The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (22 page)

Again I stress my unwavering faith for even when I drank too much to stand and lay praying in my own sick I knew I remained
in His Service, though to an outsider I suppose it appeared that perhaps I lost my way somewhat, for several times I was denied
sanctuary at local parishes and had to stay at taverns or farms, where those my age reveled despite the calamitous nature
of those times. I would watch the girls dance and only then did my piety tremble like their smooth, plump thighs swaying under
their dresses, dresses damp with sweat and youth and—

Ahem.

At one such village a particular lass seemed to shine on me, and so intent was I on talking with her that I scarce remembered
to drink and spent the entire night with a blasting headache but a gay heart. We wandered over streams and across fields,
and when I brought her to her door she kissed me on the cheek. Such bliss! Her father softened and set down his ax when he
threw open the door to discover a young monk chatting with his daughter, and to my shame and inner torment I discovered that
my destined abbey sat atop the hill of that very village, and from my cell window I could pick out the light of Elise’s farm,
for that was the girl’s name.

I managed to clean myself up enough to be accepted at the abbey, and in very little time had gotten myself comfortably arranged
with the cook. Rare was the day when water passed my lips instead of beer, wine, brandy, or mead, rare as a good Christian
in the Holy Land these days. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I know as well as you that all men drink regardless of their
link in the chain, but know you must that I drank more than is befitting of any save a drunkard. The faces of my brothers
and superiors were as interchangeable as those at my last monastery, although I still shook in my dreams when I remembered
the pretty farm girl Elise cavorting that previous spring when I hiked through vale and mountain. Whenever possible I volunteered
to take our herbs to the village for market, where Elise would often notice and come running to warm me with her adorable
smile, her chest heaving from the exertion. Temptation, lads, shun it, shun it! I prayed and drank and tended the garden and
studied and prayed and debated and drank and helped illuminate manuscripts and prayed and translated and drank and prayed.
There I would have grown old and shriveled like the fruit of the Lord which I was but instead, instead…

That’s better. Good stuff, this. They must be Benedictines, yes? Fine drink, fine, fine, fine. But as I said, was saying,
am saying, er, where was I?

Oh, oh oh oh. Yes. Two years passed, was it two? Three? No matter, a little time passed, and then the pest came to our fair
empire without warning, and then all flesh and souls were threatened by the Archfiend’s plan, for surely, surely he was to
blame. At the time, naturally, I did not know this, and shared the base belief that it must be God’s Wrath, a cleansing of
the Gomorrah we had become. To believe such evil was wrought by His Pure Hands!

What? God’s, who else’s?

No, no, I did not mean it like that, I meant only that the pest was not His Holy Work but the machinations of the old Serpent
again among us. At the time, however, how else could we see it but as another test? The serfs and yeomen who had built their
town around the abbey, however, had their own ideas…

That noxious swamp vapors are responsible for the pestilence is documented, and by your nodding heads I see that you are educated
men. What is not so well accounted is that in certain rural, dismal places men are so desperate for succor from its ravages
that they bow down before the miasma itself, offering devotion in exchange for their lives and those of their families. This
diabolical heresy was perpetuated by the cult’s ringleader, a man calling himself the Bird Doctor.

He arrived shortly before the pest, and succeeded in gaining the confidence of the foolish members of the village. The abbot
brought me personally along to condemn the man as he cavorted in the square, dressed in a suit of raven feathers and wearing
a sinister wooden vulture mask. The abbot launched into a diatribe against the heretic and swore if he was not departed in
three days’ time sterner measures would be taken. The man laughed under his mask and told the assembled mob that only he could
ward off the miasma, and continued his strange, lascivious dance.

Contrary to his nonchalance, he left the following morning, wandering down the eastern road, and, they said, dancing and singing
as he went. That evening the miller’s wife began coughing and by cockcrow had buboes swelling from groin and pits. A family
of Jews were passing through, and they could not escape before the town had rallied and caught them. From my cell I heard
their screams as they went onto the pyre, accused of sprinkling viper skin into the brook and conjuring forth the miasma.

This time the blasphemous peasants chased the abbot back to the abbey when he tried to intervene, and the miller rode out
in pursuit of the Bird Doctor. They returned late that night, and as I drank in my cell I saw their shadows on the moonlit
road. After his return, events, as you may suspect, did not improve.

The village was decimated within a week but the abbot refused to allow any of the peasants entrance, swearing they had brought
the pest upon themselves by turning their backs on God. I was not then and am still not now convinced he made the right decision,
but I was young then and old now, and young men often do very foolish things. When the first of our order developed those
damn lumps and the distinct cough we all prayed, and I am sure I was not the only one to eschew water for stouter stuff. Each
day several more caught it, and yet Providence spared me, and I drank and drank and drank but could not forget her face.

I packed my belongs, in a drunken fit of hubris convincing myself I could do His Work just as well outside the church as within.
I packed my things, mostly bottles, and escaped down to the pest-riddled village in search of Elise. Why do we punish ourselves
so?

I saw her pleasant face bloated and gray, staring out from the pile of rotting corpses as I hurried down the rocky path. I
found her burnt bones beside the creek, where the heretical peasants had tried to purify her dead flesh. I even saw her embracing
the Bird Doctor, licking his hideous mask and cooing to him as I ran through the square. But the worst, which I knew would
be the truth as I raced along the outskirts to her house, was that she had contracted the pest but had not yet expired, and
I would find her in horrible pain, powerless to help. I was a sobbing man-child as I banged on her door, praying she had eloped
with a farm boy before the Bird Doctor arrived.

As I feared, none answered my summons, and in my despair I kicked in the door. The stench tormented me but I fought it with
more mead and braved the interior. The wretched, foul bodies were too far decayed to tell man from woman, father from daughter,
and I embraced the moldiest of them, wailing her name between fits of vomiting.

I heard my name spoken from the door, and my gagging throat and breaking heart both hesitated in their course. Oh, her voice,
her charming, innocent voice!

She trembled like a foal taking its first steps, like a novice reciting his first letter, she lived, she lived! Oh, what further
proof of His Love, what further proof!? She had meant to flee that very night, having hid in the hay bales for several days,
incapacitated with grief and terror. She had seen my approach and raced away, fearing I was the Bird Doctor who had menaced
her every day until her parents’ passing and her concealment behind the house. Later she told me something inside had made
her turn back to be sure, and we agreed it must be the merciful whispering of Mary.

We traveled to a hunter’s cabin high in the hills behind the abbey, taking only what food she had in her satchel and I had
in mine. Base as I had become, I had also stolen several rushlights, and lighting one of these, I nested us down in that dilapidated
shack at the foot of an enormous peak. The heavy pines more than the thin roof kept out the rain, and with tears still glazing
our cheeks we acknowledged that we must inspect one another for marks of the pest.

She removed her dress and I my cowl and habit, and our joy at finding each other unblemished soon increased. Do not cast such
disapproving looks my way! I shall explain to you as I did to Elise that Martyn the monk is different from Martyn the man,
and Martyn the monk’s last act as such was to wed Martyn, the man, to Elise. The woman.

Of course it works that way! Who’s the priest here? Thank you, Hegel. But you know, after that first kiss we shared this has
never tasted as sweet as it once did, and never has filled me with that old joy; only, when I have enough, a blissful absentmindedness.

Yes. We spent days if not weeks there, laboring with all our skill to cope with our grief and our strange new situation. But
before I could join us in marriage she had me be her confessor, convinced without immediate absolution she would be forever
damned.

That wicked Bird Doctor had taken a strong interest in poor, poor Elise, confirming my suspicions that beneath his avian mantle
lurked a decidedly human pair of eyes. But he was more than human both in body and spirit, for before traveling to transmit
his ruin he had studied the evil arts. A diabolist of self-professed prowess, he had described in gruesome detail to her how
he had used the blood of babes and the fur of rats to summon up an entity from the pit, a demon straight from the old times
of darkness and devilry. He welcomed this fiend into his own body and became a demoniac, and it possessed first his bilious
humours, growing and nursing and encouraging him in his evil ways. And now he spread plague and ruin and reveled in it, masquerading
as the cure for the very malignancy he carried. These and worse secrets he called to her through her bolted door, telling
her as soon as the rest rotted alive he would take her as his own and let a similar demon into her virgin body.

