The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [172]
“One go is all I have,” Awa said nervously, wondering if the plan she was forming had any chance of success. “I’m out of time.”
XXXVI
The Requiem of Bicocca
In the predawn gloom the corpse of Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, artist, soldier, and pretentious know-it-all, was somberly carried through the camp by the Dutch gunner Mo and a Milanese man who had not campaigned under von Stein in years. Those who had not seen their old ally in over half a decade were warned away by his dour face and cold eyes that nodded down at the body he helped carry whenever one of his former friends tried to ask him just where the hell he had gotten to after cutting out with Manuel and disappearing all those years ago. At von Stein’s tent the guards did not give them much trouble, for von Stein overheard before Monique’s voice could become too loud and hurried out to see if it was true. He had no idea Manuel had come down to find sport at the little park just north of Milan, indeed, if he had he would have gotten the boy a cushier location than the front, and he gnashed his teeth to see his useful pawn as cold and dead as the trout he had left half eaten on his plate to investigate the ruckus.
“What’s this, what’s this?” said von Stein. “I thought you died of the pox ages ago, my maid, and yet it’s poor little Manny I see at his reward? Baffling!”
“He wanted ya ta be left lone with ’is corpse,” said Monique sadly. “Said it often, he did, fore he went—said you’d ’ave a pray o’er him in private, that you’d understand.”
“Did he?” Von Stein blinked down at the body. “Well I don’t, not at all. Morbid, morbid as hell, such a thing.”
The pallbearers held their breath, then von Stein sighed and held open the flap of his tent. They carried Manuel in and set him down on the ground, and von Stein stood over the body shaking his head. Then he looked again at the man who had helped Monique carry in Manuel’s body and the captain blinked, now more interested in the soldier than the corpse.
“Ber … Bernardo?” asked von Stein.
The man nodded.
“I sent you with Manuel all those years ago, didn’t I?”
The man nodded again.
“I recall you, I do.” Von Stein waggled his finger at the mercenary, pleased with himself for remembering the man’s name. “Manuel absolutely hated you. I thought you died.”
“I did,” said the man, and slapped von Stein’s extended hand. The captain took a step back, then toppled over, his eyes rolling back in his head as he died with all the glory of a glutton choking on a chicken bone. Awa quickly knelt and restored Manuel from the little death she had given him outside the camp while Monique pointed her guns at the tent flaps lest the guards enter upon hearing von Stein’s body fall. They did not, and Manuel, having had some experience in bouncing back from a little death, helped Awa drag von Stein under the captain’s massive table. Manuel glanced nervously at Monique and when he looked back at Awa he saw she no longer appeared to be Bernardo but now looked exactly like von Stein. It was bizarre and terrible to see the man hunched over his own corpse, and then she looked up at her old friend, grinning with teeth the color of the trimmed beard that wreathed them.
“Do I look the part?” asked Awa.
“Need to start writing plays,” muttered Manuel. “Or poems. Something with tragedy.”
“No tit in plays, an’ poems’re for ponces,” said Monique, creeping to the mouth of the tent to peek out. “Can’t fuckin believe that worked.”
“You’re dealing with a witch of the first water.” Von Stein’s doppelganger puffed out her chest. “I think it’s time to, how did you put it, inspect