The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (16 page)

Hegel followed his brother’s lead, wiping the spot of blood off on Giacomo’s shoulder and relooping his pick onto his belt.
Giacomo relaxed, touching his neck and launching a barrage at Alphonse, who in turn explained the Brothers were moon-touched
and would be dealt with accordingly. If not now, later.

“Gotta nun?” Hegel asked his brother.

“More likely a sweet piece he wanted off-limits til his wife died or some such. Didn’t say daughter or sister or nuthin, but
who knows. Poncey’s a little rough on the ears.” Manfried gingerly touched his cropped lobe.

Ennio returned from the rear hallway, pale and shivering. Alphonse and Giacomo both spoke at once, but Manfried cuffed Alphonse
in the ear, encouraging him to talk right or not at all. Ennio narrowed his eyes at the Brothers but seemed distracted. He
hurried to the door and ensured the slat locked it firmly, and dragged another bench to the fire. All eight eyes waited for
his next move. Sighing, he relieved Alphonse of his bottle.

“Go fetch the grain bag and make some porridge,” Ennio said wearily.

Alphonse complained to himself but went into the back.

“Grossbarts,” Ennio said. “Any queries should be given to me instead of my associates, as they will provide you with nothing
of substance.”

“Dunno if that’s all true,” Manfried said. “What’s the girl to this captain—kin or kinmaker?”

“None of your concern, be assured,” Ennio said with a frown at the returning Alphonse.

“Maybe yeah, maybe nah,” Manfried said, removing the stew from the fire and setting it on a bench. Hegel wasted no time in
setting to, dipping his bowl whenever his brother was not slurping directly from the pot. The three foreigners cooked and
ate their porridge in jealous silence.

With their stew gone, the Grossbarts gazed at the porridge. Permission was stated by Hegel rather than requested, and they
ate the rest of that, too. Pleasantly bloated, the Brothers sipped their schnapps and reclined by the fire. Even Alphonse
and Giacomo appeared to have forgotten the altercation, whispering to each other and smiling drunkenly. In view of the porridge,
the Brothers let it slide. Ennio disappeared through the rear hall and soon returned with a fresh bit of frost on his hat.
He resumed his seat with a sigh.

“The snow has stopped,” Ennio finally said, “and the moon is near full, you can actually see about.”

“Well, that’s somethin, I guess, or you would a stayed quiet,” Manfried said.

“No lights.” Ennio rolled a bottle from hand to hand. “Not so queer if everyone is here, but they are not.”

“What about that monastery?” Manfried said.

“Black. But it can be seen in the moonlight. Usually some lights at those, especially if they have a feast or festival or
other reason why town has gone there.” Ennio sipped on his bottle, Alphonse’s pattern of listening and whispering implying
he translated for Giacomo.

Alcohol had blunted Hegel’s anxiety about the town but it still twisted in his brain and heart and he brooded in silence.
He knew what came next, and did not want to hear it. Something about the unseen woman in the rear also itched at his nerves.
He wanted to lay eyes on her to see if that helped, although he suspected it would not.

“So we go out and look around, bang on some doors to ensure, and hike up to the monastery. Even in snow it is close.” Ennio
set his bottle on the floor and stood, looking at the four doubtful men.

Hegel broke the silence with a laugh, surprised his brother did not join in. Regaining himself, he wiped his eyes. “Have fun!
Me and Manfried’ll make sure nuthin goes amiss round here.”

“Grossbarts,” Ennio patiently explained. “We must discover where everyone has gone. Their absence is unnatural. Whole towns
do not disappear without reason.”

“So? Ain’t gonna make no difference where they at. Can’t drive them ponies by moonlight on these roads, so we’s here til cockcrow
at the soonest.” Hegel sipped his drink, unable to remember a time when he would less fancy a moonlit stroll.

“Hegel—” Ennio began, but Manfried cut him off.

“Any princes or lords round here?” Manfried said.

“No,” Ennio said, not seeing the relevance.

“How’d that monastery get built?” Manfried pressed.

“Looks more of a keep or fortress than a church, so mayhap a duke or count lived there. But that would be long ago, I suppose,
or else the monks would not be there now. You think someone ordered the absence of the village?” Ennio perked up, unsure what
Manfried implied.

“Nah,” Manfried said, “but seein’s how you’s been so kind’s to let us ride, the least me and my humble family can do is spot
around the town with you.”

