There was nothing else of much significance. A dozen candles had been arranged in a circle equidistant from the cage, but instead of being black or carved with ominous designs or made of some obscene substance like the rendered fat of corpses, these were the ordinary white-golden beeswax candles used to light the Great Hall. They were, if anything, expensive enough that the Grand Master wondered who had let Baba Yaga get her hand on such things when tallow dips were almost certainly sufficient for her needs.
There were several things inside the cage itself. One was a solitary coin, its colour and lustre suggesting gold though it might just as easily have been polished bronze. On one side was a horn cup half-filled with some clear liquid, and on the other a plain wooden platter with some chips of wood piled up on it. Both cup and plate were stark, functional things, used by the sergeants in their own refectory and seldom if ever seen in the High Castle.
Von Salza was unimpressed. For the summoning of something like a Firebird, which he knew from its reputation if nothing else was a creature of bright magnificence, he had expected more splendid accoutrements than these. It was all rather cheap and seedy. He glanced sideways at Baba Yaga and reflected that the spell was well matched by the old witch who cast it. His thin, patrician nostrils twitched in disgust as they caught a whiff. She was no cleaner now than before, when he could smell her from the opposite side of the room. The only difference was that he breathed through his mouth when in her company, and did his best to ignore the outraged messages from his nose.
There had been one good effect from Baba Yaga’s sojurn in Castle Thorn. All the knights, even those who considered that bathing was either dangerous or close to the sin of luxury, had taken to washing themselves more often as a reaction to the filthiness personified by the witch. Except for the tower where Baba Yaga had her quarters, the whole castle smelt better than it had done for a long while.
Von Salza was glad of it, no matter what the reason. He and perhaps a dozen other knights and sergeants who had served in Outremer, where water was more precious and more hoarded than gold or jewels, had always bathed enough to provoke comment. Some were simply enjoying the fact that now there was water in abundance – though sometimes in autumn there was water to excess, both in the air and underfoot. Others, and von Salza was one, held to a view that some Papal edict or other had probably declared heretical. If God created man in his own image, then man should show respect for God by maintaining that image in a good condition, just as they would wash or paint a holy statue when it grew shabby.
The Grand Master glanced at Baba Yaga once again, and wondered idly just whose image she was meant to represent. Baba Yaga, most probably; herself alone, without reference to any higher Power. That was the sin of pride, of course, and deserved condemnation – except to do so would be a waste of breath, since pride was the least sin on the calendar of iniquities she had committed. Von Salza didn’t know how much of what she had said to him was true, and how much was merely evil boasting that soiled the air which carried it. He didn’t want to know.
There were already several plans in his mind for her disposal, once her usefulness to the Order was at an end. Von Salza sometimes wondered if, had he known then what he knew now, he would ever have commanded Dieter Balke to bring her back from Russia. Balke’s own grim methods, violent and brutal though they were, had a cleanness about them that was entirely lacking in whatever Baba Yaga said, or did, or was.
Landmeister Balke was at least a human being; Baba Yaga hardly deserved the title.
Von Salza sent a sergeant to fetch Father Giacchetti and the two inquisitors, noting the relief with which the man-at-arms took his dismissal. After what had happened here, it was scarcely surprising he would jump at any chance to leave the room; and there was always the stench of unwashed witch to be considered.
There were more books than before on what he had come to regard as Baba Yaga’s private shelf. Like those ghastly inbred tribes the Teutonic Knights had discovered – and exterminated – in the deep forests of the Prussian hinterland, they had different titles yet shared a grotesque, deformed resemblance. Like the first grimoire he had ever seen in Baba Yaga’s possession, each book was charred and its cover hacked and blackened as if struck repeatedly with a red-hot pickaxe.
Von Salza knew now that they were the marks of the Firebird’s claws. So this was the first result of his plan to expand the domains of the Teutonic Order, and the Holy Roman Empire, and Christendom: letting a stinking hag lay hands on books of black sorcery. He shivered and blessed himself just as Father Arnald of the Inquisition stepped into the library.
