The Tower of Fools

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  Reynevan nodded.

  “That’s why it annoys me so much,” finished Horn.

  Reynevan nodded again. Urban Horn scrutinised him.

  “Well, well, I’ve gone on a little,” he said, yawning, “and such talk can be dangerous. Many a man has cut his own throat with his own wagging tongue… But I trust you, Lancelot. You don’t even know why.”

  “Oh, but I do.” Reynevan smiled affectedly. “If you suspected that I would denounce you, you’d whack me on the head and say in Strzelin that I died of a sudden influx of fluids and humours.”

  Urban Horn smiled. Very evilly.

  “Horn?”

  “Yes, Lancelot.”

  “It’s easy to see that you’re a worldly wise and shrewd fellow. You wouldn’t by any chance know which noble family has estates in the vicinity of Brzeg?”

  “And where does your curiosity—so dangerous nowadays—come from?” Urban Horn’s eyes narrowed.

  “Where it usually comes from: curiosity.”

  “How could it be otherwise?” Horn raised the corners of his mouth in a smile, but the suspicious gleam didn’t leave his eyes. “Oh well, I shall satisfy your curiosity as far as I am able. In the vicinity of Brzeg, you say? Konradswaldau belongs to the Haugwitzes. The Bischofsheims own Jankowice, Hermsdorf is the property of the Galls… While Schönau, from what I know, is the seat of Cup-Bearer Bertold of Apolda…”

  “Does one of them have a daughter? Young, fair-haired—”

  “My knowledge doesn’t extend that far,” Horn cut him off, “and I don’t usually let it. And I advise you against it, Lancelot. Noblemen can tolerate ordinary interest, but they dislike it greatly when anybody shows too much interest in their daughters. Or wives…”

  “I understand.”

  “Good for you.”

  Chapter Seven

  In which Reynevan and company arrive in Strzelin on the Eve of the Assumption, just in time for a burning. Then those who ought to do so listen to the teachings of the Canon of Wrocław Cathedral. Some more willingly than others.

  Outside the village of Höckricht, near Wiązów, the previously empty highway was a little busier. Aside from peasants’ carts and merchants’ wagons, there were also horsemen and soldiers, hence Reynevan considered it advisable to put his hood up. Beyond Höckricht, the road, winding among picturesque birch woodland, became empty again, and Reynevan heaved a sigh of relief. A little prematurely.

  Beelzebub once again demonstrated his impressive canine intelligence. Up until then, he hadn’t even growled at the soldiers passing them, but now he gave a short, sharp warning bark, unerringly sensing the intentions of some knights who unexpectedly emerged from the birch woodland on both sides of the road. The mastiff also snarled ominously when one of the servants attending them took a crossbow from his back on seeing him.

  “Hey, you there! Stand still!” yelled one of the knights, as young and freckled as a quail’s egg. “Stand still, I say! Don’t move!”

  The mounted servant riding next to the knight slipped a foot into the stirrup of the crossbow, nimbly cocked it and mounted a bolt. Urban Horn walked his horse forward a little.

  “Don’t you dare shoot at the dog, Neudeck. Take a good look at him first and you’ll recognise him.”

  “Zounds!” The freckled knight shielded his eyes with a hand against the flickering confusion of birch leaves being tossed around by the wind. “Horn? Can it truly be you?”

  “In person. Order your man to put the crossbow down.”

  “Yes, yes. But hold the dog. As to our business here, we’re a search party tracking somebody. Thus, I must ask you, Horn, who rides with you?”

  “Let us first be specific,” said Urban Horn coldly. “Who are my noble lords pursuing? If it’s cattle thieves, for instance, that rules us out for plenty of reasons. Primo: we don’t have any cattle. Secundo—”

  “Very well, very well.” The freckled knight had already looked over the priest and the rabbi and contemptuously waved a hand. “Just tell me: do you know them all?”

  “I do. Will that suffice?”

  “It will.”

