The Heretic

by David Pilling

  Henry understood threats well enough. He piped down, snuffling and wiping his nose, while the rest of us sat on our haunches and waited for sunrise.

  Occasionally I caught a distant echo of the man-hunt. It seemed to be dying down. Perhaps the watch resented being roused from their beds at such an ungodly hour, especially by a band of drunken Englishmen, babbling in their strange tongue about heretics.

  Someone coughed behind us. We turned, hands clapped to our swords. I expected to see a troop of grinning watchmen with halberds lowered, ready to carve us into pieces if we resisted.

  Instead there was just one man, a slight figure, face hidden under the cowl of his ankle-length grey cloak. He stood in the middle of the narrow street, little white hands raised with palms outwards to show he came in peace.

  “Your pardon,” he whispered in German, so slowly even I could understand him. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Thomas drew his sword. I grabbed the big ex-forester by his brawny shoulder and pulled him back.

  “My name is Schiller,” the stranger said before I could ask, “you should come with me. I know somewhere you can hide in safety until morning. The streets are not safe for...”

  “For what?” Ralf asked quickly, “what do you think we are?”

  “Englishmen,” the other replied, “the watch are hunting for four English fugitives. Heretics, so they say. Enemies of God.”

  “Trust me, or not,” he added, “but decide quickly.”

  “Why would you offer to help such men?” I demanded, straining to catch a glimpse of his face under the hood.

  “Because I am Schiller,” he replied evenly, “and Schiller was a friend to Jan Hus.”

  4.

  I decided to trust him. Anything seemed better than creeping through that maze of streets, damp and cold and scared half out of our wits, praying for the sun to rise. We might have been attacked at any moment, by footpads if not watchmen. Nor was I confident the gates would be opened at dawn.

  “Unless the commander of the garrison is an idiot, or cares little for his duty,” I said, “he'll order the gates to remain shut until his men have scoured the city from top to bottom, including the poor quarter. We need a refuge. Somewhere even a pack of dogs can’t sniff us out.”

  Ralf looked suspicious, but respected me too much to argue. Henry and Thomas were simply too exhausted and frightened to do anything but trail after us like a couple of lost sheep.

  “How did you find us?” I asked Schiller as we followed the grey-cloaked figure down a sidestreet. He moved with a light step, padding noiselessly across the wet cobbles.

  “I heard the bells,” he replied, “and the cries of ‘heretic!”’ and “Englishmen!” that swept through the streets. When I heard a band of foreigners stumble past my dwelling, cursing in their barbarous northern tongue and making enough noise to be heard in Prague...well, God has granted me enough wit to make certain connections.”

  “You risk your life,” I said, “a follower of Hus, living in a German city.”

  “The risk is shared, friend. I am not alone.”

  He said nothing more, and we followed him in silence through the dank streets. Above us the sky was slowly fading from black to charcoal grey. I heard the rattle of cart wheels, the clop of hoofs, shutters unfastened and thrown back, bleary morning voices. Nuremberg disturbed night was almost over.

  Finally we came to a little church with a square tower. The church lay at the northern end of an unusually wide street, where one or two shopkeepers were already laying out their stalls.

  Schiller led us around the back of the church to a narrow door. I thought I heard him breathing hard, and his fingers shook slightly as they fumbled with a bunch of keys at his belt.

  The door glided open without a sound. We filed through into a whitewashed antechamber, bare of furnishings save a row of wooden pegs on the wall. Schiller closed and locked the door behind us. Only then did he peel back his hood.

  He was quite young, perhaps in his early twenties, and girlishly pretty. His thinning hair was the colour of sand, and his moist blue eyes and sensitive mouth gave him look of a poet: a delicate, undernourished poet, of the sort who spend their short lives in garrets scribbling verses dedicated to women who despise them, before gently expiring of drink and starvation.

  Yet this Schiller, I reminded myself, must be forged of harder stuff. He had placed himself in jeopardy by helping us.