“The Devil, Manfried, we ain’t…” Seeing the gleam in his brother’s eye, Hegel trailed off. The familiar look on Manfried’s
face clued Hegel in, drunken excitement besting his worry. Cursing his own obtuseness, Hegel said, “Yeah, you’s right. I was
bein selfish. Right uncharitable a me.”

“That’s right, brother,” Manfried chided. “We’s here to do the work a Mary. And She clear as Hell wants us to lend a hand
to our friends.” Then shifting to their brotherly cant, he added, “And sides, monks’ more liable to be decent folk than your
average priest. Most a them’s shit, sure, but always err on the side a helpin’em out, case they’s in good with the Virgin.”

Ennio shrugged and made ready to leave, wise enough to recognize that while the Grossbarts were certainly working an angle,
there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, if they had murder on their minds then Alphonse and Giacomo would have already
been dead and they would have gone after him without pretext. The cousins were tickled to be left behind, wanting nothing
to do with the Grossbarts in a desolate town under a fat moon.

No wind or snow disturbed their march but the chill worked into their beards. They brought rushlights but these stayed cold
in their belts, the moon reflecting eerily off the snow. Every time Ennio called out into the stillness or rapped on a door
the Grossbarts had to suppress the urge to club the idiot. The town consisted of less than a dozen buildings on each side
of the road but the knee-deep drifts slowed their progress. The high stone wall circling the houses ended in another wooden
gate, and rather than forcing it they climbed a convenient stile and hopped over the side.

Here the road switchbacked up the face of a stern mountain and they could see the silhouette of the monastery several bends
away. They did not speak, slowly tramping through the snow until they rounded the final curve and broke off onto the path
leading to the black structure. The road fell away on the side overlooking the town, the moon so bright they made out the
alehouse, the town walls, and the mountains they had journeyed through.

To their left the monastery wall terminated in a cliff face that rose up into its own shadow, nullifying the need for additional
fortifications on that end, and to their right the barrier skirted the drop-off on the other side of the natural shelf and
blotted out the view of Rouseberg below. The keep abutted the sheer mountainside, and a wide gap between the edifice’s right
flank and the encircling wall indicated the monastery grounds continued behind the looming central structure. Ignoring the
small wooden buildings annexed along the wall, Ennio stepped forward and cupped his hands around his mouth to hail the monks
when Hegel boxed his ear.

“Keep that hole shut,” shushed Hegel.

“Where’s the churchyard?” Manfried whispered.

“Eh?” Ennio glanced from one to the other.

“The cemetery,” said Hegel. “Boneyard? Graveyard? Burial ground? Like a potter’s field, only with markers.”

“A necropolis?” Ennio’s chestnut eyes narrowed to almonds. “What business have you there?”

“Our own,” Manfried shot back.

“But what could we find in such a place?” said Ennio with a shudder.

“All questions are answered in the grave,” Hegel sagely stated.

“I do not know where it is,” Ennio said. “If it was once a castle they might have a crypt in the cellar.”

“That’s a risk we gotta chance,” Manfried said, seeing the concern on Hegel’s face. The witch-chills had returned to Hegel,
stronger than what he had felt in the town.

“Maybe we oughta just call it done,” Hegel said, peering around nervously.

“First we must check the door and try to gain the inside,” said Ennio, relieved Hegel had sided with him. Sane men do not
poke around graves in the best of times, let alone under a full moon in a suspiciously vacated town deep in the winter-gripped
mountains.

“Rot,” Manfried snarled. “We check the back, see if it’s there. If it ain’t, then we pry a window and find the cellar. Don’t
forget yourself on me, Hegel Grossbart.”

Hegel’s resolve strengthened at hearing his full name. The spoils were waiting and he had suggested leaving them for the dirt.
He shoved past Ennio, reckoning the man’s cowardice had rubbed off on him.

Ennio sullenly followed the Grossbarts, cutting between a wooden building and the side of the monastery proper. They were
in shadow again, the outer wall and the side of the abbey conspiring to blot out the moon, the crunching snow the only sound.
Emerging back into the moonlight, they were in another large courtyard with a single outbuilding set against the rear of the
wall where the fortification curved back into the cliff. The trio made for a small doorway in the wall beside the building.

