“Maybe he’s impatient for us to finish each other off so we can have the End of Days. It would save him the trouble of killing us.”
“Have you ever read the Bible?”
“Yes, sure. I read Latin. Some, anyway.”
“And what of the rest of us, who can’t?”
“That’s what priests are for. To tell you what’s in the Bible.”
“Why can’t we have a Bible in German?”
“Well, Moses and Jesus and the others didn’t speak German.”
“What shit you talk, Dismas.”
“Hell, I don’t know why we’re not permitted Bibles in our own language. There must be some reason. That’s why we have theologians. Really, Markus. You are a good shot but you are very ignorant.”
“Okay, Master of Theology, then explain indulgences to me.”
“Well, it’s very simple. Indulgences allow us to shorten our time in Purgatory after we die. We can buy them from the Church. One ducat for—depending on the current market value—say, fifty years’ reduction of your sentence. You can purchase them for your own soul, or for the souls of your loved one. Is that so complicated?”
Markus shook his head. Dismas went on.
“As for the relics, if you venerate before a certain relic, or make a pilgrimage to a relic, then you also earn an indulgence. If you can’t afford to purchase your indulgence, then you can earn it by making a pilgrimage to a shrine. Or attend, say, fifty masses. Or whatever. It’s really a very clever arrangement the Church has worked out, you see.”
“All right, then, Latin Bible reader, tell me: Where in the Bible is this scheme for making money off frightened believers described? Did Jesus sit down with the Apostle Peter and tell him, ‘All right, here is how you will finance my Church. When people come to you and say, “I have sinned,” you tell them, “Not to worry! Give me a ducat and I will take away fifty years from your time in Purgatory.” ’ ”
Dismas thought Markus’s attitude very impious. At the same time, he could not recall where, exactly, in the Gospels Jesus had outlined the particulars of the indulgence business. It must be in there somewhere.
Markus prattled on with his grievances.
“Why is it that every time someone translates the Bible into a language people like us can understand, they burn him at the stake?”
“Because people like you, Markus, would misinterpret it. Look here, I don’t know. Why are you asking me all this? Do you lust to read the Bible? It would do you good, sure. I’ll find you a Latin tutor when we get to Mainz. And a confessor. One with lots of time to hear your scarlet sins.”
“I’ll tell you why they burn people for translating it. They’re afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That if we read it for ourselves, we won’t need them anymore. To intercede. Religion’s a business like any other. The middlemen fatten. Why should we need middlemen between us and”—Markus pointed at the stars—“whatever the hell is up there?”
Dismas groaned. “Hell is down, Markus, not up. And you must not speak about God that way. It’s not decent. Or wise. He might hear.”
“Don’t you see? It’s about control. The priests—your Archbishop Albrecht, to say nothing of that fat, Florentine sodomite in Rome—”
“Are you making reference to the Holy Father? Sure, our boat will be destroyed by lightning.”
“He’s the worst of the lot. If God is the sun, they’re standing between him and us. And where does that leave us? In shadow.”
“What a sophisticated argument. God is the sun. Tell me, where did you get your diploma in divinity? In Heidelberg?”
“Have you heard about this Copernicus person?”
“Yes,” Dismas said. “Albrecht says he is a heretic.”
“Because he declares that the earth revolves around the sun? Well, he’s sure to end up tied to the stake in Kraków, poor bastard.”
“And how does this Polack know that the earth revolves around the sun? Tell me that.”
“You’re the ignorant one. He’s a scientist.”
“Ah? It was a scientist, sure, who came up with the gunpowder that damn near killed us at Cerignola. Was that also a wonderful new idea? Hm?”
“All right, then. You tell me this—how does the Pope know that the sun revolves around the earth?”
Dismas groaned. “How should I know such a thing? Maybe God told him. If you want to talk about revolutions, my head is making them from all this brandy and your jabber. Go to sleep, man.”
They kept clear of churches the rest of the way to Mainz.
