The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  “What?” Blood oozed from Hegel’s cavernous nostrils.

  “Who?” Manfried’s cropped ear had reopened, matting his chin and neck.

  “I go to church,” Martyn said, unable to keep his head from rocking from side to side at the sight of them. “Perhaps you would care to join me?”

  Hegel gave Manfried a concerned look but he need not have worried.

  “Nah.” Manfried stained Hegel’s pillow with his face. “Nuthin for us there.”

  “But how else will you confess?”

  “Confess what?” Hegel asked.

  “We ain’t sinned,” said Manfried, opening a bottle.

  “Every man sins, Manfried,” replied Martyn.

  “Nah, he’s right,” Hegel agreed.

  “Thank you, Hegel.” Martyn smiled.

  “I mean my brother’s right.” Hegel sniffled blood into his beard. “We ain’t done nuthin might displease Her.”

  “Nevertheless-” Martyn began but Manfried swelled before him.

  “Neverthemore, Priest, will you accuse us a sinnin! Think killin demons’ a sin? What bout witches? Hackin up heretics require us to lick your ears, that it?”

  “Hegel.” Martyn looked to the apparently less volatile Grossbart. “I meant no disrespect, to you or your brother, only that we all sin in our weakness.”

  “Tell him that.” Hegel reclined on the broken bed. “Stead a disrespectin us both by talkin to me.”

  “What was it you said, Priest?” demanded Manfried.

  “I,” Martyn swallowed pride and spit, “I apologize, Master Grossbart, for implying you had a stained soul.”

  “I acknowledge your apology.” Manfried nodded. “And remind you that any sinnin and weakness on your part don’t reflect on us. We ain’t no beggars nor beg-hairs nor any other breed a blasphemer. We’s Grossbarts, and you’d do well to recollect that.”

  Disgusted with them and himself, Martyn turned to the door. “I will pray for you, Grossbarts, I hope this is not an imposition?”

  “Nah, it ain’t nuthin to us.” Hegel held a cool glass to his cheek.

  “When I give an account of your deeds to my superiors I will do so justly, and I am pleased our paths crossed for even a brief time. Farewell.”

  “You think bout gettin what’s due your way from the captain fore you leave?” Manfried asked. “Cause we ain’t savin you a share if you ain’t there to claim it.”

  “Take my share for yourselves.” Martyn shut the door on the Grossbarts and strode away, head held high.

  Rodrigo intercepted him on the stair and escorted him off the grounds. Certain questions were posed to and honestly answered by the priest, who looked a sight better for his bath. They parted at the gate when Rodrigo caught wind of Al-Gassur skulking in the overgrown garden surrounding the main building. Martyn stepped out into the street and made his way back through the wondrous city toward a reunion with his fold.

  Al-Gassur had set traps in the bushes and one yielded a plump pigeon, which he roasted in a dry, ivy-throttled fountain. Hearing Rodrigo approach, he grabbed his bottle and bird but before he could hop away Rodrigo snatched his cloak and spun him around.

  “A poacher too, eh?” Rodrigo raised his fist.

  “Please speak properly, sir,” Al-Gassur pleaded in German.

  “What’s this shift in tone?” Rodrigo asked, obliging the beggar.

  “To please my revered employers, I will only speak so that they too will always comprehend.” Al-Gassur batted his gooey eyes at Rodrigo.

  “Those ignoble Grossbarts?” Rodrigo scowled, seizing Al-Gassur’s earlobe.

  “Present,” said Hegel.

  “And accountable,” added Manfried.

  “What you doin with our Arab?” Hegel stepped around the shrubbery.

  “Merely inquiring as to his presence outside his prescribed chambers.” Rodrigo relinquished the ear with a pinch.

  “Honorable Hegel. Magnificent Manfried.” Al-Gassur awkwardly bowed, concealing the pigeon in his tunic. “I spied you through the boughs approaching, and wondered what purpose such masters as yourselves would find in such a low state as that which I presently inhabit?”

  “Eh? Shut it.” Manfried looked back to Rodrigo. “Got any more jabber or can we speak to our property in peace?”

