The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  No sooner had she left than Paracelsus had dire need of a shit, and after quitting the campfire the physician crept after Awa, watching with interest as she cut flesh and bones from two fresh corpses that lay close to where they had found her. She knew the noisy doctor was watching her grind up the meat and bone with the aid of her knife’s pommel, and on the return trip she made sure to catch up with him and have a little word on the propriety of the occasional judicious silence.

  Otherwise she was as honest as the dead with her companions as she prepared the stew that only Monique was allowed to sample, much as the smell of fresh pork excited Manuel. She made a much smaller batch for the artist soon after, which he found stringy for his taste—thankfully the sinuses and cheek meat of the dead men did their work well enough without his palate’s approval. As they ate Awa told them everything, about her servitude to the necromancer and her onanistic romance with Omorose and her curse and her years of searching graveyards and the friends she had made amongst the dead, and her enemies as well. They only occasionally interrupted her with their questions, and when she was finished they took their turns, Awa immensely relieved to hear they had dispatched the hyena.

  “And when we got to Calw we heard that Ashton Kahlert’s estate had burned down, so of course we came over to have a look ourselves,” concluded Manuel. “Camped out here so as not to arouse the local ire by picnicking in the ashes, though we gathered that the barkeep at least was no friend of Kahlert.”

  “An’ I’m walkin down ta see if all’s still quiet so’s we kin get out the way we come in,” said Monique, “an’ I hear ya shoutin them fuckwords Manuel an’ me taught ya, an’ I wager they ’eard, too, so we all come a’runnin.”

  “But why come all this way?” said Awa. “I understand Paracelsus wishes to study my methods, but you two have lives away from all this. Manuel’s family, and your brothel, and—”

  “Well, the cleanest ’ores in Christendom didn’t stay quite so clean without your attentions,” Monique said sheepishly. “Sides, Manuel here needed your help in fulfillin a certain fantasy of ’is what relates ta those of the skeletal persuasion.”

  “It’s not like that!” Manuel protested but he was smiling, too. “I’m an artist, damn it!”

  “Yes, yes, of course you are,” said Paracelsus. “And of course Paracelsus will risk his life a dozen times over to study someone else’s methods, of course it’s all business for him, of course he has no fondness for anyone or anything but esoteric knowledge. It’s all just research for the magus, the only nourishment he requires.”

  “Eat up,” said Awa, lifting another spoonful to Monique’s thick lips. “It’ll only help if you eat.”

  Monique and Awa took the first watch together, catching one another up having taken some time and Paracelsus’s addition of laudanum to his schnapps making the day float by all the faster for the reunited friends. Monique waited until she was confident Paracelsus and Manuel were asleep before putting the problem to Awa directly: “So what now? If the ol’ wizardly cunt don’t know a way, an’ you don’t neither …”

  “I don’t know,” said Awa. “I’ve got his book, but if it doesn’t know and my tutor doesn’t know and the Bastards of the Schwarzwald don’t know, then I certainly don’t, either.”

  “What bout what he did, then? Couldn’t you do the same, nick out an’ take some other body fore he gets yours?”

  “Even if I knew how, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t do that to somebody. I’m not like him.” Awa knew she was trying to assure herself as much as Monique.

  “What if they was willin, like?”

  “Willing? I don’t think most—” Awa saw the look on Monique’s face and shook her head vigorously, her heart twisting in a bittersweet contortion that is only possible on the rarest of occasions. “No. I … no. I can’t ask that of you, or anybody. The spirit … the spirit is destroyed, obliterated, or else trapped in his book, I think, oh hell, I really don’t know. But no.”

  “Maybe we could share?” said Monique. “Like, if you wasn’t keen on, on pushin my soul about, maybe we could both set up shop. Room enough for two in ’ere. Rest of my family’s right dwarfs, maybe that’s the reason I come up so big?”

  “I—I’ve never heard anything so generous.” Awa took her friend’s hand. “But like I said, even if I wanted to I don’t know how. I can talk to spirits, and make bargains with them, but I’m not so wise about controlling my own spirit, or who knows what else goes into what he does.”

  “Whatta the, uh, the dead say on it, then?” said Monique.

  “Which dead?”