Markus didn’t linger. It was getting on fall and he was anxious to be heading back to the cantons before the first snow.
“Come with me,” he said.
It was a tempting thought. “Can’t. I’ve got to get all this to Albrecht. Then it’s on to Wittenberg.”
“This bone dealing, Dismas. There’s something not right about it.”
“We used to earn our living by killing. Was that right?”
Markus grinned. “Well, that’s for you and your brother theologians to decide. But if you’re convinced the End of Days is coming, do you want God to find you peddling saints’ testicles?”
Dismas laughed. “And where do you want God to find you, Markus?”
“In bed, screwing.”
3
Albrecht
Ah, Master Dis-mas.”
Albrecht, twenty-eight-year-old Archbishop of Mainz and Brandenburg, greeted his relic master, gliding into the loggia, attended by his entourage.
He was a person of serious mien, with a long nose, glum, pouchy eyes, and pursed lips. Though relatively young, he was already in possession of what looked to be the first of many jowls.
Albrecht’s customary tone with Dismas was the exaggerated noblesse oblige of an aristocrat at pains to be more courteous with his tradesman than necessary. Dismas was used to it by now. They’d been doing business together for half a dozen years. Albrecht was the sort of client who was always telling you how lucky you were to have him for a client. Dismas played along, though this posturing had grown tiresome. More annoying was Albrecht’s continual attempts to wheedle information from him about Frederick’s relics. Dismas gave elusive answers.
“Your grace.”
Dismas bent to touch his lips to the quail-egg-sized sapphire on Albrecht’s index finger.
Dismas gave nods to the Archbishop’s attendants. Among them he recognized Pfefferkorn, Fugger’s man. Word was the Brandenburgs had another benefice in mind for Albrecht—a cardinal’s hat. What a fortune that would cost. Two archbishoprics, the Electorate of Mainz, and now a cardinalate. Well. It would make Albrecht Primate of Germany—at twenty-eight, one of the most powerful men in the Empire. Dismas reflected that only aristocrats knew their precise age. He could only guess at his own.
Here came pudding-faced Friar Tetzel, bald but for a wisp of white hair at the top of his pate, a lonely cloud hovering above a polished orb. He looked all business, eager to inspect Dismas’s Basel purchases so he could decide how many days’, months’, or years’ remittance from Purgatory each relic warranted. Markus’s questions echoed. What a business!
The entourage included a flutter of monsignors, lesser clerics, and various body men. Looming above other heads was that of Drogobard, High Marshal of Mainz. He served Albrecht in a variety of offices: chief of the Cardinal’s Guard, spymaster, adjutant inquisitor, superintendent of cells, high executioner. A fine collection of responsibilities. An even finer payroll.
Dismas had noticed on his way into the cathedral cloister that the square outside was freshly scorched, and that preparations for another burning were under way. He himself had no reason to fear Drogobard, but neither would he desire to come into his purview. Drogobard gave Dismas a curt nod.
What’s this?
In Albrecht’s train were two men immediately and unpleasantly recognizable to Dismas by dint of their flamboyant attire: full-skirted, multicolored jerkins, embroid
ered doublets, wide-brimmed hats with extravagant plumage. They carried halberds, razor-sharp.
Dismas suppressed a groan. Christ. Landsknechte? German mercenaries. What was this rabble doing in an archbishop’s retinue?
They might dress like popinjays, but their skills were lethal. Dismas had gone up against them many times in the course of his own Reiselaufer soldiering days. He would never begrudge Landsknechte their ability, and thus felt free to despise them. They were barbarous, incapable of remorse for even the cruelest acts. Their only loyalty was to their purses. They’d cut the throat of the sleeping infant Jesus for a price. Herod could have employed them to murder the innocents.
They returned Dismas’s icy stare with smirks. He wondered: Did they know who he was, or was it only typical Landsknechte arrogance?
The relics had been laid out for inspection on tables along the cloister loggia. Tetzel made a distasteful face as he held up an ampulla filled with crimson dust.