  “Pardons, pardons.” Rodrigo raised his palms and backed away, his immaculate clothes catching in the brambles and spoiling his aristocratic posturing. “I leave you to yourselves. Tonight you will dine in your chambers and I shall trouble you no more until the morrow.”

  “See that you can keep a promise that simple,” Hegel said dismissively. “Now then, Arab.”

  “Yes?”

  “Speak,” Manfried commanded.

  “Speak what?”

  “The words a your people.” Manfried gave the sniggering Hegel the hardest eye yet given.

  “You mean such words as caliph, ambrosia, and camel?” Al-Gassur could not understand their reasoning.

  “Yeah, like them.” Manfried’s fingers beckoned. “More, and without the proper speech.”

  “Ah, you wish to hear me speak as I would to a countryman?” Enlightenment brightened Al-Gassur’s face.

  “Yeah, tell my brother to get stuffed like he was yours stead a mine,” quipped Hegel.

  “Do it and see what happens,” said Manfried. “Say somethin simple, like the grave’s full a gold for those what brave the mold.”

  “Immediately, illustrious owner.” Al-Gassur bowed, and let out a long string of gibberish-and gibberish proper, as opposed to the language of those who dwell in the sandy lands of the south. Al-Gassur had neither heard nor spoken a word of Arabic since his youth, the bulk of the intervening years spent learning the tongues of those he sought to fleece. The random sounds his mouth produced pleased the Grossbarts, however, who grinned and nodded at his nonsense.

  “Told you!” Manfried hooted. “What’s that mean, then?”

  “The grave holds no gold save for yellow mold.” Al-Gassur bowed again, hoping he had remembered the poem properly. He had not, but this did not displease his audience.

  “Too oft the truth.” Hegel nodded. “He’ll do as well as any other.”

  “Cept there ain’t any other,” said Manfried.

  “Begging more pardons than I am deserving.” Al-Gassur’s leaden eyes glimmered. “What will I do for?”

  “For whatever pleases us,” said Manfried.

  “Which ain’t much presently, so stay unseen and unheard lest you face our judgment,” elaborated Hegel.

  “The matter of an instant.” Al-Gassur bowed even lower, almost losing his pigeon. “I shall be at your disposal day and night, either here or in the porcine quarters.”

  “How’s that?” Manfried looked around.

  “The barn.” Al-Gassur’s retrieved his crutch and slunk away, mulling over his recent employment.

  The Grossbarts ambled down the overgrown paths of the garden, clever horticulture making the grounds seem far more spacious than they actually were. Neither would admit how awed he was by their current situation, Barousse’s stinginess notwithstanding. When dusk came they invaded the kitchen and made obnoxious demands of the cook and her scrawny husband. They ate two meals there before retiring to bathe, with instructions for the next meal to be delivered directly to the tub.

  The Grossbarts basked in the opulent house and slept deeply, awaking the following morning to Rodrigo banging on their doors. He waited with them until food and wine arrived, and when they did not offer him any of theirs he sent for his own. Well fed and tipsy, the Grossbarts finally acknowledged his presence.

  “What’s the order a the day, then?” asked Manfried.

  “You will accompany me to be outfitted for your journey.” Rodrigo handed his plate to the hovering servant girl, flashing her an awkward smile. “Thank you, Marguerite. Shall we be off?”

  “Wanna talk with the captain,” Hegel belched.

  “You may request an audience later this evening, b
ut until then, there is the matter of equipping you.”

  “With a boat?” Manfried elbowed his brother, nodding enthusiastically.

  “What? No. With new clothes, and armor and weapons if you require them, as well as any other items you may find essential to your voyage.”

  “He told you where we’s headed, then?” Hegel scowled, displeased the captain would reveal their destination.

  “Yes, not that it is any matter to me.” Rodrigo stiffened. “There are much more pressing matters facing the captain, and your presence only serves as a distraction to the upcoming trials awaiting our attention.”

  “Ours as in you and us?” Manfried pinned on his cloak.

  “As in myself and the captain.” Rodrigo led them out.

  The Grossbarts insisted they retrieve cheese and bread from the kitchen before embarking into the city. The thronged roads passed around and often through buildings far grander than Barousse’s, even the narrowest of the bridges they crossed gilded with ornate carvings. Rodrigo suggested they hire one of the small boats bobbing beside them in the canals to carry them on their rounds but the Grossbarts refused, and their displeasure became compounded when their guide informed them the chief cemetery lay on an island inaccessible by foot.

