The Enterprise of Death (23 page)

“Good show, sir,” said Manuel, taking another pull from the bottle. “So you’ve led my countrymen to victory over your countrymen and your former masters, and all for the fucking Milanese.”

“All for my fucking self,” said von Stein, opening his desk again. “And the Kakerlake King, of course—the Milanese stay fucked and French, which is perhaps redundant. If you’re really interested in politics you ought to pay more attention to whom you’re working for, Manny. As for countrymen, well, your countrymen are my countrymen, and the word is Maximilian had even more Swiss marching this way than us, so be thankful they changed their minds and went home before brother had a chance to slay brother, eh? Or might you have relished the chance to stick it in some Basel-backer, or whoever you Bernese are squabbling with this week?”

“All members of the Confederacy are Swiss,” Manuel said numbly, suddenly wondering how many of the saints he had martyred along the road to Milan were cowherds or merchants’ sons from the next canton over and not, as he had previously assumed, Imperial. Both sides were paying, so why should he think all the Swiss would gravitate to one foreign banner instead of whoever approached them first? And why the fuck should it matter if the boys—the
men
, he corrected himself—if the men
he had killed were confederates or not? They were saints just the same …

“— Manny, and we both know who’s in charge here.” Manuel might have sighed at von Stein’s redundant tapping of his own chest if the man’s other hand had not taken another saltpeter-soaked cord out of his desk and lit it on one of his gauche purple candles. Manuel might have snatched the gun away but he was a little drunk and by the time he fully registered what was happening von Stein had picked up his pistol and cinched the sputtering cord into place after cocking the hammer. Then he stood and moved around the desk as Manuel finished the bottle, the artist’s hand around its neck to bash von Stein if he got crazy. Manuel had listened to far too much of the man’s shit today to allow himself to go quietly and—

“The campaign’s over,” von Stein said. “For me, at least. I’m going home, and suggest you do the same. The Emperor’s fled and Milan’s saved, which means we’re finished.”

“But I haven’t got enough money yet!” Manuel protested.

“Then find a new master,” von Stein sniffed. “Or go back to painting. Everyone else will be nipping off, and those who actually helped defend the city earned more than enough to be happy for quite a few years to come, so you might be lonely if you stay.”

“Defend from what!? You said the fucking Imperials never showed up!”

Seeing von Stein’s expression, Manuel shifted his approach.

“I would’ve helped!” He stood to face von Stein, the bottle still gripped in his left hand. “You sent me away or I would’ve been here, you know it!”

“I do.” Von Stein nodded. “But you weren’t, and you disobeyed my orders. I’m a gentleman, Manny, not a cheap, cheating little peasant, and if you had done as I told you I would have paid you for it, even though it would have pained me, knowing as
we do now what a fraud that Kahlert turned out to be. So if you had followed orders you would be just as rich as if you helped guard the city, if not more so, but instead you played the martyr, strolling in here with your head held high like you’d just fucked the Duchess of Ferrara
and
her daughter instead of losing a little girl and getting all your men killed. You Bernese can’t take a punch to the nose or a hard shit without slapping yourselves on the back.”

“What am I going to do?” said Manuel, as much to himself as to his gloating captain. He was smarter than von Stein, much smarter, and nobler, for being of a lower birth, and a hell of a lot more handsome and talented, so how the fuck did he always end up with the short end?

“Paint,” said von Stein, waving his gun in the air with a flourish. “I’ll commission a piece for my wife, and another for my mistress. Just don’t go getting them mixed up!”

“Paint.” Manuel sighed, knowing too well just how poorly that paid.

“Don’t worry, Manny,” said von Stein, putting his free hand on Manuel’s shoulder and leading him back toward the door. “I’m flush as a virgin’s cheek on her first poke, so expect a fair price for your work. Which hand do you paint with?”

“My right,” said Manuel, still distracted from the wine and his pardon and his diminished prospects, and so he failed to notice von Stein stepping behind him until the gun went off. He shot the fucking bottle, Manuel thought as the glass exploded and smoke enveloped them both, and then he realized his left hand had caught fire. Stumbling forward, he held his arm in front of him and saw a ragged hole punched through most of his palm, his middle two fingers attached to the rest of his hand by nothing more than raw, scorched skin. Then the blood came and he reeled, collapsing on the carpet as von Stein delivered a few lazy kicks to his backside.

“— orders, you self-righteous little shit,” said von Stein, and through the massive gaps on either side of the door Manuel saw the guards storming the room. The last thing he heard as two men scooped him up was von Stein saying, “And don’t take him to the good leech, give him to that batty fraud. The boy’s fond of witches.”

“Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim,” said the ugly little man as he bowed. “But you may call me Doctor Paracelsus.”

For a moment Awa could not speak, amazed by the length of his name and trying to commit it to memory.

“Right,” said Manuel, cracking his knuckles and trying desperately to forget that if his reunion with his captain did not go exceptionally well he might be dead within the hour. “And remember, Doctor, von Swine
hates
Moors, so not a word.”

“The lady’s presence in my clinic will be a secret known only to the inner sanctum of we three now present, for I shall adorn her as a bandaged nun upon your departure,” said Paracelsus. “In truth, I doubt your commander’s prejudice to those of the darkest land can compare with my aversion to his good graces, and so upon calling in the future request Sister Gloria instead of whatever unpronounceable, to our honest tongues, and esoteric name the Moor has gone by in the past.”

“The Moor?” Awa blinked. “Me?”

“Know thyself, Sister Gloria, and be free!” said Paracelsus. “What herbs do you use in your practice?”

“Ah, wormwood,” said Awa, looking fearfully at Manuel. This
so-called doctor was barely older than she and very clearly blind drunk. “Lots and lots of wormwood.”

“A fine plant, useful in so many applications! Those with trouble of stomach would do well to sample its leaves, and the root, when mashed and mixed with—”

“Right, take care, Sister Gloria,” said Manuel, backing out of the small room Paracelsus had ushered them into. “I’ll be by to visit from time to time.”

“Be careful,” Awa called after him, but then Paracelsus had seized her arm, looked her up and down for the umpteenth time, muttered something in a language even she did not recognize, and then set to swaddling her with a roll of thin white linen bandages. After this layer he provided her with a musty, oversized habit that had a small cut and a large dark stain on the right shoulder, and finally gave her white gloves. Only her eyes, nose, and shards of her temples were not obscured by the bandages, and he then smeared a pale ointment on these visible patches of skin.

“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?”