Cathedral

by Ben Hopkins

  In the centre, burning and smoking, a wooden carving of the Virgin.

  Von Fegersheim jumps down from his stallion, tries to grab at the statue, save the Holy Mother from the flames. Around the fire, the heretics start shouting: “It’s just wood! It’s just a piece of wood! It means nothing!”

  Von Zabern clutches his brow, shocked into silence, then comes back to himself. “Shackle them!”

  The troop dismounts, pulling chains from saddle bags. Von Fegersheim grasps at the burning statue with his mail-gloved hand, but she’s too hot to take hold of, her painted, upheld face is bubbling, smoking. The villagers shout, spin, shriek, turn, screech. “Why worship bits of wood? Why offer prayers to stones? Is your God a painted carving?”

  One of the noble boys beats a screaming old woman across the face and her cheek splits open. Von Fegersheim yells as he grabs the burning madonna from the fire and sears his hand. The weavers are shouting and screaming at us like lunatics, and then suddenly some of them go silent, serene, and stare upwards into the sun, into the light, almost without blinking.

  Von Fegersheim rolls the Virgin in the damp grass, but she’s already half burned-away, blackened, deformed. The heretics keep screaming, but don’t resist. The troop chain them up, throw the eldest and youngest on the carts, try their best to beat them into silence.

  Manfred, after shackling a few of the loons, stumbles off to look in their houses, his sword ready against ambush. But there’s no-one left inside—all the homes are empty, and they don’t have much to steal. They live like monks, or how monks are supposed to live. At Mohrmünster, the Brothers lived like princes, but these heretics seem to starve like Jesus in the desert. Their houses are bare and cold, like the homes of snakes or lizards.

  In one house he finds tools for stripping and scutching flax and four sheets of fine linen. In other houses he finds big looms with linen half-woven. Too big to carry now, but one thing’s clear: these weaver folk are headed for the pyre, and nothing will save them. And where they’re going, they won’t need looms nor shuttles nor sheets.

  † † †

  The smoke from the burning village palls around them as they ride in slow cortège back towards Honau. Before leaving, they set fire to all the houses. Manfred and Bertle pulled out the looms and laid them on the wet grass, with the hope to come back for them later. They took the sheets and the tools with them.

  The devils have stopped screaming, they parade in silence through the outlying barns of Honau. Scraps of ash, spirals of soot carried by the agitated wind curlicue around their sullen faces. The Honauers come and stand in doorways, stare through windows. Some spit, especially when the Treasure-Fucker is looking in their direction. Public display of the One True Faith.

  Back at the Inn by the pier, and the barges are slow to be loaded with their new human cargo. Manfred dismounts for a draught of wine, stands at the doorway, drinking it down, and sees a man running up in panic. He recognises him from the Hagenburg docks: Dagobert the Dyer.

  Dagobert sees Manfred, a familiar face. “You’re Manfred Gerber’s boy,” he says. “I am.”—“Where are they taking the weavers?”—“To the pyre, no doubt.”—“What, all of them?”—“All as we could find.” Dagobert blanches like linen, holds his face in his hands. “Then who will weave me my goddamned cloth?”

  “Ask the Treasurer there, he’s sure to weave you up a few lengths, if you ask him nicely.”

  “This is no laughing matter, I’m ruined.”

  “Less ruined than they are.”

  Dagobert looks at him bitterly. Manfred finishes his wine, nods. “I’m sorry, my friend. How many lengths do you need?”

  “Twenty-one. I downpaid for seven. I’ll never see that money again.”

  “It’s gone up in smoke.”

  “Stop making jokes about it.”

  “Listen, Herr Färber, my father and I will deliver you that cloth.”

  “From where?”

  “We know people. My wife and her sisters are handy with a loom.”

  “I need twenty one! And well-woven!”

  “And you will get them, mark my word—we have all the connections you need.” Manfred doesn’t mention the eight lengths he and Bertle have already liberated from the flames, baled over the back of Bertle’s stallion. “When and where must you deliver?”

  “Freiburg. Seven dark blue, seven light blue, seven yellow. Liveries for the Duke. No cheap rubbish. Supple and hard-wearing. By Pentecost.”

