The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [137]
From heretical altars on dirt floors to modest piety to rejecting the Church and fine city living in only a generation or two—impressive, thought Manuel as he kept along the river. He stabled the horses, then walked the length and breadth of Wolfach, plank and charcoal in hand like sword and shield.
Following a side street to the eastern wall, he paused by a gate looking up the cleared hillside bordering the town. Several late revelers were dashing down the cowtrail toward the artist, laughing and whooping, and seeing they were still some distance off he idly began sketching their approach. He would wipe the plank clean with a damp piece of bread later, but such exercises were good at keeping his speed up—rarely did even the perfect model keep the perfect pose for more than a few moments.
They were a curious bunch, the man in the lead dressed like a monk, which seemed a little strong even for an isolated town like Wolfach. At least he did not wear a mask, unlike the devils who chased him, their monstrous faces sliding about as they raced for town. Then one of the bestial men hoisted a blunt-looking flail and easily as threshing wheat knocked the running monk’s legs out from under him. Manuel paused. Another man, all horns and fangs and animal skins, grabbed the monk’s beard as the poor fellow tried to gain his feet, and then the others were there, a man with a giant rooster mask seeming to give them orders.
Manuel ducked down, peering through the slats in the gate. As the chicken-headed man pulled his mask off to reveal a rather mundane mustachioed face, Manuel noticed two things. First, what he had taken to be the monk’s beard was clearly a crude gag made out of a pelt that was now jammed back into place, and second, the monk was none other than Doctor Paracelsus. The subdued physician was hoisted onto the shoulders of three of the five men, who trotted back up the trail into the forest as Chicken-Head put his mask into place and scanned the edge of the town. Manuel ducked lower, wondering just what the hell was going on, and when he next peeked through the slats the hillside was as empty as it had been on his arrival.
Fuck. Paracelsus? Fuck. Manuel very, very much regretted leaving the inn where Monique no doubt still drank, and he very, very much regretted leaving Bern in the first place. Whatever trouble the old quack had gotten himself into was his own damn fault, and … Manuel sighed, and set to picking his way back to the inn where he had left Monique.
She was gone, and he could not find her in the next few taverns he tried, either. The sun was setting now, bonfires lit along the river, and the festival was growing wilder. Manuel had almost given up hope of finding her at all when she clapped him by the shoulder and spun him around. To his immense relief she was not drunk; on the contrary, she looked remarkably sober.
“Where the fuck’ve you been?” she demanded before he could do the same of her, and without waiting for an answer she whispered, “Let’s get ta some back road, an’ now. We gotta talk.”
Monique led him through several alleys before she would even slow down, let alone speak. They were winding east between the half-timbered houses, and when they hit the wall where Manuel had seen Paracelsus he set his heels and growled, “What’s happened, Mo?”
“She’s here,” said Monique, and then a pack of children went howling past them along the wall, pursued by a straw-covered man with a goat mask.
“What? Who?” Manuel glanced at the darkening hillside beside them, the twilight sky blurring with the treetops.
“Who do