The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  “Need Ellis, you said.” Manfried snorted.

  “Aye, coward Ennio may a been, but he got pure fore he died.”

  “Suppose so.” Manfried nodded. “Sight better than Ponce lettin that demon in, damn straight. Ennio’s sittin with Mary as we converse.”

  “And what you think a that other one? Drowned in melted snow!”

  “Who cares? They’s all’s weak as these ones, we’s gonna be princes a Italia and never need go to Arabtown!”

  The day heated up, snow turning to sludge and impeding their progress until they left the gate and began winding up the road. Here the trail resembled stream more than highway but they persevered and a short time later stopped inside the gate of the monastery. With the demon safely destroyed, they could both retrieve their gear and finally get a peek inside that crypt.

  “Be back in a bit,” Manfried called to the woman but got no response. He dallied but Hegel egged him on, and they hurried around the side, through the door and into the cemetery. They splashed through the mud and fell upon the sacks they had left behind. Their crossbows were wet but appeared serviceable, and the bottles they had pinched from the tavern were intact.

  “Not demon, Devil, witch, or weather will keep us from our richly pleasure!” Manfried toasted.

  “Bless Mary, and bless us too!” Hegel intoned solemnly, then they drank and clapped each other on the back.

  Stowing the booze, they eagerly pushed open the crypt door and stepped inside. Hegel got their last rushlight aflame and swung it around the cramped interior, revealing three stone tombs. The bronze ornamentation they ignored, setting their prybars under the lids and putting them to their named use. Each contained an older skeleton than the last, but in the layers of dust and decay on the floors of the sarcophagi metal still glimmered. They fished out seven rings and a gold crucifix.

  “Can melt him down.” Manfried grinned, stowing it in a pouch.

  “Beauty better than any woman,” Hegel sighed, trying on a silver ring inlaid with green stones.

  “Speakin a such,” said Manfried, “I oughta check on’er.”

  “What for?”

  “See if, uh, she wants some food. Ain’t et in our presence, gotta be famished.”

  “That’s right civil a you, brother,” Hegel said. “Just be sure you don’t go pissin in our feedbag.”

  “How’s that?” Manfried turned in the doorway.

  “She noble or close enough. I’d reckon they’s smart enough to figure out we done somethin if somethin we do. So do all you can with your eyes, cause them hands a yours best stick to your own mecky self.”

  “You got a wicked, unchristian mind.” Manfried stormed off, Hegel chuckling and polishing his rings on the step of the crypt.

  Leaving the graveyard, Manfried noticed that the drapery covering the back of the wagon hung open. The only things inside were blankets and several boxes. Looking around, he saw a door on the rear of the monastery likewise ajar. Remembering that the demon had hinted at something regarding the abbey, he grabbed his crossbow before advancing. Poking his head in, he found it far too dark to attempt without both light and Hegel. He shouted for his brother, and when Hegel arrived they spent the heftier part of a little while getting the rushlight relit.

  “Gonna claim this ax,” Hegel informed his brother. “Sword got buried back at the tavern and I might need a sharp edge stead a my pick.”

  “Yours til somethin better turns up, then it’s mine again.”

  “Proper. My bow looks a mite warped, so lets hope we ain’t gotta use’em.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t shoot less you’s sure you gotta. No sense puttin a hole in our feedbag.” Manfried held up the sputtering reed.

  “How’s that? Oh.”

  Manfried led the way, Hegel instantly put off by both the darkness and the eye-watering stench they now equated with the pestilence. At the end of the hall stood a large door, and, exchanging a nervous glance, they shoved it open.

  Unmistakably the kitchen, this room housed piles of wooden plates and cooking implements, as well as rotting food of all varieties. The high windows were boarded up for winter, but Hegel noticed a sconce in the wall and removed the torch, lighting it from his brother’s rushlight. Manfried went directly across to the opposite hallway but Hegel tarried, inspecting several oaken casks.

  “What you got there?” Manfried asked from the hallway.

  “Beer.” Hegel jammed the bung back in place. “Quality, too.”

  “Later. We need our feedbag fore we can drink.”

