The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “Fortunate for you I had this Spirit of Saturn, Sister Gloria,” Paracelsus said as he rinsed the lead paste off his fingers. “I wish you to know that in this mortal flesh you have found an ageless hunger for knowledge, a timeless receptivity to the arcane and the so-called unnatural. We both know that all things come from nature, do we not, that God is a gardener, yes?”

  “Ah,” said Awa, simultaneously terrified and curious. “I think—”

  “You do, you do.” Paracelsus bobbed his head. “How many would listen, though? How many would admit that a Moor and a woman are both capable of thought, and the skull of even the Moorish woman must be tapped for milk like a coconut from her savage shores, the milk of knowledge, the elixir of information!”

  “What?” Awa took a step back, resolving to put the man down like a crazed animal if he tried to bore into her skull to get whatever milk he thought might be there, friend of Manuel’s or not. Their journey to Milan had been uneventful, although they had needed to hide from the retreating Imperial mercenaries as they approached the contested city, and upon gaining the walls Awa discovered it was unlike any place she had ever been, an overwhelming jumble of impressive buildings and once-impressive buildings reduced to rubble and ruin. Now, in the broken heart of Milan and the doctor’s clinic, Awa felt far less optimistic about her current prospects—the man was deranged, and the entire low building echoed with screams and wails.

  The actual hospital lay deeper in the city and was much larger and cleaner, but Paracelsus’s clinic was not intended for war wounds and mundane illnesses. Rather, the warehouse he had cordoned off with clothesline and sheets into something resembling an infirmary was devoted to treating the Great Pox, and with the siege finally ended the doctor was overjoyed to eject the combatants he had been forced to tend and return to his never-ending supply of syphilitics. After he finished adorning Awa in her disguise he led her out of the crowded storeroom and down the makeshift hallway, pointing from one curtained-off chamber to another and rattling off the required care.

  “But what is it?” Awa finally managed to sneak in a question as Paracelsus took a pull from his flask of schnapps. “I know what a pox is, but what is this particular pox? How is it caused and how is it spread and—”

  “The French Disease?” said Paracelsus, and, noting her continued confusion, he clapped a pudgy hand to his forehead. “The Italian Disease? Dutch Disease? Wherever-the-soldiers-or-sailors-or-whores-come-from Disease? I suppose they don’t teach such things in the convents, of course. I suspect it’s caused through contact with the infected, especially by coitus, intercourse, sex. The inflicted dribble their noxious fluids into one another, not that those high asses at the university would admit it. So long as you live up to your habit you won’t have much to fear, but tell that to all my deserters. It’s you and I for now, sister, everyone else has abandoned us for the real hospital.” The scorn in his voice was palpable to even a novice in the ways of nuance such as Awa.

  “But what does it do?” asked Awa, all of the patients obscured by the hanging sheets.

  “Why, it ravages the body and destroys the mind!” said Paracelsus with obvious relish, and suddenly snatching her arm, he dragged her between two curtains. A patient lay in a bed, staring at the ceiling. “Behold the wages of fornication, the cost of rutting like a beast!”

  Awa took a step toward the man. At first she took him to be an animated corpse, meaning Paracelsus knew more than he let on, and meaning she was in a great deal of danger. She turned to the doctor, convinced he was performing some strange experiments on the dead and masquerading it as a pox epidemic. Then she heard the patient’s wheezing breath and turned back in horror, disgusted and fascinated that life was capable of persisting in so decayed a vessel.

  The man’s face—no, his entire body—was rotting, the stench wafting from him something she had not experienced in quite some time. Paracelsus watched curiously as his new nurse approached the man instead of recoiling in horror. She did not even hold the clove oil–soaked sleeve of her habit to her nose, instead leaning in to get a closer look at the poor, damned mercenary.

  The spirit of the malady thrived in the man like maggots in a dead boar’s belly, Awa could see, the invader pulsing and wriggling through its victim, gobbling up spirit, flesh, and mind alike. She had never encountered so virulent and terrible a creature, and leaned ever closer, staring with wide eyes as it worked. She wondered if the little stowaway spirit she had picked up from Omorose their first night together would have grown into something so powerful if she had not caught and destroyed it early on. No, she decided, this was much worse.