  Something crosses Manfred’s mind. Blue. “You’ll be needing woad, then?”

  “Of course.”

  On their third boat, coming in soon, God Willing, sacks of woad from Picardy. “Picardian woad?”

  “It’s the best.”

  “We’ll do this. I’ll give you three sacks of Picardy woad for the price of one.”

  Dagobert’s eyebrows raise. He scans the pier, the huddled forms of the weavers crowding the barges, the mounted troop now leading on their horses, the Treasurer at the end of the pier, staring into the grey flow of the waters. “Why?”

  “To seal this deal. From now on, the Gerbers will supply you all the linen you need.”

  † † †

  All the holding cells in Hagenburg are full of heretics, there’s no more room. At the gates of the city they are redirected to Kronenweiler castle, another two hours’ trudge distant. News not joyfully received. They skirt the town walls to the Mayenzer Tor and head out across the newly-sown fields.

  This was the third day of the heretic round-up. The first two days, Manfred and his militia brothers had been deployed in the City itself. They were given a list of names before dawn, and sent out to knock on doors. Some of the names caused them no surprise; black sheep, odd eggs, the kind of person people whisper about—she’s a witch, he hasn’t been to church for years, he has a kobold in his cellar. Many, of course, they’d never heard of—Hagenburg is a big town, after all. Some are folk known to them, good people, shopkeepers, kind old ladies, children. But who are they to question Holy Mother Church, especially when they’re being paid tenpence a day?

  Some hear what they have to say, nod quietly, collect a bundle of clothes and a hunk of bread, and then hold out their hands for the shackles. Some start shouting and crying. Some jump from windows, twist their ankles, run half-naked through the streets, and they have to give chase. Of course, the Captain of the Militia has posted men at the four town gates to stop any fugitives trying to escape.

  But some managed it somehow. Jumped into the Ehle and swam to the marshes. Swung ropes down from the town walls and ran through the fields. Some hid in cellars, in barrels, some hid under sacks on carts and had themselves rode out to the hills. But most of them, willingly or unwillingly, came under their guard and filled up the Mayor’s holding cells.

  Manfred leads his tired nag by the halter, walking alongside one of the carts carrying the weavers’ women. There are two sisters; the younger is pretty and eye-catching enough, but the elder sister is amongst the most beautiful creatures he’s ever seen. He keeps looking at her, in spite of himself.

  The wind dies down, clouds gather and hide the sun. Kronenweiler Castle hulks above the pointed gables of its village rooves and the knotted vines of the barren brown fields. Spring came and went this year, brought forth the leaves and then retreated, shivering.

  The gates of the castle open, their day’s work is ending. In the courtyard, dozens of prisoners, huddling under hide tenting. A cattle trough for water, and each of them handed a small loaf of bread from the Kronenweiler baker, standing there in wool coat and apron beside his baskets of loaves. It’s a windfall for his tiny village business. Blacksmiths for the shackles, soldiers for guards, bakers for the penitentiary bread, monks and lay brethren as Inquisitors, carters, bargemen, timber merchants, armourers, the ostlers at the Fish Market who hired out Manfred’s useless nag. From the Church’s pu
dgy hands, shillings and pence flood down to their legions of helpers and collaborators, and from the ashes of the pyres, the Church pulls the gold of distrained houses, farmsteads, fields.

  All in all, a profitable business.

  † † †

  With Bertle they hire a boat and then a cart and collect the looms from the wind-fired ashes of the weavers’ village. At Honau they hail and board a passing barge, straining upriver against the spring-thaw swell to reach the Hagenburg dock by sundown. Bertle and Manfred are set to the oars to help pay their passage.

  Manfred Senior is still at the warehouse when Junior stumbles in, half dead from exhaustion. Father ladles out some lukewarm soup, rolls out a turnip from the embers for Son to eat. It’s charred and sweetened in the fire, tastes of earth and ash, fills his belly with much-needed warmth.

  As he eats, Father pushes over the ledger and a candle so Son can read up the day’s transactions. Their third boat, christened the Grete after Manfred’s new bride, came in today with a mixed load from the Lower Rhine towns; half of it freight borne for other merchants, half of it their own speculations. The woad, from Amiens, was on board. Son tells Father the deal he made in Honau.