  “I ain’t the expert,” protested Monique. “Jus’ askin, right? You told of helpin out all them dead people fore meetin up with Manuel an’ me, thought you might’ve asked one of them dead or spirits or what bout how ta deal with dead wizards tryin to do stuff an’ all. What?”

  “No.” Awa had sat up straighter, a sudden thought setting her teeth on edge. “I just … maybe … Monique, is there a war happening?”

  “A war?”

  “Yes, like the ones you were fighting when Manuel and I met?”

  “Hell, there’s always a war goin down Lombardy-ways,” said Monique. “Emperor Charles ain’t just a fuckin Spaniard cunt but the king of the fuckin Spaniards from afore he got the ’oly Roman crown, so ya know he’ll be mixin it up with the cheese-eaters an’ the eye-ties even more than the old Emp. What’s war gotta do with it?”

  “I … I …” Awa was getting excited, her thoughts swirling around something but unable to stick to it. She was on the edge of salvation, she felt it. “We need to go there, Mo, we need to go to war.”

  “Might’s well ask Manuel if he’d like ta paint a pretty ’ore.” Monique grinned. “Them sally eggs ya gave me’s changed the whole fuckin game, Awa. Traded a smith some mink for time in ’is shop, an’ made me some commissions. An’ I’m talkin dread fuckin cannons, no locks ta jam, no cords ta die in the rain, no trays ta spill—I jus’ keep’em in the bottom of the barrels, add a charge and round, an’ pop goes the fuckin hyena, Barbara bless us. Go on down the front an’ get some honest blood on’em sounds fun, ’specially if my arms get as good as you say. But mark me, this is my last go—I’d rather crawl back on bended tit ta Dario than keep workin the von Wine shaft.”

  “One go is all I have,” Awa said nervously, wondering if the plan she was forming had any chance of success. “I’m out of time.”

  XXXVI

  The Requiem of Bicocca

  In the predawn gloom the corpse of Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, artist, soldier, and pretentious know-it-all, was somberly carried through the camp by the Dutch gunner Mo and a Milanese man who had not campaigned under von Stein in years. Those who had not seen their old ally in over half a decade were warned away by his dour face and cold eyes that nodded down at the body he helped carry whenever one of his former friends tried to ask him just where the hell he had gotten to after cutting out with Manuel and disappearing all those years ago. At von Stein’s tent the guards did not give them much trouble, for von Stein overheard before Monique’s voice could become too loud and hurried out to see if it was true. He had no idea Manuel had come down to find sport at the little park just north of Milan, indeed, if he had he would have gotten the boy a cushier location than the front, and he gnashed his teeth to see his useful pawn as cold and dead as the trout he had left half eaten on his plate to investigate the ruckus.

  “What’s this, what’s this?” said von Stein. “I thought you died of the pox ages ago, my maid, and yet it’s poor little Manny I see at his reward? Baffling!”

  “He wanted ya ta be left lone with ’is corpse,” said Monique sadly. “Said it often, he did, fore he went—said you’d ’ave a pray o’er him in private, that you’d understand.”

  “Did he?” Von Stein blinked down at the body. “Well I don’t, not at all. Morbid, morbid as hell, such a thing.”

  The pallbearers held their breath, then von Stein sighed and held open the flap of his
tent. They carried Manuel in and set him down on the ground, and von Stein stood over the body shaking his head. Then he looked again at the man who had helped Monique carry in Manuel’s body and the captain blinked, now more interested in the soldier than the corpse.

  “Ber … Bernardo?” asked von Stein.

  The man nodded.

  “I sent you with Manuel all those years ago, didn’t I?”

  The man nodded again.

  “I recall you, I do.” Von Stein waggled his finger at the mercenary, pleased with himself for remembering the man’s name. “Manuel absolutely hated you. I thought you died.”

  “I did,” said the man, and slapped von Stein’s extended hand. The captain took a step back, then toppled over, his eyes rolling back in his head as he died with all the glory of a glutton choking on a chicken bone. Awa quickly knelt and restored Manuel from the little death she had given him outside the camp while Monique pointed her guns at the tent flaps lest the guards enter upon hearing von Stein’s body fall. They did not, and Manuel, having had some experience in bouncing back from a little death, helped Awa drag von Stein under the captain’s massive table. Manuel glanced nervously at Monique and when he looked back at Awa he saw she no longer appeared to be Bernardo but now looked exactly like von Stein. It was bizarre and terrible to see the man hunched over his own corpse, and then she looked up at her old friend, grinning with teeth the color of the trimmed beard that wreathed them.

