No?” The woman sighed. “Then that’s another old wife dead due to Grossbartery, and with the little ones in my belly, why, two innocent souls beside.”

  Heinrich stopped, the snow settling on his pack. “What?”

  “You heard,” she cackled, her laugh
ter like ice splintering underfoot on a frozen river. “You heard, Heinrich Yeoman, digger of turnips, just as you heard your little ones roasting alive in the house you built them.”

  Heinrich brandished his knife and stumbled back toward the woman, feverish with hatred and confusion.

  “Help an old lady home,” she repeated. “If you wish to see those Grossbarts suffer and beg, there’s no other way. They are too far ahead to catch on foot, and every moment they spread a wider trail between you and they. But there are ways to find them, Heinrich, ways I know well.”

  Heinrich stood before her, sweat freezing the dagger to his palm. His teeth rattled, her eyes black specks on a leathery face, and he knew at once she was either witch or spirit. Dejected beyond reason, he attempted to recall the parish priest’s insistences that God alone could punish the Grossbarts, and nodded to her. A lifetime of holy terror had convinced him that without a final confession, Hell might be the only place he could again lay eyes on Gertie, his girls, and poor Brennen.

  She rose with the help of a cane and together they began trudging up the road. Heinrich lasted less than a mile before his legs went and he collapsed in the thickening snow. He heard her cooing in the darkness, and something so cold it burned pressed against his lips. He had been Brennen’s age the last time he had drunk directly from a cow’s udder but his gums remembered the method to coax out milk, and with the first drop he felt heat returning to his limbs. His hand went to her flabby breast and squeezed, frigid as what it was, his slurping mixing with her rising moans; a nearby bear retreated up the slope in search of less sinister prey.

  “Enough,” she said, stroking his snow-dusted hair, “that’s not for you.”

  Heinrich whimpered when she tore her withered teat away, and he regained his legs in pursuit. Her scowl made him reconsider, and together they began walking once more. Unnaturally invigorated, he followed her off the road and down the mountainside, her hunched shoulders all he could make out in the swirling blizzard. That night they threaded through crevasses treacherous in sunlit summer and scaled sheer sheets of rock without incident, arriving in her wooded vale just before dawn.