by Ben Hopkins
Of course, I have to let him think that he is the senior partner of the two of us and I have to live with him taking the friar’s portion of the credit for everything we do, but it’s a small price to pay for the results I need. And so I meekly trot behind him, walking in his wake like a Saracen wife behind her Pasha, but when the doors are closed and the meeting begins, I unwrap my tongue. And then he sits quietly by my side, looking important and thoughtful, and helpfully mutters his “quite so”s and “so true”s, until, at the end he laughs and exclaims, “Mistress Gerber is quite a chatterbird! But I have to say, I couldn’t have put it better myself!”
And so me and my Beard, sweet, virtuous Councillor Enzelin, go about our business of slowly, gradually, changing the world, piece by little piece. And now we have a veritable Challenge: to try and persuade the Bishop to put the funding of the building of the Cathedral into the Citizens’ hands.
† † †
I’ve always had a strange kind of leaning for Bishop Eugenius—when I look back now I realise that even when I hated him, I was secretly rather sweet on him—but he isn’t growing old gracefully. Now he’s beginning to go deaf on top of being blind, and whereas before he seemed merely to assume that everyone around him was a fool, now it seems an iron conviction.
Yet his ears are still open to Reason, if you can shout it loud enough. And I’ve always had a good shrill voice.
“THE PEOPLE OF THIS CITY WANT TO DONATE TO THE CATHEDRAL! THEY WANT TO SEE THE BUILDING COMPLETED AND KNOW THAT IT HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTED WITH THEIR FUNDS! BUT IF WE DONATE TO THE CATHEDRAL ALTAR, THE MONEY GOES INTO THE CHURCH’S POT, AND WE HAVE NO OVERSIGHT OVER THE WAY THAT MONEY IS SPENT! IF THE CATHEDRAL FABRIC FUND WERE SEPARATE, AND OVERSEEN BY A COMMITTEE OF CITIZENS, AND THE SPENDING THEREOF OVERSEEN BY CITIZENS EXPERT IN BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION, THEN THE DONATIONS WOULD INCREASE MANIFOLD! AND THE BUILDING WORK WOULD BE QUICKER AND MORE EFFICIENT! AND WE WOULD FINALLY HAVE A CATHEDRAL AT THE CENTRE OF OUR CITY AND NOT A BIG, CHAOTIC BUILDING SITE!”
. . . is the gist of what I shout in his silver-haired ear, with Councillor Enzelin nodding by my side, and, at intervals, shouting out, “SO TRUE! QUITE SO!”
After he has heard our presentation, the Bishop sits a while in silence. It seems the longer he has been cut off from the world of the sighted, the more eccentric he has become. As he reflects upon our weighty matter, his head twitches from side to side, and his mouth pops open and shut like a carp in a pond.
After many long moments, he speaks. “Very well, Councillor, Mistress Gerber. There is much common sense in what you say. And we shall essay it.”
“OH THANK YOU, YOUR GRACE!”
“Schäffer and Vergersheim will draw up the statute. But it shall be so written that it can be rescinded by the Episcopate should the arrangement prove unsatisfactory, or should there be irregularities in the allocation of funds. In short, the idea seems very fine, but you will forgive me when I say, I do not trust the citizenry as much as you do.”
† † †
Hagenburg, I have to admit, is slowly improving, slowly changing from a crowded sewer into a place of order and decency. Our new Bishop, guided in no small part by my canny brother, is open to change and development. His Grace’s mind is that of a mathematician: he likes order, planning and sequence and frowns upon mess, confusion and muddled reckoning.
It may not yet be the Earthly Paradise, but all is going in the right direction. A rain of statutes has poured forth from the City Hall, regulating weights and measures and the quality of goods put on sale, banishing the “Stinking Trades” of knackers, blacksmiths and tanners beyond the city walls, banning the emptying of chamberpots onto the streets, begging in the residential areas, the banging of drums after sunset. The streets are sweeter and cleaner, the gangs of urchins, beggars and thieves have been swept away, and Trade, after years of stagnancy during the years of war and tension, is flowering once again.
