“The Lord shall rain snares upon the wicked! The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place!”
“Can’t that madman be gagged?” asked the Inquisitor in exasperation. “Or otherwise silenced?”
“But what for?” Konrad of Oleśnica grinned. “Let the people listen to this drivel. Let them have a laugh. The people toil by the sweat of their brow. Pray zealously. Don’t have enough to eat, particularly during fasts. They deserve some diversion. Laughter relaxes them.”
The crowd clearly agreed with him, and each subsequent exclamation of the prophet was greeted with roars of hilarity. The front rows of onlookers were bent double with mirth.
“You wiiiill peeeriish!”
“Will no one,” Gregorz Hejncze said, unable to remain quiet and seeing what was afoot, “will no one be shown any mercy? Were the executioners not given instructions?”
“Oh, but they were.” The bishop finally rewarded him with a look, a look of triumph. “And they are carrying them out to the letter. For we are strict here, Grzesiu, my boy.”
The servants removed the ladders and withdrew. The executioner approached with a torch lit from a brazier. As he lit the fires in turn, flames flickered and cracked among the brushwood and smoke curled upwards. The condemned reacted in various ways. Some began to pray. Others to howl like jackals. The altarist from Saint Elisabeth’s struggled and strained, howled and banged the back of his head against the stake. The eyes of the painter of the polyptychs brightened, lit up as the sight of flames and the smell of burning tore him out of his torpor. The shaven-headed woman began to wail, a long string of snot hanging from her nose and saliva dripping from her mouth. The prophet went on bawling his nonsense, but his voice had changed. The further the flames crept up, the higher and squeakier it became.
“Brothers! The Church is a harlot! The Pope is the Antichrist!”
The crowd howled, roared and cheered. The smoke grew thicker, obscuring the view. The flames crept over the wood, wandering upwards. But the pyres were high. They had been built like that deliberately. In order to prolong the spectacle.
“Look! See the Antichrist approaching! Look! Don’t you see! Or are your eyes blind? He is from the tribe of Dan! He shall reign for three and a half years! His church shall be in Jerusalem! His number is six hundred three-score and six, his name is Evanthas, Lateinos, Teitan! His face is as of a wild beast! His right eye is as a star rising at dawn, his mouth is a cubit in width, his teeth a span in length. Brothers! See you not! Broooo—”
The fire finally defeated and overcame the passive resistance of the damp wood, burst through aggressively, flared up and roared. A horrendous, inhuman screaming rose above the fires. A hot wave drove the smoke away and for a moment, for a very brief moment, human shapes could be seen thrashing around at the stakes in the crimson inferno. It was as though the fire was shooting straight from their screaming mouths.
The wind, mercifully for Gregorz Hejncze, drove the stench in the opposite direction.
The four sides of the garth overshadowed by arcades at the monastery of the Premonstratensians in Ołbin were meant to assist with meditation by recalling the four rivers of Paradise, the four Evangelists and the four cardinal virtues. That “barricade of discipline,” as Saint Bernard called it, was a picture of order and aesthetics. It emanated peace and quiet.
“You’re somewhat taciturn, Grzesiu,” remarked Konrad of Oleśnica, Bishop of Wrocław, watching the Inquisitor intently. “As though you are ailing. Is it your conscience or your stomach?”
The monastery. The garth. The garden. Humility. Calm. Keep calm.
“Your Eminence takes the liberty of addressing me in a particularly familiar manner with admirable unswervingness and unyieldingness. I shall also take the liberty of being unswerving: I shall remind you once again that I am a papal Inquisitor, delegate of the Apostolic See for the Wrocław Diocese. By virtue of my position, I deserve respect and the appropriate title. Your Eminence may call your minions, canons, confessors and dogsbodies ‘Grześ,’ ‘Jaś,’ ‘Paś’ or ‘Piesio.’”
“Your Inquisitorial Reverence,” said the bishop, putting as much scornful exaggeration into the title as he could, “need not remind me what I can and can’t do. I myself know best. It’s easy: I can simply do what I like. In order for there to be no misunderstandings, I will tell Your Reverence that I’m in the process of exchanging letters with Rome—with the very Apostolic See, as it happens—the consequence of which could be that Your Excellency’s wonderfully promising career may turn out to be as perishable as a fish’s bladder. Pop! And it’s gone. And then, the highest office Your Excellency can expect in this diocese is to work for me as a servant, canon or dogsbody, with all its obligations, including the familiar term of address ‘Grześ.’ Or ‘Piesio,’ if I so wish. For the alternative will be the name ‘Brother Gregorius’ in some remote monastery, among picturesque, dense forests, in a location as far from Wrocław as Armenia.”
“Indeed.” Gregorz Hejncze interlaced his fingers and also leaned against the arcade, without lowering his gaze. “Indeed, Your Eminence hasn’t left much room to be misconstrued. But your efforts were in vain, since the exchange of letters between Your Eminence and Rome is very familiar to me. I also know, indeed, that the result of that correspondence is actually nil. No one, naturally, can forbid Your Eminence from sending further epistles. Little by little does it—who knows, perhaps one of the cardinals will finally succumb, perhaps they’ll finally dismiss me? Personally, I doubt it, but everything is in the hands of God, after all.”
“Amen.” Bishop Konrad smiled and breathed out, happy that the level of the conversation had settled down. “Amen, Grzesiu. You’re a bright lad, do you know? It’s what I like about you. Pity there’s nothing more.”
“A pity indeed.”
“Don’t make faces. You know perfectly well what I dislike in you and why I’m trying to have you removed. You’re too soft, Grzesiu, too merciful. You act too indecisively, sluggishly and without a plan. And time doesn’t favour that. Haereses ac multa mala hic in nostra dioecesi surrexerunt. Heresy and heathenism are spreading. The world is teeming with Hussite spies. Witches, kobolds, phantoms and other hellish monsters are mocking us, holding their sabbaths on Ślęża, five miles from Wrocław. Vile practices and the cult of Satan are conducted by night on Grochowa Mountain, on Kłodzko Mountain, on Żeleźniak beneath the peak of the Pradziad, and in hundreds of other places. The Beguines are active again. The godless sect of the Sisterhood of the Free Spirit mocks the law, unpunished, because it’s full of and led by noblewomen, patrician matrons and the abbesses of the wealthiest convents. And you, Inquisitor, of what can you boast? Though you had Urban Horn—apostate, traitor and Hussite spy—in your grasp, he slipped out of it. Though you had Reinmar of Bielawa—sorcerer and criminal—in your grasp, he slipped out of it. One after another, petty merchants who trade with the Hussites have slipped through your fingers. I mean: Bart, Throst, Neumarkt, Pfefferkorn and others. They were prosecuted and punished, of course, but not by you. Someone disburdened you. Someone keeps having to. Should somebody be taking over the Inquisitor’s work? Well? Grzesiu?”