Cathedral

by Ben Hopkins

  It wasn’t so long ago that I thought I could spend my life carousing and living off the fat of my estates. But now I’m on my way to see some ink-stained lawyer, and the world and his wife are looking to Me to lift the Bishop’s curse.

  † † †

  In Vergersheim’s bureau, I shift in my seat and try and tell him what’s bothering me, keeping me awake at night. But he looks at me like I’m not making any sense. I’m not surprised. None of this gibberish comes naturally to me. “What I want to know is . . . What did Schäffer call them? My assets. Who owns them. I mean. If I die. Who . . . ?”

  Vergersheim smiles. Thin-lipped, pale. Like his skin has never seen the sunlight. “You mean, My Lord, you have concerns about your succession?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and the Baroness have no offspring, am I right?”

  “You are right. But I have a nephew. A decent von Kronthal Knight.”

  “The Baroness has a Brother. Count Rutger von Moder.”

  “She does.”

  “And his nobility trumps that of your nephew.”

  “Don’t tell me that bastard von Moder will inherit everything?”

  “Nearly half of your estate came to you in marriage. The von Moders have a claim to all if your marriage is issueless.”

  Not that this is News to me. But when this Troglodyte says it, it feels somehow more irritating, more real. Before, when I just had the ancestral and dowry lands, it was all much of a muchness to me. But now that I also have most of the old Schwanenstein estate, plus Prinzbach and other spoils of war in my sights, it feels too much to let slip away . . .

  When I mention Prinzbach, the Magistrate is overcome with delight like a muzzled truffle pig sniffing its prize. “Oh, the Prinzbach mines! Well, wouldn’t that be quite something, My Lord!” But then he fidgets. “Excuse the impertinens . . . but is your wife the Baroness still . . . menstruans?”

  I have no idea what he is talking about.

  He squirms. “Is she still womanly . . . fertile?”

  Oh, I see. “No. And I haven’t touched her in years.”

  “Then we can expect . . . well . . . no future issue . . . from the marriage?”

  “No we bloody can’t. Ever since she dried up, they’ve salted her away in Castle Moder like some barrel of pork.”

  “Protecting their investment, I see.”

  “Yes, and I can’t blame them. When she lived with me, she was always ailing. It’s a sin I know, but I did hope she would kilter over and croak. But in Castle Moder I hear she is in the bloom of health. They’ve been fattening her up like a veal calf.”

  Vergersheim curls and contorts like some damned cat trying to lick its backside. He squeaks. “My Lord, may we speak frankly and openly, inter nos?”

  “Yes, just speak plain German with me.”

  “Yes, My Lord. Have you any bastards?”

  Well, I asked for it. I control the urge to strike him across the face.

  “Children conceived outside of your marriage to the Baroness?”

  “I know what bastards are. Three I know about.”

  “Male?”

  “Just one. Tybolt.”

  “Age? Status?”

  “He is some seventeen summers now, I suppose. I haven’t seen him for a few years. But he’s a fine lad. Has had a decent education, in the household of a knight of Lorraine.”

  “Well, this is promising. Would you ever consider him worthy as your heir?”

  It’s my turn to go pale. “His mother is . . . was . . . a bloody handmaiden! A chambermaid!”

  “And yet he is your only direct male heir. Would you consider it?”

  “How can you . . . ? Can you . . . legally . . . make him . . . ?”

  “Not I, Baron. That does not lie within my meagre powers.” Vergersheim offers his thin-lipped smile, blinking like a lizard in sudden sunlight. “The Pope has such authority, and no one else.”

  “The Pope . . . ?”

  “There are precedents, My Lord. It can be done. It is . . . very expensive and sometimes difficult to petition the Pope to annul a noble marriage and legitimise another . . . illicit relation. But it has been done before.”

  “How?”

  “We would write a petition. We would need the support of a higher cleric. An Abbot, a Bishop. Then it is a matter of paying the clerks in the Papal Court . . . ”

  “Counsellor Vergersheim. If there is one thing that is certain to provoke the von Moders, then to disinherit them in this way would be it, no?”

  “Yes, it is a challenge indeed! They would maybe need to be . . . well remunerated.”

  “And the mother? Of the boy?”

  “Of course you would need to marry her. Is that a problem?”

  “Marry? She’s dead!”

  “On paper, Baron. Just on paper.”

  On paper. Baroness Elise von Kronthal, the late chambermaid daughter of a heretic weaver, my lawful wife. But just on paper.

  Kunigund von Moder, a whore who illegitimately shared my name and Castle Kronthal bed for twenty years. But just on paper.

