Jesse Bullington - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

“Thought it’d be bigger,” Hegel lied, having envisioned a body of water no larger than the lake outside Bad Endorf.

“Course you can’t see it all from here,” Manfried explained, mistaking cloudbanks on the horizon for the opposite shore. “Said that pond off the Danube weren’t big as you’d thought and it still took us forever and a day to get round.”

“My brother hated the ocean,” Rodrigo murmured, “said it could not be trusted. Seems the road cannot be trusted, either.”

“Fall off a wagon, get up and walk.” Hegel swayed, staring down the quay. “Off a boat, you can’t do nuthin but die.”

“Know how to swim?” asked Rodrigo.

“You callin us witches?” Manfried shoved his beard in Rodrigo’s face.

“Any man who gets on a boat had best know what to do if he goes over its side.” Rodrigo recoiled from Manfried’s foul breath.

“Swimmin’s for fish same as flyin’s for birds,” said Hegel.

“Yes, but-”

“But nuthin. Tryin to trick us into drownin?” Manfried squinted in the twilight to see the lie in Rodrigo’s eyes.

“I meant to advise you, as any good Christian advises another, and nothing more.” Rodrigo haughtily drew away. “By Marco’s mighty morals, I meant no trickery!”

“Marco’s that ox what minded our Arab when we showed up, yeah?” asked Hegel.

“What?” said Rodrigo. “No! Ah, yes, he is named such as well, I forget, but I meant a different Marco. The saint who guards our city.”

“You heard a him?” Hegel asked his brother.

“Course I have,” Manfried lied.

“He rests in the basilica I pointed out earlier.” Rodrigo clumsily motioned back they way they had come.

“What’s he buried with?” Manfried followed Rodrigo’s gaze.

“Nothing,” Rodrigo said quickly, appalled at what he correctly assumed was the line of thought Manfried had embarked upon. “Back to the manse, then.”

They arrived after dark, the tolling of church bells reminding the Grossbarts of Father Martyn. He had appeared an exceptionally unheretical priest to the Brothers, and his donating any share of the loot they might extort from Barousse raised him in their esteem even further. They stumbled through the kitchen, scalding their fingers when they snatched food from the pans. The cook shooed them out, which almost provoked Manfried to strike the woman.

Gaining the opposite hallway, they let Rodrigo take the lead and unlock the captain’s door. Barousse stood before the fire, his back to them while they took places across the table. Servants followed them in, cluttering the massive board with steaming platters and bowls. Only when their lessers had retreated and Rodrigo latched the door did Barousse turn to face them.

Alexius Barousse’s eyes were rough, purple craters staring out of his craggy face but in their depths lurked no sorrow, only a greedy glimmer to match that of the Grossbarts. He bade them eat and drink, which they did with gusto until heads reeled and guts bulged. Rodrigo nodded in his chair but sobered up when the captain finally addressed them.

“I have sent word for my maiden to be repaired and taken out of dry dock, and as Rodrigo has prepared you, all we need do is wait until she is ready and then we sail south.” The captain raised his glass. “We will retake what was lost, and gain what never was!”

In better circumstances Rodrigo would have responded with something more solid than spraying wine from his nose.

“Glad you came around.” Manfried hoisted his glass, drunkenness nullifying any surprise he might otherwise have harbored.

“Sensible,” Hegel slurred, raising a bottle.

“What?” Rodrigo coughed.

“Too long have I sat mired by a tide that fills my boots but stirs not my soul.” Barousse stood and stalked along the table, wagging a finger at the assembled. “Cowardice has haunted me alongside my family.”

“What’s that mean?” Hegel kicked his brother, who shrugged and repeated the question to the captain.

“Gone!” Barousse thundered. “Taken by Triton or God or whatever dark thing sought a price for my transgression! Gone! Swallowed up, like it swallows up everything from boat to man to mountain! Gone!”

“Leave him alone,” Rodrigo hissed, then had wine splashed in his face by the raging captain.

“They will speak! And I will answer! Secrets are for thieves and the dead, and we are neither!”

“True words.” Manfried handed a fresh bottle to the captain.

“Over a decade I have cowered and been coward, thousands of nights tossing in my horrors, thousands of days begging forgiveness, all in vain, in vain! I knew when I sent her away, I knew that first night my woes would not end through such a route! When one spends their life on her back they cannot expect to ride off it. Not without price!”

The Grossbarts loved shouting, and Hegel fired back in turn, “How and why?!”

“My sons! Taken on a skiff not a league out, a day’s fishing turned black with their mother’s grief and red with their blood! A wave out of nowhere, a maelstrom from the calm!”

“My father with them,” Rodrigo muttered, but no one cared.

“And your wife?!” Manfried bellowed.

“Slipped from a gondola into the lagoon, where sea-vines snatched and pulled! So they say, so they say! Not one body given back for their last rites, not one spared an eternity crashing into each other and a million more of the damned, that coldest Hell below the surface!”

“Except you!” exclaimed Hegel.

“Through and to my shame! Watching my fortunes dwindle, my name muddied, my ship eaten by dryrot, my nerve softened, all for a song! Would that I could undo my error, would that I could send her back! But I will! Now, Grossbarts, I will!”

“Who?” Manfried asked, his suspicions cheating him of a forceful yell.

“The Nix! The Siren! She whom I caught! She whom I sent away, but not before she cursed us all! She whom you have brought back! She who took Luchese and Umberto, and dearest Mathilde, who loved me even when I brought a succubus into our home! She who took Italo, and a decade later his son, your brother, my godchild! Ennio, poor, honest Ennio!”

“Come on then!” Hegel toppled his chair gaining his feet. “Let’s put’er to the blade!”

“Never!” The captain’s cutlass appeared in his hand and sliced the air in front of Hegel. “I would sooner put it to your throat or mine! I have failed enough! No masonry will blot out the sound, not stone nor wood nor crashing coast will silence her! Over the peaks it haunted my dreams, and before I banished her I cut out her tongue with these ten finger bones of mine, all for naught! No scars, no blemishes, just a fat red tongue! Even time fears her and touches her not! If only-” Barousse fell back in his chair, sword clattering on the floor and face in his hands.

“We’s experienced in the ways a witches,” Manfried murmured after a brief lull.

“Got your paramour, er palomar, uh, best interest in mind,” agreed Hegel.

“Erp,” Rodrigo managed, every rumor he had heard growing up in the house of Barousse confirmed in a storm of shouting. In his years of service to the captain he had become accustomed to the wild mood swings and tantrums but never had he seen any, himself included, taken into Barousse’s confidence so fully. Perhaps the old man had finally cracked, he thought, the strain of the woman’s reappearance too much for his injured soul.

“Leave me,” Barousse muttered through meshed fingers, and this time the Grossbarts departed without snatching the last word.

Al-Gassur received his payments on time, but that pittance was appropriately supplemented by the food brought to him from the house and the birds he caught in the garden. Fate’s wheel had spun him into the yard of one of Venezia’s only estates to boast even a tiny plot of land allowed to run so riot. Better still, on the rare days when the Brothers left the manse to Grossbart upon the town he could creep out and spend an honest day begging without the worry of being absent when sought. Confident his employers would not notice the discrepancy, he periodically unbound one leg and wrapped the other, lest his limb atrophy from lack of use and truly become lost. A veteran of a vague crusade inspired more charity in the populace than a simple Arab come to the city by Providence and his own two legs.