  “Do I look the part?” asked Awa.

  “Need to start writing plays,” muttered Manuel. “Or poems. Something with tragedy.”

  “No tit in plays, an’ poems’re for ponces,” said Monique, creeping to the mouth of the tent to peek out. “Can’t fuckin believe that worked.”

  “You’re dealing with a witch of the first water.” Von Stein’s doppelganger puffed out her chest. “I think it’s time to, how did you put it, inspect the lines?”

  “The lines.” Manuel gulped. “Yes, I, that’s where the worst will be. But what about his, his body?”

  “Oh, that’s an even better idea! I’ll just raise his corpse, make myself look like Bernardo again, and we can all—”

  “Oh fuck it all,” Monique hissed, and tiptoed quickly to where Manuel and Monique stood. “It’s Lautrec, it’s fucking Lautrec! He’s coming in!”

  “Who?” Awa asked.

  “The Lautrec?” said Manuel. “Oh fuck.”

  “The big boss,” Monique began, “Frenchman who—”

  “Allll-brecht!” The dark-haired, squinty man stepped into the tent, the flaps held back by von Stein’s guards. “Just what is the meaning of this?!”

  “Ah.” Awa looked desperately at her two friends. “I, ah—”

  “A fish breakfast?” The Vicomte de Lautrec walked around the stunned trio and poked von Stein’s trout. Manuel held his breath, wondering if the man could see the commander’s corpse shoved under the desk from his vantage. Spinning around, Lautrec said, “Might we speak in private, Albrecht?”

  “What?” Awa squawked. “They, they need to be here.”

  “Tosh.” Lautrec shooed them away with his fingers. “I just want to have a quick little word, Albrecht, then you can have your advisors back.”

  Manuel and Monique dejectedly marched outside and stood at the mouth of the tent, wondering if everything was about to turn to shit. One of the guards glanced at them, did a double take at seeing Manuel up and about, and swooned. Then the duo set to explaining to the other guards how Manuel had needed to fake his own death lest there be spies in the camp, obviously, and—

  The tent flaps swished and Lautrec stepped out, a curious smile on his thin lips. He looked mischievously at Manuel and Monique. The other guards were standing rigidly in salute and Lautrec looked around, then stepped closer to the artist and the gunner.

  “Awa?” Manuel whispered.

  “A what?” Lautrec whispered back in French. “Normally I’d take offense to you scum addressing me in your incomprehensible accents, and your uppity refusal to even salute, but thanks to your captain all of you are going to die. Die. Give the Infinite my regards, cowherds.”

  “Right!” von Stein boomed, exiting his tent. “To the lines with us, then!”

  All heads turned and cocked in his direction, just as the embedded Imperial arquebusiers would soon turn and cock their guns on the advancing Swiss that von Stein would lead. The morning moved very, very quickly after von Stein’s announcement that he would personally lead the contingent of mercenaries from Bern, and as the lines were formed at the front Manuel prayed more and more vigorously. Incomprehensible though it seemed, their orders were to march straight across a field toward a fortified road the Imperials held with pikemen and gunners. As for the boisterous Swiss, their own pikes swayed like wheat, exactly like wheat, and Manuel knew what happened when the wheat grew tall enough to properly sway. Fuck fuck fuck.

  “So,” Awa explained after ducking back to von Stein’s tent, altering her appearance to resemble Bernardo again, and returning with the reanimated body of von Stein in tow, “just before we got here von Swine told his master, that Lautrec, that all the Swiss would abandon the fight unless they were allowed to attack immediately. Lautrec was coming to try and change his mind, I think, or maybe just yell at him. But anyway, we’re at the front!”

