The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (9 page)

She grinned, black-toothed and scab-gummed. “Welcome, welcome.”

“Uh, thank you,” said Hegel.

“Hard night for traveling?” Her eyes shone in the firelight.

“Had worse. My brother’s in a bad way, though.”

“So I see.” Yet she did not remove her eyes from Hegel.

“Caught’em a touch a the pest out in the wood.” Hegel’s body hummed, either from the change in climate or her presence, he
could not be sure which.

“Oh did he? Found a pest in the forest?” she asked.

“No, er,
the
pestilence. You know, buboes?”

“He’s got the black bulges, does he?”

“Not yet, he—” Hegel stopped short when the woman darted out a hand and poked his wounded face. He snatched for his sword,
but the look in her eye held it in its sheath. He stared aghast as she licked the blood from her finger, appraisingly.

“Not out there,” she muttered, “no, no, caught a different case of death, I’d wager.”

“He ain’t dead yet,” said Hegel, turning to Manfried.

The walls of the cramped interior bulged with cluttered shelves containing bottles, jars, and heaps of bones and feathers,
and from the ceiling hung a hundred different bundles of drying plants and strips of cloth. The firepit in the rear filled
the room with a pungent, piney haze that masked the sickly smell of the crone, a small, snowmelt-dripping hole in the roof
failing to accommodate all the smoke. An empty chair sat before the firepit and one corner held a heap of rags, the other
a small woodpile.

Hegel dragged his brother onto the hearthstones. Manfried had grown pale but his skin burned, his body wracked with spasms.
The crone leaned over them both, clucking softly.

“Caught a case right enough, a case of the comeuppance!” she jeered.

Hegel’s hand again reached for his sword but her tongue intercepted him.

“Calm, calm, Grossbart, remember your promise.”

“Slag,” Hegel hissed, “you watch yourself.”

She cackled in a manner only the elderly can master.

“Wait a tic.” Hegel swallowed, neck-hairs reaching for the roof. “How’d you know our name?”

“You look like long-beards to me,” she replied. “Don’t you call a thing by what it most resembles? Call a dog a dog, a beast
a beast, eh?”

“Suppose so,” Hegel allowed, not convinced.

“Your brother’s dying,” she said, her voice lacking the solemnity Hegel felt the situation deserved.

“Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t. You don’t look like no barber, so maybe you should mind your mouth.”

“Well, Grossbart,” she said, “tis true I’m no barber—I’m better than one. Barber couldn’t do anything for that man, just put
him on the cart for the crows.
I
might help him, if I was so inclined.”

Hegel stepped toward her, dried belladonna brushing his hair. “If I was you, I’d incline myself with the quickness.”

“Menacing words, menacing eyes.”

“You—”

“Careful. I’ll mend your brother, and you besides, if you do as I say.”

“What we got that you want?”

“Oh, nothing special, nothing unique. Just that thing all men got, the tail we feeble women lack.”

It took a moment for her meaning to sink in, but when it did Hegel recoiled. “I couldn’t give you that even if I was a mind
to.”

“No? Even for your brother?”

Hegel chewed his lip, considered slaying the woman, thought better of it, spit twice and said, “See, I’s chaste—”

“Even better!”

“I wouldn’t know how—”

“I can teach you, it’s simply done.”

“I—”

“You?”

“After you fix’em up.”

She brayed again. “Think I trust you, Grossbart? Think I don’t know what you’re thinking? Don’t worry, it’ll be done soon,
and might not be as bad as you think.”

“I doubt that. What guarantee I got you can even heal’em?”

“Guarantee’s my oath, just like yours. I can sweeten his wounds, same as I can make it sweet for you.” She lasciviously hiked
her rags up around her thighs, revealing complicated networks of veins bulging under the pruned skin. Hegel smelled a stronger,
acidic scent overpowering the burning wood and felt his horse meat rise in his throat but choked it down.

“Like I said,” he managed through his disgust, “I would if I could, but I can’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

She had turned and rooted through an array of jars on a shelf, her backside thrown out toward him. She turned back triumphantly
with a dusty vessel, its rag stopper half-rotten. Withdrawing the rag she offered it to Hegel.

“Knock this into that gut of yours.” Her eyes glittered.

“Give me your word it ain’t poison.”

“Given, given,” she replied dismissively.