  Winding through the narrow streets they spent the better part of the day purchasing chain mail shirts, shields, new boots, clothes, satchels, and anything else they could think of when it became apparent Rodrigo paid for everything they wanted. Their guide drew the line at a supposed Arab device wraught of iron and glass that not even the peddler could guess the purpose of yet still demanded a small fortune to part with. Several stops at alehouses were made, and by mid-afternoon all three were drunk. Rodrigo stumbled onto a quay, and here the Brothers were afforded their first glimpse of the sea.

  “Thought it’d be bigger,” Hegel lied, having envisioned a body of water no larger than the lake outside Bad Endorf.

  “Course you can’t see it all from here,” Manfried explained, mistaking cloudbanks on the horizon for the opposite shore. “Said that pond off the Danube weren’t big as you’d thought and it still took us forever and a day to get round.”

  “My brother hated the ocean,” Rodrigo murmured, “said it could not be trusted. Seems the road cannot be trusted, either.”

  “Fall off a wagon, get up and walk.” Hegel swayed, staring down the quay. “Off a boat, you can’t do nuthin but die.”

  “Know how to swim?” asked Rodrigo.

  “You callin us witches?” Manfried shoved his beard in Rodrigo’s face.

  “Any man who gets on a boat had best know what to do if he goes over its side.” Rodrigo recoiled from Manfried’s foul breath.

  “Swimmin’s for fish same as flyin’s for birds,” said Hegel.

  “Yes, but-”

  “But nuthin. Tryin to trick us into drownin?” Manfried squinted in the twilight to see the lie in Rodrigo’s eyes.

  “I meant to advise you, as any good Christian advises another, and nothing more.” Rodrigo haughtily drew away. “By Marco’s mighty morals, I meant no trickery!”

  “Marco’s that ox what minded our Arab when we showed up, yeah?” asked Hegel.

  “What?” said Rodrigo. “No! Ah, yes, he is named such as well, I forget, but I meant a different Marco. The saint who guards our city.”

  “You heard a him?” Hegel asked his brother.

  “Course I have,” Manfried lied.

  “He rests in the basilica I pointed out earlier.” Rodrigo clumsily motioned back they way they had come.

  “What’s he buried with?” Manfried followed Rodrigo’s gaze.

  “Nothing,” Rodrigo said quickly, appalled at what he correctly assumed was the line of thought Manfried had embarked upon. “Back to the manse, then.”

  They arrived after dark, the tolling of church bells reminding the Grossbarts of Father Martyn. He had appeared an exceptionally unheretical priest to the Brothers, and his donating any share of the loot they might extort from Barousse raised him in their esteem even further. They stumbled through the kitchen, scalding their fingers when they snatched food from the pans. The cook shooed them out, which almost provoked Manfried to strike the woman.

  Gaining the opposite hallway, they let Rodrigo take the lead and unlock the captain’s door. Barousse stood before the fire, his back to them while they took places across the table. Servants followed them in, cluttering the massive board with steaming platters and bowls. Only when their lessers had retreated and Rodrigo latched the door did Barousse turn to face them.

  Alexius Barousse’s eyes were rough, purple craters staring out of his craggy face but in their depths lurked no sorrow, only a greedy glimmer to match that of the Grossbarts. He bade them eat and drink, which they did with gusto until heads reeled and guts bulged. Rodrigo nodded in his chair but sobered up when the captain finally addressed them.

  “I have sent word for my maiden to be repaired and taken out of dry dock, and as Rodrigo has prepared you, all we need do is wait until she is ready and then we sail south.” The captain raised his glass. “We will retake what was lost, and gain what never was!”

  In better circumstances Rodrigo would have responded with something more solid than spraying wine from his nose.

  “Glad you came around.” Manfried hoisted his glass, drunkenness nullifying any surprise he might otherwise have harbored.

  “Sensible,” Hegel slurred, raising a bottle.

  “What?” Rodrigo coughed.

