The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [135]
Manuel was genuinely impressed that Monique had not tarried at the brothel but departed immediately upon concluding her business. He decided to try south, thinking if he were to write a play or a poem, something about witches and mercenaries and such, the obvious downward symbolism of the direction could not be passed up, and he arrived at her roadside campfire just after dark. She had told herself she would not smile but could not help herself, feeling like an idiot as she stowed the pistol she had brandished at the sound of hooves.
“You’re going the wrong way,” said Manuel, still on his horse. “Get your gear and mount up.”
“Well, I didn’t want ta get too far ahead lest ya lose the trail,” said Monique. “And how in fuck ya know where Awa is?”
“I don’t,” said Manuel. “But we’re not looking for Awa.”
“We’re not?”
“No.”
“Then who’re we lookin for?” said Monique.
“Ashton fucking Kahlert,” Manuel said triumphantly, but when Monique just blinked at him he sighed and pulled out the parchment he had received from Oswald after the flustered abbot had returned from checking his records. “The former Inquisitor who’s paying muscle to track down our little friend, printing posters and getting himself kicked out of the Church and such.”
“Ahhhh!” Monique’s crooked teeth shone in the firelight as she booted sand onto the blaze. “Ya got a beautiful brain inside that ugly head of yours.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“So where’s this cuntsmack gonna get ’is?”
“Well, the good news is Kahlert came from Salzburg, so the abbey at Bern had a few places to look for him. The bad news is that he hadn’t been through in years, so who knows how out of date the addresses are. But it’s a start.”
“That it is, that it is.” Monique mounted her horse. “Where’re the possibilities?”
“Well, one’s near Granada, which is the last place Oswald was sure Kahlert went before being excommunicated, but that’s almost ten years old. The other address is outside some shitty backwater in the Schwarzwald, a property he inherited from a dead superior of his.”
“Holy Roman, then,” said Monique. “Helluva lot closer, an’ bad as Imperials are, Spain’s full of evil cunts.”
Manuel wondered at this, for everyone he had ever met from Spain had been nothing short of lovely. They turned their horses and doubled back past Bern, the pretty red millwheel Manuel adored nothing but a black blur in the night, and together they began their hunt for an excommunicated witch hunter with the funds to send mercenaries all over Europe after Awa. For fuck’s sake.
A Fast Night in the Black Forest
The records Manuel had extorted from Oswald mentioned a house outside of Calw that Ashton Kahlert listed as his personal property, and with the last hard snows of winter behind them Manuel was confident they would gain the city by Lent. Not that he would be fasting this year—that was the first thing to go, although it might make getting decent food at the inns difficult. They were entering the land of Luther, though, so hope sprang eternal.
The slow, meandering river they had followed that morning now joined another just outside one of the dozy hamlets that popped up far less frequently than Manuel would have preferred. The Schwarzwald was every bit as black as its name, owls gliding just overhead in the middle of the afternoon; he had stowed his hat lest the birds mistake his bobbing toque for something edible. They crossed clearings and meadows as they wound up through the hills, but these breaks from the forest only made the artist more nervous, as if the entire surrounding wood were watching him venture out into the open, and always the road took them back under those brooding firs and the occasional elm, whose bare branches appeared almost reluctant to bud in so grim a forest.
“Wolfach,” Manuel told Monique as he returned to the table she had secured despite the throng of already piss-drunk locals.
“Never ’eard