“What’s this?”
“Blood. Saint Cyprian.”
“And how much is his grace being asked to pay for that?” Dismas found Tetzel’s haughtiness more risible than offensive.
“The purchase price was fifteen gulden. And as his grace well knows, he is under no obligation to buy it. For that matter, to buy anything here, should it not meet with his satisfaction.”
“Now, now, Friar Johann,” Albrecht rebuked Tetzel. “None of that, none of that. We are well pleased to welcome the martyred Bishop of Carthage into our keeping. Dismas, what of Saint Agatha and the other one, Saint . . .”
“Afra. On that table, there. Your grace.”
“You see, Tetzel? Oh, well done, Dismas, well done.”
Albrecht and Tetzel glided over to the table to examine and confer. Tetzel held up the two relics to the light.
“Virgins. Martyrs. And at the hands of Diocletian . . .” Albrecht nodded, impatient for Tetzel’s evaluation.
Tetzel set them back on the table and rubbed his chin. “For the ring, we would offer an indulgence of ten years. Twenty, depending. For the piece of Afra . . .” He turned to Dismas and said with annoyance at having to ask for information that should have been volunteered, “And what kind of bone is it?”
“Patella.”
“I am not an anatomist,” Tetzel sniffed.
Dismas pointed to his kneecap.
“Ah. The very bone on which she knelt as she was martyred.”
“Possibly,” Dismas said. “We don’t really know. Do we, Brother? All we know is that she was tied to a stake and suffocated.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Tetzel said with a dismissive wave. He said to Albrecht, “Fifty years.”
Archbishop and vendor worked their way down the tables, assigning each relic a value. Donate such and such sum to venerate such and such a relic, and so many years would be deducted from your term in Purgatory.
They lingered over the bit of hilt from the sword that had decapitated St. Maurice. Albrecht gestured to Fugger’s agent Pfefferkorn to join in the evaluation.
Fugger held the monopoly on papal finances. He’d even handled the negotiation between Albrecht and Rome over how much Albrecht would share with Rome from his indulgence sales. He had handled, too, other indulgence contracts.
For instance, Pope Leo had demanded twelve thousand ducats to license Albrecht to sell indulgences for venerating relics of the twelve apostles. Outrageous! A thousand ducats per apostle? Albrecht counteroffered seven thousand, a sum pegged to the seven deadly sins. They compromised on ten thousand. Tongues wagged that the sum must be based on a thousand ducats per commandment.
Pricing indulgences was, to be sure, a complicated and technical business. But in its way, it was equitable. Everyone had to pay to have his sins remitted, even kings and queens. And archbishops. Those worthies were expected to give twenty-five gold florins per indulgence. Twenty for abbots, cathedral prelates, counts, barons, and other high nobles. For lesser nobility, six florins. Three for burghers, three for merchants. For those of more moderate means, one florin. Since Our Lord had decreed that the Kingdom of Heaven must also open to the poor, those wretches could earn a remittance with fasting and prayer. Prayer cost nothing. Peasants could pray while they toiled. Fasting was hardly a privation inasmuch as peasants spent their entire lifetimes fasting, one way or another.
Albrecht and Tetzel and Pfefferkorn concluded their deliberation over the St. Maurice sword hilt. Tetzel said he would feature it in his next procession.
Dismas had no liking for Tetzel, but he recognized that he was—as Schenk would put it—a considerable “personage.” A man of many hats: Grand Inquisitor of Heresy in Poland. Grand Commissioner of Indulgences in the Germanic states of the Empire. And as befitting a Dominican monk, a capable homilist.
Tetzel’s protocol was to arrive at a town at the head of a solemn procession, bearing the papal bull of indulgence on an embroidered cushion. A heavy metal coffer would be set down, thunk, in the center of the square. And Friar Tetzel would preach to the clink of coins. Indeed, he had composed a couplet on this very aspect. It was famous.
As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
The soul from Purgatory springs.