  “Too long have I sat mired by a tide that fills my boots but stirs not my soul.” Barousse stood and stalked along the table, wagging a finger at the assembled. “Cowardice has haunted me alongside my family.”

  “What’s that mean?” Hegel kicked his brother, who shrugged and repeated the question to the captain.

  “Gone!” Barousse thundered. “Taken by Triton or God or whatever dark thing sought a price for my transgression! Gone! Swallowed up, like it swallows up everything from boat to man to mountain! Gone!”

  “Leave him alone,” Rodrigo hissed, then had wine splashed in his face by the raging captain.

  “They will speak! And I will answer! Secrets are for thieves and the dead, and we are neither!”

  “True words.” Manfried handed a fresh bottle to the captain.

  “Over a decade I have cowered and been coward, thousands of nights tossing in my horrors, thousands of days begging forgiveness, all in vain, in vain! I knew when I sent her away, I knew that first night my woes would not end through such a route! When one spends their life on her back they cannot expect to ride off it. Not without price!”

  The Grossbarts loved shouting, and Hegel fired back in turn, “How and why?!”

  “My sons! Taken on a skiff not a league out, a day’s fishing turned black with their mother’s grief and red with their blood! A wave out of nowhere, a maelstrom from the calm!”

  “My father with them,” Rodrigo muttered, but no one cared.

  “And your wife?!” Manfried bellowed.

  “Slipped from a gondola into the lagoon, where sea-vines snatched and pulled! So they say, so they say! Not one body given back for their last rites, not one spared an eternity crashing into each other and a million more of the damned, that coldest Hell below the surface!”

  “Except you!” exclaimed Hegel.

  “Through and to my shame! Watching my fortunes dwindle, my name muddied, my ship eaten by dryrot, my nerve softened, all for a song! Would that I could undo my error, would that I could send her back! But I will! Now, Grossbarts, I will!”

  “Who?” Manfried asked, his suspicions cheating him of a forceful yell.

  “The Nix! The Siren! She whom I caught! She whom I sent away, but not before she cursed us all! She whom you have brought back! She who took Luchese and Umberto, and dearest Mathilde, who loved me even when I brought a succubus into our home! She who took Italo, and a decade later his son, your brother, my godchild! Ennio, poor, honest Ennio!”

  “Come on t
hen!” Hegel toppled his chair gaining his feet. “Let’s put’er to the blade!”

  “Never!” The captain’s cutlass appeared in his hand and sliced the air in front of Hegel. “I would sooner put it to your throat or mine! I have failed enough! No masonry will blot out the sound, not stone nor wood nor crashing coast will silence her! Over the peaks it haunted my dreams, and before I banished her I cut out her tongue with these ten finger bones of mine, all for naught! No scars, no blemishes, just a fat red tongue! Even time fears her and touches her not! If only-” Barousse fell back in his chair, sword clattering on the floor and face in his hands.

  “We’s experienced in the ways a witches,” Manfried murmured after a brief lull.

  “Got your paramour, er palomar, uh, best interest in mind,” agreed Hegel.

  “Erp,” Rodrigo managed, every rumor he had heard growing up in the house of Barousse confirmed in a storm of shouting. In his years of service to the captain he had become accustomed to the wild mood swings and tantrums but never had he seen any, himself included, taken into Barousse’s confidence so fully. Perhaps the old man had finally cracked, he thought, the strain of the woman’s reappearance too much for his injured soul.

  “Leave me,” Barousse muttered through meshed fingers, and this time the Grossbarts departed without snatching the last word.

  XIX. Like the Beginning, the End of Winter Is Difficult to Gauge in the South

  Al-Gassur received his payments on time, but that pittance was appropriately supplemented by the food brought to him from the house and the birds he caught in the garden. Fate’s wheel had spun him into the yard of one of Venezia’s only estates to boast even a tiny plot of land allowed to run so riot. Better still, on the rare days when the Brothers left the manse to Grossbart upon the town he could creep out and spend an honest day begging without the worry of being absent when sought. Confident his employers would not notice the discrepancy, he periodically unbound one leg and wrapped the other, lest his limb atrophy from lack of use and truly become lost. A veteran of a vague crusade inspired more charity in the populace than a simple Arab come to the city by Providence and his own two legs.