The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [94]
Awa dropped down on the other side of the wall and Manuel followed, the planks in his satchel clattering as he landed. Looking guiltily up at the monastery’s church, Manuel wondered how many candles he and his wife had given over the years, how many bright mornings they had entered the building with the rest of the neighborhood instead of jumping the wall under cover of darkness. Then his eyes settled on the small chapel jutting out of the nave and he wondered if it would be a serviceable hiding place if the monks were to hear them in the graveyard and investigate. They slunk along the wall like burglars, which was what Manuel supposed they were, even if they just intended to borrow the property. Isn’t that what thieves always said? We were just borrowing?
Then a figure loomed out of the darkness, a short, thin figure, a figure with holes punched through it by the moonlight, a grinning skull for a head, too-tight skin clinging to its bones like a damp shift on a sweaty whore. Manuel had seen the dead walk before but he still squeaked in surprise as it stepped back to prevent him from running into it, and as the other three corpses emerged from the shadow of the wall their smell hit him. He had smelled worse, and often, but even though they stunk of little more than wet dirt and old bones he felt himself beginning to gag and clapped a hand to his mouth.
“You were late so I got a few ready,” Awa explained, and to his horror he saw she had changed back into the moldering nun’s habit.
“Why are you wearing that?” he hissed, the walking dead momentarily forgotten at her heretical flourish. “That’s not right!”
“So asking me to raise the dead for you is alright, but wearing this robe isn’t?” Awa crossed her arms—walking around in both the habit and the dress without her leggings had chafed her thighs dreadfully, and to have him whine about what she had done for his benefit sat poorly with her indeed. “Monique found your servant throwing it away and saved it for me, and when I told her where I was going she surprised me with it. She said it would help me blend in, since we’re at a church and—”
“Keep your voice down!” Manuel almost shouted, his eyes flicking to the dark building leering over the too-small cemetery. “Blend in?! In a churchyard, after dark, at a monks’ monastery?”
“How is my wearing it here any worse than wearing it on the road or in your house or—”
“Point.” Manuel clenched his hands into nervous fists. “Point. We should have gone to the hospital graveyard instead, with you dressed up like that. Or the nunnery across the Aare.”
“Shall I light a—”
“No! Don’t light anything!”
“Fine,” Awa groused. “I was just trying to help. I didn’t know your eyes were as good as mine since you walked past where I was sitting on the wall twice before I hit you with the pebble.”
“The moon’s all I need,” said Manuel, giving the dark building a final once-over before kneeling and opening his pack. He should have been studying the corpses, taking in every detail, but he could not bring himself to look at them until he had plank and charcoal ready. “This commission is for the Dominicans, I suppose, so they can’t object too strongly to our presence. It will probably go on the outside of the wall, though.”
“I thought you’d drawn a lot of dead men,” said Awa, sitting on a gravestone as he set up. “And what sort of church wants pictures of them?”
“Most of the men I’ve sketched aren’t nearly so dead,” said Manuel, picking out one of the corpses and focusing on him. Or her, the artist could not really tell. “And this is to be a Dance of Death.”
“Oh,” said Awa, not really understanding. “You should have told me. I can have them do anything you like.”
Before Manuel could begin telling her about revivals of medieval tropes and the significance of Death as an artistic image, the four corpses had paired off and begun to dance. The only dance Awa knew was a rather spastic Andalusian