by Ben Hopkins
And that was the Idea. But an Idea is nothing without hard facts, and the hardest of all facts is Money. They spread the word over town, in the markets, in the shops, in the Ehle and Rhine harbours. A Merchants’ Church, St. Niklaus, to be built with their donations, and fuck the Bishop and his Cathedral.
We are at War, his father had said. And here was Manfred’s opening battle. But what fool is just going to hand over his silver to some ginger-haired idiot boat-freighter to make a church? Manfred curses himself for not listening to his father more often when he was around. He realises that building a church is not so simple. His church needs a Committee, and a Treasurer, and someone to check the Treasurer’s accounts and report to the Trustees, and a Werkmeister and a Lawyer and some friends in the Council to approve the land sale and builders and workmen and donors . . . And, in the end, let’s not forget. A Priest. To run the fucking place. And, in this diocese, whether Manfred and his friends like it or not, the Priest will be appointed by . . . the Bishop.
So. Best not go around shouting too loudly about this being the Fuck the Bishop Church. Manfred calls a meeting of his co-conspirators and says, Let’s just tone it down, boys. Keep that kind of thing to ourselves. We can’t do anything without the right friends. Friends in the Cathedral Chapter, in the Rathaus, in the lawyers’ offices in the Schriwerstublgass, in the Counting House, the Treasury and the Guilds.
Manfred learns quickly. Every day after Prime prayers he’s at the Morning Altar in the Cathedral with the other Merchants of the City. When he can he does the rounds of the shops and markets and warehouses, talks to people, gets his face seen. Everywhere he goes, Manfred makes Friends.
He’s never been so busy. He wishes there were double hours in the day, that he could go somewhere, anywhere, and buy an extra Month or two, to give him the time he needs. And he spends the Hours that he does have running from one place to another. Over here to the Rathaus to draw out a parcel of land for the church, over there to the fields of flax to make a downpayment on the harvest (a favourable rate by paying half in advance! God willing, it will be a plentiful crop . . . ), over here to one of his looms, over there to lick some aristocratic arse to help oil the wheels of permits and permissions, over here to bow and scrape to the Bishop’s household in search of diocesan work commissions, over there to make the deal with the Saxon murderer to take revenge and kill an Inquisitor to hike his popularity amongst his peers, over here to inventorise his boat just docked in from Flanders and Cologne and over there . . . when there’s blessed time . . . to see Grete and his newborn son, Manfredle.
The boy’s little feet make him laugh, kicking at nothing. His tiny hand pushes and pulls at Manfred’s finger. His mouth gurgles, dribbles, twists. “He smiled this morning,” says Grete. “If only you’d seen it!” She throws up her hands, pulls a pretty face of pique. “I wanted to come running to find you! But I’d no idea where you were, as usual.”
“At the Cathedral. How’s the weaving?”
Grete snorts. “Is that all you’ve got to ask me?”
Grete had looked a bit put out when he brought home one of the Honau looms and told her to get to work. Maybe she’d thought that a wife’s life in the Merchant Quarter would be all leisure and luxury, grapes and honey cake from silver platters. Thought she’d let her hands grow soft and ladylike, not pluck at flax, pick at carding combs and shuttle shuttles.
She felt better when two more looms made their way to her sisters’ houses in Lenzenbach, and when he put her in charge of the workers, the schedules, the deliveries. Grete Gerber of the Rhine-boat Gerbers, Manageress of Delivery of Cloths and Textiles.
The Gerbers now have some twenty-one looms working for them in the city and in the villages, and out back where once the neighbours grazed their pigs, a water trough to soften the flax. Twenty-one women. When their babies are sleeping, when their husbands are sated, when the household can be left a while to its own sweet life, then they sit down to the loom and start to shuttle and weave. Tuppence ha’penny a cubit.
“Looks like you haven’t done much today,” says Manfred, nodding at the loom in the corner.
Grete puts Manfredle down, her face flushes apple-red. “Look you,” she says. “I can’t run the business, take care of you two Lordships and weave like a heretic all at the same time!” She slams her fist down on the table. She has a temper on her, his wife does. And the Devil knows she never showed it until his ring was on her lilywhite finger. “I need a bloody servant! Now! So get me one!”
