The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [133]
“I lied to him,” Katharina said. “I don’t know if I ever have, not really, but I lied to his face.”
“I heard the row.” Tomas nodded. “Is everything alright?”
“I don’t know.” She drained her glass. “I don’t even know why, why I did it, it just came out, they were like dogs at each other’s throats, and out it popped. Apparently Niklaus isn’t the only fucking martyr in this house.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them that those men who came about the Moor, I, well, I told them I had disclosed the girl’s location to those men.”
“She really did go to Russia?” Tomas loved a good bit of gossip as much as the next servant but was not quite following his mistress.
“Of course not,” said Katharina. “I was really scared, of course, the thought of lying terrifies me, which somehow makes me rather adept at it, apparently. I kept pretending I didn’t know who they were talking about, and then I cracked, I was going to crow Paris! at the top of my lungs, but then I heard myself say Petersburg, and that was that, they were gone before I could even ask myself what the hell I’d done. I was so proud of myself ! And he was so proud of me! Sinful, really, all the pride-taking that went with that little lie. I saved her, me, the meek little housewife, I saved her! Or at least risked my life and family to try and save her.” She sighed, her shoulders relaxing, and raised the glass Tomas had refilled.
“So why tell Master Deutsch and his friend that you had given up the secret?” The servant set his own emptied glass down and laid his hand on top of hers.
“Because we really should have sent word to her, at the very least,” said Katharina after pondering the question for a moment. “That must be it. It’s not enough to do a little good, is it? We’ve got to do everything we can, especially if God’s not honoring indulgences and deathbed confessions anymore.”
This latest development in the Manuel household was even more surprising to Tomas than the couple’s creative definition of fidelity, though it certainly went a way toward explaining it. The young man very much loved his mistress, however, and knew that just because she took her pleasure from him when he was lucky he did not have the right to address his reservations about their abandoning the Church. At least his master was still meeting with the abbot, which implied they had not quit it altogether.
“I quit it altogether, you puffed-up pigeon!” Manuel said, interrupting the abbot. Oswald blinked, no doubt intending to spout more anti-Luther rot, and Manuel quickly clarified, “I mean your church, I mean this house of lies, this, this midden, with Old Leo king cock! How dare Luther speak? How dare Leo excommunicate a man with more piety in his ballsack than you lot have combined! And now that Leo’s dead you’ve elected a Dutchman?! Really, man, the Frog Pope? It’s like a bad joke!”
Oswald had begun to turn the same bright fuchsia color he had in Manuel’s studio upon first seeing the nudes, and Manuel paused. Certainly he was being harsh, and it was not as though he had actually met Luther or anything; he just agreed with some, but certainly not all, of his ideas. Manuel had been thinking about Awa, and then Oswald had said something exceptionally, offensively foolish, and then—
“Sacrilege!” Oswald finally managed. “You blaspheming—”
“Horseshit,” sneered Manuel, a few of his voices cheering him on, others mortified into silence, and a few content to watch his mouth work its magic. “You fucking clergy blaspheme more in a day than I do in a year, and I’ve been known to hide in the closet and watch my wife stick rosary beads up the ass of the help, so I know from sacrilege. Come, come, if they weren’t meant to go there