by Mark Teppo
The crowd milled about for a few minutes, pacified by the priest’s benediction, before they slowly began to disperse.
“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?” Andreas offered.
“But effective,” the mounted knight replied.
“Do you know him?” Andreas asked.
“Konrad von Marburg,” the knight replied. “He is as he says: an inquisitor of the Roman Catholic Church.”
“I saw him earlier, on the road. I did not see you with him.”
“I am not traveling with him.”
“But you know of him.”
The knight looked down at Andreas, his gaze resting for a moment on Andreas’s cloak brooch. “You ask many questions for a man who has not bothered to introduce himself. Some would see that as impertinent and more befitting a man of low character than a knight of a holy order.”
“Many of the order who do know my name would still say the same,” Andreas replied. He pulled back the right sleeve of his robe and offered his hand to the knight. The knight glanced down and, seeing the scar on Andreas’s forearm, tugged the sleeve of his mail back. The two men clasped forearms, and Andreas felt the roughened edges of an old scar on the knight’s forearm. Similar to his, but slightly different. As they all were.
“I am Raphael, lately of…Cologne,” the knight said.
“Andreas,” Andreas replied. “Lately of Petraathen, but more recently—” He shrugged as if it wasn’t important. Ultimately they were all from the old citadel. That was where they took their vows and where they received their scars and their swords.
“Well met, Brother Andreas,” Raphael said, releasing Andreas’s arm. He nodded toward the closed door of the inn. “I had thought to ride farther today, but perhaps I will inquire as to suitable care for my horse. Do you think yonder establishment might be able to offer us sustenance and shelter, should we need to tarry overnight?”
“It might,” Andreas smiled. “We could even offer to share a room.”
“Spoken like a true penitent,” Raphael said. “But you get the floor.”
Andreas bowed. “As long as you are paying, Brother Raphael.”
Raphael laughed.
Gerda had woken that morning to the sound of her husband’s hound baying in fright. Her head fuzzy with sleep, she had dragged her recalcitrant body from beneath the woolen blankets and stumbled toward the door of the one-room hut she shared with Otto. The hound, an old herding dog that Otto had taken pity on several years ago when it had broken its leg chasing a frisky ewe across a gopher-hole-riddled field, lay crouched on the floor not far from the wooden door. Its paws between its snout and its body pointed toward the door, it growled and whimpered as if were both angered and frightened by something on the other side of the warped wooden panel.
Gerda had not yet noticed her husband was missing from the bed, and annoyed at the dog, she had pulled open the door to see what was causing the animal so much distress. As the door opened, the dog yipped in fear and leaped away, running toward the back corner of the room. She had turned toward it, meaning to curse it for its cowardice, and in doing so, caught her first glimpse of what lay directly outside the hut out of the corner of her eye. She froze as the smell struck her. She had hunted with her father as a girl, and he had taught her how to dress the rabbits and squirrels he caught in his snares. She knew the smell of fresh blood.
Trembling, she had turned her head and started screaming when she recognized her Otto’s face staring up at her from the ground. Just his head, canted on one ear, lying in the center of a large smear of dark blood.
The first person who had come in response to her terror fled as soon as he identified the round shape. Others came and went after that, and she had no memory of their faces other than their wild eyes and gaping mouths—not unlike her dead husband’s. All that she could recall of the next few hours after being dragged out of the house was the forlorn expression permanently fixed on Otto’s dead face.
Her neighbors and friends—people whom she had traded bread and vegetables with, whom she had laughed and danced with at the last village feast—looked at her with hate-filled eyes. Some spat on her; others made the sign of the warding eye, refusing to let the Devil leap from her sin-ridden body to their own. The magistrate, who had commented on the flowers in her hair only two days ago when he had encountered her near the communal bread oven, had very little control over the mob’s rising panic. If the priest on the black horse had not appeared when he had, she would have been torn apart by the villagers.
