The Heretic

by David Pilling

  The others didn’t come. I waited until long past midnight, by which time the town was dark and silent and I was thoroughly drunk. In the end the innkeeper, a heavy-jowled fellow with piggy eyes, refused to serve me. I cursed him and staggered to bed, where I lay nursing a sore head and wondering at the fate of my companions.

  Images of smouldering pyres, cackling priests in rich vestments and burning bodies spun before my eyes. Sheer exhaustion drove me to sleep. Every so often I was woken by the creak of a timber, or the scuttling of rats in the thatched ceiling. I prayed to hear familiar English voices, the tread of my companions on the stair.

  My prayers were ignored. When morning came, washing the secluded valley with pale light, I knew I had to leave. To stay much longer in Wagendorf might arouse suspicion.

  I fetched my horse and led her outside. With a last look back at the road to Nuremberg, I clapped in my spurs and rode east.

  Alone.

  5.

  My plan was to head for the town of Tachov, which lay just inside Bohemian territory. With nothing save Schiller’s tattered map to guide me, I soon got lost on the network of roads that cut through the heavily forested country north-east of Weigendorf.

  I passed through several more towns and villages on my way to the German border, the names of which escape me. The money in my slender purse bought me food and lodging for another two nights. I bedded down in cheap, flea-infested taverns, where I was careful to sleep light and keep one hand on my dagger. At one such pigsty a man drew a knife on me while I sat eating a bowl of greyish slop. He was hopelessly drunk, and I slit his belly open and left him on the floor to bleed and howl while I finished my indigestible supper. A couple of roughs, employed by the innkeeper to deal with such problems, dragged him out. God knows where the fool ended up: in the river, probably, with a couple of heavy stones tied to his ankles.

  I continued to blunder in a vaguely north-east direction, and spent my third night on the road sleeping under the stars, shivering under a blanket of ferns with a sod of turf for a pillow. I draped my cloak over my horse to stop her taking cold in the night. If she died, my chances of survival were bleak.

  The next day, without realising it, I crossed the border into Bohemia. I rode along deserted roads, mile after mile of pine forest, wreathed with mist. Occasionally I passed a dwelling, some isolated farm or woodcutter’s hut lost deep in the woods, but never saw another living soul. Heavy grey skies stretched into eternity, shot through with patches of black cloud.

  Just when I thought this dreary, monotonous landscape would wind on forever, the forests started to peter out. I emerged to find a broad sweep of empty countryside, gently undulating plains stretching away before me towards a range of blue hills.

  Beyond the forest, the road narrowed to a track that followed an erratic path before vanishing into the hills. I dismounted and let my horse crop the grass. As she fed, I drew in lungfuls of gloriously pure air and marvelled at the strange land that had suddenly unfolded before me.

  We pushed on, following the track as it cut across open country. The hills lay some three miles from the edge of the woods, and before long we were passing through them, picking our way through little gulleys and ravines, splashing across shallow streams. It was a beautiful country, though desolate. After another couple of hours the charms of all this wild emptiness started to fade. I longed for the sight of another human face.

  Then I spotted wisps of smoke, curling lazily above the treeline to the east. Some kind of settlement. I hesitated, gnawing my lip as I mulled over the risks of approaching the place. Civilisation was a long way behind me, and I had no money left to buy my way out of trouble.

  The ground sloped gently down to a little wood. I donned my helmet and carefully followed the path into the trees, sword drawn. The wood made for a perfect ambush spot, and I wanted to be prepared.

  All was quiet. I rode loose in the saddle, reins slack in my left hand, allowing my horse to plod along at her own pace. The ground was well-trodden, marked with the regular passage of men and beasts.

  We rounded a bend in the track. From here I saw the trees ran out, some twenty paces ahead. Beyond the ground sloped sharply up again, to a small village perched on the crest of a hill. The smoke I had glimpsed earlier rose from holes in the thatched roofs of the cottages.

  I reined in. “All right,” I shouted, “you may as well show yourselves. I’ve heard you crash about like a herd of cows. Now I want to see your faces.”

