“Come on, then,” Hegel prodded. “Out with it, and spite the Old Boy.”
“Uh, well, that nixie…” Manfried swallowed.
“Yeah?”
Martyn wanted to interrupt but his curiosity overpowered him and he remained silent.
“Well, I, uh, kind a got a fondness for her and that song a hers.” Hegel nodded while Manfried continued. “Reckon some a them things I was thinkin was put there by her witchery, but some a them, er, probably come by my own volition. Mecky thoughts, things what’d shame the Virgin.”
“And what’d you call her?” asked Hegel knowingly.
“Eh?”
“By what name was she called in your thoughts, brother? I know cause I’s guilty’s well a callin a witch by Her Name.” Hegel bowed his head. “Terrible sin.”
“Does it count if you say it stead a me?” Manfried kicked his brother. “So yeah, I reckon lackin a better title the name Mary might a been used. I’d creep into that wagon and watch but I never touched her, well, uh, never
“There it is.” Hegel sighed.
“But that ain’t the worst, brother!” Manfried said anxiously. “I done worse yet. Wickedness to blush Scratch’s smooth cheek. See, when we was with the captain the first time we met Angelino, he was fightin with Barousse and you and Rigo was off lookin outside and I was, I was…”
“Whatever it was, you’s forgiven soon’s you tell me,” Hegel said gently.
“I was fillin my wineskin from her tub, and since then on anytime I was feelin low I’d take a sip out a that salty bathwater, even after she went monstrous.” Manfried’s shame brought his chin low. “Still got a little bit left.” Manfried kept his head bowed until he heard a strange noise and looked up. “You laughin at me, you hag-touchin degenerate?”
“Hey now.” Hegel covered his mouth with one hand. “Just cause you’s forgiven don’t mean you ain’t a mecky whoreson! Her
“Well fuck you and your witch-kissin ways!” Manfried shouted.
“Calm yourself!” Hegel swelled up, then relaxed at seeing Manfried’s eyes threatening to pop. “Calm, calm. Mockin a man’s confession’s a worse sin than any either a us done, so you got my confession on that too, fair? Hell, you wanna keep drinkin it, it’s alright now cause I bless you and I’ll bless it too, make it holy water. It’s alright, brother.”
“It most definitely is not!” Martyn roared, and Manfried socked him in the gut.
“You got any interest in delayin your reunion with the fuckin infinite, you shut your mouth in the presence a the saint!” Manfried roared back, and Martyn keeled over clutching his stomach. “Go on, brother.”
“I was bout done,” Hegel said, then looked around at the shining eyes watching him from across the fire. “Anyone else wanna be washed clean?”
Raphael stood and walked to them, plopping down and addressing Hegel directly for the first time since losing his hand and most of his teeth. He told them of all the atrocities he had committed during his service in the White Company. The mercenary army had taken part in all sorts of debauchery involving wine, women, and extreme violence, and Raphael confessed until the tears came and he shook with remorse.
“You’s forgiven, boy.” Hegel exchanged a shrug with Manfried, neither having understood most of what was said. “We’s all sinners in this mecky world.”
“I too have something to confess.” Al-Gassur giggled, crawling toward them around the fire. “But first, is my miserable, lowly Arab-self allowed the same benefits as you?”
“Long as you don’t keep prattlin on and own up already,” Manfried said.
“And no revenge will be inflicted upon my flesh for whatever evils I have done?” Al-Gassur pressed, the hoax that had kept him laughing all these months almost told.
“Yeah, yeah, spit it,” said Hegel.
“I, I’m, I’m not-” Al-Gassur tried to say it but his whole body trembled with mirth. “I am no Arab!”
“No Arab what?” Hegel’s eyes were slits.
“No Arab at all! Not even a Turk!” The laughter overpowered Al-Gassur and he rolled in the sand.
“Heth mwad,” Raphael guessed.
“No!” Al-Gassur hooted, “Neither mad nor Arab! I am from Constantinople, probably the same stock as the rest of you! Born a beggar, yes, but an Arab? Not on your souls!”
“What are you, then?” Hegel asked. “Not honest, whatever the breed.”
“My father was a Wallachian peddler.” The memories of his youth calmed Al-Gassur’s delight. “He took my mother to Constantinople to practice his trade. But he was robbed and beaten, and without any coin to even travel home he moved to the only place which would take him, the Jews’ quarter. I was born there, and so to the ignorant city folk I was a Jew. My father and mother both died when the rival Christian merchants launched one of their attacks on the ghetto, killing anyone they could catch. But not I!”
“That don’t tell us why you act the Arab.” Manfried had risen to a crouch.
“Even the exotic Arab with his thirst for Christian blood is less despised than the Jew,” Al-Gassur hissed. “And a converted infidel, one who fought for the Pope in a crusade, can coax coin from even the least charitable Christian. As a young man in the ghetto what chance had I as a beggar or anything else, when all who see you know you for a Jew? I adopted a new name and what name I had is long forgotten.”