Manfred picks up the nearest thing; his drinking flagon, and throws it at the wall. Bang! It breaks. Grete flinches, even though it goes nowhere near her. Takes Manfredle in her protective arms, as if Manfred was about to hit him too. Like an accusation. Manfred loses any control he had left. “You’re a LADY now, are you, you fucking bitch?”
It takes him three big cups of wine at the tavern before he can calm down. And when he’s finally calm, and looks up from the dregs of the third tumbler, he’s looking straight in the unforgiving eyes of Wolfram of Basel.
“You’re back,” Manfred says, faintly.
Wolfram says nothing. Rather than be taken by the Inquisitors, he disappeared, leaving his brother to run his boats from Basel.
Absence hasn’t helped his business. Manfred’s taken over five of his accounts.
Wolfram. Glaring at him. “Was it you, you bastard?” he growls.
Manfred checks. Wolfram is armed. A long dagger at his belt. Weak words crowd the back of his throat: What me? What are you talking about? Ha ha ha the very thought of it . . .
He throws them away. Stands. “And was it you who named our names?”
Wolfram stands too. But he’s hardly three cubits high, the midget. “So it was you?”
“No. Was it you?”
“No.”
Two Freightsmen, between them they hold the Hagenburg Rhineboat trade. Wolfram has twelve boats, Manfred is just building a fourth. Staring at each other, looking for a lie in the corner of the eyes.
Wolfram blinks first. But his hand is still on the pommel of his dagger. “So who was it, Gerber?”
Manfred swallows. “I don’t know.” He finishes the dregs of his cheap tavern wine; a mouthful of sediment. “You lost some trade, Wolfram. I’m sorry. But I lost my father. Someone told lies about us. And when I find them . . . ” Manfred falters. “Someone told lies about us. But it was the Church that gave us false trial. And the City that lit the fire. Think about it that way. It helps.”
† † †
In times of war, moments of peace are precious. Before the Angelus bell softly tolls, bidding all to hearth and supper, Manfred leaves the tavern, checks his purse for pennies, and knocks on the Stationer’s door in the Schriwerstublgass.
Coming home, their anger still rings in the air, a buzzing of flies trapped in by the window shutters. The shattered tankard is still on the floor, left as a sign. Grete sits in twilight, far from the lantern that hangs by Manfredle’s crib.
Silence as Manfred opens his satchel, places parchment, ink and a quill on the table. The dim light catches in Grete’s eyes, the trace of a smile.
“Come, bring that lantern over here,” he says softly, and is relieved to see that she obeys. Without a word she places the light on the table, and pulls up her stool, ready. He sits beside her.
“This is an A,” he says, and dips the quill in ink, and draws the letter, simple and bold. “A is for Apple, for Aaaaaaachen, for . . . .”
“Aaarsehole?” says Grete, with an arched eyebrow.
“Don’t start,” says Manfred, raising a warning finger, but unable to hold back a smile. “And this . . . ” his pen strokes upwards, downwards, in two generous curves, “is a B. B is for Bishop. B is for Bertle. B is for—?”
“Bastard.”
“Bitch.”
Grete laughs. This is more enjoyable than he’d feared. For weeks
she’s been nagging him, and he always finding excuses. Ink and parchment are expensive. He was a bad student, so he’ll be a bad teacher. Where can he find the time?
“Now you try. Hold the quill like this.” He shows her.
He hated study. He envied the porters’ boys who’d spend their summer evenings by the banks of the Ehle whilst he, Bertle and Rolo, a fraternity of resentment, sat at lecterns in the cold presbytery with Father Bernard. Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Latin as the hours of play drained away into dusk. A torture paid for by their families’ shillings, and their poor progress rewarded in beatings by the teacher’s switch and their fathers’ belts.
Those evening-golden hours of play are long lost and will never come again. Now, in this time of war, in soft lanternlight, Grete’s hand wobbles over the page, the nib splutters speckles of ink, turns, curves and comes to rest.
An A. Her first A.