  Manfred Senior pokes the embers in the hearth, coaxes the ochre flames, nods. “Dagobert has good clients on the eastern bank. You made a good bid. Just make sure you deliver.”

  “I will.”

  “I know you will.” He sits down, straddling the same bench where his son is sitting. “I only wish this wasn’t a business built on the misfortunes of others.”

  Manfred shrugs. It’s the way of the world. Father continues, “The Grete boys say they’re burning folk all the way down the Rhine, in every town and city. Either there were heretics everywhere and we didn’t know it, or the Church has lost its mind.”

  He takes a sip of wine, rolls its sweetness around his mouth, and swallows. His eyes close. “Nothing good will come of this.”

  THE LINEN CHEST

  (ANNO 1232. GRETE GERBER I)

  I only knew my father-in-law a small handful of Sundays. He was taken well before his rightful time.

  Our first meeting was not too full of promise neither. Manfred brought me into the house perfumed and garlanded, and said, “Father, this is my bride Grete.” I looked pretty as a spring flower and smiled ever so sweetly at my new Dad, but Manfred the Elder shut the door in my face and started on Manfred the Younger with such a shouting as all the street could hear.

  It was my first time in the City, and so I stood out on the doorstep of the house with flowers in my hair, and looked at the to and fro of the merchant quarter which was to be my home. By now, Manfred the Younger was shouting back at his Dad, ever so respectfully, but shouting nevertheless, and a small crowd was gathering in the muck outside, making me compliments, to which I curtseyed. I was trying to keep an ear on the shouting inside, but showing an outer face that said “this is the most normal wedding day in the world.” This was a challenge, but I rose to it well, and before too long the door was opened and Manfred the Elder was there, red in the face from shouting, but assaying a friendly smile as best he could and saying, “Now let’s be looking at you, girl.”

  So, I did my prettiest curtsey and smiled, and for some reason I winked at him. Whatever I did, my Father-in-Law was suddenly embracing me and saying, “Well, my boy, I give you, she’s a jewel.”

  The heart of the matter was: my Manfred had been meant to marry a merchant’s widow but—as he told me—he’d rather go to bed with a sow. And so, as I was for the taking, he took me, and I was right happy to be took.

  But his father wasn’t pleased at all, not until my Manfred shouted at him that Father Manfred as a young man had done exactly the same thing, and married for Love against his own father’s wishes. And didn’t he always say that he never regretted it one minute? Well, Manfred the Elder didn’t take so kindly to have his own song sung back at him, but in the end he couldn’t tell the Kid not to act the Billy Goat. And so he gave me a hug and passed me over to Manfred the Younger, who carried me over the threshold.

  Then they sent out for my boys to join the party, and Emmle came first from the Judengasse. How he’d changed! A bit of fur on his lip, pale and with a deep voice! And talking clever, like a priest!

  Rettich, well, he’ll never change. He ran up with the messenger boy, looking the same as ever, and on hearing that I was now Frau Gerber of the Rhineboat Gerbers, stood a while tongueless, and unable to decide between looking like a cloud about to spit lightning, or the happiest elder brother on earth. In the end it came down to Money like it normally does, and his troubles were two: one, that my husband had shaved our sisters’ heads for four and sixpence each, and two, that I had no dowry to speak of and that he had planned to marry me off in four years, by which time Rettich would be a Companion and able to fill a linen chest with fine sheets and silver, to make me a proper bride.

  My husband, who had a clever mind for such things, took me and Rettich to the bridal chamber and showed Rettich the empty linen chest there. I had come from Lenzenbach with nothing but a small bundle of clothes and a box of pins, carding combs and other bits and bobs. Now Manfred put my bundle in the linen chest and held a pretty speech. He said, “Apprentice Rettich, your sister’s smile is, for me, worth all the rubies of India, and I am in want of nothing. But look, sir, if you want to honour your sister with a dowry, this linen chest will be yours to fill any time you wish, and we will accept your future gifts with the gratitude of a loving sister and brother.”

