The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “It ever cross yours it might not’ve?” Monique kicked the base of an easel, bringing a painting he had been tweaking for half a year facedown into a spreading pool of paint.

  “Stop!” Manuel went for her, the smirk breaking her face like a rock through a window telling him this was just what she had in mind. His fingers went numb as his punch struck her cheek, and then he was down again, unable to breathe or even see straight as first a jab to the stomach and then a boot to the armpit sent him rolling across his floor, the forest of stands toppling around him.

  “—’eard the way she talked bout ya,” Monique was saying as the artist moaned, wiping the smear of blood from his face. Paint, he realized, which was somehow worse. “Only ’eard lads on the line talk bout their da’s like that, or preachers preachin bout the All-Father. You’re a saint ta her, Saint Manuel the fuckin Brave. She’d tell ’ow you saved’er from Werner an’ them more times’n you talk bout the ’orny fuckin bishop, talk bout your little pictures like they was treasures of Heaven. Have you even fuckin thought bout her since them men came lookin?!”

  Manuel had thought of hardly anything else, but had almost convinced himself she would do better without his blundering about, leading her hunters to her hiding place. Things were better than they had ever been in Bern, he wasn’t some fucking peasant anymore, he was coming up fast. Von Stein, asshole though he certainly was, had found his little cowherd even more useful on these obscure political battlefields, and so vanishing from society for who knew how long to ride to Paris to maybe get his friend killed, and himself and his growing family besides, had not seemed exactly judicious. Tell that to the raging lummox in his studio, though.

  “I should’ve written,” he admitted, still not moving lest she deliver another kick. “I should have fucking found a way to get word to you, alright? They said if she were lying, they’d, they’d take measures. Measures with Kat, and our fucking kids! She sent them to Muscovy and—”

  “How in fuck ya know she said that, Manuel?” Monique sat down on his stool, one of the few untipped items in the room. “How you know that wife of yours didn’t point ta Paris an’ say—”

  “She’s not a liar,” said Manuel, the fear one he had harbored ever since that day, to his shame and frustration. “We’ve never lied to each other.”

  “And ’ow you know that? You her confessor, too?”

  “We don’t go anymore,” said Manuel. “We’re, we’ve broken. You should, too—God doesn’t need you to pay some—”

  “Manuel!” She was using her battlefield voice, and he knew a servant would arrive soon, praise God. “I don’t fuckin care how ya do your prayin, I want ta know how ya fuckin know your wife ain’t a fuckin snitch!”

  “She fucks other men!” Manuel shouted back now, furious at her for voicing that needling doubt, for opening that box he had locked up and weighed down with volumes of Katharina’s proven honesty. “She tells me about that! And she tells me when she’s been selfish or nasty, which she is sometimes, being fucking human and all. We’re not all fucking saints, Monique! We’re not all fucking heroes who only pause their prayers long enough to enslave other women, to foster lust, to, to, to fuck girls who’d puke at the thought if they weren’t drunk, broke, and starving! So ask me how I know my wife isn’t a fucking liar and I’ll tell you how I know—because she doesn’t even lie to herself, so why—”

  “I told them where she was.” Katharina was in the doorway. She looked tired. “I didn’t lie to Niklaus, though. They came, and I told them she had gone to Moscow. They didn’t believe me. They showed me something they had in a little case, a sort of bracelet with metal spines on the inside, and pointed at my baby son, and so I told them to look in France. I told Niklaus they had come in and asked, and I had told them Muscovy. So I didn’t lie to him, and he didn’t lie to—”

  “You’re an evil fuckin cunt,” snarled Monique.

  “I’m a mother and a wife,” said Katharina evenly. “And I lack much motivation to protect a witch. Did Manuel tell you what they did together, in the graveyard before you two left? Did she tell you? Has he shown you the art he’s crafted based on what she showed him? Call me evil if you like, but I sleep very well at night knowing I’ve done all I can to protect the people I know to be good.”

  “You wanna tell me again she ain’t a fuckin liar?”