  “We beg your forgiveness, Reverend.” Another knight, in a sallet and full armour, bowed slightly before Father Granciszek. “But we do not incommode you for sport. A crime has been committed and we are pursuing a murderer on the orders of Lord Reideburg, the Strzelin starosta. This is Sir Kunad of Neudeck, while I am Eustachy of Rochow.”

  “What crime was it?” the priest asked. “For God’s sake—has somebody been killed?”

  “Aye. Not far from here. Sir Albrecht Bart, Lord of Karczyn.”

  There was silence for some time, finally broken by Urban Horn’s voice. And his voice was altered.

  “What? How did it happen?”

  “It was most strange,” Eustachy of Rochow replied slowly, after a moment, which he spent looking at Horn suspiciously. “Firstly, it was at high noon. Secondly, it was in combat. Were it not impossible, I’d say it was a duel. One man, mounted and armed, killed Lord Bart with a skilful sword thrust to the face, between nose and eye.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “A quarter of a mile from Strzelin. Lord Bart was returning from visiting a neighbour.”

  “Alone? With no escort?”

  “Such was his custom. He had no enemies.”

  “Eternal rest,” muttered Father Granciszek, “grant him, Lord. And light—”

  “He had no enemies,” repeated Horn, interrupting the prayers. “But are there any suspects?”

  Kunad of Neudeck rode closer to the wagon, examining Dorota Faber’s breasts with evident interest. The courtesan flashed him a charming smile. Eustachy of Rochow also rode closer, grinning. Reynevan was very pleased, for no one was looking at him.

  “There are a few suspects.” Neudeck tore his gaze away from Dorota. “Some suspicious individuals were loitering in the area—Kunz Aulock, Walter of Barby and Stork of Gorgowice. A rumour is circulating that some youth bedded a knight’s wife, and that knight is now hunting the seducer, hell-bent on catching him.”

  “It cannot be ruled out,” added Rochow, “that the same libertine, chancing upon Lord Bart, panicked and killed him.”

  “If so,” said Urban Horn, cleaning his ear out with a finger, “you’ll easily catch that ‘libertine,’ as you call him. He must be at least seven foot tall and four foot across the shoulders. It’d be difficult to hide someone like that among ordinary folk.”

  “True,” admitted Kunad of Neudeck gloomily. “Lord Bart was no weakling; not just any old runt could have done it… But it may be that spells or witchcraft were used. They say that the fornicator is also a wizard.”

  “By the Blessed Virgin!” squawked Dorota Faber, and Father Filip crossed himself.

  “In any case, all will be revealed,” Neudeck finished. “For when we catch up with that philanderer, we shall find out the details, oh yes, we shall… And it won’t be difficult to spot him, in any case. We know he’s handsome and is riding a grey horse. Should you encounter him—”

  “We shall not hesitate to inform the authorities,” Urban Horn calmly promised. “Handsome youngster, grey horse. Can’t be missed. Or confused with anything else. Farewell.”

  “Gentlemen,” asked Father Granciszek, “perhaps you know whether the Canon of Wrocław is still residing in Strzelin?”

  “Indeed. He’s passing judgements at the Dominican priory.”

  “Is it His Eminence Notary Lichtenberg?”

  “It is not,” countered Rochow. “He is called Beess. Otto Beess.”

  “Otto Beess, Provost at Saint John the Baptist’s,” muttered the priest, once the knights had set off again and Dorota Faber had urged on the gelding. “A severe man. Most severe. Oh, Rabbi, you have but faint hopes of an audience.”

  “Actually, no,” said Reynevan, who had been beaming for some time. “You will be received, Rabbi Hiram. I promise you.”

  Everybody looked at him, but Reynevan only smiled myste
riously. After which, still extremely cheerful, he jumped down from the wagon and walked alongside. He hung back a little and Horn caught up with him.

  “Now you see, Reinmar of Bielawa,” he said softly, “how quickly notoriety sticks. Hired thugs are abroad, scoundrels like Kyrie-eleison and Walter of Barby, but if they kill anyone, the suspicion will fall on you first. Do you see the irony of fate?”

  “I observe two things,” murmured Reynevan in reply. “The first, that you do know who I am and probably have all along.”