  In truth, the men stalking me made little noise. I had sensed rather than heard them: soldiers learn to develop these heightened instincts. Those who don't soon fill a pit.

  I heard a twig snap, and twisted to see my stalkers emerge from the trees. Two men and a boy in typical peasant garb - long woollen tunics reaching to the knee, fastened with loops and laces, rumpled hose, hooded capes to cover their heads and shoulders. On their feet they wore loose, bag-like boots, gathered in and tied at the ankles.

  My heart thumped a little faster when I saw they were armed. The boy and one of his elders each carried a hooked scythe-blade mounted on the end of a shaft, ideal for dragging a horseman from the saddle. The other bore a flail, of the sort used to thresh grain: essentially, a long wooden staff with a weighted head swinging from it. This one bristled with sharp nails driven through the head, turning a farming tool into a deadly weapon.

  “Well, friends,” I said with forced cheerfulness, “this is a happy meeting. I was just heading to yonder village, and now I have an escort.”

  My impression of a merry halfwit failed to win them over. They advanced slowly towards me, anger and suspicion writ large on their rough features. The one with the flail was a particularly ugly brute, with the face of an African ape under his hood.

  They advanced slowly towards me, led by the flail-man. I sheathed my sword and urged my horse on at a slow trot, keeping the peasants at a safe distance. If they made a sudden charge, I could gallop to safety.

  The indignity of it, retreating before a parcel of serfs, filled me with impotent rage. If my comrades were present, we would have made short work of these clowns. As it was, I allowed them to herd me in the direction of the village.

  “I am not your enemy,” I kept saying, “I’m an Englishman. A foreigner. All I want is food and a bed for the night. Can’t you understand, you bone-headed sheep? Are you deaf?”

  They didn’t seem to comprehend my bad German, or pretended not to. Once we were out of the wood, I might have driven in my spurs and left them for dead. Instead I trotted up the hill with the peasants shambling after me. On the way I counted fourteen houses in the village, half-timbered huts and cottages. Most were thatched, though three of the largest had red tiles. To the west was a byre for livestock and a couple of grainstores. The pointed blue spire of a church loomed over all.

  A peaceful, unremarkable place, yet it bore the scars of war. Three of the cottages were badly damaged by fire. The straw thatch was all burned away, exposing blackened gables, walls smeared with soot. Some villagers were hard at work, rolling new thatch onto the roof and mending broken doors and window frames.

  Some effort had been made to put the village in a state of defence. There was no wall or palisade, but a deep ditch guarded the middle of the track cut into the side of the hill, with a rampart of heaped earth behind it. More of these crude earthworks had been thrown up across the widest gaps between the houses. One or two were topped by a fence of sharpened stakes.

  The village had been turned into a little fortress. I wondered if an ex-soldier dwelled here. Someone who knew how to guard against cavalry.

  Two more peasants stepped out from behind the earth rampart. They were dressed like the others in loose smocks and caped hoods, and carried two more of those damned scythe-hooks.

  If I couldn’t make these brutes understand me, at least I might avoid angering them. To that end I folded my arms, smiled down at the rough faces, and waited.

  They didn’t know what to do. Three started to
jabber at each other in a completely unfamiliar tongue, waving their hideous weapons under my nose. The oldest of them, a burly greybeard who had an air of common sense about him, barked at the others and stumped away, back towards the village.

  I sat perfectly still and quiet, surrounded by four scowling peasants. It was vital not to give them any cause for alarm. Those wickedly hooked scythes would have carved through my mail like parchment, though it was the flail that really made me sweat. The evil thing looked heavy enough to crumple steel and drive nails through flesh and bone with terrifying ease.

  The greybeard soon returned, thank God, accompanied by a priest in a plain brown habit. His companion was tall and stringy, with thinning red hair and a deathly pale complexion. I was startled to see a long-handled mace dangling from a bow at his belt. In this land, it seemed, even the churchmen went armed.

  “You speak German?” the priest asked in that language, studying me through intelligent grey eyes. I nodded.