Manfred gives her a look of congratulation, trying not to be patronising. It doesn’t work.
A further gesture of peace. A generous olive branch.
“I’ll ask about a servant in the morning.”
Grete smiles.
“Now clear up that mess there and we’ll move on to B and C.”
Grete’s smile fades. But she’s still happy.
† † †
The woodshed is at the back of the house, beyond the trough that they now use for softening flax. In summer, it is concealed from prying eyes by the old apple tree’s spreading arms. A secret place.
The maidservant Elise seems to know what’s expected of her, and doesn’t put up any resistance. Turns her back to him and leans on the woodpile, lets him lift her skirts. A few summers younger than Grete, a perfect peach. Manfred knows she’s been “broken in” before, but this is his first try-out. He’d taken her off Gaufried’s hands when Frau Gaufried had walked in on her husband giving it to her in the storeroom up against a five-gallon barrel of Molsheimer. “Real honeysuckle, this one,” lisped Gaufried in Manfred’s ear, “you won’t find better . . . ”
Manfred’s waited what seemed an eternity for Grete to leave Hagenburg to check on the village weavers. But now she’s gone, and Elise’s beautiful buttocks are in his hands as he takes his time with her, sliding it in and out, hard and fast a while, then soft and slow. She doesn’t seem to mind.
A strange fish, Elise. Quiet, diligent, obedient. Pretty, auburn hair, petite body, chirpy bright face. But haunted, accusing eyes. They follow you wherever you go, those dark brown, even reddish eyes. If you look up from the dining table, she’s in her corner like a barn cat, watching you. Come in from the outhouse, she’s sweeping the floor, her hands flick the broom sightlessly, her eyes are on you. As if she’s recording everything for some later reckoning.
But then speak to her, and her voice is meek, obedient, calm. “Yes, Master, straight away, Master.” Every morning at dawn, she’s first into St. Stefan’s church. Two years of shaven-headed contrition in a Vogesen nunnery has put the fear of God into her, and she prays four times a day. After mass, she slips quietly back and sweeps the house, then sits to the loom and shuttles like there’s no tomorrow. There’s no faster weaver than Elise. And she knows flax, hemp and wool like a Flemish Draper. Her father taught her well.
When Grete summons her, she comes quietly and immediately. Elise is tender with the boy, her mournful face breaking out into smiles as he gurgles and sings. And when he’s moody, she will rock him in her arms, whispering lullabies in the dialect of the Northern Rhine, lays she learned as an itinerant child on the River Road. And she has Letters. In the afternoon, as Manfredle sleeps, she and the Mistress sit to the dining table with pen and ink, and Elise helps the Mistress to write and do arithmetic. And now Manfred has bought them a ragged, faint, seventh-hand copy of the first parts of Tristan, and they read that together and giggle, and wipe girlish tears from their eyes.
Manfred feels it coming, can’t hold it back any longer, pulls himself out of her, groans and shoots his seed onto her thighs. There’ll be no bastards in the Gerber house, as long as he can help it. Panting, he sinks back down onto the chopping block. Elise’s breaths subside. Her skirts slide down around her ankles. Saying nothing, she returns to the house. From the shed, he can hear her pouring out water to wash.
He tries to think of the first time he saw her.
A day of high wind, the raid on the hamlet near Honau. Cantering into the village and seeing the flames, and the Virgin burning, charred and black. And all around, the heretics screaming defiance, scorn. Her father and her beautiful sister, now both burned to ash. And she somewhere in that baying crowd, intent on damnation.
† † †
Manfred is checking cloth samples in the sunlight when there’s a loud knocking from the street outside. A fist pounding his door like on the dawn of his arrest. Not a neighbour. Not a tradesman—they know to stand by the doorway and call out the Gerbers’ names. The knock of a stranger. Manfred rushes inside.
Coming in from the bright light of the backyard, the hallway is plunged in thick greenish shadow. “There’s someone at the door, Master,” comes Elise’s soft, faintly accented voice.
“Well answer it,” says Manfred, rubbing his eyes, still dazzled by the sun.