  “Probably. And the second?”

  “That you knew the victim. This Albrecht Bart of Karczyn. And I’d swear you’re riding to Karczyn right now. Or you were.”

  “Well, well,” said Horn a moment later, “how acute you are. And so confident. I even know where your confidence derives from. Wonderful to have friends in high places, eh? Wrocław canons? A fellow feels better at once. And safer. But that feeling can be illusory, oh, it can.”

  “I know,” said Reynevan, nodding. “I’m keeping in mind those bushes you mentioned. The humours and the fluids.”

  “And so you should.”

  The road led up a hill at the top of which was a gallows bearing three hanged men, all dried out like stockfish. And down below, Strzelin spread out before the travellers, with its colourful suburbs, city wall, castle from the times of Bolko the Stern, ancient rotunda of Saint Gotthard, and the more modern spires of the monasterial churches.

  “Hey,” remarked Dorota Faber, “something’s going on down there. Is it a holiday today or something?”

  Indeed, quite a large crowd had gathered outside the city wall, and a line of people were heading from the gate to join them.

  “Looks like a procession of some kind,” Dorota guessed.

  “A Mystery, more likely,” stated Granciszek, “for today’s the fourteenth of August, the Eve of the Assumption. On we go, Miss Dorota. Let’s see it close up.”

  Dorota Faber clicked her tongue at the gelding. Urban Horn called his mastiff to heel and put him on a leash, clearly aware that in a crowd even a clever dog like Beelzebub might forget himself.

  The procession, approaching from the city, came close enough to their vantage point for them to make out clergymen in their vestments, monks in the habits of their orders and a number of burghers in fur-lined coats that almost touched the ground. Also present were several mounted knights in tunics decorated with coats of arms, and a dozen or so halberdiers in yellow jerkins and dully gleaming kettle hats.

  “The bishop’s men,” Urban Horn quietly informed them. “And that huge knight on the bay there, with the chequerboard emblem, is Henryk of Reideburg, the Starosta of Strzelin.”

  The bishop’s soldiers were frogmarching three people, two men and a woman. The woman was dressed in a white shift, and one of the men was wearing a pointed, brightly painted cap.

  Dorota Faber flicked the reins and yelled at the gelding and the crowd of townspeople who were reluctantly parting in front of the wagon. After descending the hill, the travellers were too low to see anything. When the throng became too dense to push through and the wagon stopped moving, they stood up for a better view.

  Reynevan could now see the heads and shoulders of the three people, and the stakes they were tied to rising above their heads. The piles of brushwood stacked up around the stakes were out of his line of sight, but he knew they were there.

  He heard a voice, loud and thunderous but indistinct, so muffled by the sounds of the crowd that Reynevan had difficulty making out any words.

  “Crimes directed against the social order… Errores Hussita-rum… Fides haeretica… Blasphemy and sacrilege… Crimen… Proved during interrogation…”

  “It would appear,” said Urban Horn, standing up in the stirrups, “that our dispute on the road regarding the punishment of heretical acts will soon be summarised before our very eyes.”

  “It does.” Reynevan swallowed and asked the nearby townsfolk: “Hey, friends—who are they executing?”

  “Erratics,” explained a man in beggar’s rags. “They’ve caught some erratics. They say they’re hussies or something—”

  “Not hussies, horse sons,” corrected another, similarly ragged, with an identical Polish accent. “They’re going to be burned for sacrilege. For giving communion to horses.”

  “Hey, you ignoramuses!” said a pilgrim from the other side of the wagon with shells sewn onto his cloak. “They know nothing!”

  “And you do?” Reynevan asked.

  “Aye… Jesus Christ be praised!” The pilgrim noticed Father Granciszek’s tonsure. “The heretics are called Hussites, from the name of their prophet Huss, not from horses. The Hussites say there’s no Purgatory, and they take communion sub utraque specie, which means under both kinds. So they’re also called Utraquists—”

  “Don’t lecture us,” interrupted Urban Horn, “because we’ve all been educated. My companion asked you why those three are being burned at the stake.”