  “I am Father Tomislav,” he went on, “and you, I think, are very lost. You have no mastery of the Bohemian tongue, I take it?”

  “Not a word,” I replied cheerfully, “though at least I know where I am now. I must have crossed the border some hours ago.”

  I offered him my hand. “My name is John Page. I’m English. Happy to meet you, Father Tomislav.”

  He ignored my gesture. A wary sort, this one, much like the clods around him. Perhaps he had good cause to be.

  “Why does an Englishman come to Bohemia?” he asked.

  I glanced over his head. More peasants were approaching us from the village, women and children as well as men. All of them, down to the smallest brat, carried some kind of weapon. Every pair of eyes was brimful of malice and suspicion.

  It was time to throw the dice again. Hopefully the odds were weighted in my favour.

  “Hus,” I replied simply, “Jan Hus brought me here.”

  6.

  I was obliged to hand over my sword and dagger, and my horse, and then taken into the village. My escort was Father Tomislav and six burly peasants. The rest of the villagers crowded behind us, muttering darkly to each other. If not for the priest, I have little doubt they would have murdered me on the spot.

  The village was wretched enough. A few hens scratched about, while geese mucked in the street and made the place hideous with their noise. Peasant women squatted in the doorways and gaped at me, lumpen creatures in heavy woollen smocks, dirty faces half-hidden under their coifs. The smell of wood smoke filled the air, mixed with the pervading stench of excrement and unwashed flesh.

  I was bundled into one of the largest cottages, next to the church. The interior was a single long room, heated by a fire burning low inside a square hearth in the middle of the floor. A pile of logs was stacked against one wall, and there were a few pieces of furniture, plain but stoutly made. The western end of the house was taken up by a flight of timber steps, leading to a loft where the man of the house and his wife slept.

  The mistress, a tall, stern-faced woman in an unusually clean tunic and long skirt, snatched up a poker at the sight of me. Her three brats clustered for safety around her, eyes wide with fright.

  Father Tomislav spoke to them briefly in their own tongue. The woman’s face coloured, and she tried to argue, spitting what sounded like foul obscenities at the holy man. He responded with more patience than I would have shown, and after a time she threw down the poker and stalked out, dragging the urchins with her.

  “My apologies,” he said gravely, “she is the wife of our headman, and considers herself the most important person in the village. I have told her you will be a guest in this house for a while.”

  “A guest,” I said, “or a prisoner?”

  “A prisoner,” he replied with a shrug, “if you wish to see it that way. You will remain confined until we decide what to do with you.”

  “This is unjust,” I protested, “I came to Bohemia to fight in your cause. You are Hussites, are you not?”

  My lucky guess was proved correct. “We are,” said the priest, “though the term is used as an insult by the enemies of Bohemia. If you speak the truth, then all well and good. True followers of Hus are welcome here. But we are at war, Master Page. Bohemia is encircled by wolves. Nowhere is safe. No stranger, especially one from foreign lands, can be trusted.”

  He moved over to the window. I glanced at the door, where two hulking peasants stood guard. Unarmed, I had little chance of overpowering them. Both had knives tucked into their belts, and carried axes.

  “You saw the damaged houses?” asked Tomislav. I nodded.

  “They were fired by raiders, two nights ago,” he went on, “this village has been attacked six times in the past year. Bohemia is sliding into anarchy. Bands of marauders roam freely about the countryside, plundering and slaying at will. We are particularly vulnerable, so close to the German border. Some of the marauders are mercenaries in German pay, sent to kill as many Hussites as possible. Others are merely thieves. Whatever their motives, the result is the same. Fire and famine, blood and slaughter. Eight of our people died in the most recent raid. Eight fresh graves in the cemetery.”

  “What about your lord?” I asked, “why does he not protect you?”

  “Our young baron rode away eighteen months ago,” replied Tomislav, “taking his men-at-arms with him. He went to join the army in Prague and fight against Sigismund’s crusaders. Since then we’ve had no word of him. None of his soldiers have returned.”

