“How should I know who you are? Perhaps Hussites in disguise?”
“We are monks, good and devout Christians! Cistercians from Kamieniec! Can’t you see our habits? Open up, by the living God!”
A monk appeared beside the captain of the guard, a canon of the Holy Sepulchre, judging from his habit.
“If you are indeed Kamieniec Cistercians,” he shouted, “what is your abbot’s name?”
“Mikołaj Kappitz!”
“What canticle is sung on the Laudes on Sunday and on feast days?”
Reynevan and Bisclavret looked at each other vacantly. Scharley rescued the situation.
“The Canticle of the Three Young Men,” he declared confidently. “Called the Benedicite Dominum.”
“Sing it.”
“What?”
“Sing it!” yelled the captain. “And loud! Or we’ll make a fucking pincushion out of you!”
“Benedicite, omnia opera Domini, Domino! ” bellowed the penitent, out of tune, saving the day again. “Laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula! Benedicite, caeli, Domino, benedicite, angeli Domini…”
“They are monks, in truth,” said the canon of the Holy Sepulchre gravely. “We must let them in. Draw back the bolts! Make haste, make haste!”
The Augustinian chronicler leaned over his parchment and resumed writing.
But it proved to be treachery, for they were not monachi but heretics, qui se Orphanos appellaverunt, dressed in habits stripped from the Cistercians, when in feria III pasce they attacked the monasterium Cisterciense de Kamenz, which monasterium eodem die efractum et concrematum est. They were not the Lord’s flock but wolves, lupi in vestimento ovium, the same notorious traitors who called themselves the Vogelsang: traitors, Judases, scoundrels with neither honour nor faith. Those blackguards forced their way through the imprudently opened gate and fell on the guard. Behind them was a horde of further Orphani, previously hidden under a tarpaulin on a wagon like the Achaeans in the wooden horse. The guard having been killed and the gates opened wide, in galloped the heretics’ equites, behind them rushed the infantry and, in no time, there were five and a half hundred heretics, with more coming anon. And dreadful terror occurred…
No one dared to oppose them as they ran through the new town, down New Street. There were scarcely two dozen of them, but they made enough noise and racket for a hundred. The Hussites yelled and whooped, clattering on wooden clappers. Bisclavret and Rzehors were blowing into brass trumpets and Scharley was beating a metal cymbal. Horror-struck and stupefied by the deafening hullabaloo, the citizens of Frankenstein fled before them, running towards the town square. Only once were crossbows and harquebuses fired at them, from the windows of the brewery, but they didn’t even slow or stop making a racket. The yells and gunfire intensified from the Kłodzko Gate, which had been breached deceitfully, to the south, and soon also from the west; the Orphans were evidently storming the castle and the Church of Saint Anne.
They ran. They were shot at again in Lower Bathhouse Street, this time to some effect; two bodies were left lying in the muddy gutter. The small garrison of the Ziębice Gate also greeted them with a chaotic crossbow salvo, but the bowmen’s hands were shaking, and no wonder: they had already seen the black smoke rising above the roofs and heard the cries of the slaughtered.
They attacked the guards with fury at once and it appeared as though the Orphans wanted to take out their anger after the reckless run through the streets.
At once, bodies began to fall and blood to stain the cobbles outside the gate. Reynevan didn’t take part in the fighting, but, along with Berengar Tauler and Samson, reached the gate and began sliding back the bolts. Scharley was watching their backs and cut down a guard with rapid blows of his falchion who rushed at them.
The bolts and beams clattered down, the double gate pushed from the outside opened wide and cavalrymen rode in with a thud of hooves, followed by a wave of infantry uttering battle cries. Horseshoes boomed on the cobbles and the Orphans poured into the town, straight down Ziębice Street.
“Good work, Reynevan!” yelled Jan Královec of Hrádek, reining in his horse in front of him. “Good work with that gate! I’m changing my mind about you! They were right to praise you! And now onwards, onwards! The town still isn’t ours!”
When they reached the town square, it appeared that Královec was wrong and that Frankenstein was already in the Orphans’ hands. The house of the Abbot of Henryków was in flames, the cloth hall in flames, the market stalls in flames; fire and smoke were belching from the windows of the guilds’ houses. The town hall was still being stormed, as above the battle cries of the attackers rose the high-pitched screams of the slaughtered. People being tossed from windows were falling directly onto the blades of voulges and halberds held upright. A massacre was taking place in the arcades around the town square. Shots could still be heard from the southern part of the town; the castle, under attack from the forces of Kolda of Žampach, was clearly putting up a fight. But a fire was burning fiercely in the bell tower of Saint Anne’s.
Hussite foot soldiers rushed into the town square, followed by the cavalry led by Matěj Salava. The young knight’s face was black with soot and his sword dripped blood.
“Over there!” Královec pointed with his mace, trying to bring his horse under control as it slipped on the blood. “We can cope here. You men, get over there! To the Dominican monastery! To the monastery, Warriors of God!”
“Come on, lads.” Reynevan turned around. “To the monastery. Quickly. Scharley, Rzehors…”
“Let’s go, Reinmar the Doughty Gate-Opener,” called Královec.
“Tauler, are you with us? Samson?”
“I’m here, too.”
Salava’s mounted troops, quite useless in the fighting to capture buildings, scoured the streets, leaving the storming of the Dominican monastery to the infantry. Numbering over a hundred men, it was being commanded by Smil Půlpán, the Deputy Hejtman of Náchod, a chubby fellow with a shaved head. Reynevan recognised him, having seen him before.
“Have at them!” yelled Smil Půlpán, pointing his short sword in the direction of the attack. “Have at them, Brothers! Kill them!”
Yelling, the Hussites sprang to the assault, faltering over and over under a hail of missiles, only to spring forth again at once.
“Have at them! Death to the papists!”
Supported by the burghers and guildsmen, the Dominicans bravely and staunchly defended their monastery, but it was a vain attempt. The Orphans’ advantage was overwhelming, the virulence of their attack terrible. The monks yielded under the assault, falling back, leaving bodies in white habits, surrendering one building after the next to the Hussites.
The vestibule and barricaded main doors of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross were the last bastion. The monks fought to the last crossbow bolt and the last harquebus ball. And to the last man.
When, enraged by the rearguard action, the Orphans finally burst into the chancel over the corpses, the rainbow-coloured beams shining from the stained-glass windows revealed only two monks left alive. One, head lowered, was kneeling at the altar, by the antepodium. The second was shielding the first with his body and a crucifix.