He was an inquisitor of the Roman Catholic Church, and he was not the compassionate savior she had first imagined. When he lifted her chin and looked upon her tear-streaked face, she saw no pity in his sky-colored eyes.
Her trial was to be held in private, immediately after the priest took his meal, and she was forced to kneel before his table while he sated his prodigious appetite. She had tried to catch his eye, but he was intent on his meal as it was laid out before him: a bowl of steaming stew, the scent of which made her already shriveled stomach cramp even further; a loaf of warm bread; tankards of the ale brewed by her sister’s husband’s cousins; a chicken slow-cooked in hot coals so that the meat slid effortlessly off the bone when the inquisitor tore into the leg and wing with his hands and teeth.
After a while she could not bear to look upon the inquisitor, his hands and face shiny with grease and ale, and she sank to the floor, clutching her shackles to her belly. She lay still, her mind slowly fading away from the welter of confusion and despair that filled her body.
AVARITIA
After parting with a few coins and ensuring that his horse would be well cared for, Raphael made his way back to the inn. The green was deserted but for a few malingerers loitering around the pyre, and they glared at Raphael as if daring him to accuse them of being eager to see the judgment of God meted out. Raphael ignored them; he had seen far worse behavior in men during the Fifth Crusade, and while he did not like to dwell on his lack of moral outrage at such fiendishness, he had come to terms with a certain amount of pragmatism in the years since his first blooding as an exuberant initiate of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. Righteousness dwelt within the heart of a man, not within his hand or his sword.
As he entered the inn, he was assaulted by the noise and the smell of many people clustered within the low-ceilinged room. A sullen fire crouched in a hearth on the opposite wall, and not all of the smoke from the wet wood was going up the chimney. A gray pall clung to the wooden beams of the ceiling. A large cauldron hung on an iron rod, and whatever stew bubbled within smelled delicious enough that Raphael’s stomach did not care how long it had been boiling in that pot. Men shouted back and forth to one another, a minstrel struggled to make himself heard, and the beleaguered tavern staff were constantly summoned to every corner of the room by whistles and wordless grunts and shouts. Raphael surmised that the stairs at the back of the common room led to private chambers on the upper floor. Likewise, one if not both of the other doors out of the common room would lead to a more private dining area.
Andreas, the young Shield-Brother he had met earlier, was sitting on his right, embroiled in an elaborate tale that involved an earnest amount of arm waving and making faces. The young man caught sight of Raphael and his broad face lit up. He waved Raphael over, elbowing the man seated next to him to make room.
Raphael began to apologize to the man who had been so unceremoniously moved, but the lean villager, catching sight of the sword on Raphael’s hip, shook his head and scooted ever farther away on the bench.
Andreas shoved a half-empty tankard in front of Raphael. “It is not a bad brew, my brother,” he said. “And the stew is as hearty as it is bland to the tongue.” He whistled shrilly, catching the attention of the nearest tavern maid. He pointed at himself and Raphael, and the young woman nodded before she vanished into the crowd.
Raphael sat and inspected the contents of the tankard. “You were telling a story before I arrived,” he said. “Pray
continue.”
“I was just telling these attentive listeners tales of the Crusades,” Andreas said.
Raphael glanced shrewdly at him, assessing his age. His face was still youthful beneath his blond beard, though he was beginning to collect lines beyond those engraved in his face by years of raucous laughter. Which Crusade? he wondered. Surely he was not at Damietta?
As Andreas continued his story, Raphael opted to not ask such an indelicate question. He raised the tankard of ale and drank. His eyes strayed to the far side of the room, and as he watched, one of the two doors opened and a bevy of servants filed out, their hands filled with empty serving trays. In the room beyond, he caught a glimpse of two men, seated at a table. The magistrate and the inquisitor, who was eating vigorously.
Raphael wondered if the inquisitor would remember him.
Gerda was stirred from her reverie by a loud belch from the inquisitor. His chair scraped on the floor as he pushed himself back from the table, and when she turned her head slightly, she saw his leather boots. A thin metal band wrapped around the heel of each, bound across the instep and sole of the boot with leather ties. As the inquisitor shifted in the chair, she spied a short spike jutting from the back of one of the bands.
