The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [90]
“Oh, that?” said Manuel, putting his unmarred right hand on the nape of her neck and squeezing gently. “That’s a story for later, full of witches and bastards.”
“But is it alright?”
“It is, it is, but there’s another region that’s troubling me …”
“Oh really?” Katharina began kissing the fingertips of the hand she held. “Now, I thought you just said witches.”
“I did, I did,” said Manuel, pulling his hand away from her mouth and replacing it with his own. “Later.”
They did nothing but kiss for a very long time, and then she cried briefly but fiercely, holding on to the hand von Stein had shot, and then they fucked until Manuel came, which was far too quickly for both of their liking. Then he finally confessed to masturbating on five different whores, on nine separate occasions, as he used his hand and mouth on his wife—the taste of his own paint was a fitting penance, they agreed as she squirmed and he postponed her climax as he detailed the way he had made them hold up their skirts, the way it had run off their breasts like oil whites, but before he got to the last night with the last whore, where he had sketched a French girl no older than his niece with his charcoal in one hand and his cock in the other, splashing her chin and tongue and breaking the charcoal in his passion, before he got there Katharina had heard enough and drew his head back in with her nimble feet as he tried to break away to continue his tales, and she came harder than she had since he had left to go to war. Exhausted from the ride to Bern, and his wife, Manuel opted to wait until the next evening before asking her about the men she had enjoyed while he was gone.
“You could,” Katharina said after they had both caught their breath. “I really wouldn’t—”
“Hmph,” Manuel snorted, cupping her breast firmer as he pressed himself against her. “Don’t want to. The sketching’s enough until I get back to you.”
“It makes me think you’re playing martyr when you say it like that,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “I actually, you know, fuck other people, I fuck them, Niklaus, and you make up dirty stories. As long as the whores—”
“I don’t want to jerk off on whores, let alone have sex with them,” said Manuel. “I want to sketch them, and occasionally paint them, and then I want to come home and make gentle love to my wife as I invent stories about jerking off on whores. And call me old-fashioned, but I’m still perfectly happy with you sleeping with other men when I’m away so long as you love me best.”
“Mmmm,” said Katharina, snuggling closer to her husband. “I sometimes think it wouldn’t be as … weird if you really did, instead of making it up.”
“Oh? Weird, eh? A pity, then, it would be so much more normal if I painted whores with my prick instead of my brush.” Now Manuel pretended to sulk, but Katharina’s hand had fallen to his, her fingers running over the gnarled scar tissue.
“Tell me what happened,” she said, her tone now somber, and so he did, leaving out nothing. Before he had even stormed out of von Stein’s tent for the first time she had gotten up and retrieved the special schnapps, and then they sat on the edge of the bed and drank little sips of the fiery enzian water as he recounted his story. She stopped him, bidding he confirm and confirm again the details of Awa raising the dead, and of her raising Manuel from the little death. She did not cry even when he did, and at last he concluded his story, wishing he could see her face in the dark—the moon had long since deserted them. He waited quite a while before she spoke. When she did, her voice was very flat, in the way it became when she was quite furious with him.
“So you risked me, and Lydie and the baby, all for a fucking witch, Manuel? A real witch? That creepy fucking Moor you brought here, into our home? With an Inquisitor searching for her?”
“The Inquisitor, he, ah, he’s been excommunicated, and—”
“Niklaus Manuel!” She slapped him across the face as hard as she could,