God be praised.
And yet I feel a Tension, I sense Ill-Feeling beneath the new smiling face of Hagenburg. Take the Cathedral Square, for example. It has been cleared and ordered, the mess of the workmen’s Lodges and the building debris moved aside, and where there were once ramshackle arcades and wooden lean-to taverns and shops, we have now erected a fine row of harmonious, patrician townhouses—the residences of the foremost merchants and officials of the City—and it is here that I now live, in Haus Gerber, on the northern side of the Square.
And yet I step out of my doorway and what do I hear? Preachers standing on boxes, calling Hagenburg a Sodom and Nineveh, calling for a Lightning Bolt to fall and strike the crown from the heads of the Lords of the Sword, the Lords of the Cross and the Lords of the Pen, to punish the Luxury and Sin of the wicked, rich merchants, and to set fire to the houses of the evil, moneygrubbing Jews.
And at the public execution of Tybolt—he who claimed to be the bastard son of Baron Volmar—there were loud lamentations as he was brought to be hanged. He a murderer, who had killed four people in cold blood. “Kill all the Nobles!” was the cry to be heard. “Hang the bloody Lords, not their poor bastards!”
And I have to admit it: I know I’ve said similar things myself, in the past, when I was young. And now that I am a Lady of Substance, with assets and silks and silver spoons and a house on Cathedral Square, I shrink back at the echo of my younger voice.
In the heat of my blood, I called down Lightning on all those richer than me, all those put above me in the fortune of birth. And it seems that the people of the city got a taste for it at Wolfsbergen—to pull Lords from their horses and cudgel them in the mud. And Manfred, God bless him, if he’d been alive at Wolfsbergen, he would have cheered them on. He always said, One day we will rise up and kill them all.
It’s all a fairy tale they tell us, he always used to say, that their power and supremacy comes from God, that only they know the pathway to Heaven. One day all their fairy tales and lullabies will come to an end, and we’ll rise from our slumber, and we’ll take the Lords of the Cross, the Sword and the Pen, and in our rising, tear them all asunder.
† † †
I have so much still to do. The Cathedral Building Committee is one thing, but I have the second cloth atelier to build, I have to find a good buyer for the river freight business. I have to set up the Merchants’ School where our children can also learn to reckon and manage accounts, not just the Latin and Bible hocus pocus they presently learn from the Priests. And now is the time to get these plans into realisation, now that the Diocese and Municipality are open to Enterprise and Reason.
What bitter absurdity it is therefore, that as soon as the Gates of Possibility are opened, I must succumb to illness.
I have pains in my chest. They come and go. Biting, yanking pains that rob me of my breath. A cold, firm hand that grabs and squeezes my heart. And what Emmerich tells me is no succour at all. Rettich, the year before he died, suffered from similar attacks. And then one strong seizure that lamed him. And then one final seizure that stopped his heart for once and all.
† † †
And so I, threatened with the shadow of an untimely death, must needs think of my Legacy. And it is a hard truth, but one that I must bear, that my son, Manfredle, is a Fool. A happy Fool, a sweet Fool, but a Fool nonetheless. To leave my great fortune into his hands would not be wise, he would drink it, gamble it and give it away in warm, foolish generosity to his friends.
So I need to invest my fortune in Land. In fields and vineyards and farmsteads, in hills and moors full of grazing sheep, in forests full of precious timber, in mountains riddled with mines and quarries, yielding precious stone. Then my fortune will be locked in properties that Manfredle cannot squander, and he can live like a Prince from the tithes and rents.
But How?
The Lords own all the Land, and why should they want to sell their fount of Gold? Whilst one sometimes hears of a Commoner buying a far
mstead, a small estate, a disused flour mill that he wishes to fix and put back on its feet again, a plot of land by a lake where he can fish for carp . . . one never hears of a Great Landowner whose blood is not noble as the German Eagle.
It’s the eve of first Advent Sunday at Haus Gerber, and after two tumblers of wine, I feel melancholy and weary. “We’ve come some way, Emmle. But there’s still such a long way to go. The Nobles still own the Land, the Ministerials the City. You and me are like village dogs, biting and yapping at their heels. We bother them, and every now and again they throw us scraps of meat . . . but we’re still dogs.”
