The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (49 page)

“The prie—Er, the cardinal say he takes care of that.” Raphael looked around but Martyn had vanished.

“Mecky fuckin hole!” Manfried yelled. “Martyn! Where’s that trickster?”

“What was you doin while our gold was gettin cardinal-touched?” Hegel asked Rodrigo.

“Nothing,” Rodrigo replied, his once-bold face wearing a wan grimace.

“Gotta been doin somethin.” Manfried considered slapping the man to get him to pay attention when the door opened and the
King of Cyprus entered.

The Grossbarts blinked at the friendly, immaculately dressed man approaching their table, accompanied by several no less suave
advisors. He congratulated them on their recovery and praised the Trinity, offering his condolences for their illness and
loss of crew. Then he exuberantly launched into the specifics of their plan, righting Martyn’s spilled chair and joining their
table. They did not understand a word he said, and Manfried rose to strike the dandy for his ill manners. Rodrigo finally
smiled, expectantly watching Manfried, but Raphael intervened as translator.

“This own person be the king,” Raphael explained, slipping from his chair and kneeling.

“Oh,” said Manfried, and extended his hand. “Manfried Grossbart, servant a Mary.”

“Hegel Grossbart, living saint.” Hegel held a bottle in one hand and offered the other.

Peter coddled Manfried’s hand in both of his and pumped it excitedly as Raphael translated. The murmurs of his advisors that
these men had not showed proper supplication was quieted with a word from Peter, and with their flawed but earnest translator
resuming his seat the men talked of Gyptland, Jerusalem, and Mary. Rodrigo occasionally interrupted with harsh statements
on the nature of devotion and eternal rewards, and if either brother had understood Italian they would have struck him for
his foolishness. Luckily they did not, and in light of the man’s loss Peter took no offense, so only the advisors and Raphael
were concerned by the fellow’s vindictive pronouncements.

Had Rodrigo accurately interpreted the dialogue between Peter and the Grossbarts the Brothers’ gross blasphemies would surely
have caused trouble, but he did not and the tongue-tied and awestruck Raphael could not have conveyed the extent of their
heretical ramblings had he even been inclined. Instead, all save Rodrigo and the worried advisors enjoyed the wine and conversation,
supplemented by a feast brought to them by servants toiling somewhere below. Although a touch put out that they had not offered
him back his cabin, Peter left satisfied they were indeed divinely inspired, and the Grossbarts agreed the king was not such
the cunt for being a noble.

Time passed, the Grossbarts spending their days in the ordinary fashion of fighting, eating, and drinking, and their nights
in the extraordinary company of a king. The cardinal often joined them but abstained from helping translate as much to save
his own skin as to save theirs; instead Martyn glumly watched the imported tiger lilies he had plucked from the gardens of
Rhodes lose their ginger luster and become ashen. Rodrigo was excluded from these repasts as his offensiveness was easily
understood by Peter; the despondent man would gaze north from the stern, his tears joining those of Mary, which fill the oceans
of the world.

As the ruby clouds swirled atop the horizon like steam atop a stew, Manfried strode up beside Rodrigo. The Grossbart had noted
the change in the man’s demeanor, and such melancholy sat poorly with Manfried. The boy would either straighten out or go
over the side, because with Gyptland at hand he would not tolerate such folly.

“Still worryin on the captain’s account?” Manfried shook his head in disbelief.

“He was all I had,” Rodrigo sniveled. “First my mother, then father, then my brother, and now him. All dead.”

The tears returned but before Rodrigo could turn back to the sunset Manfried had snatched him by his hair, tugging on his
healing, scabby scalp and turning his head to face him.

“Tell me he ain’t better served where he’s at,” Manfried snapped, and when the lad dumbly stared at him he went on. “Still
the doubter, eh? You say he ain’t better served with the Virgin than on this lousy boat with a company a blood-handed men?”

“I want him—”

“You want him what? Alive and pained stead a at his reward? Want him to suffer long with us? Selfish, that,” said Manfried,
still gripping Rodrigo’s hair.

Rodrigo’s scalp peeled back a little as he went for Manfried’s throat, stopping when his perforated hand tried to close around
the Grossbart’s neck. Then the young man slumped and Manfried released him.

