The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [187]
Finally, I need to offer my appreciation for those individuals whom I so shamelessly conscripted into this novel: Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, his wife Katharina, Doctor Paracelsus, Albrecht von Stein, and especially old Boabdil were no doubt very different from how I have written them here, and I hope their shades accept my sincere thanks, and apologies for rendering them in such a fictitious—and often unflattering—manner. This novel would not be the work it is without the real lives of real people to inspire me, and as much fun as it was to play with their histories I would never wish anyone to mistake my versions of these individuals for the actual historical figures. Paracelsus, at least, would presumably appreciate the exaggerations.
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about the author
Jesse Bullington’s formative years were spent primarily in rural Pennsylvania, the Netherlands and Tallahassee, Florida. He is a folklore enthusiast who holds a bachelor’s degree in history and English from Florida State University. He currently resides in Colorado, and can be found online at www.jessebullington.com
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if you enjoyed
THE ENTERPRISE OF DEATH
look out for
THE SAD TALE OF
THE BROTHERS
GROSSBART
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Jesse Bullington
The First Blasphemy
To claim that the Brothers Grossbart were cruel and selfish brigands is to slander even the nastiest highwayman, and to say they were murderous swine is an insult to even the filthiest boar. They were Grossbarts through and true, and in many lands such a title still carries serious weight. While not as repugnant as their father nor as cunning as his, horrible though both men were, the Brothers proved worse. Blood can go bad in a single generation or it can be distilled down through the ages into something truly wicked, which was the case with those abominable twins, Hegel and Manfried.
Both were average of height but scrawny of trunk. Manfried possessed disproportionately large ears, while Hegel’s nose dwarfed many a turnip in size and knobbiness. Hegel’s copper hair and bushy eyebrows contrasted the matted silver of his brother’s crown, and both were pockmarked and gaunt of cheek. They had each seen only twenty-five years but possessed beards of such noteworthy length that from even a short distance they were often mistaken for old men. Whose was longest proved a constant bone of contention between the two.
Before being caught and hanged in some dismal village far to the north, their father passed on the family trade; assuming the burglarizing of graveyards can be considered a gainful occupation. Long before their granddad’s time the name Grossbart was synonymous with skulduggery of the shadiest sort, but only as cemeteries grew into something more than potter’s fields did the family truly find its calling. Their father abandoned them to their mother when they were barely old enough to raise a prybar and went in search of his fortune, just as his father had disappeared when he was but a fledgling sneak-thief.
The elder Grossbart is rumored to have died wealthier than a king in the desert country to the south, where the tombs surpass the grandest castle of the Holy Roman Empire in both size and affluence. That is what the younger told his sons, but it is doubtful there was even the most shriveled kernel of truth in his ramblings. The Brothers firmly believed their dad had joined their grandfather in Gyptland, leaving them to rot with their alcoholic and abusive mother. Had they known he actually wound up as crow-bait without a coin in his coffer it is doubtful they would have altered the track of their lives, although they may have cursed his name less— or more, it is difficult to say.
An uncle of dubious legitimacy and motivation rescued them from their demented mother and took them under his wing during their formative man-boy years. Whatever his relation to the lads, his beard was undeniably long, and he was as fervent as any Grossbart before him