  “You liked that, did you?”

  Halfway down the hall they could go no farther, the stink gagging them. Following Hegel’s prudent suggestion, they dipped their sleeves in the beer barrel and held them to their nostrils. They could then advance, although both were becoming heady from the odors.

  Passing into the huge chapel, they discovered the cause of the smell. Over fifty bodies were heaped atop the pews, the outlines indistinct from the copious mold growing on them. Children and mothers had rotted together into hideous shapes, the faces of the dead weeping gray slime from every orifice. Monks were piled on women in suggestive positions, the entire putrefying mass an obvious labor of devotion. Even with their ale-soaked sleeves vomit assaulted the Grossbarts’ esophagi, and they staggered back down the hall, passing under a large cross smeared with excrement and pus. Shutting the doors on either end of the hallway helped but they could not get the smell out of their noses.

  Again Manfried felt delighted and Hegel disturbed by the woman’s sudden reappearance. She sat on a table in the kitchen nibbling dried fish from a small crate beside her. Manfried went to her side and reached for a fish but she knocked the lid shut. Manfried felt a mix of anger and reproach, his watchful brother scowling in contempt. Hegel wanted fish, too, but if Manfried would not snatch it away neither would he. Hegel filled his porridge-crusted pot with beer and munched on the least moldy piece of bread he could find.

  Manfried stared up at the angelic woman, at a loss as to what he could do or say. She did not seem to mind his attention, which any respectable person would have found disturbing at the least. Hegel kept poking around, and in addition to the beer barrel he found a smaller cask of schnapps. He rolled this out the hall to the wagon, and was dismayed to see the sun already sinking.

  “Light’ll be gone soon,” Hegel informed his brother.

  “So we’s campin out here.”

  “Inside? Fuck that. Catch us the pest. Better camp out in that barrow.”

  “What?” Manfried broke his vigil.

  “Sleep with the nobility. Might be a touch dead for your predilection, but one must adapt.”

  “I swear, brother, you shame the Virgin with your insinuations.” Manfried glanced up at the smiling woman, and thanked Mary his beard concealed his coloring cheeks. He did not want Hegel getting the right impression. Not only was she the prettiest thing he had ever seen-save gold-but she tolerated his presence instead of recoiling with revulsion.

  “Gotta burn them corpses.” Hegel had brought his satchel and deposited his oil bottle on a counter.

  “Not gonna waste it on them dead ones?” This brought Manfried away from his infatuation.

  “Ain’t gonna drag’em to a hole, and damn sure ain’t diggin one under’em. Leaves us with the torch.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fail to reckon how it’s our responsibility.”

  “Cause it’ll ire the Devil.”

  “Right enough for me.” Manfried retrieved his oil as well, then they went to the church.

  Each restrained his vomit, oiling the mound of rancid bodies. They heaped pews on the revolting mass and set it ablaze, tripping over each other to avoid the flames. The corpses popped and hissed and smoke engulfed the monastery, the Brothers hoofing it to the rear courtyard. The woman had returned to the wagon, and after cursing each other’s foolishness, they risked the burning building to roll out the beer barrel.

&nbs
p; That night they stowed the horses in the small stable beside the gate and the Brothers camped in the crypt, thinking it bad luck to sleep in one of the outbuildings after they had burned a church. The woman refused to leave the wagon, and since they had secured the front gate Hegel reasoned she would be safe. Manfried grumbled a bit but soon forgot everything but the joy of drinking with his brother in a ransacked graveyard.

  Enough snow remained to offer the churchyard some semblance of solemnity when the sun disappeared and the moon rose. They boasted to each other of their prowess in slaying demons and monsters, to say nothing of cracking open tombs. Then came a period of serious theological discussion regarding the nature of cowardice, evil, and the Virgin. When Hegel shifted the conversation toward women and their natural inclination toward witchery and deception Manfried yawned, replaced the bung in the beer cask, and went to sleep.

  Hegel stayed awake long enough to chisel their mark into the front of the crypt’s door. His uncle had taught him it was good form to let any Grossbarts who came after know which tombs were already cleaned. Illiterate though every Grossbart was, the symbol was known by all who carried that accursed name.