  “I am not a priest,” he explained, “but the clergyman in charge of this church is a secret follower of Hus. He lets me use it as a bolt-hole from time to time. For fellow heretics, as they creatures of Rome call us.”

  “What are you, then?” I demanded. Schiller had the look of a clerk, and a damned nervous one, fingernails bitten to the quick, face prickled with cold sweat.

  “A guild apprentice,” he replied shortly, “though I recently took holy orders as a useful disguise. No more questions, for now. Follow me.”

  Wiping the sheen of perspiration from his brow, he took us through a doorway into the nave.

  The unearthly silence of an empty church pressed down on me. I glanced at the altar and made the sign of the cross. I was still a Christian, a member of Christ’s church, whatever the priests might say.

  Schiller fiddled with the lock to another door at the rear of the nave. This opened onto a flight of stone steps leading down into shadow. He took a stub of candle from a recess in the wall, lit the wick with flint and tinder, and beckoned at us to follow him.

  “A hole in the ground,” moaned Henry, “this little turd means to bury us alive.”

  “Quiet,” I snapped, though a similar fear had occurred to me. Ever since my brush with death in the mines outside Rouen, and later in the Baron de Rougemont’s filthy dungeon, I had hated the prospect of enclosed spaces, especially underground.

  The stair was mercifully short and ended in a small crypt, less than half the size of the nave. Schiller’s candle revealed a tomb under an arch in the western wall. The effigy on the lid depicted a clergyman. His stone fingers were pressed together in prayer, the details of his face worn away by time. Otherwise the crypt was empty, and smelled faintly of mould.

  “You will be safe down here until morning,” Schiller whispered, his face transformed into a hideous yellow mask by the flickering light, “wait until dusk before trying to leave the city. The watch should have lost interest by then. I will bring you food.”

  “Wait,” I said as he walked back to the stair, “give me the keys to the door upstairs.”

  He turned to face me. Thomas shuffled behind him. The big Derbyshireman’s eyes fixed on mine. Waiting for the signal. I had seen Thomas kill French soldiers with his bare hands. He could have snapped Schiller’s neck like a straw.

  Thankfully it didn’t come to that. The priest smiled and dropped the keys into my waiting palm.

  “You are a prudent man,” he said, not even glancing at Thomas.

  “It pays to be,” I replied.

  He handed the stub over to Ralf, and showed us where a pile of fresh candles were kept in another recess, along with flint and tinder. Then, with a promise to return in a couple of hours, he scampered up the steps and heaved the door shut behind him.

  “He’s a strange one,” said Thomas as we tried to make ourselves comfortable on the cold stone floor. “I don’t trust him. Oily little worm. Should have let me snap his neck, sir. We could have holed up here until it was safe to leave.”

  “Next to Schiller’s corpse, you mean?” I replied angrily, “how do you think God would reward us for murdering one of His servants, inside a church to boot?”

  I rolled up my cloak for a pillow and curled up on the flagstones. The cold seeped through layers of mail and wool into my flesh. I was too tired to care. Waves of fatigue rolled over me, a host of fractured images, gory battlefields and burning towns and and laughing, tearful faces, dead faces, faces contorted in agony, faces silhouetted against raging fires. At last the pictures faded, and I s
lept.

  I was woken at midday by the return of Schiller. He brought us bread, cheese, a jug of cold water, and news.

  “The watch are still hunting for you,” he said, “extra soldiers have been posted at every gate. There is no way in or out of the city. The militia are out on the streets, sniffing for English blood.”

  “Seems a lot of fuss over a handful of foreigners,” remarked Ralf.

  “It is,” agreed Schiller, “left to themselves, the burghers would happily drop the matter. They want the gates opened and trade to resume as soon as possible. The wretched priests won’t allow it. They have the scent of fire in their nostrils.”

  “How long must we stay down here?” I demanded.

  “Until the citizens grow bored,” he answered, “another day or so. In the meantime you must stay in the crypt, and pray.”

