The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [132]
“It’s gnawed at me,” Katharina said quietly. “But I didn’t have a choice. You would have gone to her.”
“Probably.” Manuel smiled weakly. “Probably led them right to her, gotten everyone killed. I’m not very good in tight spots.”
“What is it about her?” Katharina looked down at the scattered sketches and prints and paintings. “You’ve been obsessed ever since you met her. Witches everywhere. Why didn’t you just fuck her instead?”
“I never wanted that,” said Manuel heavily. “I’d make more sense to myself if that was it. I love you, Katharina, and I love our family, and I won’t jeopardize you again, not for her, not for anyone. I gave you my word the first time I went to war —when children arrive I’m finished, the sword goes on the mantel, and there it stays. I’m a man of my word.”
“Except when you took that sword to Novara not so long ago?”
“That was different,” Manuel said, knowing it wasn’t. “Von Swine just needed a clerk, not exactly frontline action, or at least it wasn’t supposed to be—and it was the worst I’ve ever seen, Kat, the things they did, the things we did, and I told him I was finished, didn’t I, and came home early, and—”
“We’re talking about the Moor, remember? I thought you said you were an instrument of God? He wanted something of you, wanted you to help her. Isn’t that why you’ve had me stop going to the confessor, why you’ve made me talk to myself like a madwoman? Because you think God’s more interested in talking to we sinners than the Pope?”
“Pope’s a dick,” said Manuel.
“Nice.”
“Well, you know.” Manuel smiled.
“Why don’t you get your gear and go after her?” said Katharina. “Monique’s right, you love her and—”
“I don’t! Not like, like that,” protested Manuel. “And she doesn’t need my help. She’s a fucking witch, remember? If anything, being around us made her soft, and if she left so close to those bounty hunters arriving she must have known, and got out first. They’ll never find her, and neither will Monique.”
“If I had known that’s what they were, hired men and not real Inquisitors—”
“Hired men are worse, Kat,” said Manuel. “I know from experience, don’t I? You did the right thing in telling them. And not telling me. I can be … excitable.”
“Foolish.”
“That too.”
“Go after her,” said Katharina, staring at the Judgment of Paris, at the dark spot where spit had dampened the contour of her naked breasts, the apple Manuel had made her hold out to the seated man. One of his so-called Classical pieces, but the apple, and her nudity, had invoked a different garden to Katharina’s mind then, as it did now. “Be safe.”
“I’m a painter,” said Manuel, as he set to cleaning up his studio. “And I’m a father, and a husband. She’ll be fine. She doesn’t need a Saint Niklaus any more than you or the children.”
“If you change your mind I’ll understand.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll try to understand.”
“Better. We’ll make an honest woman of you yet,” said Manuel, his smile almost genuine.
“I’ll send Tomas to tell the abbot that you’re ill and—”
Manuel cursed, having completely forgotten about his meeting with Oswald to discuss a referral to Rome, of all places. “This is too big, Kat, for all I know he’s already shown my work to some cardinal or bishop. Fuck! Can you get this or—”
“Go on.” She shooed him off, and he raced around the house, washing the paint off his face, pulling clods of it out of his hair, and would have carried on like this for some time if his wife had not cornered him in the bedroom. “You’re an artist, Niklaus, he’ll be disappointed if you’re not a little scruffy.”
“There’s this public office I might be, well, I was waiting to tell you, but I think between Oswald and von Stein I might get the appointment and—”
“Out, Niklaus!”
Pecking her on the cheek, out he went. Watching