  “Of course, there’s not much to do for them at this point but hope they die quickly, the doomed wretches,” said Paracelsus. The patient’s eyes grew wide at this and he tried to speak, a gurgling rasp escaping his blistered lips. Paracelsus frowned. “You are Swiss, aren’t you? Do you happen to speak any other languages, sister?”

  “A few,” said Awa in Spanish, and, lapsing back into German, whispered to the patient, “Would you like to die?”

  The man jerked away, shaking his head, and Awa withdrew her hand from his moist shoulder. Paracelsus was watching her curiously as she turned back around, and, also in Spanish, he said, “This isn’t that sort of clinic.”

  “Oh? And what sort of clinic is this?” Awa followed him out into the hall.

  “More than just hospice, if that’s what you’re driving at,” said Paracelsus. “Your task is to see the patients remain hydrated, fed, and as comfortable as their loathsome condition allows. The administering of any cures is the sole province of myself.”

  “So there’s a cure?” said Awa.

  “There’s a plant in New Spain that’s said to be effective, but I haven’t been able to lay hands on it. This leaves us with the traditional remedy, though I’ve yet to hit on a wholly effective method of administering the hydrargyrum.”

  “What’s hydrargyrum? A plant?”

  “Quicksilver,” said Paracelsus. “Tell me, Sister Gloria, would you spend a night in the arms of Venus if you knew it led to a life of mercury?”

  “What?”

  “Nor I, though I’ve pioneered some new delivery methods for the treatment, certainly more credible means than the fumigation those charlatans taught.”

  “The charlatans of the Schwarzwald?” Awa asked, his use of the term nearly identical in context to that of her old tutor’s.

  “Who?” Paracelsus blinked. “No, Ferrara, though the piss-gazers weren’t much better at Vienna. So-called universities, both as riddled with ignorance and superstition as these lost souls are riddled with pox, and with the same result—infection, proliferation, death.”

  “Oh,” said Awa. “Can I see this quicksilver?”

  “Certainly,” said Paracelsus. “I needed to refill my flask anyway.”

  Back in the storeroom, Paracelsus lit a lamp and set it on his cluttered table. Then he took a small metal pail with a wooden lid from a low shelf and heaved it onto the desk with a sloshing sound. Then he took two flasks from his pocket, one clay and one steel, and a small metal funnel. First he removed the stopper from the clay flask and knocked it back to make sure it was empty, then inserted the funnel and poured an amber liquid from a bottle on the table into the container, his lips counting off several seconds and then stopping the pour at the brink of overfilling his flask. Capping and pocketing it, he took a sip from the open bottle and passed it to Awa before placing the funnel in the steel container.

  Awa coughed on the liquor, prompting Paracelsus to snatch it back. “Careful, little sister, this is the real stuff. Now hold the beaker straight, over the bucket.”

  She obliged, savoring the heat the liquor had brought to her gasping breath. Then she saw a stranger marvel still as Paracelsus removed the lid from the pail and turned to retrieve a ladle. The iron bucket, which appeared to be lined with some sort of stone or wood, was full of molten metal, its surface rippling, yet it emitted no heat. Spooning up the
liquid, he beamed at Awa and motioned for her to hold the flask and funnel over the surface. She did so and he slowly filled it to the brim with the quicksilver. It was beautiful and alive with spirit, utterly unlike iron or other dead metals, and the doctor must have noticed her fascination for he took the bottle from her, pocketed it and the funnel, and bid her hold out her cupped hand. She did, and he ladled a little of the mercury into her palm.

  “Oh!” Awa let the cold fluid roll around, and bending her pinky inward was able to brush the surface of the tiny pool. Unlike blood or grease it did not leave a residue on her fingertip, and she was about to taste it when Paracelsus raised his eyebrows and pointed back to the bucket. She reluctantly let it run down the side of her hand into its pail, and he put the lid back on and returned it to the shelf.

