“Father Apfelbaum,” said the priest, raising eyes the colour of iron, Zettritz noted.
“So he is.” He stuck out his jaw. “So he is, laddie. The Tybald Raabe you ask about is in my dungeon. I locked the rat up, for he’s a heretic.”
“Is that so?”
“He sang rude songs about priests and made fun of our Holy Father, the Pope. He was showing around this amusing picture, here, with Pope Martin V in a pigsty tending swine. The Pope is the one wearing the tiara, third from the left. Haa-haa-haa!”
Zettritz was weeping with laughter and his burgmen joined in. One of the hounds barked and was kicked. The grey-eyed visitor smiled affectedly.
“Though I warned him not to incite my subjects.” The knight grew serious. “Sing any fucking songs you like about Wycliffe and the Antichrist, I told him, call priests leeches, because they are. But don’t fucking tell the peasants that everyone’s equal before God and soon all property will be common, including my estates, my burg, my granary and my treasury. Or that they don’t have to pay duty because a just, divine order is coming to abolish all duties and rents. I tried to dissuade him, I warned him. He didn’t listen, so I threw him into the dungeon. I haven’t decided what to do with him yet. Perhaps I’ll have him hanged. Or just flogged. Perhaps I’ll tie him to the pillory in the town square in Landeshut. Perhaps I’ll turn him over to the Bishop of Wrocław. I need to improve my relationship with the episcopate since it’s soured a little lately, haa-haa-haa!”
The grey-eyed priest knew, of course, what it was all about. He knew about the attack on the Cistercian abbey in Krzeszów that Zettritz had committed the year before. The guffaws of the knights at the table suggested that they must also have taken part in the robbery. Perhaps he was looking on too intently, perhaps there was something in his face, because the Lord of Schwarzwaldau suddenly straightened up and punched the armrest of his throne.
“The Abbot of Krzeszów burned three of my farmhands to death!” he bellowed, with a roar the aurochs in his arms would have been proud of. “He acted against me. He fucking crossed me, though I warned him he wouldn’t get away with it! He accused the men of supporting the Hussites without any proof and sent them to the stake! And all in order to show me disrespect! He thought I wouldn’t dare, that I wasn’t strong enough to strike at the monastery! So I taught him a lesson!”
“The display took place,” said the priest, raising his eyes again, “if I recall, with the help and complicity of the Trutnov Orphans under the command of Jan Baštín of Porostlé.”
The knight leaned over and his eyes bored into the spy’s.
“Who are you, you damned priest?”
“Haven’t you guessed?”
“I have indeed,” rasped Zettritz. “And it’s also true that I taught the abbot a lesson with your invaluable Hussite help. But does that make me a Hussite? I take Communion in the Catholic way, I believe in Purgatory and I call on the saints in need. I have nothing in common with you.”
“Apart from the spoils plundered from Krzeszów and split half-and-half with Baštín. Horses, cattle, swine, coin in gold and silver, wine, liturgical vessels… Do you think, m’lord, that Bishop Konrad will absolve you in exchange for any old troubadour?”
“You comport yourself too brashly here.” Zettritz squinted his eyes. “Beware! Or I shall add you to the reckoning. Oh, the bishop would be glad of you indeed… For I see you are a man of substance, not some oaf. But don’t raise your eyes or your voice. You stand before a knight! Before a lord!”
“I know. And I suggest a knightly way of resolving the matter. An honest ransom for a squire is six hundred groschen. A troubadour’s worth no more than a squire. I’ll pay for him.”
Zettritz looked at the burgmen and they all grinned menacingly.
“Did you bring silver here? In your saddlebags, is it? And the horse is in the stable? In my stable? In my castle?”
“Indeed.” The grey-eyed man didn’t flicker an eyelid. “In your stable, in your castle. But you didn’t allow me to finish. I’ll give you something else for the goliard Tybald.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“A guarantee. When the Warriors of God come to Silesia, and it’ll happen soon, when they burn everything to the ground, no ill will befall either your stable, your castle or your subjects’ belongings. On principle, we don’t burn the property of people who are friendly to us. Not to mention our allies.”
It was quiet for a long time. So quiet that the sound of the flea-ridden hounds scratching themselves could be heard.
“Everybody out!” the knight suddenly roared at his entourage. “Raus! Begone! All of you! This instant!”
“As regards an alliance and a friendship,” said Herman Zettritz the Younger, the Lord of Schwarzwaldau, once they were alone. “As regards future collaboration… Future collaboration and brotherhood of arms… And the division of spoils, naturally… May we discuss details, Brother Czech?”
Immediately outside the gate, they spurred the horses into a gallop. The sky in the west darkened, literally turned black. A strong wind blew and whistled in the tops of firs, tore dry leaves from oaks and hornbeams.
“M’Lord Vlk!”
“What?”
“Thanks! Thank you for freeing me!”
The grey-eyed priest turned around in the saddle.
“I need you, Tybald Raabe. I need information.”
“I understand.”
“I doubt it. Ah, Raabe, one more thing.”
“Yes, m’Lord Vlk.”
“Don’t ever utter my name aloud again.”
The village must have been right on the route taken by the troops of Baštín of Porostlé, who, following the previous year’s robbery of the Krzeszów abbey, had plundered the land between Landeshut and Wałbrzych. The village must have offended the Hussites somehow, for all that remained was black, scorched earth, with odd timbers and stones sticking up here and there. Not much was left of the local church, either—just enough to see there had once been a church. The only thing that had survived was a roadside cross and the graveyard beyond the embers of the church, hidden among the alders.
The wind blew, combing the forested mountainside, covering the sky with a blue-grey curtain of cloud.
The grey-eyed priest reined in his horse, turned around and waited for Tybald Raabe to ride up.
“Dismount,” he said dryly. “I told you I need certain information. Here and now.”
“Here? In this fell wilderness? Right beside a boneyard? At dusk? Under those clouds, which will any moment burst? Can’t we talk in a tavern, over a beer?”
“I’ve already unmasked myself sufficiently because of you. I don’t want anyone to see me with you and put two and two together. For which reason—”
He broke off, seeing the goliard’s eyes growing wide in fear.
What they first saw was an explosion of black birds, flying up from the thicket surrounding the graveyard. It was then that they saw the spectral dancers.
One after the other, in a line, holding hands, skeletons appeared from behind the graveyard wall, cavorting in strange and grotesque strides. Some naked, some incomplete, some adorned in ragged shrouds, they danced, rocking and hopping, lifting high their bony feet, shin bones and thigh bones, snapping their gap-toothed jaws rhythmically. The wind blew, groaning like the damned, whistling through ribs and pelvises, playing through skulls like flutes.