The Enterprise of Death (29 page)

“But it’s so real!” Awa peered closer. “What is that gold circle floating behind your head?”

“I think it’s about time to eat,” said Manuel, reluctant to own up to artistically rendering himself in a similar fashion to what he did for the men he had struck down on the Lombardy battlefields, even if he had nominally done the painting as one of Saint Luke—it would take too long to explain, anyway.

That night, after a dinner that might have been awkward even without the revelation that the nun in filthy bandages was actually a Moor, and the arrival of a rather drunk Monique midway through, and the eventual disclosure that Manuel had not actually earned very much money at all, the artist and his wife finally escaped their guests and household, closing the door to their bedchamber with the finality of masons sealing a crypt. Then they fucked with far more passion than they had been able to raise over the last hour of entertaining, Katharina only giving her husband enough time to rinse his business before kneeling before him, kissing his stomach as she worked his member with a practiced hand. Manuel sighed, more content than he had been in ages, and then she took him in her mouth and he tousled her hair, groaning happily.

“Did you miss me?” Katharina asked, dropping him from her mouth and scooting backwards just as he reached the edge of the slope upon which there is no purchase. He teetered, clenching the muscles he did not know the names of, and the pressure relaxed. He scowled happily at his wife, who had gotten to her feet and was quickly undressing.

“Like a leper misses his limbs,” said Manuel with a bow, pulling his trousers the rest of the way down. He had washed and changed upon gaining his house that morning and almost wanted to keep them on, so much had he missed the feel of genuinely clean clothing upon his flesh, but for some reason Katharina always insisted they be completely nude after dark. During the day she delighted in finding ways to accommodate him through her sometimes cumbersome dresses, in sliding his codpiece aside just enough to flick his foreskin with her tongue, to have him squeeze her breasts almost to the point of pain through her bodice, but once the sun had set she would not tolerate so much as a stocking upon him or her.

“Not more?” she pouted, the light of the full moon making her body glow like alabaster, and making Manuel once again contemplate taking up sculpture to better honor her.

“More than words can say,” he said through a mouthful of shirt as he got the last garment over his head. “More than art can show, more than—ah.”

Her foot had intercepted his chest as he reached the edge of the bed, intending to crawl on top of her.

“Ah,” he said again, gently lifting the foot to his lips. She kicked him lightly on the chin.

“How many, Niklaus?” Katharina said firmly, her voice unwavering even as he took her big toe into his mouth. “It must have been quite a few, for you not to confess freely. The Moor?”

“No!” said Manuel, genuinely taken aback. “She wouldn’t even let me sketch her, and besides, she reminds me of Lydie.”

“Really?” Katharina had no idea how the stone-quiet and spruce-stocky Moor reminded her husband of their niece. “The big dyke, then?”

“Dyke? Really?” Manuel clicked his tongue at his wife, although his friend had more than once referred to herself as Schielands Hoge—the biggest dike in Rotterdam. “Mo’d break it off if I suggested it, and she won’t let me sketch her, either.”

“Hmmm,” said Katharina, stretching her foot past her husband’s ear, finally letting him lower himself. “Let me work on them, they’ll have their skirts over their heads before you can mix your flesh tones.”

“That’s, well, that’s, beautiful, really,” said Manuel, but he wasn’t thinking about painting his companions, he was gazing raptly at his wife’s profile as he slid down beside her and kneaded her breast. “Christ Christ Christ, have I missed you, Kat.”

She gasped and he squeezed harder but then she was sitting up, tearing his freshly scarred hand away and holding it up toward the window. “Niklaus, what’s happened?!”

“Oh, that?” said Manuel, putting his unmarred right hand on the nape of her neck and squeezing gently. “That’s a story for later, full of witches and bastards.”

“But is it alright?”

“It is, it is, but there’s another region that’s troubling me …”

“Oh really?” Katharina began kissing the fingertips of the hand she held. “Now, I thought you just said witches.”

“I did, I did,” said Manuel, pulling his hand away from her mouth and replacing it with his own. “Later.”

They did nothing but kiss for a very long time, and then she cried briefly but fiercely, holding on to the hand von Stein had shot, and then they fucked until Manuel came, which was far too quickly for both of their liking. Then he finally confessed to masturbating on five different whores, on nine separate occasions, as he used his hand and mouth on his wife—the taste of his own
paint was a fitting penance, they agreed as she squirmed and he postponed her climax as he detailed the way he had made them hold up their skirts, the way it had run off their breasts like oil whites, but before he got to the last night with the last whore, where he had sketched a French girl no older than his niece with his charcoal in one hand and his cock in the other, splashing her chin and tongue and breaking the charcoal in his passion, before he got there Katharina had heard enough and drew his head back in with her nimble feet as he tried to break away to continue his tales, and she came harder than she had since he had left to go to war. Exhausted from the ride to Bern, and his wife, Manuel opted to wait until the next evening before asking her about the men she had enjoyed while he was gone.

“You could,” Katharina said after they had both caught their breath. “I really wouldn’t—”

“Hmph,” Manuel snorted, cupping her breast firmer as he pressed himself against her. “Don’t want to. The sketching’s enough until I get back to you.”

“It makes me think you’re playing martyr when you say it like that,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “I actually, you know, fuck other people, I fuck them, Niklaus, and you make up dirty stories. As long as the whores—”

“I don’t want to jerk off on whores, let alone have sex with them,” said Manuel. “I want to sketch them, and occasionally paint them, and then I want to come home and make gentle love to my wife as I invent stories about jerking off on whores. And call me old-fashioned, but I’m still perfectly happy with you sleeping with other men when I’m away so long as you love me best.”