  Late in the night when the fire in the doorway had died, Manfried awoke to music drifting in. Hegel snored beside him, arms wrapped around the keg. Manfried went to the door and looked out, and to his surprise the snow had melted and in the moonlight the cemetery had become a placid lagoon with only the tips of the highest tombstones jutting above the surface. A ripple cut through the water before him and by the glistening pale skin he knew it was her. She clambered onto an exposed barrow, the music even louder now that she had surfaced.

  She smiled at him, only the intervening crosses shielding her exposed body. The song touched Manfried in a place he had never acknowledged, and he walked down the crypt’s stairs into the water. When it reached his waist he paused, realizing how frigid the pond was. The strength in his legs disappeared, and with a smile on his lips he pitched forward, sinking instantly in the icy liquid.

  Hegel sat up in the dark, his heart pounding from a dream he could not remember. He blinked and lay back down, but then he detected a faint splashing in the stillness, and the unease of his unremembered dream haunted him. As he stumbled to the door, the moonbeams reflecting off the snow blinded him for a moment. Then he saw Manfried at the foot of the crypt, face-down in a puddle. Hegel jumped down, rolled him over, and punched him in the gut. Through dark lips Manfried began vomiting water and coughing, and the astonished Hegel hurried back inside and brought him a bowl of the monks’ beer.

  “What in the name a fuck, brother!” Hegel yelled. “You gotten moontouched or somethin?”

  “Dreamin.” Manfried shuddered, sipping the alcohol.

  “Bout what?”

  “Can’t really say.”

  “Get on in,” Hegel sighed, helping Manfried up.

  Hegel started a new fire inside the crypt and shut the door most of the way. Manfried curled around the blaze, his beard and chest soaking. He nodded off immediately but Hegel stayed awake for several hours, watching his brother. Something worried him, and he went outside to make sure. Right enough, the pool in which he had discovered Manfried drowning was covered in a thick layer of ice except where his brother’s face had entered it. A chunk of broken masonry lay beside the hole, and Hegel had a sick feeling in his bowels. The wind picked up, stirring the snow around him as he stared at the still-smoking monastery. He spit twice, praised the Virgin, and went to bed.

  They set off at daybreak. Accusations went back and forth at the wisdom in setting fire to the corpses before thoroughly checking all the rooms for hidden treasure. Monks might not have much in the way of coin, but surely a substantial amount might be found in the abbot’s quarters. The initial hope that the stone building would keep everything but the chapel safe had proved false, for the blaze had gutted all the interior rooms save the monks’ cells and the kitchen.

  They did not trust the meat but besides grain they brought a bushel of turnips and a sack of mildly moldering rye bread. Hegel sniffed out three wheels of cheese, so the breakfast they ate on the bench surpassed any in memory. The road proved treacherous, the previous day’s heat combined with a windy night having resulted in more ice than snow. They wound up the mountain-side all morning, and when they reached the pass they both spit back the way they had come. Manfried refused to discuss his dream, instead turning the talk to their good fortune. Hegel had to agree, things could not be better and they would doubtless find themselves lords of Gyptland in the very near future.

  The sky went gray in the afternoon and snow fell, summoning more curses and a slower road. Despite the deepening twilight Manfried insisted on continuing rather than stopping on the narrow track. When they almost went over the edge of a cliff bordering the road Hegel snatched the reins and they agreed breaking for the night would be a sharp plan. From Hegel’s perspective, the only thing dumber than a horse was four horses.

  Several miserable days and worse nights later, they plodded along an identically icy stretch of thin road when, shortly before dusk, Hegel began feeling his preternatural worry building up inside like a bad case of gas. He grew increasingly anxious, finally stringing his crossbow and insisting he walk ahead of the wagon to guarantee their safety. Rounding a wide bend with a sheer drop-off on the right and a steep rise pimpled with snowy boulders on the left, Hegel noticed a sharp bump in the road. Pushing ahead, he found it to be loose rocks piled across the trail, lightly dusted with snow. It would take only a few minutes to scatter them enough for the wagon to pass but their presence bothered him immensely. Manfried had brought the vehicle up behind him when Hegel jumped and yelled to his brother.