  “Yes.” Manuel panicked at the realization that he had left the satchel with all his planks back in the tent. “We’ve got to go back, I’ve got—”

  “That’s the fuckin signal,” Monique observed as a horn lamely tooted somewhere behind them. “Get walkin, lump. Jus’ like von Wine, sendin us straight inta a fuckin killin field. They’ll ’ave all they gunners at the front, mark me, an’ just mow us fuckin down. Only way to use fuckin guns, not that von Wine ever understood that. Never thought I’d say it but wish Doctor Lump had stuck it out with us stead of pissin off ta find those bastards of the Black-wood you was on bout.”

  “So what do we do, Awa, what do we do?” Manuel tried to get himself under control. In the past he had not become so flustered before a battle, so goddamn scared, but all he could think about was his wife and his children and his studio. Focus, Saint Niklaus, he thought, focus on what needs must. “I sent a letter. A few days ago. Inquiring about a civic position, begging for it, really. I’m done, this is it, I’m done, after this, I’m done, it’s charity and tithing and—”

  “You tellin us or God?” Monique winked at Awa, who always stood close enough to von Stein to control the walking corpse and have it parrot a word or two if needed. “But lump’s got a point, don’t he, Bernie? What’s the scheme?”

  “When the killing starts we secure a small area we can keep people out of, and you, if you’re sure—” Awa began.

  “We’re sure, we’re sure,” said Monique as the column began to move. “What we gotta do?”

  “Protect me,” said Awa. “That’s all. Make sure no one disturbs the circles I draw.”

  On an open plain without cover such a seemingly simple request might prove impossible, but her two friends nodded. Saint Niklaus enters the scene, he thought with a smile, and they were off, moving with agonizing slowness across the field. The stiffly marching corpse of von Stein did not respond to the coded orders one of Lautrec’s pages gave him to wait for the French artillery to bombard the fortified position of the Imperials, instead pushing ahead across the field of Bicocca. The second column, led by a provincial Swiss captain jealous of von Stein’s bravado, did not wish to be left behind and likewise ignored the order to hold.

  Then light appeared in the east and the Imperials, embedded atop the earthworks they had built immediately behind the sunken road that cut across the field, opened fire, a second dawn blooming in the south as a hundred muzzles flashed. The noise was deafening, not of the guns but of the pikemen screaming as they fell by the score. A mist of blood enveloped the columns as they rushed forward, scrambling over their fallen comrades, and every few breaths another volley would cut down the first few rows o
f charging Swiss. Awa had never experienced anything like it, but neither had Manuel or Monique or any of the men present, and only the sight of their brave captain von Stein trudging ahead with half his arm blown off kept the troops from routing.

  “Cowards!” Manuel screamed, his voice cracking to see the Imperials hiding atop their wall. “You fucking cowards! Cowards!”

  Awa kept a wall of marching dead men in front of her and her friends, and if any of the Swiss mercenaries noticed that their companions rose despite mortal wounds they themselves were killed before they could spread the word. Then the columns reached the high wall of mud the Imperials had built and the massacre worsened. Looking beside him, Manuel was horrified to see that two of the dead men carried Awa between them, the witch no longer disguised as Bernardo, her eyes twisted back in her head and foam running from her lips, a piece of damp parchment clutched in her hand.

  “Fuck!” Manuel screamed, pressing himself flat against the wall as gunners leaned over the edge to fire down into them. “What do we what do we what do we—”

  “Lump!” Monique slapped him in the mouth. “Shut it! She’s been ’avin that fit since ’alfway cross the plain, so jus’ fuckin shut it! The, the dead ones are still walkin, aye? So she knows what she’s bout, aye?”

  “I don’t know,” Manuel whined, his face covered in blood. “I don’t fucking know!”

  “Well I do.” Monique grabbed Manuel’s arm and impatiently began dragging him along the wall, as if it were a country hedge they were strolling beside and not a deadly fortification. The corpses carrying Awa followed them, which encouraged Monique even if she was not sure what it portended. “There, that cart stickin out the fuckin wall. Let’s get under there an’—”

  Another volley from just overhead brought bells to their ears, and as the cloud of black smoke rolled down the wall to envelop them Manuel saw von Stein’s corpse methodically climbing straight up the mud embankment, pikemen rallying behind him. Couldn’t they see that the morning light was spilling through dozens of wet holes piercing his fat frame? Maybe they were already dead, Manuel suddenly realized, maybe he and Monique and all the rest had fallen and Awa was just marching them forward, and—