  Two more days and nights passed before it was safe to emerge from that stuffy vault. Schiller held to his promise, and kept us fed and informed. He had friends in the city, other secret Hussites like himself, though he revealed little of their identity or whereabouts. Nor did he ask questions. He seemed content to believe we were true followers of Hus, and happily risked his own skin on our behalf.

  Only once did Schiller test us. “I must know,” he said on the evening of the second day, “have you received Communion sub utraque specie?”

  We must have looked baffled, for he gave us a patronising smile. “The Communion in two kinds,” he went on, “the receipt of both bread and wine during the sacrament of the Eucharist.”

  I knew little of this strange form of Communion, known as Utraquism after the Latin. In the Catholic faith, only bread is administered to the congregation during Eucharist. The Hussites believed that the essence of Christ was present in both the bread and wine, and so took both. Those who held to this belief in Bohemia – the creed was especially popular among the nobles - were called Utraquists. There are many other complex theological arguments involved, which a poor blockheaded soldier like myself cannot hope to adequately explain. My lot in life has ever been to fight, kill for money, and ask as few questions as possible.

  Schiller insisted on us taking Communion in both kinds, then and there, in the crypt. Our lives depended on his goodwill, so we obediently knelt on the floor while he played priest, muttered Latin over us, and distributed hard black bread bread and sour wine.

  When the rite was completed, Schiller's pale face glowed with a kind of inner light. He was almost hysterical with joy, laughing and rubbing his hands together, and insisted on embracing us all.

  “Welcome,” said Schiller, kissing me on both cheeks, “welcome to the true and uncorrupted faith. Forget your old lives, and whatever sins you may have committed. Now you are warriors of God, washed clean in His mercy.”

  Next morning, after another comfortless night on cold stone, he told us the hysteria in the streets had died down. “Now is your time to escape,” he said, “all is arranged. My friends have procured four good horses for you. They are stabled at a tavern near the eastern gate of the outer city wall. The tavern is called Der Rabe. A guide will take each of you there.”

  “Each of us?” I asked sharply.

  “Indeed. You cannot leave all together. It might arouse suspicion. You will leave individually, an hour apart.”

  He planted his forefinger on a yellowed map of Nuremberg and its surroundings. “There is a town named Weigendorf some thirty miles east of the city. I suggest you meet up again there. After that, seventy miles lie between you and Tachov, just inside the border of Bohemia.”

  Schiller was no fool. He assumed (correctly) that we were headed for Bohemia, and intended to offer our swords to the Hussite army. He and his friends, whoever they were, had arranged a neat plan of escape.

  “You are the captain,” he said, nodding at me, “so you leave first. It is only right.”

  I would have offered to draw lots instead, but the others were happy to let me go first. Not, I suspect, out of loyalty to their beloved commander: if the plan went wrong, or was betrayed, I was the most likely to suffer for it. While I was being interrogated, possibly tortured, they could make good their escape.

  Our guide arrived at noon. To look at, he was a thoroughly respectable middle-aged German citizen, all bushy beard and sagging belly. His green cloak with its gold clasp, rolls of vellum stuck into his thick leather belt, silver-hilted dagger and red velvet hat, jauntily decorated with a goose feather, marked him out as a wealthy merchant or guild-brother. In short, just about the last man to have any dealings with heretics.

  The newcomer was silent, and Schiller told us nothing about him. “You will pose as his servant,” said the young man, “follow him through the streets, exactly three paces behind. Keep your hood down and your face hidden.”

  “God bless you, my friend,” he added, hugging me again, “when next we meet, it will either be in Heaven or a world cleansed of sin.”

  More chance of the former, I thought, assuming filthy soldiers like me are allowed to enter Paradise.

  I said a brief goodbye to my men, shaking each by the hand, then followed my new master up the steps, through the church and into bright spring sunshine.

  Schiller had given us all new clothes, in my case a quilted jack, loose breeches and hooded mantle. I pulled the hood low over my eyes and walked slowly behind my guide, exactly three paces behind. He led me through busy streets, an endless press of people growling away in German, possibly the most aggressive-sounding language in the world.

