The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley

Author:Christopher Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

24

Gifts

Next morning at dawn, they assembled in front of the Edenhaus to make their departure.

The Landsknechte were wobbly and spent, having been unable to resist a valedictory night of libidinous mayhem. Dismas settled the bill. In the event there were inquiries, he told the proprietress a lie, that they were on their way north, to Freiberg.

They left by the St. Alban’s gate, cleared their nostrils of the stench of paper mill, and rode west. In ten miles they reached the St. Gunther well, and took the southwest road that led over the Jura.

They were a glum party. The Landsknechte were so hungover from their debauch it was all they could do to stay upright in their saddles. Dismas and Dürer rode together in the cart, each silent within his own melancholy; Dürer asking himself why in God’s name he was continuing on, Dismas miserable and self-loathing at deceiving Magda. It was no comfort to him that he’d done it for her own good. Even Dürer, sunk in his own gloom, noticed his friend’s.

“What’s eating at you, then?”

Dismas didn’t answer. He had not shared with Dürer what had passed between him and Magda.

“There’s a sight to cheer your cowherder heart,” Dürer said, pointing over his left shoulder at the Alps, rising white and clean into the blue sky. Dismas barely glanced. It annoyed Dürer that Dismas’s spirits should be lower than his own when he had made such a noble sacrifice. He said, “Oh, cheer up. I don’t want to dance with death any more than you.”

Dürer studied his friend’s face, as he would if he were painting it. Painters read men’s souls, and he saw this was neither dejection nor fear at the prospect of death.

“Ah. The girl.”

Dismas sighed. Yes, the girl.

“Well, I miss her, too,” Dürer said, shoehorning himself into Dismas’s misery. “Splendid lass. And after everything she endured at the hands of that pig. Sure, he’s squealing in Hell. I hope Hell does look like Bosch’s vision.” After a pause he said, “I’d have liked to do her portrait. What a beauty she is. What a wife she’ll make some fellow. Maybe she and Paracelsus—”

“Nars. Please, shut up.”

“Smitten! As I thought. Well, well, Dismas has a heart after all. Fine time to fall in love. But all right. Let’s turn around and go back to Basel. I’ll make a wedding portrait of the two of you. No charge. My present.”

Dismas said nothing.

“Well, does she love you?”

“Can’t you be quiet?”

“I think she must, the way she looks at you. Painters know these things.”

“Am I to have no peace? She’d have looked that way at anyone who helped her. Look, Nars, I don’t want to talk about this.”

“If she does love you, why don’t we—?”

“She does not love me! Gratitude is different from love. Love is . . .”

“Yes? Please, go on. Tell me about love.”

Dismas groaned.

“What a fraud you are, Nars. You only want us to turn around so you won’t end up on the fucking gallows with me in Chambéry.

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