The door opens, sending a jagged diagonal burst of light into the hallway. A tall, black silhouette stands in the threshold.
Manfred’s eyes adjust, see commanding eyes, sun-browned skin, a large silver cross.
Treasurer-Bastard.
“My Lord, I thought you were in Rome?” says Manfred, confused by conjecture. What can this visit be about? Fear pumps at the valves of his heart. The murder of Dorso? The pilfering of Cathedral bequests for their new church of St. Niklaus?
“I am, as you can see, returned from Rome, Gerber.”
Manfred swallows, ready to run. From the woodpile he can jump to the cesspits and through the drain to the Ehle. He wouldn’t be the first fugitive to fetch up at the Rhine Harbour soaked in shit and river water. “What can I do for you, my Lord?” he asks, and his voice trembles.
“It is not you I have come to see, Gerber,” says von Zabern, and fixes his sharp eyes upon him. “Though I hear that we would have plenty to talk about. Your name seems to crop up with a dispiriting frequency these days.”
Manfred feels something unfamiliar rise in him, dispelling his fear. It is pride. “If it is not me you’ve come to see . . . .? My wife is at market . . . ” His confidence ebbs as uncertainty once more comes over him. Von Zabern’s eyes probe the shadows of the hallway, find the flexuous petite figure silhouetted in the back room threshold. The Treasurer speaks softly, as if to an infant, or a fool. “I have come to see little Elise.” And his finger points out to her. “Is that she?”
† † †
Grete comes home to find her husband with his ear pressed to the back room door. He gestures frantically to her to be quiet.
She, perplexed, obeys. Why does a man eavesdrop in his own house? And to whom? To the maidservant talking with his baby son? She slips off her clogs, tiptoes to join him at the door. A cheeky, quizzical look to her husband, and then she crouches to listen too.
Manfred blushes at the thought. That he invited a von Zabern into his own home, allowed him to sit at his table, interview his servant, drink his wine, sit in his chair, whilst They, the Master and the Mistress of the House, crouch eavesdropping in the hallway like a valet and maid.
And he came there many times?
Not many, no, My Lord, just twice or thrice
And why did he come?
My Lord, to see my sister
Your sister? Why?
He wanted to marry her, My Lord
Grete looks at Manfred: What? Who?
Manfred makes her a face: keep quiet, or else . . .
Where did they plan to get married?
I don’t know.
/> In a church?
I don’t know.
But they had different religions, did they not? von Esinbach was a Christian. And your family . . . Cathars.
But now I am a Christian, My Lord.
I know, my dear. And as a Good Christian, I want you to tell me. Was Achim von Esinbach a believer in your religion?
No, my Lord.
Are you sure? But he was going to marry your sister Odile . . . ?
A bitter silence. Sound of von Zabern’s expiration, the shuffling of his feet. And then he is still again. The silence spreads, black and cold like ditchwater.
In his mind’s eye, Manfred sees the Treasurer’s eyes burning across the silence. He sees Elise look down in fear and then look up again to face that probing gaze. A gaze that says, tell me what I need to hear.
Elise’ voice is soft. Tears catch at the edges of her words.
But he said he would consider . . . to convert. He wanted to marry Odile so much. He said he might leave the Church.
† † †
Arses in moonlight. Pale globes emerging from the Rhine’s dark surface. Three of them swimming, showing off. Manfred treads water, the cold river flowing around his naked body.
The musicians play. Flute and drum. Lindalisa yelps and sings, slaps her big thighs. Mir han nen Bischofen, nen Narrenbischofen nen Dreckbischofen, habemus Arschepissco-popum! . . . a foolbishop a filthbishop, we have a new Arsebishop! Song from the Feast of Fools, when they crown the town idiot in the Bishop’s mitre, make a beggar the Mayor, make a cripple Emperor. The joys of an upside down world celebrated for that one dark, midwinter day.
But now it’s the first warm night of spring, and the party has staggered out of the zum thrunkenen Cahne and onto the quay. “Be quiet, you damn idiots!” shouts a desperate trader from his sleepless room. But tonight the night belongs to the young merchants of the Morning Altar, and there won’t be sleep till dawn.