“Think on it. He’s gone where we all will, Mary be praised. You think to imply other than he’s better now than fore and I’ll
prove you wrong. Course, heretics don’t never reach where he’s at, meanin if you do wanna see him and the rest a your morally
skint kinfolk again you’d best straighten your mecky ass out.”

“You know nothing!” Rodrigo screamed, his face shining. “Nothing! He was sick of mind when you came, and you made him worse!
I knew you’d bring his end!”

“Men bring their ends on themselves,” said Manfried.

“He listened to you!” said Rodrigo. “Years I obeyed him as a son obeys a father, and for what? You come into our house and
suddenly it’s you and not me he trusts!”

“Way the wheel spins,” said Manfried, with what he assumed was a sagacious air. “Maybe if you’d been a better son to ’em he’d
never a set foot on that boat. Maybe he’d a listened to you.” The Grossbart did not look at Rodrigo as he left, his satisfied
smile unseen by all but Her.

In the sea-bound stable, Al-Gassur showed the bundled relic he had begun to think of as his brother’s heart to the horses,
which stomped and whinnied whenever the item left his cloak. He regaled the steeds with the legend of Barousse and whispered
in their long ears how he would sell the Grossbarts to the first Bedouin slavers they encountered. Then eastward for him,
to find a sea containing a bride of his own, and perhaps to meet his brother again under the waves.

When they sighted the coast Hegel and Manfried slapped each other and King Peter on the back until welts rose. At dawn they
coasted into the harbor of Alexandria and the Grossbarts led the charge down the docks, armor and weapons glowing in the autumn
sun.

The massacre that ensued is well documented elsewhere, neither women nor children spared from butchery. The unsuspecting citizens
fled as best they could but not before the waves splashing the quays were crimson and the gutters filled with blood. Unlike
many of the Hospitallers and Cypriots, the Grossbarts and Raphael took no pleasure from the slaughter, going to task as men
have always toiled—with bored disdain. Al-Gassur followed the Grossbarts from a safe distance, liberating bottles and coins
from the dead and the dying left in their wake. Rodrigo refused to partake or even watch, creeping back onto the ship and
drinking himself into a miserable stupor.

Breaking into a multi-domed manse, the Grossbarts found their way to the larder and wiled away the twilight hours drinking
syrupy wines and gorging on strange meats and fruits. There they spent the night, Raphael forced to take first watch and Al-Gassur
shoved outside until daylight. At dawn they wandered the vacant streets, idly making toward two monoliths rising in the distance.
Standing before Cleopatra’s Needles, the Brothers yawned.

“What you make a all them shapes etched on there?” Hegel peered at the black obelisks. “Reckon there might be someone under
them?”

“Might be.” Manfried pressed his cropped ear to the side of the less worn monument and banged with his mace. “First let’s
see if there’s some kind a door up here.”

There was not. Disgruntled and sweating, unable to find portal or crease, they sat between the two, chewing their beards.
Before they could resume their efforts one of the Hospitallers in Martyn’s service spotted them and brought them to the cardinal
and the king, who had established themselves in a palace.

The Grossbarts would look back on the time they spent with King Peter as if recalling a fairy tale, with embellishments added
only through a failure to recollect the specifics. They characteristically avoided the bridge over the canal leading to the
battle lines, where the city’s inhabitants successfully held off the crusaders, instead surreptitiouly crossing in quieter
quarters to vainly prowl for tomb-cities. They were undeniably sloshed for the bulk of their stay in Alexandria, which ended
up being only a few days. After their unsuccessful attempt to pry open the solid stone of the Needles, they shunned the column
of Diocletian towering nearby and so never discovered the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa or the Christian and Jewish cemeteries
thereabouts.

Their innate gold-hunger led them at last to the alabaster tomb of that mighty city’s mighty founder, but his gold casket
and bejeweled scepter had been pinched long before. They were impressed by the quality of workmanship but annoyed their predecessors
had not marked the grave in some way to denote its hollowness, which would have saved them time and toil.

Finally, at long last, the red glimmer of evening revealed to them the grand graveyard of Chatby, and both were struck mute
by the sheer volume of stone markers and crypts. A number of other crusaders were already at work, and rather than risk drawing
Mary’s disfavor by associating themselves with amateurs they returned to the palace to coerce the king into putting a stop
to the looting so that they might do it properly.