  “I’ve been known to get my flasks mixed up,” Paracelsus said with a wink. “Not that the debauchees complain to have a taste of schnapps, mind you.”

  “That’s truly wondrous,” said Awa. “But is it really a good cure if it’s poisonous in its own right?”

  “What makes you think it’s poisonous?” said Paracelsus, not angry or accusatory, but with some other, stranger emotion in his eager, bulging eyes. “You were unacquainted with it, I believe?”

  “Oh.” Awa swallowed, knowing she could not very well tell him she had asked the spirits of the mercury as she held them in her palm. “I—”

  Awa was saved for a second time by Manuel as he was assisted into the clinic by two of von Stein’s guards, his clumsily bandaged hand spattering blood on the hay-covered floor as he was half dragged up the hallway. His low moans would have been lost amidst the usual syphilitic symphony of the clinic had they not come in through the door beside the storeroom, and so Awa went straight out, followed by Paracelsus. Any protests the doctor had about bringing a non–venereally afflicted patient into his clinic instead of the regular hospital were silenced by Awa and the guards, all of whom turned angrily on Paracelsus when he started in.

  “Oh, it’s Manuel, isn’t it?” Paracelsus finally observed as the guards trotted out of the stinking clinic. “Let’s get him a bed, then.”

  They made Manuel as comfortable as they could in a cot beside the storeroom, no real distance from the stench and cries of the infected. Paracelsus examined the hand, lamenting that Manuel had not taken von Stein’s weapon. “I possess an elixir that goes on the blade instead of the cut, and had we the tool of your injury we might undo its mischief!”

  “Sounds like a witch to me,” Manuel said through gritted teeth when the doctor went to his storeroom, leaving him alone with Awa. “How’re you getting on?”

  “Quiet,” said Awa. “He did this to you, your master?”

  “Yeah,” said Manuel. “But I gather that’s the worst of it. That Inquisitor that wanted you’s been kicked out of the Church, so his order to catch you’s void.”

  “Did you find out how this Inquisitor knew of me, or why he wants me?”

  “I was a little fucking busy being shot to ask, actually,” said Manuel. “If you’d care to ask von Swine yourself—”

  “I intend to,” said Awa, getting out of the chair she had brought beside the pallet. “And I’ll also ask him where he gets off threatening the family and injuring the flesh of a man of more character and worth than the god he claims to worship.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Manuel, catching her wrist with his good hand. “Damage is done, isn’t? And you’re off his mind as well, which was a boon I didn’t expect but am happy for. So sit down, calm down, and tell me how the doctor’s treating you.”

  “I’ll tend to you.” Awa lowered her voice. “His remedies are … suspect. He uses wet metals that don’t seem to do much but make him a little crazy.”

  “Oh.” Manuel nodded. “And what will you use?”

  “Is there a graveyard near this place?”

  “Never mind.” Manuel shook his head decisively. “Bring on the wet metals. And the drink. He’s got spirits here?”

  “Spirits?” Awa whispered, her eyes widening. “I wondered if he might. He seems to know more—”

  “I’ve just the thing, Manuel!” Paracelsus returned from his office carrying a large board laden with terrible-looking tools, and setting this across his patient’s thighs, he shooed Awa out of her chair and began inspecting the wound. “Sister Gloria, if you would be so kind as to take a pitcher around to water the weeds.”

  “What?”

  “The patients?” Paracelsus arched an eyebrow.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Awa said after catching Manuel’s smile. “Call if you need me.”

  There were several rain barrels set just outside the main door, and Awa filled her jug with the brownish water many times throughout the day as she tended to the patients. Most were not as bad as the first man she had seen, and there were also a few women down on the left side, closest to the building’s only fireplace. Once she had watered them all she brought them gruel from the large cauldron that had been warming since breakfast, then collected the bowls and washed them in a rain barrel. After this she emptied their chamber pots, and then cleaned the beds and bodies of those too wasted away to reach the pot at all. Manuel was dozing in bed, Paracelsus dozed in his chair, and on Awa worked into the night.