  “Stay clear!”

  “Eh?”

  “Don’t move!” But instead of Hegel, a massive boulder fifty paces up the slope shouted this. Squinting, they made out a dark shape behind it.

  “Wasn’t plannin on it!” Hegel responded, slowly pulling his crossbow off his back.

  “What if we do?!” Manfried shouted angrily at the unseen man, urging the horses on another few steps.

  The boulder rocked violently, snow dropping from its summit. “Hell to pay, rest assured! I just want to speak for a moment!”

  “Then come down here, so we can do that stead a yellin!” Hegel called. In a lower voice, and in Grossbartese to boot, he addressed his brother. “No highwayman’s pinchin our loot.”

  “Yeah, but if they was thick in numbers they wouldn’t risk smashin the wagon,” Manfried replied, his own crossbow loaded on the bench.

  The man yelled something in yet another language they did not understand.

  “Speak proper, you sneak-thievin fucker!” Manfried barked.

  “You don’t recognize your name?” the man shouted, and the boulder rocked again.

  “Easy on, you godless cunt, we gotta woman in here!” Hegel shot back.

  “Blaspheme at your own peril, serpent!” The boulder shifted violently but settled instead of rolling.

  “What sort a footpad accuses Christian soldiers a blasphemy?” Manfried shouted, sensing a common ground.

  “Did not the Son warn of your ravening kind upon a similar location?” he called back.

  “See now!” Hegel responded, “We ain’t met no sons but we slain a damn demon, so your thievin ass had best recognize the quality at hand!”

  The man did not say anything but jumped out from behind the boulder, squinting down at the Grossbarts, which is when Hegel’s quarrel struck him. Hegel tore up the slope toward the downed ruffian, pick in hand. Manfried stood on the bench, scanning the snowy scree with his crossbow leveled.

  The man had almost crawled back to the log he had jammed under the boulder as a lever when Hegel reached him. The pick rose as the man rolled onto his back, jabbering at Hegel, the bolt skewering his forearm. Hegel almost spiked the man’s face but stopped in time, and uttering an oath to Mary, threw down his weapon and knelt beside him.

  Seeing his brot
her duck out of sight Manfried shouted, “Careful, brother! Slit his treacherous throat and get back here!”

  “We fucked up!” Hegel responded, his voice cracking. “He’s a monk!”

  “A what?!”

  “A monk, damn you!”

  “Oh Hell.” Manfried sat down heavily on the seat.

  “You’s gonna be rightened soon,” Hegel told his victim. “Sorry bout that.”

  The man groaned, allowing his would-be prey to cut off the arrowhead protruding from his arm. Blood splattered on them both when Hegel pulled the shaft out, and continued welling forth even when they bound the wounds in strips of the man’s tattered habit. Clapping him on the back, Hegel helped him up and together they slowly went down to the road.

  Manfried greeted them with a bowl of beer. “Now then, Friar, have a sip a this and then see how heretical we strike you.”

  The shaken man balked, but Hegel sealed the offer. “It’s made by your folk, so I reckon there’s no sin in it.”

  Gulping the beer and making a face he swooned and fell. Confusion, exhaustion, pain, and exposure had sapped his energy, and he did not awake until the moon had risen and the Grossbarts had made camp down the road. After much haranguing Manfried had consented to the liberation of more blankets from the wagon’s occupant, and with fresh snow powdering them they sat bundled up, watching the man stir.

  The stanched wound made him whimper even before coming to, and when he did open his eyes he started, unsure of where he lay and the company he kept. Then the man remembered, and he covered his baggy eyes with his hands. His tonsure had grown ragged, tufts of gray hair blooming on his pate above the lanky ring circling his head. His shaking hands eventually steadied, and then Manfried felt comfortable addressing him.

  “Apologies to you,” Manfried said. “Had we known what you was we wouldn’t a shot.”

  “Never,” Hegel agreed.

  “But you put us in a spot where we had no reason to suspect, you understand,” Manfried continued.