  “Crusaders,” he spat, crossing himself, “they dare to call themselves holy warriors, these Germans and Hungarians and the foreign trash they hire to fill out their armies. They are servants of the Devil, blasphemers and murderers, slaves of that deluded villain in Rome who calls himself Pope. Pope! The Sacred College of Cardinals may as well have elected a pig. At least pigs are honest creatures.”

  The ‘deluded villain was Pope Martin V, who largely owed his position to the influence of King Sigismund. Between them, Martin and Sigismund had vowed to destroy the Hussites in Bohemia. Tomislav clearly hated them both with a passion.

  “Let me help,” I said eagerly, “this is why I came to your country, to fight the enemies of Hus. I saw the ramparts and ditches. They offer some defence, but can be improved. The village could be made impregnable. There's plenty of good timber in the woods to build a palisade. The ditches should be widened, and filled with sharpened stakes. I’m a soldier. I know all sorts of tricks.”

  He gave me a sly look. “I expect you do. Yet we have learned to defend ourselves. Those raiders I mentioned? Five of them will never see home again. We piled their bodies in a field and burned them. They didn’t deserve Christian burial.”

  “Tell me,” he asked thoughtfully after a pause, “where were you heading before you wandered into our village?”

  “Tachov,” I said.

  Tomislav chuckled. “You strayed a little off the path, Englishman. This village is called Straz. Tachov lies ten miles north of here. The Germans will lay siege to it, very soon.”

  “Perhaps I was fortunate to lose my way, then,” I said lightly, “God must have guided my steps.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Tomislav, “we shall see. The elders will decide your fate. In the meantime you stay here, under guard. Have no fear. You will not be maltreated.”

  Tomislav proved to be that rare creature, an honest priest. For almost a week I was held prisoner in the headman’s house at Straz - the headman and his family were quartered elsewhere - and kept adequately fed and watered on vegetable stew, black bread and a plentiful supply of ale. Bohemian ale is the best I have tasted anywhere. It washed down the bland food, got me good and drunk, and never failed to knock me out. Otherwise I might not have slept at all, uncertain whether I might live another day, or be dragged out in the morning and murdered.

  None of the villagers, not even Tomislav, visited me. I was left in silence, save for the cheery greeting I tossed at the hobbling, black-gummed old peasant who brou
ght my food twice a day. He hissed at me in return, and made the sign of the cross before withdrawing: perhaps in case I turned into a fiend and flew away through a window, trailing fire from my backside.

  Otherwise my confinement was hellishly dull. I swung between boredom and despair, and cursed Tomislav for a suspicious fool.

  God must have taken pity on me. One moonless spring night, black as hell and warm as blood, the village was attacked. A band of riders came galloping from the west. Mercenaries in German pay, sent to exterminate the stubborn defenders of Graz and wipe their village off the map.

  I was drowsing on the floor next to the embers of the fire, wrapped in the scratchy woollen blanket Tomislav had given me, when the church bell started to clang. It was followed by cries of alarm, screams, the thunder of hoofs.

  “Jezdci!” I heard the shout echo through the street. “Jezdci!” - “Horsemen!”

  Torchlight flickered through cracks in the shutters and cast grotesque shadows against the wall. The house echoed to the sound of running footsteps, gruff voices raised in alarm.

  I got up, staggered to the door and hammered on the tough, cross-grained wood, yelling at the top of my voice.

  “Let me out, you clods! I can fight! Give me my sword - my sword, damn you!”

  None heeded me, though I continued to punch and kick the door with all my strength. It shuddered in the frame, but refused to yield. I heard the neigh of horses, war-cries - some were in German - and the clash of weapons. The enemy had got into the village.

  “You stupid bastards,” I panted, leaning my head against the door, “so much for your trenches and little heaps of earth. I could have turned this dunghole into a fortress. Now you're all going to die.”

  A key scraped in the lock. The door was wrenched open. Tomislav stood in the doorway, silhouetted by a torch grasped in his left hand. He looked ghastly, his long face white as death, eyes bulging, skin damp with sweat.