“What is it?”

“Something good. Something that’ll make you able. Hell, it’ll make you eager.”

He stared hard into the bottle, his intuition goading him to cast it in the fire and run her through regardless of Manfried’s
condition. He had no doubt his brother’s soul would make it to Heaven, it was his own body he felt concern for. In the end
his pride would not allow him to walk a coward’s road, and so with a prayer to Mary he downed the contents, the stuff filling
his mouth with the taste of putrid mushrooms.

The room spun and the bottle broke on the stones, a yellow mist clouding his vision. Hegel turned to his hostess to inform
her that no way no how would a little fungus water make him willing when his breath caught in his throat and tremors radiated
outward from his groin. She reclined in the chair but had set one foot on an upended bucket, the firelight illuminating a
thigh the color of goat cream. The pouty turn of her thin lips, the vulnerable want in her milky eyes, the gnarly fingers
now snaking between her legs, the reedy sigh as she pushed her bottom forward on the chair to meet her digits—Hegel felt an
almost-pain in his breeches, and his hands dropped to his waist to relieve the source of his discomfort.

The crone appeared no different from before Hegel had taken the draught, but he no longer remembered such simple things as
his faith’s prohibition of carnal pleasures or his society’s scorn and disgust for women more than a decade into puberty.
He simply saw her for the beauty she was, albeit a beauty of remarkably advanced years. Dropping to his knees in a show of
contrition, Hegel crawled toward his host, who spread her legs farther on the chair to accommodate her guest. A pleasant chevre
odor wafting from between her curd-textured, indigo-marbled thighs tickled the bulbous nose that soon tickled her mound, and
his left hand hoisted her rags out of the way while its twin fumbled with his belt.

Cold as her outer skin felt, Hegel’s tongue nearly stuck to her frigid folds and the white wisps drifting from his full mouth
mingled with the pale cloud itching his nostrils. She patiently coached him until he set off a trembling gush, refreshing,
brisk wetness cooling his hot throat even as she squirmed off of the chair and pushed him onto his back. Tasting herself in
his kiss, she settled onto his trowel and he worked her furrow, his rough hands surprisingly gentle as she guided his fingers
from breasts to mouth to rear and back again.

“What’s your name?” Hegel gasped, desperate to know before he lost himself. He knew something important was brewing and somehow
he had to find out before the end. “Please?”

“Call me Mary.” She grinned, popping his index finger back into her mouth as she ground against him.

Hegel spent himself quickly but she kept moving after he had stopped, and before he could protest or lose his firmness his
prune-skinned paramour utilized tactics that would make the most weathered whore in the Holy Roman Empire scratch her head
in wonder, and soon she reached another occasion. Freshly invigorated, Hegel would not let her rest and greedily set to bouncing
her again. Eyes locked on a fetching little liver spot just beneath the folds of her jowly neck, Hegel had no way of anticipating
how suddenly the potion would fade and his old convictions would return.

He pulled her closer, their tongues intertwining up until the climactic moment. Then she broke the kiss, a cord of saliva
bridging their panting mouths, and his perception of the heavenly Mary vanished, replaced with an odious witch.

Withered breasts swaying pendulously, her tongue flicked over her few teeth and severed their drool-bond. He shriveled even
as he came inside her cold clamminess, screaming in terror at the realization he had been bewitched and wrenching away from
her headfirst into the tipped table. He blacked out and vomited simultaneously, her cruel laughter following him into nightmares
that stood no chance of besting his first sexual encounter.

Hegel kept consciousness at bay as best he could but eventually the room came back into focus. Sitting up, he spied the hag
crouched over his brother, and getting to his feet, he silently drew his sword. Witch, he thought, witch, witch, witch.

Without turning she said, “He’ll die awful soon if I don’t finish my work.”

Teeth gritted, Hegel closed his eyes and did not move for a long time. Finally he snapped, “If he’s not fit awful soon I’ll
open you up.”

“Fair’s fair.”

“You’s a witch.”

“Perceptive.”

“Devil worshipper.”

She turned, a rust-colored needle in hand. “Not what you called me earlier.”

“You tricked me.”

“You agreed to the price, Grossbart. From the goodness of my soul I fixed it sweet for you, so you had as fine a time as I,
and now you’re acting a right child.” She batted her eyes at him.