“Tell me about this woman,” the inquisitor said, and Gerda flinched, curling more tightly about her bound hands.
From behind her, she heard the thin, raspy voice of the town magistrate reply. “I thought you wanted to wait until tomorrow before…”
The inquisitor waved the magistrate silent. “My inquiries are not a mummer’s play for the rabble. She will be judged by me and God. We do not require an audience for our work. Nor do I require anything more of you than to simply speak when I tell you to and to answer the questions I ask.” The inquisitor tapped his fingers on the table. “Or is there someone more capable in this bewitched town to whom I should be addressing my questions?”
“She is Gerda. Her husband is—was—” The magistrate cleared his throat nervously. “He was a woodsman named Otto, as was his father before him.”
“Otto? Am I to understand that his head was found on her doorstep?”
“Yes, Father, Your—Your Grace.”
“And the body?”
Gerda heard the magistrate gulp noisily. Her hands tightened into fists, her ragged nails digging into her palms. She had somehow convinced herself that Otto might still be alive, even though she could not imagine how his body might have survived being separated from its head.
“The body has not…we do not know where it is. Though we did find—” The magistrate sighed, gathering his courage.
“We found blood and…”
Unwanted, an image surfaced in Gerda’s mind—the vision of Otto’s headless body lying in the woods, ravaged by wild animals—and she whimpered as she banged her head against the floor in a vain effort to drive the image from her being.
“And?” the inquisitor prompted. “Come now. Is there more to tell, or do I need to drag you and the woman out to this spot in the woods? Was there more than blood?”
“No, Fa—Your Grace. I mean, yes, Your Grace.”
“Which is it?”
Gerda started when the inquisitor slapped his palm against the table, rattling the numerous dishes set before him.
“The Devil walks among your citizens, Magistrate. It is my duty to flush the insidious serpent out, to drive evil from the hearts of all good Christians. He wants you to be fearful of him and the actions of his agents because, when you are, you are more liable to forget your Christian duty to fear God.” The inquisitor slapped the table again.
“Fear me, for it is my judgment, my duty, to destroy this blight upon your community. Wherever it may dwell.”
The magistrate gulped again. When he spoke, his voice was breathless and he stuttered. “There were signs that he had been…cleaned.”
“Cleaned?”
“Like a rabbit.”
Gerda tried to hold back the terror that had been building inside her, but at the magistrate’s words, she lost control. Her back arched and her mouth opened wide as her grief and fright tore out of her in a great wail. As her lungs emptied, her body began to shake uncontrollably.
“God help me,” the magistrate cried. “She is possessed.”
“Possessed by despair,” the inquisitor snapped. “Hold her still, you fools.”
As Gerda felt hands take hold of her legs and shoulders, she lashed out. She felt the wooden cuffs of her shackles connect with someone’s head, and the impact emboldened her even more. She sat up, eyes wide open and staring, filled with a sudden, desperate resolve. There were four men standing over her, men she did not know and whom she knew to be in the service of the inquisitor. As they tried to restrain her, she fought back savagely.
The woman’s scream brought an immediate reaction to the men in the common room. The babble died in an instant, leaving the weak voice of the minstrel as he fumbled to the end of his verse. Both Raphael and Andreas were already on their feet, shoving their way through the crowd toward the door that led to the private room. Andreas reached the door first, yanking it open; Raphael crowded right behind him.
Inside, they found several of the inquisitor’s men wrestling with a frenzied woman on the floor while the inquisitor and the magistrate looked on from behind a long table. The magistrate was leaning back, almost out of his chair, and as the Shield-Brethren entered the room, the inquisitor leaped to his feet.
“How dare you!” the inquisitor thundered, and because he had not clarified to whom he was speaking, everyone froze, thinking he was referring to them. Except for the woman, who continued to struggle. One of the inquisitor’s men sat across her body, his broad hands pinning her manacled hands to her stomach.