  And fine, young Tybolt, son of noble, lawful blood. By a few strokes of the pen and ink, a von Kronthal for ever. Heir to my fortune.

  Vergersheim is smiling at me, and I don’t like it. I have the feeling that even his smile is expensive. “My Lord, can I offer my services to you? I would be delighted. I already have some experience with dealing with nobility,” he trumpets, whilst hypocritically affecting modesty, averting his humble eyes, fidgeting with his ink-stained hands. “I do have other noble families on my . . . client list.”

  “Not the bloody von Moders, I hope?”

  His face winces and jerks like a grouse caught in a wire. “Oh I couldn’t possibly say! Confidentiality, my Lord . . . is of vital . . . importance in my profession!”

  I look at him for a while. I’m not one of his type, a woodlouse who spends his life crawling about under stones, but I think I know what all this twisting and twitching must mean. “Well, Vergersheim. You can’t work for both of us, can you?”

  “No . . . I . . . ,” he stutters. Looks up from his hands. “You are right, My Lord. I work on a ten per centum commission basis, plus fees. And if you should so wish it, as of now, as God is my witness, I shall work only for you.”

  † † †

  As I walk away from his fetid offices, I try and remember if I always detested clerks and secretaries, officials and recorders. Certainly Schäffer made me change my mind for a while. He dazzled me with all his wizardry, and I couldn’t see the snake beneath the cloth of gold.

  Annul my marriage and give all to young Tybolt? Can I do this?

  I have to consider it.

  One thing’s for certain. The Staufen are all but finished in the German Lands. When this is all over there’ll be one new leading family in the Alsace and the Upper Rhine.

  Von Kolzeck’s. Or von Habsburg’s. Or mine.

  INTERLUDE

  ANNO

  1318

  VISITATIONS

  (ANNO 1318. ALBRECHT KAIBACH I)

  W hen i was young like you, my children,

  i would believe anything

  if you told me one can build a ladder to the moon

  climb up, sit on the edge of its silver disc and look down on the earth

  i would believe you

  if you told me that the cat had given birth to mice

  i would run to her litter to see the miracle for myself

  in short

  i was a little fool

  and so there was i

  an apprentice in the masons’ lodge at the cathedral

  and the other apprentices made fun of me

  they told me “the dombaumeister needs to see you”

  and so i would go to his bureau and interrupt his work


  and he would shout at me “what the hell are you doing here?”

  and so i was always getting into trouble

  and i was always being punished

  but one punishment changed my life

  i was fifteen summers old

  the year was written: the year of our lord twelve hundred and sixty four

  and in Hagenburg

  a new Mason’s Lodge was being built at the corner of Cathedral Square

  and the old one, which was then little more than a big wooden shack

  was being taken down to build a fine patrician house in its place

  for the whole of the Cathedral Square was being rebuilt

  and my punishment was

  to stay behind after work and after the curfew bell

  and sort and clear the storage rooms

  even if took all night

  and so i worked

  piling up old broken stools for use as firewood

  old blunt broken tools to be melted down and made afresh

  old parchments with faded sketches and calculations to be rescraped as palimpsests

  and i was hungry and tired and sad and wanted my supper and my bed

  but then i came to an old escritoire

  a drawing desk

  with broken legs

  and a document chest under the writing surface

  locked with a key

  i searched here i searched there

  but no key was to be found anywhere

  and so i took a hatchet

  raised it above my head

  and brought it down

  and broke the chest open with one great blow

  and, children, what did i find?

  old parchments and little packages, wrapped in cloth and twine

  a treasure

  a veritable treasure!

  i brought close the lantern

  and untied one of the parchments

  and there i found

  that which would change my life

  a drawing

  —not such a perfect drawing, mind, in the way it was drawn—

  but an imperfect drawing of perfection itself!

  the western portals and façade of the cathedral

  as yet unbuilt in those days

  and such beauty!

  and a drawing of the Western Rose

  unfinished and only half coloured

  but in design, exquisite

  and i opened one of the two packages wrapped in cloth

  and found

  nestled in with scribbled notes,

  as big as the palm of my hand,

  a piece of yellow glass

  amber like sunlight

  and a piece of blue glass

  azure, deep and rich

  like the blue of a summer sky on a harvest evening

  and i held them up to the light of the lantern

  and i looked down at the drawings

  of tiers of statues

  of prophets, monsters and saints

  and i was filled with joy

  † † †

  children, at first i did not know what this treasure was, what it could be . . .