A warm breeze chilled their nerve at the door, a fetid wind blowing from behind. Turning as one, they saw nothing but the
rear of the monastery and their own footprints trailing off into darkness. The pungent stench burned their eyes, and all three
instantly knew it to be the odor of rotting meat. The draft faded but the stink remained. Ennio had taken a step toward the
abbey when Manfried whistled softly.

Beyond the small wooden door a churchyard stretched along the stone shelf, cliffs rising up on one side and dropping from
the other until the tapering plateau faded into the face of the mountain. Crosses and other markers jutted out of the snow
like wreckage in a flood, and several pale hummocks towered beside the largest mound. To anyone else it would have appeared
another vague lump in the powder but the Grossbarts instantly recognized it for a crypt. They hurried through the cemetery,
banging their boots and knees on submerged tombstones, Ennio stumbling after.

The stone door had clearly stood undisturbed for ages, and Ennio leaned against it. He covetously watched Hegel withdraw a
bottle from his bag and take a pull, then pass it to his brother. Manfried swigged it and planted it in the snow at his feet.
While the Brothers inspected the door and counseled in their private dialect Ennio retrieved their schnapps in what he hoped
appeared to be a casual manner and crouched in the snow rather than sit on a tomb.

Taking a long pull of the drink, Ennio thought of a certain lady in Venezia who would make him forget all about mysterious
towns, strange passengers, and frigid necropoli. He thought of her olive skin and green eyes, of the sweet way she would tease
him when he pretended to have left his purse at home. Then he saw Hegel remove a prybar from his bag and jam it into the door
of the crypt, and Ennio choked on his drink.

“What you do this?” Ennio coughed.

“Pipe down,” said Manfried.

“Ain’t doin,” Hegel muttered, red-faced and white-knuckled.

“You mean to enter it?” Ennio gasped.

“Course we do,” Manfried said, digging the snow out from the bottom of the door.

“Got it?” Hegel asked, setting down the prybar.

“Yeah,” Manfried sighed, “but they got us good, too. What you make a this?”

Hegel hunkered beside his brother. Thick stones and masonry sealed the bottom of the door. The Grossbarts had encountered
worse. They dug in their bags while Ennio paced, staring aghast at them.

“What could the inside tell us of the town? Or that stink by the gate?” Ennio demanded.

“Nuthin,” Hegel said, pulling out Manfried’s hammer and chisel.

“Less than,” said Manfried. “Inside a graves only tell the future, not the past.”

“Common misconception,” Hegel agreed, setting the chisel in place.

“What?” Ennio’s head swam. “What nonsense are you speaking?”

“Well,” Manfried said, raising his hammer. “The content a this here stone-house’ll tell us what’s to come. If it’s full a
riches, then we’s rich, and if it ain’t, we ain’t.”

“Course there’s a deeper meanin,” Hegel said, pulling his own chisel out and using the flat end of his pick in lieu of a hammer.
“And even if it’s empty we’s needin all the practice we can get fore hittin up them what the Infidel’s got. Heard they’s specially
tricksome to get into.”

Both struck at the same time, the metal ringing out in the stillness. They shared a smile, the familiar sound a balm to ward
off the chill of weather and witch alike. A faint echo returned, and at this they struck again, stone splintering off the
crypt.

Ennio let fly a string of foreign curses, then remembered himself. “You intend theft from the dead? You’re defilers of graves!”

“Ennis—” Manfried began.

“Ennio,” Hegel corrected, smashing more masonry.

“Ennio,” Manfried continued, “even a half-wit knows it ain’t stealin if they’s dead.”

“Like rape won’t take away virginity,” Hegel said excitedly, sure his violation at the hands of Nicolette qualified.

“Exactly.” Manfried’s hammer fell again.

“You damn yourselves!” Ennio spluttered. “This sin cannot be undone!”

“We tithe,” Hegel explained.

“Doin Mary’s Will.” Manfried blasted off more stone.

Ennio turned. “We part paths here and now. Sleep in there, for we will not permit you to enter our shelter.”

“You’s drawin lines,” Manfried said, not looking away from his task.

“Never smart,” Hegel grunted, struggling with an obstinate piece of stone.

“Cause then we gotta cross’em,” Manfried finished. Many years had passed since the mortar was laid, evidenced by the ease
with which it splintered. Further proof of Her Grace.