“Witch.”

“Got some quim-juice drying in your womb-broom.” She motioned to his beard.

“Witch!”

“Oh, horse apples. You’re no monk yourself, lover.”

“Call me that again and all a us’ll be in Hell fore this night’s out.”

“Tempting, tempting. Now put that thing away, you insatiable letch.” She went back to stitching Manfried.

Hegel felt the draft on his nether regions and, blushing, sheathed both of his tools. He collapsed into the chair, his stomach
contorting painfully from her words and his memory. Blinking at the window, he realized daylight had come and the snow had
departed. He stood and went outside to loosen up his stomach.

Coming in after doing his business, he joined the witch at his brother’s side. Manfried breathed easier, and his brow felt
neither scalding nor frigid to the touch. She had cropped most of his right ear, the severed, blackened pieces drying on the
hearth. Poultices were bound to his leg and ear, and his chest rose and fell rhythmically.

“That all needs doin?” Hegel asked.

“You took longer than he, but the beard should cover any scars.”

“Eh?” Hegel touched his face, surprised to feel the crust of some ointment smeared on his wounded cheek and underneath that
the bumps of stitches. The whole side of his face was numb and, continuing his inspection, he felt ointment on his dog-bitten
ear and scalp, and more stitches on his manticore-clawed arm and hound-gnawed leg.

“When did you do all that, then?”

“Last night. Had to open up the old bite on your ankle and get the nasty out, would’ve turned in another week and rotted off.”

“Eh,” Hegel said in lieu of thanks. He was not going to thank that witch for nothing. “Simple as that, then? Sew us up like
we was ripped tunics? What kind a witchery’s this?”

“Hegel,” Manfried groaned in his sleep, slapping the floor.

“Right here, brother,” Hegel said, forgetting his line of questioning.

Manfried opened one bloodshot eye and grabbed his brother’s hand. “Manticore,” he hissed, and passed out again.

“What’s that he said?” the witch asked from behind Hegel.

“Never you mind.”

“Fair’s fair. Eat some of this.” She set a bowl of stew beside Hegel.

“Ain’t eatin nuthin you’s touched, witch. Probably poison.”

“Hush. You’ve already et the foulest thing in this house.” She cackled and sat down in the chair.

Hegel reluctantly devoured the food. Between mouthfuls he would glance from witch to Manfried and back again. Finally he asked,
“How long til he can get up?”

“My ways are better than a barber’s, as I’ve told you. He should be fit by tomorrow, and if not, then the next.”

“Eh.” Hegel did not relish spending another moment in her company, let alone another night. The day passed excruciatingly
slowly, and with darkness the snow returned. He went out to the side of the shack and fetched enough wood to replenish the
pile, and at one point Manfried sat up, guzzled four bowls of stew, and promptly went back to sleep without a word.

“Fancy something sweet to warm yourself?” the witch asked coyly, night settling onto the mountains.

“Shut that loaded trap fore I spring it,” Hegel retorted, trying to bully her into silence.

“Oh, I see how your dirty mind works. No, no, sorry dear, no more of that for you. Got me all tuckered and puckered.”

“I said—” but he saw the bottle she offered and suspended judgment for the briefest of intervals. He sniffed the mouth suspiciously,
relief and joy coursing through him as the familiar scent of mead wafted out. “Better not have mixed none a that other in
here, or I’ll cut off your head and burn it, witch.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Drink.”

Crossing himself, Hegel took a small pull, then a larger one. It tasted slightly stronger than other honey brews he had sampled
and he greedily drank more. Out of a sense of fairness he pinched Manfried’s nose and poured a bit down his brother’s throat.
That the ill Grossbart did not gag from this liquid intrusion is testament to his quality. Hegel pretended not to notice the
witch staring at him but his nerves would not let him relax.

“What?” Hegel eventually snarled, trying his damnedest to be intimidating.

“If I tell you something, will you give your word to keep sword in place?”

“Ain’t promisin you nuthin.”

“Very well.”

Time wore on, and the more Hegel drank the more his curiosity gnawed at him like a rat at a grain sack. He fidgeted and scratched.
He checked on his brother until Manfried managed a few obscenities and clumsily struck at him. He went out and pissed, stared
at the snow, and came back inside to fidget some more. Eventually: