Jesse Bullington - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

“Can melt him down.” Manfried grinned, stowing it in a pouch.

“Beauty better than any woman,” Hegel sighed, trying on a silver ring inlaid with green stones.

“Speakin a such,” said Manfried, “I oughta check on’er.”

“What for?”

“See if, uh, she wants some food. Ain’t et in our presence, gotta be famished.”

“That’s right civil a you, brother,” Hegel said. “Just be sure you don’t go pissin in our feedbag.”

“How’s that?” Manfried turned in the doorway.

“She noble or close enough. I’d reckon they’s smart enough to figure out we done somethin if somethin we do. So do all you can with your eyes, cause them hands a yours best stick to your own mecky self.”

“You got a wicked, unchristian mind.” Manfried stormed off, Hegel chuckling and polishing his rings on the step of the crypt.

Leaving the graveyard, Manfried noticed that the drapery covering the back of the wagon hung open. The only things inside were blankets and several boxes. Looking around, he saw a door on the rear of the monastery likewise ajar. Remembering that the demon had hinted at something regarding the abbey, he grabbed his crossbow before advancing. Poking his head in, he found it far too dark to attempt without both light and Hegel. He shouted for his brother, and when Hegel arrived they spent the heftier part of a little while getting the rushlight relit.

“Gonna claim this ax,” Hegel informed his brother. “Sword got buried back at the tavern and I might need a sharp edge stead a my pick.”

“Yours til somethin better turns up, then it’s mine again.”

“Proper. My bow looks a mite warped, so lets hope we ain’t gotta use’em.”

“Whatever you do, don’t shoot less you’s sure you gotta. No sense puttin a hole in our feedbag.” Manfried held up the sputtering reed.

“How’s that? Oh.”

Manfried led the way, Hegel instantly put off by both the darkness and the eye-watering stench they now equated with the pestilence. At the end of the hall stood a large door, and, exchanging a nervous glance, they shoved it open.

Unmistakably the kitchen, this room housed piles of wooden plates and cooking implements, as well as rotting food of all varieties. The high windows were boarded up for winter, but Hegel noticed a sconce in the wall and removed the torch, lighting it from his brother’s rushlight. Manfried went directly across to the opposite hallway but Hegel tarried, inspecting several oaken casks.

“What you got there?” Manfried asked from the hallway.

“Beer.” Hegel jammed the bung back in place. “Quality, too.”

“Later. We need our feedbag fore we can drink.”

“You liked that, did you?”

Halfway down the hall they could go no farther, the stink gagging them. Following Hegel’s prudent suggestion, they dipped their sleeves in the beer barrel and held them to their nostrils. They could then advance, although both were becoming heady from the odors.

Passing into the huge chapel, they discovered the cause of the smell. Over fifty bodies were heaped atop the pews, the outlines indistinct from the copious mold growing on them. Children and mothers had rotted together into hideous shapes, the faces of the dead weeping gray slime from every orifice. Monks were piled on women in suggestive positions, the entire putrefying mass an obvious labor of devotion. Even with their ale-soaked sleeves vomit assaulted the Grossbarts’ esophagi, and they staggered back down the hall, passing under a large cross smeared with excrement and pus. Shutting the doors on either end of the hallway helped but they could not get the smell out of their noses.

Again Manfried felt delighted and Hegel disturbed by the woman’s sudden reappearance. She sat on a table in the kitchen nibbling dried fish from a small crate beside her. Manfried went to her side and reached for a fish but she knocked the lid shut. Manfried felt a mix of anger and reproach, his watchful brother scowling in contempt. Hegel wanted fish, too, but if Manfried would not snatch it away neither would he. Hegel filled his porridge-crusted pot with beer and munched on the least moldy piece of bread he could find.

Manfried stared up at the angelic woman, at a loss as to what he could do or say. She did not seem to mind his attention, which any respectable person would have found disturbing at the least. Hegel kept poking around, and in addition to the beer barrel he found a smaller cask of schnapps. He rolled this out the hall to the wagon, and was dismayed to see the sun already sinking.

“Light’ll be gone soon,” Hegel informed his brother.

“So we’s campin out here.”

“Inside? Fuck that. Catch us the pest. Better camp out in that barrow.”

“What?” Manfried broke his vigil.

“Sleep with the nobility. Might be a touch dead for your predilection, but one must adapt.”

“I swear, brother, you shame the Virgin with your insinuations.” Manfried glanced up at the smiling woman, and thanked Mary his beard concealed his coloring cheeks. He did not want Hegel getting the right impression. Not only was she the prettiest thing he had ever seen-save gold-but she tolerated his presence instead of recoiling with revulsion.

“Gotta burn them corpses.” Hegel had brought his satchel and deposited his oil bottle on a counter.

“Not gonna waste it on them dead ones?” This brought Manfried away from his infatuation.

“Ain’t gonna drag’em to a hole, and damn sure ain’t diggin one under’em. Leaves us with the torch.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Fail to reckon how it’s our responsibility.”

“Cause it’ll ire the Devil.”

“Right enough for me.” Manfried retrieved his oil as well, then they went to the church.

Each restrained his vomit, oiling the mound of rancid bodies. They heaped pews on the revolting mass and set it ablaze, tripping over each other to avoid the flames. The corpses popped and hissed and smoke engulfed the monastery, the Brothers hoofing it to the rear courtyard. The woman had returned to the wagon, and after cursing each other’s foolishness, they risked the burning building to roll out the beer barrel.

That night they stowed the horses in the small stable beside the gate and the Brothers camped in the crypt, thinking it bad luck to sleep in one of the outbuildings after they had burned a church. The woman refused to leave the wagon, and since they had secured the front gate Hegel reasoned she would be safe. Manfried grumbled a bit but soon forgot everything but the joy of drinking with his brother in a ransacked graveyard.

Enough snow remained to offer the churchyard some semblance of solemnity when the sun disappeared and the moon rose. They boasted to each other of their prowess in slaying demons and monsters, to say nothing of cracking open tombs. Then came a period of serious theological discussion regarding the nature of cowardice, evil, and the Virgin. When Hegel shifted the conversation toward women and their natural inclination toward witchery and deception Manfried yawned, replaced the bung in the beer cask, and went to sleep.

Hegel stayed awake long enough to chisel their mark into the front of the crypt’s door. His uncle had taught him it was good form to let any Grossbarts who came after know which tombs were already cleaned. Illiterate though every Grossbart was, the symbol was known by all who carried that accursed name.

Late in the night when the fire in the doorway had died, Manfried awoke to music drifting in. Hegel snored beside him, arms wrapped around the keg. Manfried went to the door and looked out, and to his surprise the snow had melted and in the moonlight the cemetery had become a placid lagoon with only the tips of the highest tombstones jutting above the surface. A ripple cut through the water before him and by the glistening pale skin he knew it was her. She clambered onto an exposed barrow, the music even louder now that she had surfaced.