“So you ain’t a Jew or an Arab, is that right, Arab?” Manfried insisted.
“No! Yes! The golden horses and other riches my father believed to stand in Constantinople as proof of the city’s wealth were long before stolen by Venetians in a crusade as noble as that on which we are now engaged, and that is why I journeyed there. I intended to abandon my Arabian ruse along the way but it stuck fast and earned me as much pity and drink as it did beatings. My true ancestry won my father naught but a broken heart and an empty pouch, and had I adopted a Jewish name be assured the beatings would have surpassed the mercy, especially in those plague-ridden days when every scapegoat was whispered to have horns beneath his pointed hat.”
“So how’d you learn to talk like’em?” Hegel asked.
“The few Arabs I saw in my youth taught me a bit, and while I had forgotten it all by the time we met, our recent company has rekindled the spark of language so that I may speak a little instead of simply spouting nonsense that would only fool a Christian.” Al-Gassur puffed out his chest, waiting for the blows to fall.
After a long silence, Hegel and Manfried exchanged a glance and began to chuckle. Raphael and Rodrigo soon joined in, and all four laughed until their ribs ached. Al-Gassur and Martyn looked on amazed until Manfried recovered enough to ask another question.
“And you got nuthin else to confess? No other lies need tellin? Last chance!” Manfried’s smile was too broad, too honest.
“What, er, no?” Al-Gassur had not expected them to be amused, but then they fulfilled his expectations by leaping upon him, Hegel holding his arms and Manfried seizing him around the thighs.
“We’ll make you honest yet, Arab!” Manfried began tearing Al-Gassur’s breeches. “What’s under here, then, a stump? I seen you runnin in Venetia, Arab, seen you runnin with both legs!”
Al-Gassur struggled but they held him fast. Blocking the man’s view of his own exposed lower half Manfried revealed the bound leg and tore the rags keeping it lashed against thigh and ass. Then Manfried drew his dagger and pressed the dull side against Al-Gassur’s knee.
“Gonna cut it off, Arab, so’s you ain’t a liar no more!” Manfried dragged the metal across his skin, making the beggar scream and wail. Then the Grossbarts let him go, and he scurried away into the dark while they laughed and laughed. They had not had such sport since they first came to Gyptland.
Heartbroken that his confession had not bothered the wicked twins in the slightest, Al-Gassur took succor in that he no longer needed to bind his leg. In the dark between the fires he stealthily extracted his hidden treasure from his smaller bag, as well as the spool of thin, flexible cable he had found in Alexandria. He noosed one end of the line around the swaddled bottle and the other around his thigh, then stuffed the bottle back into his satchel and shoved the bag up the front of his short tunic to serve as a false potbelly. Only a searching eye would notice the cable leading from the top of his breeches to the bottom of his shirt; having robbed him of even the satisfaction of his deception, Al-Gassur had little doubt the Grossbarts would soon turn to his physical possessions, but if they wanted his brother’s heart they would have to cut it out of him.
“I have a confession as well,” Rodrigo said after the cackling at Al-Gassur had calmed. “When I came above deck on the ship it wasn’t to save your lives, it was to watch you hang. I wanted to witness your suffering, for I blamed you then as I do now for Ennio’s death.”
“What brought illumination to your ignorant fuckin ass?” Manfried said.
“One fool shot a bow at me and then the other tried to stab me. Has a way of making a man come round.” Rodrigo, like Al-Gassur, waited for a kick that never came.
“Killin them bitchswine only penance you needed, boy, so I pronounce you clean,” judged Hegel.
“Heretics!” Martyn pointed at them. “By Mary’s Virginal Belly, you are heretics!”
“Stow that noise,” Hegel said, “or I’ll demote you to bishop.”
“Blasphemer!” Martyn snapped. “Only the Lord may judge me!”
“Heth a thaint!” Raphael wagged his stump from Hegel to Martyn. “Know your own pwace, Pwiest!”
“Just cause you ride with us don’t mean we won’t execute your ass,” Hegel reminded Martyn. “You been slippin of late, but despite all a your recent blasphemin I got faith you hates demons and witches and such, so you’s probably goin upways if I put you down like a blood-simple hound. If not that’s your own mecky fault. What was it you said bout us bein tools and Her Will bein done?”
All eyes were on Cardinal Martyn, who stood on shaky legs surveying the four men he had shared so many days with. Everything seemed so utterly wrong that he turned away without a word and stalked off, the jeers of the Grossbarts following him into the night. Instead of making for the other fire he wandered out into the open desert, a cool wind rinsing his mind free of the Grossbartian dust that had coated it for so long even as his good hand stripped him of the murder-bought cardinal’s vestments. Scaling a dune he followed the ridge until the rosy full moon again slid under the clouds. Completely naked, drunk, and crazed through the clarity of just what he had been up to over the last year of his life, Martyn looked back at the twin campfires and wept.
Closing his eyes, Martyn remembered the past for what it was and not what he had made it. His thoughts turned away from the lies he had almost believed, all the