Emmerich smiles one of his mocking smiles. “You may be a yapping bitch, it’s true, Little Sis. But you’re a yapping bitch as rich as a Countess.”
The fire burns in the grate. The others are all in bed. Outside the night watchman calls out the Peace; the third walk of the watch, and all is well!
Emmerich clears his throat. “In my experience, everything is for sale.”
“But not Nobility, Emmle. Anything but that. If Nobility were for sale, I would have bought it a while ago.”
“If a cobbler’s son can become the Pope, why can’t a shepherd’s daughter become a Countess of Alsace?” Emmerich drinks his wine to the dregs and stands. “And if there’s any shepherd’s daughter can do it, then I’m sure it will be you, Little Sis.”
I raise my eyebrows, say nothing.
Emmerich shrugs, wraps his hood around his white-golden, tousled head. “Let me know if you’re interested, and I will look into it further. I’m sure I can procure you a good parcel of land. Good Night, Sis. I’ll let myself out.”
And he stoops to kiss my cheek and leaves. I sit there, in a wine-gold haze, as I listen to his footsteps on the stairs, the bang of the door, and the sounds of the housemaids shutting the bolts behind him. And then his boots clacking across the cobbles of the Cathedral Square.
Countess Grete, what a joke. My brother can rustle up some young stable boys to pleasure me in my bed on Sunday afternoons when the Servants are all out on leave, but make me a Landowner with an estate . . . ? There are limits. Even to Emmerich Schäffer’s cunning and nous.
I pour out the last drops of wine, and look around my beautiful home. The Crucifix above the hearth, edged in gold. The Venetian glasses, the blue-glazed bowl of apples and cloves, the oakwood table and chairs, upholstered in down and silk, the levantine carpets, the silver, star-shaped chandelier.
My lonely bed awaits me, but I have no strength to move. On winters’ nights in Lenzenbach when I was a little girl, the house would be as cold as ice. But under the heavy woollen covers of the children’s bed where we five little mice slept together, all would be snug and warm. And I would cuddle my wooden doll to my chest and listen to the wind whistling in the shutters. And all around our dark, silent house, the whispering, desolate woods where kobolds drink children’s blood, and the winter wolves keen and howl.
ANNO
1270
INK
(ANNO 1270. EMMERICH SCHÄFFER III)
To His Honourable Highness, Count Rudolf von Habsburg, from Emmerich Schäffer, Secretary to the Bishop of Hagenburg.
My Honoured Lord,
My Master, His Grace Bishop Eugenius von Zabern, in reluctant recognition of his ailing health, has charged me with the solemn task of apportioning the assets of the von Moder estate into deserving hands. In doing so, His Grace has conferred upon me full powers of discretion, and assures me of his desire to withdraw, as much as the exigencies of his office allow it, from the temporal world of men, the more to devote himself to prayer, to meditation and to God.
After the most heinous murders of the four direct family members of the House of von Moder, murders carried out by the bloody hand of a certain Tybolt, whom some claim to be the illegitimate son of the late Baron von Kronthal, there remain no primary heirs to the substantial von Moder-Kronthal estate. Claims have been made by distant cousins, some of whom have even engaged legal counsel and written petitions to Rome. There being at present no incumbent on the Papal Throne due to disagreement amongst the Cardinals, Bishop Eugenius has asked me to act swiftly and to dispense the estate to the political and financial advantage of the Diocese of Hagenburg, in which all the von Moder lands are situated, to avoid a lengthy dispute such as that which occurred with the lands of the House of Dagsburg some thirty years ago, a dispute with which I believe You, Honourable Lord, must be familiar, Yourself being one of the beneficiaries of the eventual outcome.