  “That I don’t know. I’m not from around here.”

  “That one there,” said a local, a brickmaker judging by his clay-spattered jacket. “That one in the cap of shame is a Czech, a Hussite envoy, an apostate priest. He travelled here from Tábor in disguise, inciting people to revolt and burn churches down. His own countrymen recognised him, the same ones who fled Prague after 1419. And the other is Antoni Nelke, a teacher at the parish school, a local accomplice of the Czech heretic. He hid him and passed around Hussite writings.”

  “And the woman?”

  “That’s Elżbieta Ehrlich. She’s a different kettle of fish. She and her lover poisoned her husband together. The lover fled, otherwise he’d be bound to a stake, too.”

  “The cat’s out of the bag now,” interrupted a thin fellow with a felt cap clinging closely to his skull. “Because it were Ehrlich’s second husband they murdered. Probably poisoned the first, too, the hag.”

  “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, who can say?” A fat townswoman in a short embroidered sheepskin jacket joined the discussion. “They say the first one drank himself to death. He was a shoemaker.”

  “Shoemaker or not,” the thin man stated, “she poisoned him, no two ways about it. Must have dabbled in witchcraft, too, if she’s upset the Dominican court—”

  “If she poisoned him, it serves her right.”

  “It certainly does!”

  “Quiet!” called Father Granciszek, craning his neck. “The priests are delivering the verdict and I can’t hear a thing.”

  “Why bother listening,” sneered Urban Horn, “when everything’s already been decided? The people at the stake are haeretici pessimi et notorii. And the Church, which abhors bloodshed, is handing the punishment of the guilty over to the brachium saeculare, the secular arm—”

  “Silence, I said!” snapped Father Granciszek.

  “Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem.” A voice, fragmented by the wind and muffled by the murmur of the crowd, reached them from the stakes. “The Church does not wish for blood and shies away from it… May thus the justice and punishment of the secular arm be meted out. Requiem aeternam dona eis…”

  The crowd cried out in a powerful voice. Something was happening by the stakes. Reynevan stood on tiptoe, but too late. The executioner was now behind the woman, possibly adjusting the rope around her neck. Her head lolled on her shoulder, softly, like a cut flower.

  “He throttled her.” The priest sighed quietly, as though he had never seen anything like it before. “Broke her neck. He did the same to that teacher, too. They must have shown remorse during the interrogation.”

  “And turned someone in,” added Urban Horn. “The usual story.”

  The rabble howled and protested, displeased with the mercy shown to the teacher and the poisoner. The shouting grew louder when flames burst from the bundles of brushwood and suddenly exploded, in the blink of an eye engulfing the faggots, the stakes and the people tethered to them. As the fire roared and shot upwards, the crowd recoiled from
the heat, making the crush even greater.

  “A botch-up!” yelled the brickmaker. “Shoddy workmanship! They used dry bloody brushwood! It’s just like straw!”

  “Verily, a botch-up,” said the thin man in the felt cap. “The Hussite didn’t even make a sound! They don’t know how to burn. Back home in Franconia, the Abbot of Fulda knew his stuff! Supervised the burnings himself. He had the logs arranged so that first only the legs fried, then the knees, then higher, to the stones, and then—”

  “Thief!” A woman hidden in the crowd began to shriek. “Thiiieeef! Stop, thief!”

  The fires roared, radiating waves of fierce heat. The wind blew towards the travellers, carrying the foul, choking, cloying smell of burning corpses. Reynevan covered his nose with his sleeve. Father Granciszek coughed, Dorota choked and Urban Horn spat, grimacing horribly. Rabbi Hiram, however, astonished everyone. The Jew leaned out from the wagon and vomited violently and copiously—on the pilgrim, the brickmaker, the townswoman, the Franconian and everybody else in the vicinity. People quickly dispersed.

  “Please forgive me…” the rabbi managed to mumble between spasms. “It isn’t a political statement, just ordinary puking.”

  Canon Otto Beess, the Provost of Saint John the Baptist’s, made himself comfortable in his chair, straightened his skullcap and examined the claret swilling around in a goblet.