  “I knew,” said Manuel, and laughed a stupid, weird little giggle. “I knew. Or I should have. The look on your face when I got home, Kat, the panic in your eyes when you said Moscow to me, and I said do you swear, and you just nodded, as frightened as I’ve ever seen you. I knew right then you’d told them more but I didn’t ask, did I? I just said you, you’d done a good deed. Ah!” Another part of the conversation came to him, and he giggled again. “You said I should write! You said I should write to warn Awa, and I said no, we were, we were probably being watched and she could take care of herself, and and and—”

  “Stop crying,” said Katharina, and he tried. Turning to the other woman, Manuel’s wife said, “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “I understand,” Monique said. “I seen enough in my day ta know what direction the piss flows. Devil always shits on the biggest pile.”

  “But pray tell,” said Katharina, “how is it that you come here looking for her? We thought she was with you.”

  “She left, didn’t she,” said Monique. “Dunno where she went. Cut out not a week fore them prats showed up talkin bout gettin me locked up, closin down the shop an’ all. So don’t act like I wasn’t threatened, too.”

  “And what did you tell them?” asked Katharina. “What clever ruse did you employ to send them on their way?”

  “I didn’t,” said Monique, “an’ they didn’t go no place but facedown in the shithouse. Come in my fuckin place usin words like dyke ? That term’s reserved for we what hold back the sea, and a select few who’re in our good graces, not some stoat-lookin assholes come tryin to bring the scares with fuckin toothpicks at they waists an’ a matchlock what requires more’n earnest prayer to get primed an’ lit.”

  “So now you’re a murderer, and threw away what they threatened to take?” Katharina shook her head as though she were talking to a child.

  “Been one longer’n I ’aven’t.” Monique shrugged. “An’ I sold the whole kit to Dario, who’s well aware of what’s ripenin in the shithouse an’ was more’n happy to pay a mite lighter than he might’ve otherwise due ta the inconvenience. There’s a time I could’ve done better by forgettin to mention a detail but didn’t, so maybe the both of you assholes could do with followin the example of Saint Cuntlick ’ere.”

  “I think you had best leave,” said Katharina.

  “I think that’s fuckin sound,” said Monique, glaring at Manuel. He had not gotten to his feet again but lay on his back in the wreckage of his studio, propped up on his elbows. She walked over to him, leaned down, and extended her hand. He moved to take it but she reached past him and fished a small canvas off the floor beside him. It was a portrait of Awa, one of the few where he had not disguised her by blanching her skin or substituting his wife’s nose, his niece’s lips. Monique held it up and brushed it off, and without looking at the prone artist said, “Should I give’er your apologies or ya gonna come deliver’em yerself?”

  “She’ll understand,” said Manuel, and that was the worst, sharper than Monique’s boot or fists, the knowledge that Awa would understand, indeed, she would insist he had no choice at all, and neither had Katharina. People always have a choice, Manuel knew, and looking from Monique to his wife he made his. “Let me give you some crowns before you go. I can spare—”

  If she had spit on him it would have been better, but her phlegm struck one of the few paintings not cast about in her rage. He did not watch her leave, instead scrambling up and hurrying to clean the canvas. She had narrowly missed herself, the clod of lung-butter dripping down between Paris and Venus, between Manuel and Katharina. Carefully peeling the slick matter off wit
h his apron and daubing the spittle up, he tried so hard not to remember working on the painting in that Parisian park that when his wife put her hand on his shoulder he jumped.

  “It’s gnawed at me,” Katharina said quietly. “But I didn’t have a choice. You would have gone to her.”

  “Probably.” Manuel smiled weakly. “Probably led them right to her, gotten everyone killed. I’m not very good in tight spots.”

  “What is it about her?” Katharina looked down at the scattered sketches and prints and paintings. “You’ve been obsessed ever since you met her. Witches everywhere. Why didn’t you just fuck her instead?”

  “I never wanted that,” said Manuel heavily. “I’d make more sense to myself if that was it. I love you, Katharina, and I love our family, and I won’t jeopardize you again, not for her, not for anyone. I gave you my word the first time I went to war —when children arrive I’m finished, the sword goes on the mantel, and there it stays. I’m a man of my word.”