I therefore take it upon myself to offer You, Honourable Count von Habsburg, an abundant share in the Estate. In so doing, we recognise You, My Lord, as Knight and Warlord pre-eminent in our lands, as our greatest worldly leader. I am assured by many who are expert in such matters that when the throne of the Kingdom of the Germans and the Holy Roman Empire should fall vacant, it is You, My Lord, who will take the imperial crown. I hope therefore, by this modest offering, to demonstrate the continued Loyalty and Support of the City and Diocese of Hagenburg, and to bind you further in Friendship to the Hagenburg Episcopal Throne.
A final matter. I wish to present myself as Your Servant and Devotee. My honourable sister, Mistress of the Hagenburg Guild of Drapers, Grete Gerber—whom your Secretary Herr Wehelin will doubtless remember—was She who raised the ample funds that brought Your fortitudinous Hand to the side of the City of Hagenburg, and thereby brought us Victory at Wolfsbergen. I, her older Brother, now will deliver to you the Prize of profitable von Moder lands in the Vogesen and the Rhine Plain. You may thereby plainly see that we, Your Servants, have greatly endowed your treasury with our loyal gifts.
My humble request is merely this: should fate accord to you the deserving prize of the Imperial Crown, to remember me. Our lowly house of Schäffer has been blessed by abundant financial fortune and will soon acquire substantial estates in the region of Lenzenbach, but only You, Honourable Lord, will have the power to crown our good fate in noble Gold.
My Lord, I await from your Secretary in the fullness of time a confirmation of receipt of this letter, with a declaration of your continued loyalty, as friend and military protector of the Bishop of Hagenburg, and a confirmation that you will look favourably upon me, Emmerich Schäffer, as your liege and servant. On receipt of same, I will convey to you, as lies within my power, the title deeds to an abundant portion of the von Moder estate.
Yours in devotion, Your Servant
Emmerich Schäffer, Secretary to the Bishop of Hagenburg
† † †
To His Honourable Highness, Baron Lanzelin von Rappoltstein. From Emmerich Schäffer, Secretary to the Bishop of Hagenburg.
My Lord Baron,
As You know, I am your loyal servant, and have taken it upon myself, ever since you came to me for advice on the matter of your Insolvency, to find solutions to the embarrassment in which you find yourself. To date—and this I admit with a measure of shame—the measures that I have proposed have been but temporary and partial, in the nature of negotiating favourable rates for bridging loans from my contacts in the Judengasse, but now I am very content to say that I have a proposal that may, on the face of things, seem unusual, but which will, should you agree, clear all your present debt in one stroke.
In short, the proposal is thus: I will, in my capacity as the executor of the von Moder estate, bequeath to you some lands in the Vogesen, in recognition of your services to Hagenburg. Please believe me when I tell you that the allocation of land to your House will not be greeted with joy in all quarters, but I have laid the groundwork, indicating your valiant actions in the Battles of Wolfsbergen and Schwanenstein at the side of the late Baron von Kronthal, as sufficient justification for your inclusion in the list of recipients.
I appreciate that what you presently need is not more estates, but coin, and in substantial amount.
To this end, you will receive from my sister, Mistress Grete Gerber, the sum of
one thousand marks for the rump of these estates which lie adjacent to Lenzenbach, which you will then sell to the Family of Schäffer. You will then pay me six hundred marks, and keep four hundred yourself, which will cover your debts, and allow you to start afresh in a life of solvency and comfort.
The condition for this gift of four hundred marks is simple: your silence and confidentiality. The sale of the Lenzenbach lands to me will be kept quiet for the time being. I know the Bailiff of Lenzenbach personally, and, as his new landlord, will be able to explain the situation to him in discretion.
Should you not wish to contract this deal, I have no further solution to your situation. Your level of debt is very serious and can only otherwise be met by selling a substantial parcel of your estates. I could find you a buyer, should you wish. But the offer I have just made you will save you the embarrassment of selling your House’s assets and will restore your name and honour.
If you find the proposal amenable, please ride to Hagenburg at the nearest opportunity and present yourself to me at your next convenience.
Your humble Servant,
Emmerich Schäffer
† † †
To the Honourable Magistrate Heinrich Vergersheim.
From Emmerich Schäffer, Secretary to the Bishop of Hagenburg.