“Pardon us, Father,” Andreas said, bowing slightly to the inquisitor. His hand fell, not altogether accidentally, on the hilt of his sword. “We heard a scream and thought you might be in distress.”
The inquisitor’s face darkened at the suggestion in Andreas’s words, but he managed to choke back his initial response. “This is a private tribunal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church in matters of heresy and witchcraft,” he sputtered. “It does not concern men such as you.”
“No?” Andreas countered. “My companion and I are members of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, a holy order that has been officially recognized by the Church in matters martial and judicial. Are you certain the sanctity of these proceedings would not benefit from the eyewitness accounts of two Knight Initiates?”
The inquisitor stared over Andreas’s shoulder, his blue eyes blazing. “I know of your order,” he said icily, regaining his composure, “and it has no authority over matters pertaining to the Inquisition.”
Raphael’s hand touched Andreas’s elbow—a light grip, but firm nonetheless. “Our apologies, Father,” Raphael said, his voice flat and emotionless. “It was not our intention to intrude upon your holy duties. We simply wished to offer our assistance.”
“Which I do not require.”
Andreas, still feeling Raphael’s hand on his elbow, bowed again. “Very well, Father,” he said, preparing to allow himself to be led from the room. “Anyone else?” he tried, unwilling to simply walk away. “Does anyone wish to call for our aid?”
The inquisitor’s man sitting on the woman shifted his grip, putting his hand over her mouth and pressing her head against the floor. Andreas stared at the man’s back for a moment, his jaw working, and then he turned his gaze toward the magistrate. “No?” Andreas asked, and the magistrate would not meet his gaze as he shook his head.
The woman’s eyes bulged in her head as she tried to get Andreas’s attention by sheer force of will, and he met her gaze as Raphael opened the door behind them and gently pulled him away.
As soon as the door closed behind them and they were back in the common room, Andreas whirled on the older knight. “Explain yourself, Brother,” he snapped, standing too close.
“He’s right,” Raphael said qui
etly, not stepping back.
“He is an inquisitor of the Church. His power is absolute, should he desire it to be so. We cannot interfere.”
“I don’t—”
The door bumped into him as it opened, and Andreas turned to stare at a pair of the inquisitor’s men. His words turned into a snarl and he took a step toward the two men. They closed the door and one stayed, putting his back against the panel, and the other—offering a hostile glare at Andreas and Raphael—called for the innkeeper’s attention as he strode off.
The remaining guard cleared his throat and rested his hands on the short hilt of the knife shoved into his belt.
Behind the Shield-Brethren, the innkeeper shouted to the room at large, “Drink up and go home. We’re closed.”
As the villagers took the hint and started a mass exodus toward the door of the inn, Andreas stalked past Raphael and sat down heavily at a table near the center of the room. He pulled his sword from its scabbard, causing a few of the nearby villagers to shove their way more quickly toward the door, and set it on the table.
“I’m staying,” Andreas announced loudly. “I am holding a vigil for that poor woman’s soul.”
The guard at the door chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment and then shrugged as if it made no difference to him what Andreas did as long as he kept his distance.
“There is time, Brother,” Andreas said, indicating the bench opposite him. “I would hear the explanation you were about to give.”
Raphael sighed and signaled to the innkeeper that the two Shield-Brethren would appreciate being served, regardless of the man’s insistence of the inn’s closure.
Gerda had tried so valiantly to get their attention, but the heavy brute sitting on her had covered her mouth. All she could do was try to communicate her desperate fear with her eyes, and when the blond-haired one with the shaggy beard had asked if anyone needed aid, she had tried to bite the hand over her mouth—gnawing her way out of the man’s grip if need be. But before she could get any purchase on his flesh, the two men had left. As the door latched behind them, she slumped to the floor. When the man removed his hand, all that came out of her mouth was a stream of weak sobs.