  “Except when you took that sword to Novara not so long ago?”

  “That was different,” Manuel said, knowing it wasn’t. “Von Swine just needed a clerk, not exactly frontline action, or at least it wasn’t supposed to be—and it was the worst I’ve ever seen, Kat, the things they did, the things we did, and I told him I was finished, didn’t I, and came home early, and—”

  “We’re talking about the Moor, remember? I thought you said you were an instrument of God? He wanted something of you, wanted you to help her. Isn’t that why you’ve had me stop going to the confessor, why you’ve made me talk to myself like a madwoman? Because you think God’s more interested in talking to we sinners than the Pope?”

  “Pope’s a dick,” said Manuel.

  “Nice.”

  “Well, you know.” Manuel smiled.

  “Why don’t you get your gear and go after her?” said Katharina. “Monique’s right, you love her and—”

  “I don’t! Not like, like that,” protested Manuel. “And she doesn’t need my help. She’s a fucking witch, remember? If anything, being around us made her soft, and if she left so close to those bounty hunters arriving she must have known, and got out first. They’ll never find her, and neither will Monique.”

  “If I had known that’s what they were, hired men and not real Inquisitors—”

  “Hired men are worse, Kat,” said Manuel. “I know from experience, don’t I? You did the right thing in telling them. And not telling me. I can be … excitable.”

  “Foolish.”

  “That too.”

  “Go after her,” said Katharina, staring at the Judgment of Paris, at the dark spot where spit had dampened the contour of her naked breasts, the apple Manuel had made her hold out to the seated man. One of his so-called Classical pieces, but the apple, and her nudity, had invoked a different garden to Katharina’s mind then, as it did now. “Be safe.”

  “I’m a painter,” said Manuel, as he set to cleaning up his studio. “And I’m a father, and a husband. She’ll be fine. She doesn’t need a Saint Niklaus any more than you or the children.”

  “If you change your mind I’ll understand.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ll try to understand.”

  “Better. We’ll make an honest woman of you yet,” said Manuel, his smile almost genuine.

  “I’ll send Tomas to tell the abbot that you’re ill and—”

  Manuel cursed, having completely forgotten about his meeting with Oswald to discuss a referral to Rome, of all places. “This is too big, Kat, for all I know he’s already shown my work to some cardinal or bishop. Fuck! Can you get this or—”

  “Go on.” She shooed him off, and he raced around the house, washing the paint off his face, pulling clods of it out of his hair, and would have carried on like this for some time if his wife had not cornered him in the bedroom. “You’re an artist, Niklaus, he’ll be disappointed if you’re not a little scruffy.”

  “There’s this public office I might be, well, I was waiting to tell you, but I think between Oswald and von Stein I might get the appointment and—”

  “Out, Niklaus!”

  Pecking her on the cheek, out he went. Watching him gain the street from the bedroom window, Katharina went down to the kitchen and poured herself a drink. Tomas came in, and after surreptitiously drawing the curtains, the servant stepped beside his mistress and put his hands firmly on her shoulders. When she did not relax at his touch he sighed and walked around the table, getting one of the glasses Manuel had blown for himself.

  “I lied to him,” Katharina said. “I don’t know if I ever have, not really, but I lied to his face.”

  “I heard the row.” Tomas nodded. “Is everything alright?”

  “I don’t know.” She drained her glass. “I don’t even know why, why I did it, it just came out, they were like dogs at each other’s throats, and out it popped. Apparently Niklaus isn’t the only fucking martyr in this house.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them that those men who came about the Moor, I, well, I told them I had disclosed the girl’s location to those men.”

  “She really did go to Russia?” Tomas loved a good bit of gossip as much as the next servant but was not quite following his mistress.