The next morning, however, word arrived that the Mamluks, those slaves-become-masters who ruled all of Gyptland, had a massive
army approaching the city by sea, land, and river, and despite Peter’s protests the fleet prepared to abandon its conquest.
Standing on the dock that final morning with the hordes of the Infidel entering the rear of the city, the Grossbarts dismissed
Peter’s pleas to accompany him back to Cyprus.

“Shit, sure we got plenty a gold, notwithstanding that what the cardinal donated.” Manfried shot a glare at Martyn. “But that’s
missin the point.”

“Yeah,” Hegel explained, “you gotta have faith there’s still more gold locked up in them heathen tombs.”

Peter nodded at Raphael’s translation that faith was indeed more valuable than physical wealth, and through the interpreter
Peter gave his assurance that he would return with a larger army. This the Grossbarts agreed to be the sensible option, there
being no way they could transport all their loot in a canoe as Hegel had originally theorized. So king and Grossbarts parted
as allies and almost equals, neither party knowing what Mary held for them. Before he could rally another crusade King Peter
would be assassinated by papal schemers eager to suppress what would become known as the Grossbart Heresy, and as for what
befell the Brothers themselves, one must press a little further into Gyptland.

Rodrigo’s attempt to stow away back to his captain’s bones was thwarted by snooping knights, and he was escorted back into
the Grossbarts’ company. Al-Gassur beamed at the ships, waving his brother’s swaddled prize as they slipped out of harbor.
The ten Imperial Hospitallers resolved to stay with the cardinal after the Grossbarts convinced Martyn his aim of returning
to Rhodes might be unsound. The winking reminder that perhaps word had come from Venezia regarding the future of the papacy
convinced Raphael to stay as it did the cardinal.

Having little interest in meeting the Mamluk host, the sixteen men boosted a small galley and set off down the canal leading
to the Nile and the tombs of legend; the defenders on the bridge retreated to join their reinforcements and thus allowed the
Grossbarts to slip away. Only as they whisked down the canal and passed the enormous eastern necropolis did they realize how
ripe with graves was Alexandria. The remorse such an epiphany brings might cripple a lesser graverobber, but these were Grossbarts,
and after the initial cursing the disappointment instead honed their gluttonous appetites.

To think the Grossbarts were happy now that their lifetime goal was fulfilled is to misjudge them completely. They found no
wonder in a river flowing north and were intensely put out to have ten heavily armored men crowding their vessel who answered
to Martyn instead of them, even if the crusaders were the ones doing the rowing. Only with kicks and punches were they able
to convince Rodrigo of the necessity of his helping pilot the boat, fiddle with the oarlocks, and do everything else required
to keep them moving. From their vantage they made out only sandy banks and silt-muddied water, small and dank islands rearing
up where tributaries joined and broke from their liquid road.

After they had dropped anchor the first night in the boat, the Brothers stared upriver long past moonrise. Raphael, Rodrigo,
and Al-Gassur joined them, and for the first time since meeting all five shared a drink in silence, putting aside the crisscrossing
paths of mutual aversion to stare at the moon-glowing river and listen to the bizarre conglomeration of sounds. The quiet
of the scorching day had worried the seasoned Grossbarts, who knew full well silent places in nature often bespeak demons,
but the cacophony of nearby splashes, chirps, and whistles could hardly be viewed as preferable.

They started again when light crept over the bank, and at a fork Rodrigo directed them up the left channel. The Grossbarts
grew increasingly frustrated as the day waned and no steepled churches emerged to herald plunderable cemeteries. Only the
sun shone gold, turning the river all manner of strange colors that evening, the bank to their left replaced by an endless
bog.

No sooner had they dropped anchor than the darkness fully settled. Then they all saw the lights ahead, as if a small city
slowly drifted toward them on the current. The Grossbarts hissed orders and gathered their arms, but when the lights grew
closer and larger they realized flight could be their only salvation as the massive ships approached.

Raising anchor they awkwardly maneuvered about and rowed downstream, picking up the current and flying over the black water.
The ships disappeared around the curve and the nose of their boat slammed into something. The sound of splintering wood is
not something to take lightly on a river, and water had flooded the galley up to their ankles by the time they had freed themselves
from the submerged log. They managed to reach the nearby bank but the hole punched in the side made further use of the boat
impossible until they could fix it—assuming, of course, that they could.