Dismas had witnessed this on a few occasions. What a performance. He could recall it almost word for word, with a shudder.
Listen now, God and Saint Peter call you! Consider the salvation of your souls and those of your loved ones departed. You priest, you noble, you merchant, you virgin, you matron, you youth, you old man, enter now into your church, which is the Church of Saint Peter.
Consider that all who are contrite and have confessed and made contribution will receive complete remission of all their sins.
Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, beseeching you and saying, “Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.”
Do you not wish to? Open your ears! Hear your father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter, “We bore you, nourished you, brought you up, left you our fortunes, and you are so cruel and hard that now you are not willing for so little to set us free? Will you let us lie here in flames? Will you not for a quarter of a florin receive these letters of indulgence, through which you are able to lead a divine and immortal soul into the fatherland of paradise?”
In addition to his other talents, Tetzel was a supple theologian. He’d pioneered a new form of indulgence whereby you could buy full forgiveness for sins you had not yet committed. Even Jesus might marvel at that. It had aroused a bit of controversy, along with his sensational claim that a papal indulgence could free you from Purgatory even if you had—shudder—violated the chastity of the Mother of God.
Dismas knitted his brows trying to understand that one, at the technical level. Even assuming your villainy was so monstrous as to contemplate such a terrible thing—how exactly could a person living fifteen centuries after the time of Christ have carnal relations with the Virgin Mary? Especially when after her death, her body had been assumed whole into Heaven. He preferred not to think about this. A matter best left to the theologians.
Albrecht and Tetzel and Pfefferkorn completed their evaluations. The 296 relics Dismas had brought from Basel would provide an aggregate indulgence value of 52,206 years off time in Purgatory. And provide his grace with a tidy return on his investment.
Monsignor Henk, curator of the cathedral collection, tabulated that his grace’s collection now comprised over six thousand relics, with a total value of 9,520,478 years’ reduction of Purgatorial sentences.
“We are pleased, Master Dismas,” Albrecht announced. “Come and take refection with us. Much do I have to discuss with you.”
They sat, the two of them, in Albrecht’s study, under the chandelier made from antlers.
“Your trip here from Basel went well?”
“Yes, your grace. It’s easier by boat. A fine time of year. Pretty. The leaves and such.”
“Yes. You stopped along the way?”
/> “At night, to anchor.”
“No . . . incidents?”
“Our trip was without event. God be thanked.”
Albrecht nodded. “Yes, God be thanked. With such cargo as you carried. We ask because we had some report. From upriver.”
“Oh?”
“An attack. On a church.”
“Oh. That’s not good.”
“No. And to think that it happened while you were on the river. What if you had been attacked?”
“Well”—Dismas smiled—“here I am. Safe. What manner of assault was it, might I ask?”
“It was a blasphemy. A defacement.”
Dismas shook his head. “That’s bad.”
“Very wicked indeed. Crossbow.”
“This wine is very excellent, your grace. Is it from your own vineyard?”
“We are pleased you like it. I shall give you some bottles.”
“Your grace is too kind.”
“You are off to Wittenberg? To see your ‘uncle’ Frederick?”
“As his grace can see, I came first to you.”
“And we are honored, Dismas.”
“The honor is mine, your grace.”
“We wish you would call us Uncle.”
This, again? Dismas’s pulse had quickened at the mention of the church desecration. He smiled wanly. “I couldn’t. Your grace is a prince of the Church.”
“Not yet. Soon. God willing.”
“The Elector Frederick is much older than your grace. For that matter, I am older than your grace. It would be, well, awkward to call you Uncle.”
“Then call us cousin,” Albrecht said with impatience. “See here, Dismas, we are trying to convey our fondness for you.”
“Your grace—cousin—shames me with his benevolence.”
“But do not call us cousin in front of others.”
“No. Certainly.”
“And what are you bringing your uncle Frederick?”
“Well, you should ask him. Cousin.”
“But I am asking you.”
The Relic Master Page 3
