I need some help, he thought.
He’d been analysing the situation for almost an hour and trying to work out a sensible plan of action. Each time, he came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t achieve much without help.
After parting from Agnes of Apolda, the Green Lady, and overcoming the dejection her words had caused him, he rode to Powojowice. What he found there disheartened him even more. The steward whom Duke Jan of Ziębice had appointed to Peterlin’s confiscated estate needed barely two years to utterly ruin the famous and prospering fulling mill. Nicodemus Verbruggen, the Flemish dyeing master, had uprooted, it turned out, to somewhere in Greater Poland, unable to endure the harassment. New payments kept being added to Duke Jan’s ledger. The time will come, thought Reynevan, grinding his teeth, when accounts will be settled, Your Grace. A time for accounting. And payments.
For the time being, though, I need help. I won’t get much done here without help.
Two inconspicuous men were sitting in one corner, hunched over beer mugs. They were dressed simply and meagrely but were too clean for ordinary vagabonds, and nor did their faces bear the mark of chronic undernourishment. One had very bushy eyebrows, the second a ruddy and shining face. They were both wearing hoods. Both, Reynevan observed, often—too often—glanced towards him.
I need help. Who can I ask? Canon Otto Beess? I’d have to go to Wrocław and that’s risky.
To the monks of the monastery of the Holy Spirit in Brzeg? It’s doubtful they still remember me; five years have passed since I worked in the hospital. Furthermore, Birkart Grellenort might have eyes and ears there, too. Perhaps, then, I should go to Świdnica? Justus Schottel and Simon Unger, Scharley’s friends from the printing works in Kraszewice Street, will certainly remember me—I helped them for four days with their obscene paintings and woodcuts.
That’s probably the best plan, he thought. Scharley and Samson, who will be searching for me in Silesia—there’s no doubt about that—will surely end up at the printing works. Until that time, I’ll hide there, think up other plans, including…
Including a plan of how to get closer to Nicolette in secret.
The two men in the corner were talking softly, leaning over the table and drawing their hooded heads close. For some time, they hadn’t looked towards Reynevan once.
Perhaps I’m imagining it, he thought, perhaps my suspicions are now becoming pathological? I see and smell eavesdroppers everywhere. Like now, for example, that tall character at the bar, swarthy and dark-haired, resembling a journeyman, is looking at me surreptitiously. Or so it seems, at least.
To Świdnica, then, he decided, standing up and tossing a few coins on the table from what the Green Lady had given him when they parted. To Świdnica, via Rychbach. Riding the horse that the Green Lady had lent him.
After leaving the smoky tavern, he breathed in the November evening air, which now carried a boreal scent of winter, a harbinger of frosts and snowstorms.
It’s the twelfth of November, he thought, the day after Saint Martin’s Day. It’ll be Advent in three Sundays. In another four, it’ll be Christmas. He stopped for a moment, looking up at the sky, streaked fiery-purple in the west. I’ll set off with the dawn, he decided, entering a lane and heading towards the stable where the horse was being kept and where he planned to sleep. If I don’t dawdle, I’ll make it to Świdnica before the gates are closed…
He tripped. On a body. Lying on the ground, right by the threshold to a cottage, was a man. Reynevan recognised him at once. It was one of the men from the tavern, the one with the bushy eyebrows. Now that the hood and hat had fallen off, a tonsure was visible, shaved down all the way to a thin ring of hair above the ears. He was lying in a pool of blood. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.
A crossbow bolt slammed into the beam above Reynevan’s head with such force that straw fell from the roof of the porch. Reynevan jumped aside and cowered as another bolt thudded into the whitewashed wall right beside his face, sprinkling him with lime dust. He fled in panic; seeing to his left the black abyss of the lane, he ducked into it without hesitation. The fletching of a third bolt hissed beside his ear.
He cleared some barrels and a muck heap and ran into an arcade. And collided with somebody. So hard that they both fell down.
The stranger was first to his feet. It was the other man from the tavern, the one with the shiny face. He also had a tonsure. Reynevan picked up a thick log from a pile by the wall and aimed a blow at him.
“No!” cried the fellow with the tonsure, retreating against the wall. “No! I’m not—”
He spluttered and puked blood. He didn’t fall but remained suspended. A bolt was sticking out under his chin, pinning him to a post. Reynevan hadn’t even heard the whistle. He cowered and rushed into the lane.
“You! Stop!”
He stopped so abruptly that he skidded over the slippery grass, straight in front of a horse. His very own horse. The bay from the Green Lady whose reins were being held by the tall, swarthy character resembling a journeyman.
“Into the saddle,” he commanded hoarsely, shoving the reins into his hand. “Into the saddle, Reynevan of Bielawa. Ride! And don’t stop.”
“Who are you?”
“No one. Ride! Don’t tarry!”
He obeyed.
He didn’t ride far; the night was pitch-black and dreadfully cold. After happening on a hayrick by the road, Reynevan buried himself deep in the hay. His teeth were chattering. From cold and fear.
Someone had made an attempt on his life in Ciepłowody. But who? Biberstein, having given the matter more thought?
Duke Jan’s thugs, who might have been tracking him? The bishop’s servants? The Inquisition? Who were the men with shaved heads who were watching him in the tavern? And why were they killed? Who was the character resembling an apprentice who saved him?
He lost himself in speculations. And fell asleep, utterly confused.
Reynevan was woken by the cold at dawn, and any somnolence was driven away by the tolling of bells. Quite close by, as it turned out. After digging himself out of the hayrick, he looked around and saw walls and towers. The view was familiar. In the misty and unearthly morning light, Reynevan recognised the town as Niemcza, where he had gone to school, where he had acquired learning and beatings.
He rode into town among a group of wayfarers. Hungry, he was drawn by kitchen smells, but the crowd moving along the streets dragged him instead towards the town square. It was full of people, crowded shoulder to shoulder.
“They’re going to torture somebody,” stated with certainty a powerful fellow in a leather apron on being asked the reason for the gathering. “They’ll probably break him on the wheel.”
“Or shove’im on a spike,” said a skinny woman in an apron, looking like a peasant, licking her lips.
“They’ll be giving out alms, I’ve’eard.”
“And indulgences. Not for nothing, but cheap, they say. For the bishop’s priests have come. From Wrocław itself!”
Four people were standing on the scaffold towering above the crowd: two monks in Dominican habits, an elderly gentleman in black who looked like a clerk and a burly soldier in a kettle hat and a red and yellow tunic worn over armour. One of the Dominicans was speaking, hands raised theatrically. Reynevan listened carefully.