  Taking a break from her already intuitive routine, Awa slid past Paracelsus and examined Manuel’s hand. The tincture Paracelsus had smeared on the wound stunk like old mushrooms, and Awa could tell at a glance it would fester before a week was out. With a sigh she wrapped it back up and returned to the first patient she had met, the desperate, decaying man. He did not wake as she entered, and drawing the sheet along its string behind her to cordon them off, she killed him with her touch.

  “Doctor,” Awa said, and when he did not rise, “Paracelsus!”

  “Yes!” The physician started awake. “What?”

  “One of them died. The man you showed me?”

  “The Swiss? Well, I’m Swiss, Manuel’s Swiss, but the Swiss? The one I showed you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, drag him outside, then.” Paracelsus stood and stumbled toward his storeroom.

  “And what then?”

  “Eh?”

  “After I take his body outside, what then?” said Awa.

  “Leave him in the street,” Paracelsus said slowly, gesturing with his arms as though she were deaf, “and come back inside. Someone takes them to the potter’s for us; we can’t well be expected to do everything.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Paracelsus, retiring into his storeroom.

  Awa returned to the man she had murdered, and, cutting his left hand off at the wrist with her ibex dagger, she dragged him out onto the damp street. After she had cleaned up the smear his stump had left on the floor she set to cleaning the hand and digging out the needed portion, going back and forth between the dead flesh she was working with and Manuel’s injury to make sure she did not miss anything. She went wide in case there were internal injuries she could not see, and then dipped into the storeroom for cooking gear rather than tossing it all into the gruel cauldron.

  Paracelsus slept on the floor with his arms and left leg wrapped around a sword almost as tall as he was, and stepping over him, she retrieved a small pot as well as a mortar and pestle. After rinsing out the powdery residue in the latter and scraping out the black crust in the former, Awa ground up the pieces of hand she had taken, bones and all. Making a pudding from them, she set the pot over the low fire in the rear of the clinic. She was almost done when a shadow fell over her, a shadow much taller than Paracelsus or Manuel, and Awa went still, wondering if the disposal of the dead in Milan was not as casual as the doctor had implied.

  “Imma have some of that puddin,” a gruff voice said in clumsy Italian, and turning to answer her guest Awa saw the largest woman she had ever seen hulking over her like some animate larch or ash.

  “This is for another patient, madam,” said Awa. �
��But if you return to your cot I’ll make you some as well.”

  “Harrumph.” The woman squatted down, her clothes less soiled but just as pungent as most of the patients’. She had yet to acquire the stink of impending death, however, and only the fragrances of old sweat, blood, and halitosis wafted from her. Even hunched over she was a giantess, with hair the color of dead grass pulled back in a ponytail as thick as its namesake. She only had a few of the lesions on her face but Awa could see the spirit of the malady had already rooted itself deeply in the woman. “Wait ’ere with the good stink, if it’s all the same.”

  “My name is Sister Gloria,” said Awa, happy to be talking to another living woman for the first time in far too long. “ I’m a nun who tends to the sick.”

  The woman peered at the bandaged Awa and shook her head skeptically. “Ya don’t look so good yourself, Gloria. If I’d knowed that’s whatcha got up ta in the abbeys I’d ’ave married the Christ myself!”

  Then she made a terrible chortling sound like a consumptive man gasping for air and she slapped Awa so hard on the shoulder that the mock nun toppled to the side. The woman immediately helped her up, apologizing profusely. “Don’t take no offense ta my strongarm nor my fat tongue, this pox ’as me spoutin at the mouth like a piked pig.”

  “It’s alright,” said Awa, “but I’ve got to feed my other patient now.”

  “Manuel, is it?” said the woman. “Recognize that snivelin anywhere. He’s mad, mind, he’ll wade in with the best an’ the beast, but for such a fuckin martyr he bellyaches enough ta rile Mary an’ all the saints.”

  “Is your name Monique?” Awa asked, having transferred the contents of the pot into a large wooden bowl.

  “How ya know that?” The woman stood quickly, blocking the hall.

  “I’m a …” and Awa smiled beneath her bandages, because she knew it was true. “I’m a friend of his, and he mentioned you.”

  “Why’d he do that, then?” Monique was not moving.