“Mmmm,” said Katharina, snuggling closer to her husband. “I sometimes think it wouldn’t be as … weird if you really did, instead of making it up.”

“Oh? Weird, eh? A pity, then, it would be
so
much more
normal if I painted whores with my prick instead of my brush.” Now Manuel pretended to sulk, but Katharina’s hand had fallen to his, her fingers running over the gnarled scar tissue.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, her tone now somber, and so he did, leaving out nothing. Before he had even stormed out of von Stein’s tent for the first time she had gotten up and retrieved the special schnapps, and then they sat on the edge of the bed and drank little sips of the fiery enzian water as he recounted his story. She stopped him, bidding he confirm and confirm again the details of Awa raising the dead, and of her raising Manuel from the little death. She did not cry even when he did, and at last he concluded his story, wishing he could see her face in the dark—the moon had long since deserted them. He waited quite a while before she spoke. When she did, her voice was very flat, in the way it became when she was quite furious with him.

“So you risked me, and Lydie and the baby, all for a fucking witch, Manuel? A real witch? That creepy fucking Moor you brought here, into our home? With an Inquisitor searching for her?”

“The Inquisitor, he, ah, he’s been excommunicated, and—”

“Niklaus Manuel!” She slapped him across the face as hard as she could, his left eyelid immediately swelling. “You’re such a fucking idiot!”

“I didn’t have a choice, they—”

“We always have a choice, Niklaus!”

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I just kept, kept imagining it was, it was …”

“It was what?!”

“I kept imagining it was you under the sack they’d covered her with, or Lydie. And when they were going to rape her I kept thinking it, I couldn’t stop, and I thought you’d want me to help her, whoever she was, and I, and I—” Manuel’s voice broke, knowing his wife was right, that he had risked her, the most kind
and wonderful person he had ever met, and his growing family besides, for a fucking witch, and only the hand of Providence had saved him; had the Inquisitor not been excommunicated they would all be dead, or worse, von Stein was a barbarian, and —

“Oh, Niklaus,” Katharina whispered, taking her husband’s head in her arms and stroking his hair. “It’s alright, it is, and I’m proud of you, really I am, you just scared me—”

“I know!” he moaned. “I know I—”

“Shhh,” she said, her own eyes filling not at her husband’s tears, which were not so uncommon as some men’s, but at the invisible sword he had hung over her head for who knew how many days until that Inquisitor had been discharged from the Church. “I love you, Niklaus; you’re just too sweet for your own good. I’m proud of you, though, I am. I don’t know if I would have saved her, if it meant risking you and our family.”

“Katharina,” he sniffled. “You’re so good … you’re so … so good, and I knew you’d, I knew you would be waiting for me, if I didn’t, if I didn’t lose my soul. It was a test, it had to be, and I passed, I did, and to prove it He cast out the traitor in His Church, He got rid of him.”

“Who cast him out of the Church, Niklaus?”

“God,” said Manuel, realizing how ridiculous he sounded.

“Now, that’s impossible,” said Katharina, and when this stunned her husband into silence she waited only one, two, three heartbeats before saying, “I’m an adulteress, you’re a killer, and we don’t pay nearly enough to the Church for Him to intercede on our behalf, you filthy artist.”

They laughed in the dark, both scared and guilty for what they had thought, and then they finally went to sleep, the husband and wife forgetting everything but their love for one another as they fell into their dreams together.

While Katharina and Manuel spent their night engaged in wanton fucking and earnest conversation, Awa and Monique only did the latter. Both apologized, though each felt they really should not have to, and in the morning they were closer to friendship than they had been for days, if not quite warm. They ate fresh biscuits that Lydie had made, Katharina and Manuel coming down from the second floor midway through the meal.

“Nun sacks!” Manuel picked up one of the cocoon-shaped confections and bit into it with relish.

“Bozolati,” Lydie said, glancing at Awa and blushing. “Nun’s bozolati, uncle.”

“Fu—fantastic, is what it is.” Monique waved her biscuit at Manuel’s niece. “Real choice, Lydie. Sweet, too.”

Awa snorted, wondering what Manuel thought of the gunner flirting with his niece. Then she realized that several sets of eyes had settled on her, and she coughed, taking a sip of water. “Very sweet, young miss,” said Awa. “Thank you very much.”

“Manuel was telling me you both will be leaving for Marseilles at once,” said Katharina as she got herself a plate before joining them. “A pity we did not have more time to get to know each other.”

“Well, time’s a fickle bitch,” said Monique, biting into another biscuit.

“She is indeed,” said Katharina mildly. “She is indeed.”

A servant came in, only to take a step back at seeing Awa. Then he sheepishly hurried around the now-quiet table and whispered in Manuel’s ear. Katharina heard what the man said and promptly dropped her biscuit, her eyes growing large.

“Pardon me,” said Manuel, but Awa saw he had gone quite pale. On his way out after the servant he paused, looked at her, and then quickly exited into the hall. Even though he closed the door behind him they heard raised voices almost at once, and Katharina quickly stood up.

“If you ladies would care to join me,” Katharina said, both Awa and Monique noticing that while she had discarded her biscuit she still held a small knife in her right hand. She was shaking slightly, and as Lydie opened her mouth to speak, or maybe sigh or yawn, the full attention of her aunt fell upon her. “Lydie, please take a walk outside.”