  And like this, he saved my Brother Rettich’s shame that he had no money to put on me on my wedding day. And now even Rettich could smile, and Emmle could dance. Manfred the Elder sent to the tavern for a barrel of fine wine, and so, in the end, my wedding day continued in drunken happiness, as well it should.

  But it wasn’t long after that they started burning the heretics. My Manfred was signed to the city militia, which usually meant he spent one day in every seven pretending to patrol the streets at night, whilst really sitting on his behind in the guardhouse, drinking and gambling with the other night watchmen. But now it meant he was called on to put the heretics in irons and take them to the holding places for them to be tried. It wasn’t joyful work to be sure, but it was well paid, and Manfred reckoned they were Enemies of the Church, and so someone had to deal with them, and it might as well be him.

  I hadn’t been long in the city, and hadn’t had time to get used to it at peace before it broke out into war. They dug a ditch out by the Mayenzer Tor, and made a big pyre there, and that’s where they threw the heretics to burn. Many folk went to watch but I didn’t have the stomach for it, to begin with. Like a good young wife I waited at home for my husband to come back from his work, and made him as comfortable as I could, for his labour those days was a dark one.

  I knew he didn’t relish the work of putting souls in chains, but even so, after a while I could see he and his father were worried about something. The fools thought that I was some country dunce and couldn’t understand, so they didn’t tell me nothing about it. I wish they had. My Manfred learned later that I have a good head on my shoulders for solving riddles and straightening out bends, but he didn’t know and trust me then, more’s the pity.

  So one morning, it’s dawning outside and we just heard the Cathedral bell when there’s a knock at the street door. And then a pounding and a shouting. My Manfred obviously knew what was coming, for he grabbed me straightaway and lifted me up in his arms. “For the Love of God,” he said, “you promise me to be silent and not say a word.” I nodded though my heart was leaping like a hare in a snare. Manfred nods back at me, kisses me gently and . . . puts me in the linen chest! He puts a wool stocking by the lock so it doesn’t close properly, so that there’s a gap so I can breathe and can get out later. Then he pulls on a shirt and goes down to the soldiers outside.

  I hear the voice reading out, “Manfred Gerber the Elder
and Manfred Gerber the Younger, you have been charged with the grievous sin of heresy.” They quickly search the house but I can hear my Manfred say, “She went back to her village to see her sisters, I swear,” and no-one found me.

  The house went silent and then the street outside. And then I crawled out of the linen chest like a mouse out of its hole and sat on our bed and didn’t know what I should do. I first thought of my two brothers and maybe they could help me, but I was now a grown and married lady, and I shouldn’t go crying like a little girl to the men of the family, now should I?

  I don’t know why, but my only thought was to go out and see for myself. Who these heretics were, and who the people were that were burning them.

  And so I dressed and walked out into the near-empty streets, and headed for the smoke, the ditch and the fire.

  † † †

  At the Burning Ground, to get people in the mood, Uto the Town Crier was standing on a cart and shouting out a story.

  There was a man, and he was a heretic, and he was took by the Inquisitors and they seared his arm with the hot iron until he repented of his evil beliefs. As soon as he repented, through the Love of Christ, his terrible burns stopped hurting, and he was as new and reborn. He went home to his heretic wife, who listened to his tale and then made him a nice, warm dinner and took him to bed. In bed the wife started to whisper in his ear, saying that they had fooled the Church, that now they could secretly return to their sinful ways. The man, for love of his wife, reluctantly agreed, and immediately his burns opened up again, red weals all over his arms. He started to scream. His whole body was on fire, as if Devils were pressing him down into white, searing coals. He grabbed his wife, screaming, and as he grabbed her, his hands burned her flesh like his hands were made of red-hot iron. And her flesh began to burn as well, and she began to scream too. The pain was unbearable and so they ran to the river and threw themselves in the waters, hoping that they would hiss like glowing horseshoes thrown to the blacksmith’s brine. But they did not hiss and extinguish like iron, there was no relief for them in the waters, and they thrashed and screamed and howled and drowned, and their souls were torn from them by Devils and were pulled down straight to Hell, where their torment continues to this day and to the End of Time, without relent, without rest or respite. Amen.