  “Of course not,” said Katharina. “I was really scared, of course, the thought of lying terrifies me, which somehow makes me rather adept at it, apparently. I kept pretending I didn’t know who they were talking about, and then I cracked, I was going to crow Paris! at the top of my lungs, but then I heard myself say Petersburg, and that was that, they were gone before I could even ask myself what the hell I’d done. I was so proud of myself ! And he was so proud of me! Sinful, really, all the pride-taking that went with that little lie. I saved her, me, the meek little housewife, I saved her! Or at least risked my life and family to try and save her.” She sighed, her shoulders relaxing, and raised the glass Tomas had refilled.

  “So why tell Master Deutsch and his friend that you had given up the secret?” The servant set his own emptied glass down and laid his hand on top of hers.

  “Because we really should have sent word to her, at the very least,” said Katharina after pondering the question for a moment. “That must be it. It’s not enough to do a little good, is it? We’ve got to do everything we can, especially if God’s not honoring indulgences and deathbed confessions anymore.”

  This latest development in the Manuel household was even more surprising to Tomas than the couple’s creative definition of fidelity, though it certainly went a way toward explaining it. The young man very much loved his mistress, however, and knew that just because she took her pleasure from him when he was lucky he did not have the right to address his reservations about their abandoning the Church. At least his master was still meeting with the abbot, which implied they had not quit it altogether.

  “I quit it altogether, you puffed-up pigeon!” Manuel said, interrupting the abbot. Oswald blinked, no doubt intending to spout more anti-Luther rot, and Manuel quickly clarified, “I mean your church, I mean this house of lies, this, this midden, with Old Leo king cock! How dare Luther speak? How dare Leo excommunicate a man with more piety in his ballsack than you lot have combined! And now that Leo’s dead you’ve elected a Dutchman?! Really, man, the Frog Pope? It’s like a bad joke!”

  Oswald had begun to turn the same bright fuchsia color he had in Manuel’s studio upon first seeing the nudes, and Manuel paused. Certainly he was being harsh, and it was not as though he had actually met Luther or anything; he just agreed with some, but certainly not all, of his ideas. Manuel had been thinking about Awa, and then Oswald had said something exceptionally, offensively foolish, and then—

  “Sacrilege!” Oswald finally managed. “You blaspheming—”

  “Horseshit,” sneered Manuel, a few of his voices cheering him on, others mortified into silence, and a few content to watch his mouth work its magic. “You fucking clergy blaspheme more in a day than I do in a ye
ar, and I’ve been known to hide in the closet and watch my wife stick rosary beads up the ass of the help, so I know from sacrilege. Come, come, if they weren’t meant to go there why’d the Good Lord make them such a perfect shape? I wouldn’t be surprised if that Borgia Alexander had you jam a few up there yourself before God struck his ass down!”

  Oswald did not have anything to say to that, but he did stand and make for the door. Manuel leaped out of his chair and intercepted him, knowing the difference between burning a bridge and setting oneself on fire in the process. The abbot was gulping like a landed carp, and Manuel moved quickly to gut him.

  “Those pictures, Oswald, all those filthy pictures I sold you,” said Manuel in a low voice, and then chanced a bluff. “We both know I’m not the only one who knows you have them, eh? Quite a scandal, if a confidant of yours and the artist himself both outed you for collecting such lewd, lustful images.”

  Oswald drew back as if struck, and Manuel felt the slightest tinge of guilt. This was a collector he was shaming, a patron, an aficionado. There could be no hesitation now, however, and when Oswald began parroting Manuel’s excuses back at him the artist was ready to twist the knife.

  “They’re art, art! Beauty is—”

  “Art? They’re pictures of whores fingering themselves, Abbot, pictures of women fucking women and men and who knows what else I put in there. Tell me quick, Oswald, and tell me honest that you’ve never jerked off looking at them and I’ll trouble you no more!”

  “Trouble me no more,” groaned the man, choosing neither to confirm nor deny the allegation.

  “Gladly,” said Manuel, “eagerly, and with relish. You don’t even have to make good on your referral to Rome.”

  Oswald groaned louder. “Who was the Judas, Niklaus, whose sweet kiss betrayed me? Tell me that, I beg!”

  “What?” Manuel blinked.

  “Which of my friends told you I showed them?” Oswald spat. “Who must I settle accounts with after you’ve exacted your blood money?”