  I sweated at the thought of being identified. Somewhere in Nuremberg were the traitors, eight English archers who had chosen to betray their lord and captain, the man who had fed, paid, clothed and housed them for the best part of a year. The same men who had drank my health in the great hall of Red Keep.

  Those eight turncoats were once my comrades. I am a vengeful man, quick to harm those who wrong me, but my vengeance would have to wait.

  We reached the tavern, Der Rabe – The Raven - safely enough. It was a large inn, two storeys and half-timbered, with a large wooden sign hanging over the door. Some talentless artist had daubed a picture of a black raven with outspread wings on the sign, though it looked more like a startled chicken.

  I followed the guide around the back, to the stables. My horse was ready in the yard, bitted and saddled. A young groom held her reins.

  “Take this,” said my guide in a heavy accent, “keep it safe.”

  He plucked one of the rolls of vellum from his belt and pressed it into my hand. “It's a letter,” he whispered, “to a business friend of mine in Weigendorf. You are my servant, and I have despatched you to carry the letter. That is your story in case you are stopped and questioned on the road. Understand?”

  I nodded. He grunted and handed me a small leather purse.

  “Money,” he said, “not much, but enough to get you to Bohemia.”

  “What about my companions?” I asked, “we can't all pretend to be envoys to your friend in Weigendorf.”

  “Fear not,” he replied, “different alibis have been prepared for each. The followers of Hus are not fools, Englishman.”

  He left me then, after pointing out the shortest route to the Eastern Gate. I took the horse, a strong and biddable animal, superior to the rouncey I had lost, and led her through the streets.

  The man-hunt may have slackened, but there were still extra guards posted at the gate, halberdiers in plate and mail and kettle hats. Above them, on the rampart, five arbalasters with heavy crossbows looked down at the packed streets.

  In my drab garb, I was safe enough, just one of the endless flow of bodies. Even so, I held my breath as I shuffled past the halberdiers, expecting at any moment a heavy hand to land on my shoulder.

  Moments later I was free. The highway to the east lay before me, stretching through the suburbs beyond the city walls, towards distant forests and mountains. Somewhere beyond those wooded hills lay the marches of Bohemia.

  I climbed into the saddle and
guided my horse through the heavy traffic flowing in and out of Nuremberg: wagons loaded with goods, drovers and their flocks of bone-headed sheep, tradesmen and soldiers, priests and peasants, beggars, wise men, fools and slatterns, even a little group of miserable white-robed lepers, scarred faces hidden under their cowls. All the tides of humanity that wash in and out of any great city, like effluent rinsed through a gutter.

  After a mile or so the traffic thinned out, and I was able to put my horse to a canter. She splashed eagerly along the muddy road, strewn with puddles and pot-holes. The hamlets and farmsteads immediately outside Nuremberg flashed past. Then we plunged into the forest, where the highway narrowed to barely twelve feet wide, flanked by rows of pine trees. I covered the thirty miles to Weigendorf in a day and a half, stopping for the night at a lonely traveller’s inn at the side of the road.

  That night was one of the longest of my life. I sat and wolfed my supper of pork and cabbage in a corner of the crowded taproom, straining to listen for any sounds of pursuit. Later I slept restlessly in one of those infernal shared beds, trying to ignore the lice crawling over the bolster and the heavy snores of my companions.

  Come the morning, heavy-eyed and tottering through lack of sleep, I choked down a quick breakfast and was out on the road again at first light. The highway was busy, though none of the troops of mounted soldiers I encountered or bands of peasants, travelling together for safety, showed more than a flicker of interest in me.

  Schiller had given me his map. I followed the route he had explained, riding east and north-east from Nuremberg, passing several little towns on the way. At dusk I rode into Weigendorf, a sprawling place tucked away among dark green hills, ringed on all sides by deep forest.

  I decided to follow Schiller’s suggestion and wait for my companions. The money given to me by the mysterious guide bought supper and lodging at an inn on the western outskirts of the town. After I had stabled and rubbed down my horse I sat down with a jug of dark brown ale to settle my nerves, in a stall with a good view of the road.