The Enterprise of Death (30 page)

“Where should—”

“Outside,” Katharina repeated, and the two strangers realized that despite the levelness of her voice the woman was incensed. As soon as the girl had removed herself and the rear door swung shut Monique rose from the bench beside Awa.

“Right-o, what in hell’s the rumpus?”

“Oswald,” said Katharina, staring at the still seated Awa. “The abbot of the Dominican monastery.”

“Oh,” said Awa, recalling Manuel’s story of the abbot who was not supposed to like ladies but did anyway. “Is he here to commission Manuel again?”

“The Dominicans are the ones burning witches,” Katharina said softly, and Awa flinched from the sharpness of the woman’s eyes. He had told her, then, and she had not been happy. Not at
all, and now the chief Dominican in the area was talking to Manuel in the next room.

“Come on, then.” Monique nudged Awa. “I’ll get my pistols ready an’ we’ll scoot out, aye?”

Awa looked up at her friend. “They’ve caught me. Manuel’s told me the sort of men they are, that those who try to help these women are accused themselves. I’ve endangered you all enough, so let me surrender and—”

Monique stuck out her tongue and blew, the raspberry deafening. Then she seized Awa and jerked her to her feet. “You’re not that fuckin weak, an’ neither am I. Let’s go, little sister.”

“What? Mo, I’m caught, they—”

“The window at the back of his studio.” Katharina was looking at the biscuit she had dropped on the table. “Give me a moment, I’ll, I’ll spill something on myself and run in crying, keep them from looking out the front. Go straight out and left, there’ll be more people on the road that way.”

“No,” said Awa, pulling her arm away from Monique, “I—”

“Don’t think I won’t fuckin carry ya,” Monique hissed.

The door burst open and Monique’s hand fell to her hip but her guns were still in their brace, hung over a chair in the studio, and Katharina gave a little yelp. Manuel beamed at them, shutting the door softly behind him and striding proudly over to the table. Looking at each woman in turn, he sat back down on the bench and picked up his half-eaten bozolati.

“Should I stab him?” Katharina asked Monique and Awa.

“Alright, alright!” Manuel put his breakfast back down. “The abbot’s just called. Father Oswald?”

Katharina put the knife against her husband’s cheek.

“And-he’s-commissioned-me-to-paint-something-big,” came out in a rush. “Very big, and very lucrative. It’s finally happened, Kat, it’s finally fucking happened!”

“Mary’s mercy, Niklaus.” Katharina’s knife clanged onto her plate. “We heard shouting.”

“He’s just loud, and happy to see me. He’s been waiting for my return.” Manuel looked to Monique. “He commissioned me before, a small piece, but I was still excited, and so I had a drink or two since Kat—”

“Manuel,” said Monique, sitting back down. “I’ve ’eard that story far too many times ta even pretend I give a fuck bout the ’orny bishop.”

“Abbot,” said Manuel, crossing his arms. “Oswald’s an abbot.”

“Don’t make the story any more interestin.” Monique took another biscuit. Meeting Awa’s eyes, Katharina smiled. The necromancer smiled back, and they finished breakfast.

Monique claimed to need most of the afternoon to follow through on a few leads and Awa was not in a hurry to see her future employer fawning over pig-assed whores, and so as the table was cleared they parted until the evening. Later in the day, and after much soul-searching, Manuel went to his studio where Awa was preparing to leave.

“Awa?” She was admiring the dress Katharina had given her and Lydie had quickly altered, the accompanying veil draped over the stool as she held up the strange garment. The stained bandages and habit were disposed of, and Awa had been delighting in the feel of cool air on her bare skin when the knock came at the door. She pulled the dress over her head, battling the puffy sleeves onto her arms.

“Yes?” she said to the door.

“Can I … can I come in?” Manuel asked on the other side.

“Oh! Yes, yes, come in!” No one had ever asked her permission before entering a room, and the experience gave her a quiet little thrill.

“Ah,” said Manuel, again asking himself how in heaven the strapping, dark-skinned woman reminded him of his little slip of a niece. The thin tunic and brown, ratty leggings she had retrieved from her bag by the river were no more flattering than the nun’s habit or the clothes she had stolen from Bernardo, but they did suit her more than the soft dress she now wore. She seemed too big and too sharp for it, as though the cloth would be shredded to ribbons as soon as she took a step. “You look nice.”

“Am I a woman of Bern yet?” Awa plucked up the veil and held it over her face.

“Good as, or better,” said Manuel. “I’m glad Lydie was here, she’s better than Katharina or I at tailoring.”

“I’ll be happy when I can knit my own clothes again,” said Awa, dropping the veil. “I feel like this thing will rip as soon as I take a step.”

“We do have a loom here, so—”

“Your wife doesn’t like me, Manuel,” said Awa. “You should have asked her instead of inviting me in without her knowing—”

“Katharina is, can be, ah, cautious, is all,” said Manuel. “It’s not that she doesn’t like you, she just … doesn’t like you being
here
.”

“Oh,” said Awa, angry with herself for letting such a valid sentiment hurt her. “We’re leaving now, so she won’t have to worry.”

“About that …” Manuel suddenly wrung his hands. “Might you consider staying? Not in the house, but somewhere nearby where —”

“I don’t need you to protect me, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern.” Awa smiled.

“No, I suppose you don’t,” said Manuel, recalling all too well his poorly conceived and even poorer-executed escape plan back in the hazel wood with Werner and the rest. “But I do need your help, if you’d be willing to lend it.”

“Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, I’ll kill the Pope and every priest if it would please you,” Awa said, her face doing its too-serious, vaguely sinister expression that always gave Manuel pause.

“Nothing, ah, so strong as all that,” said Manuel. “Mo’s talk has been rubbing off on you, I see.”

“Not all she’s been rubbing off on me,” said Awa, and Manuel’s eyes widened, the artist gaping at her. She stared back at him and shrugged. “Well,
I
thought it was funny.”

And then he did laugh, far too loudly and weirdly for it to be genuine, but Awa appreciated the gesture nonetheless. “Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, I—”

“How in hell did we get back to the
of Bern
, eh? Manuel, it’s Manuel, or Niklaus or—”

“Niklaus is what your wife calls you,” said Awa, vigorously shaking her head. “Manuel. What is it I can do for you, Manuel?”

“Wellllllll,” said Manuel. “You could stay the night, maybe in the brothel Mo’s whores are at? And once the sun starts to go down you could—”

This is how it goes
, thought Manuel as he crept down the street along the wall just after midnight,
this is the first step down. Don’t be coy
, he thought next,
you’re already seven flights down and dropping, by Alighieri’s reckoning
.
Shall we do a recent head count of your mortal sins? Thirteen dead men before, plus the seven planks you’ve added to the compendium of saints from this last tour, plus Werner … did the other three count, Bernardo and the Kristobels?
They would still be alive if she had not been loosed, and he had loosed her, so—

A stone thumped his scalp, a lump quickly rising on his unadorned, and thus uninsulated, head. Looking up, he saw a shadow crouched on the top of the wall, and then she had his wrist and up he went.
This is how it goes
, he thought again as the moonlit churchyard came into sight beneath them,
break bread with a witch and before you know it you’re digging up bodies and—Don’t put this on her
, thought another part of him,
this idea is yours and yours alone, God forgive me
. Would the confessor wait for him to finish or drag him out of the box with his sins half recounted?

Awa dropped down on the other side of the wall and Manuel followed, the planks in his satchel clattering as he landed. Looking guiltily up at the monastery’s church, Manuel wondered how many candles he and his wife had given over the years, how
many bright mornings they had entered the building with the rest of the neighborhood instead of jumping the wall under cover of darkness. Then his eyes settled on the small chapel jutting out of the nave and he wondered if it would be a serviceable hiding place if the monks were to hear them in the graveyard and investigate. They slunk along the wall like burglars, which was what Manuel supposed they were, even if they just intended to borrow the property. Isn’t that what thieves always said?
We were just borrowing?

Then a figure loomed out of the darkness, a short, thin figure, a figure with holes punched through it by the moonlight, a grinning skull for a head, too-tight skin clinging to its bones like a damp shift on a sweaty whore. Manuel had seen the dead walk before but he still squeaked in surprise as it stepped back to prevent him from running into it, and as the other three corpses emerged from the shadow of the wall their smell hit him. He had smelled worse, and often, but even though they stunk of little more than wet dirt and old bones he felt himself beginning to gag and clapped a hand to his mouth.

“You were late so I got a few ready,” Awa explained, and to his horror he saw she had changed back into the moldering nun’s habit.

“Why are you wearing that?” he hissed, the walking dead momentarily forgotten at her heretical flourish. “That’s not right!”

“So asking me to raise the dead for you is alright, but wearing this robe isn’t?” Awa crossed her arms—walking around in both the habit and the dress without her leggings had chafed her thighs dreadfully, and to have him whine about what she had done for his benefit sat poorly with her indeed. “Monique found your servant throwing it away and saved it for me, and when I told her where I was going she surprised me with it. She said it would help me blend in, since we’re at a church and—”

“Keep your voice down!” Manuel almost shouted, his eyes flicking to the dark building leering over the too-small cemetery. “Blend in?! In a churchyard, after dark, at a
monks’
monastery?”

“How is my wearing it here any worse than wearing it on the road or in your house or—”

“Point.” Manuel clenched his hands into nervous fists. “Point. We should have gone to the hospital graveyard instead, with you dressed up like that. Or the nunnery across the Aare.”

“Shall I light a—”

“No! Don’t light anything!”

“Fine,” Awa groused. “I was just trying to help. I didn’t know your eyes were as good as mine since you walked past where I was sitting on the wall twice before I hit you with the pebble.”

“The moon’s all I need,” said Manuel, giving the dark building a final once-over before kneeling and opening his pack. He should have been studying the corpses, taking in every detail, but he could not bring himself to look at them until he had plank and charcoal ready. “This commission is for the Dominicans, I suppose, so they can’t object too strongly to our presence. It will probably go on the outside of the wall, though.”

“I thought you’d drawn a lot of dead men,” said Awa, sitting on a gravestone as he set up. “And what sort of church wants pictures of them?”

“Most of the men I’ve sketched aren’t nearly so dead,” said Manuel, picking out one of the corpses and focusing on him. Or her, the artist could not really tell. “And this is to be a Dance of Death.”

“Oh,” said Awa, not really understanding. “You should have told me. I can have them do anything you like.”

Before Manuel could begin telling her about revivals of medieval tropes and the significance of Death as an artistic image, the four corpses had paired off and begun to dance. The only dance Awa knew was a rather spastic Andalusian routine the
bandit chief Alvarez had taught her long ago on the mountain, on the night she first sampled wine, and to keep all four at it she had to focus so intently that she did not realize Manuel was speaking until he shook her arm, breaking her reverie. By this time the dead were in step and did not need her guidance, and as the two whispered back and forth the corpses pranced around the graveyard, kicking their feet and hopping on top of tombstones.