“Find something else to smash,” Samson answered calmly. “Not this. You may not.”
“May not? May not?” Foam appeared on Krejčíř’s lips. “I will… I will… Forward, children! Have at him! Kill!”
In the blink of an eye, as fast as lightning, Scharley was standing beside Samson, Tauler was beside Scharley, and Drosselbart, Rzehors and Bisclavret were beside them. And Reynevan, too, not knowing himself when, how or why. But he was there. Blocking the way. To Samson. And the sculpture.
“Would you? Would you, heretics?” yelled Krejčíř. “Idolaters? Forward, children! Have at them!”
“Stop.” A resonant and imperious voice reverberated from the vestibule. “Stop, I said.”
Prokop the Shaven entered the church, accompanied by Královec, Little Prokop, Jaroslav of Bukovina and Urban Horn. Their steps thudded and rang out, echoing menacingly as they walked down the nave. The torches cast malevolent shadows.
Prokop came closer, examined and assessed the situation with a rapid, stern glance. On seeing his expression, the sling shooters lowered their heads, all of them vainly trying to hide behind Krejčíř’s coat-tails.
“But, Brother, you see…” mumbled the preacher. “These men—”
Prokop the Shaven interrupted him with a gesture. Quite firmly.
“Brother Bielawa, Brother Drosselbart.” He summoned them with a similar gesture. “If you would, there are some things we must talk over before we set off. As for you, Brother Krejčíř… Be gone from here. Be gone and—”
He broke off and glanced at the sculpture.
“Find something else to smash,” he added a moment later.
An ox lowed; a goat bleated. Smoke hung low, creeping towards the bulrushes by the stream. A wounded man, just sewn up by the barber-surgeon from Sobótka, moaned and groaned. The Minorites glided among the refugees like wraiths, on the lookout for symptoms of a possible epidemic. God sent those monks, thought Dzierżka. They know about epidemics, they’ll spot one, if necessary. And they aren’t afraid. If it comes to it, they won’t run away. Not them. They don’t know what fear is. The humble and silent fortitude of Francis lives on in them.
The night was warm, it emanated spring. Somebody was praying aloud nearby.
Elencza, asleep in Dzierżka’s lap, moved and whimpered. She’s tired, thought Dzierżka. Exhausted. That’s why she sleeps so restlessly. That’s why she’s being tormented by nightmares.
Again.
Elencza groaned in her sleep. She was dreaming of fighting and blood.
A black aurochs on a gold field, thought Reynevan, looking at a shield half-stuck into the mud. The technical description of that coat of arms is: d’or, au taureau passant de sable. And that other coat of arms on that shield, barely visible under caked-on blood, with red roses on a slanting silver strip, is described as: d’azur, à la bande d’argent, chargée de trois roses de gueules.
He wiped his face with a nervous movement.
Taureau de sable, a black aurochs, that’s Sir Henryk Baruth. The same Henryk Baruth who three years ago hurled abuse at me, beat and kicked me at the Ziębice tournament. Now it was his turn—a blow from the iron swipple of a flail has so flattened and twisted the armet that I’d rather not imagine what the head inside looks like. The Hussites had stripped the Bavarian suit of armour from the fallen knight, but not the dented helmet. So now Baruth was lying like some enormous grotesque, in his hose, a shirt, a mail coif, the helmet and the pool of blood that had leaked out from under the helmet.
While the three roses, trois roses, is Krystian Der, the son of Walpot Der of Wąwolnica. I played with him as a boy, in the woods near Balbinów, by the Frog Ponds, in the meadows of Powojowice. We played at being the Knights of the Round Table, at Siegfried and Hagen, at Dietrich and Hildebrand. And later, we chased the Wąwolnica miller’s daughter, rightly expecting that one of us would eventually cop a feel. Then Peterlin married Gryzelda of Der, and Krystian became my brother-in-law… And is now lying in the red mud, staring up at the sky through glazed eyes. Utterly lifeless.
He looked away.
Berengar Tauler claimed that war was a thing without a future and soldiering a thing without prospects. Drosselbart tried to prove—insincerely and because of Mammon—that a Brave New World would spring from the turmoil of war. All their hopes evaporated on the twentieth day of the month of April Anno Domini 1428, a Tuesday, in the village of Moczydło. Tauler’s regarding the future and prospects, and Drosselbart’s regarding whatever he’d hoped for. Prokop the Shaven ordered them to ride to Moczydło. To agitate. There was little chance that anyone in Silesia would try to form a peasant infantry, but Prokop preferred to be cautious. The well-agitated peasants fled from Nysa, he said, twisting his moustache, before the fighting occurred. Thus, more agitation is necessary. With a view to future engagements.
They set off in the morning, a troop of ten mounted men and one war wagon. The riders were assigned to them by Prince Fedor of Ostrog. They were, like most of the prince’s men, Hungarians and Slovaks. The wagon, pulled like all war wagons by four horses, belonged to Otík of Loza’s Nymburkians and had a standard crew: a wagon hejtman, two wagoners, four crossbowmen, four handgonners and five men armed with flails, glaives and voulges. Riding alongside them were Drosselbart as an agitator, Rzehors as the agitator’s assistant, Reynevan as the assistant’s assistant, Scharley as Reynevan’s assistant, Berengar Tauler as a hanger-on and Samson as Samson.
The Hungarian cavalry, contemptuously called “Kumans” by the Czechs, drove the residents of Moczydło onto the village green, then quickly rode around between the cottages, in order—as was their custom—to try to steal or rape what they could. The Kumans’ customs were harshly discouraged in the Hussite army, hence Ostrog’s Magyars dared only to indulge themselves in secret, on distant forays when no one was looking.
The wagon hejtman decided not to look. His officers also devoted all their attention to drowsy conversations, scratching their arses and picking their noses.
Drosselbart climbed onto a wagon and agitated. Preached. Saying that what was happening wasn’t war at all and by no means a plundering raid, but rather fraternal help and a peace mission, and the armed operations of the Warriors of God were being directed exclusively at the Bishop of Wrocław: a scoundrel, oppressor and tyrant. By no means against our brothers and sisters, the Silesian folk, because we, the Warriors of God, love the Silesian folk very much and have their good at heart. Oh, by God, how we do.
Drosselbart preached with great enthusiasm, giving the impression he believed what he said. Reynevan knew, of course, that Drosselbart didn’t believe a word and that it was what Prokop and Markolt had told him to say. How could apparently sensible people, Reynevan wondered, think that anyone would believe anything as obviously and blatantly nonsensical as that “peace mission” nonsense? For no one with the smallest scrap of intelligence could believe anything like that. Not even a peasant who had spent his life shovelling shit from one place to another would give credence to anything like that. Reynevan couldn’t accept Scharley’s theory that if you repeat nonsense often enough everybody will finally believe it.