  all i knew was that it was some great and magical mystery

  i searched in the escritoire, in every corner, pulling out dust and fragments and cobwebs and dead flies

  until i found one last note, mildewed and crumbling

  written poorly in an uncertain hand,

  which said

  these be copies by an unfair hande of the greater master’s originals, now lost

  and then i knew

  i knew what i had found

  copies

  made by some apprentice or artisan

  himself no draftsman, to be sure

  of the work of dombaumeister von esinbach

  the first ill-fated Master of the New Cathedral

  who had mixed with heretics

  lost his mind

  and taken his own life

  an unholy terror filled me

  outside the Cathedral bell sounded the dead of night

  the hour when ghosts walk the earth

  and i alone

  a boy

  in the dark, abandoned lodge

  with these unholy vestiges of a troubled past

  praying the lord’s prayer to ward off evil

  i wrapped the parchments and the glass in my satchel

  and

  finishing my work

  crept home

  through the dark and empty streets

  now children, you know i have a fair drawing hand

  some say the fairest they have ever seen

  well

  even as a youngster

  my greatest joy was to take quill and ink and parchment

  and draw from life

  a leaf, an apple, a sleeping cat

  and so

  when i could

  i would buy parchment

  and

  using the copies i had found

  i began to draw

  for what were left to me in that old escritoire

  were but fragments

  a statue here, a portal there, a cornice,

  as this unknown artisan had remembered them in his mind

  from the wondrous design of Master Achim

  this artisan would scribble beside his imperfect sketches

  notes like:

  these be the old proffets i think in the second teer of statu abov the portal

  and here he would draw wild old staring men

  their eyes upraised to heaven, receiving visions from On High

  their hands outstretched, from which flame would burst

  and i would scratch my head at this wild-eyed man with the flaming hand

  and wonder

  is this ezekiel? daniel? jeremiah?

  this is no prophet i can recognise from holy scripture

  and slowly

  over the years of my companionship

  i adapted what i saw

  i took the spirit of the drawings

  and made it mine

  rendered it in my hand

  and in a way that spoke to my faith in the Lord Above

  out of chaos, incomplete confusion,

  out of passion and inspiration and intoxication

  i made order

  i made a harmonious whole

  † † †

  The Priest has been and gone, the air is thick with incense. Candles made from the molten wax of the Cathedral’s holy Paschal Candle burn around his bed.

  He has made his Peace with God.

  Sins of Anger, Arrogance and Pride he has confessed, youthful Lust, Envy of those set before him. Gluttony and Greed have tempted him, but have never consumed his soul, of Sloth there is no mention—there is not one day that God has given him in which he has not worked, studied or prayed. And no mortal sins weigh upon him; he has been faithful to his wife and to his God, has not killed, has not stolen, has not borne false witness, has honoured father and mother.

  He has left a quarter of his estate to the Hospital of Saint Johannes, a quarter to the Cathedral’s altar of the Frauenwerk, and a half to his two sons. His finest horse he leaves as a mortuary bequest to the Bishop. Two cows to the Convent in Finckweiler, to the Glory of blessed Saint Elizabeth of Thüringen.

  In the chapel of St. John the Baptist, masses in his name are to be sung for a year of Sundays.

  He is ready for Death.

  His words come slower now, fainter. His grandchildren and great grandchildren gather round the bed, leaning closer.

  † † †

&nb
sp; wrapped in cloth with the yellow glass

  was a note in the artisan’s unpractised hand

  yello glass—follow the vogesen to the lothringen border,

  after border the winzbach river,

  follow upstreem into the dark wood where the charcole burners burne,

  ask for glassmaster harrimann

  a clue, an instruction

  but written some forty years ago

  by esinbach’s apprentice?

  surely glassmaster harrimann will have passed away

  and with him

  the secrets of the yellow glass?

  children, once i turned Master Stone-cutter

  and my time was more my own

  i set off for the lothringen border

  it was autumn

  and the days were drawing colder

  night was falling as i walked my horse up the twisting winzbach vale

  higher and deeper into the woods

  the light was fading

  and i was beginning to fear that i must make my bed in leaf and loam

  when

  up ahead in the dim gloaming

  the red glow of fire

  “god give you good evening!” i called out

  and heard nothing but the cawing of crows gathering in the tree tops

  and i walked on

  until i saw

  a clearing

  and a huge mound of smoking turf

  under which a glowing fire was burning

  upstreem to where the charcole burners burne!

  just like the note had said

  i called out again

  until, from a small hut, unseen in the gloom of the nearby forest

  a man emerged and gave me good evening

  “i am looking for harrimann the glass maker” i said

  and the man said “i am he”