My miserable Elise cried and cried, but sometime before dawn her tears dried and we completed a far more pleasant ceremony,
with only the flimsy walls and the Virgin witnessing our marriage. Then such heavenly pleasure, and I do not use the word
heavenly lightly, I mean—I’m sorry, Hegel, I did not realize such matters would offend. Oh, I see it on your face, no need
to protest, I was being most crass, my apologies to both of you and the Lord and both Her and her.

I knew the Lord approved of our union, for I felt Him with me as strong as ever, but I worried about my brethren down below.
So when our food ran out, but not our drink, for in that blessed time I drank no more than an old farmwife, I insisted we
visit the monastery before traveling south to live our lives together in earnest. Elise pleaded with me not to go but I insisted,
guilt at deserting my brotherhood when they most needed me overpowering my desire to carry my bride to safety. I cursed myself
for not going to warn the abbot of the Bird Doctor’s true identity that first morning as a spouse, regardless of what he might
think of me for casting off of my habit.

In many places the pest claimed only a few or at least spared a handful, but in that blasted valley none still lived. The
abbey reared up in the twilight, an accusatory finger beckoning me back into the fold. Hand in hand we went inside through
the same back door I had sneaked out through, and saw no lights lit for Vespers, the bell tower dark and silent as if it were
a league beneath the ocean.

I built a bonfire in the garden to warm my bride and summon any who lived. They were all dead. Elise stayed by the fire but
I ran through every hall, opened every door, only to find them piled in the chapel, the stench unbearable, unbelievable. I
will not repeat the horrors I witnessed, the blasphemies marking every surface, written in odious—Yes? Sure enough, Manfried,
that is further proof that we fought the same evil! No let me fin—Sorry, I get, I get, oh Hell…

Yes please. As I say, it doesn’t help like it used to. But it helps. Better, better.

Elise is screaming in the garden, and I run to her, and I see, I see, that filthy, oh Christ, his mask is off and he’s got
his decaying face pressed to hers, the mask is at his feet and his skin is falling off. I beat him with my walking stick,
I hit, I hit, and he fell apart like a rotten roast, chunks of meat and bone and he just fell apart but it was too late. I
saw it enter her, oh Hell, I see, I see…

How long have I—Never mind, I’d rather not—Yes, very much so. Better, better. Benedictines, definitely. More? Ugh. First a
touch more of this, if it’s all the same.

It had her. That demon had her, and only her eyes were her own, and it told me with her unforgettable voice what it would
have her do, and I could not move, I was paralyzed with grief. And it laughed with her laugh, and told me all was my fault
for abandoning my brothers and then leading her back to it. It thanked me with her angelic voice! Then it told me if I would
give my soul and my flesh it would leave her with no harm done to her spirit or body, if only I would let it inside me. It
said a monk would be good sport!

In blackest suffering only His Light penetrates, and it found me then, moments before the demon surely would have had me,
and by my own volition. I adored her that much, Grossbarts, that had I, I would, I, I—

I did not. Instead, He inspired me. A demon that demands I offer my soul before taking my body is a demon which
cannot
take my soul unless it is given,
regardless
of what vengeance it wreaks upon my corporeal self! And if a fallen monk is still thus protected, what of an unblemished,
edelweiss-pure soul such as Elise’s? I began to laugh and it strode closer in her flesh, eager to hear my answer, sure that
madness had convinced me. Instead I swung my cane and knocked them into the fire and it pulled me in after, and if I wore
a hairshirt then as I do now then we both would be lost.

I managed to douse myself in the snow, although my chest and belly are forever scarred from the blaze. She and it screamed
in concert, but in her boiling eyes I still saw nothing but love through the pain. They ran toward the same drift as I but
I mercilessly beat them back with my cane, and when she went silent and its blackening shadow tried to slip out I burst its
skin with my smoldering cane, and heard it shriek my name as it seemingly expired.