“Well may you cross yourself,” he said. “Attending such a filthy deed as this one is no task for the faint of heart.”
In that one declaration Arnald had suggested he, the Grand Master of the Order, was lacking in faith, lacking in morals and above all, lacking in courage. Von Salza glared at the Dominican friar, then breathed out very slowly and let the matter pass. There were things here with more demand on his attention than the sharp words of a nervous priest.
When Father Giacchetti and Brother Johann came into the library, von Salza glanced at them casually, then stared much harder at Giacchetti, shocked by the old man’s appearance. When the Apostolic Notary and his companions first arrived at Burg Thorn, all who saw him were impressed at how the rigours of the journey had left no impression on so frail and elderly a man. Then, he had worn his more than eighty years lightly, but now they hung on him with all the weight of a shroud.
It was the cold, of course, mixed with stubbornness, stupidity and pride, though the Father had never accepted his behaviour was anything but pious and humble. A Prussian winter endured within the dank and chilly walls of a castle was far worse than a Roman winter seen from inside the Lateran Palace, but despite that the old fool had insisted on maintaining his regime of Benedictine austerity.
The Grand Master should have been warned by Giacchetti’s reaction to the comforts of his own private chambers. Von Salza’s flexible attitude towards the Order’s vow of poverty was clear enough, a flexibility far beyond just making duty in a frontier fortress less like time in Purgatory. Yet instead of taking him to task for his fine robes and wines, his ornaments of silver and gold and all the other tokens of private wealth and Imperial favour, Father Giacchetti had condemned as sinful luxury the fact that rushes weren’t scattered loose across the floor, but laid down as woven mats.
Von Salza had been irritated by such narrow-minded stupidity. He’d been more amused when Hauskomtur Kuno von Buxhövden told him how Giacchetti had criticized his private chamber for being a knight’s apartment rather than a simple monastic cell – in a castle, for the love of Mary! The old monk had also complained about its bed, the warm bedding and even the charcoal brazier in the corner, all for being more extravagant than any man of God should need. In Italy maybe; not in Prussia with mid-winter coming on. The castellan went on to confirm that Giacchetti had flung the offending articles out of the room, then wrapped himself in his travelling-cloak and his habit and gone to sleep on the floor.
If that wasn’t pride, said Kuno, it was idiocy. Von Salza considered privately it was more like protracted suicide, a greater sin than any amount of luxury. He had been ready to lay down the law to the old monk from his own full rank as Hochmeister of a military Order, but had changed his mind. The Papal envoy could do as he pleased and suffer the consequences. If Giacchetti’s foolishness resulted in his own death, there were already ways in which that death might be put to good use without the stain of actual murder on anyone’s hands.
For one thing, there was a need to put the fear of God, or at least the Grand Master, into Father Arnald. Sooner or later the inquisitor would have to be dealt with, whether that involved sending him back to Rome or to the bottom of a peat-bog in the forest. If the Teutonic Order could seem as ruthless as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, disposing of the least important member of the Papal delegation as an example to the others, then Arnald might pro
ve much more amenable to reasoned argument. If argument failed he would certainly still prove amenable to a dagger in the spine. Von Salza reserved doing that for himself, though he might take a minute to explain first.
Business, as Treasurer von Düsberg was fond of saying, before pleasure.
The three principal Order officers of Castle Thorn came into the library a few moments later, accompanied by five knights that von Salza recognized as being among the few brethren with better than average singing voices. Hermann von Salza put his eyebrows up, not much liking any involvement whatsoever between his knights and the doings of the Inquisition.
“The Father-Inquisitor requested assistance in the necessary psalms of this rite of purification, Grand Master,” said Wilhelm von Jülich the steward. “Castellan von Buxhövden gave permission.”
“That can be overruled at your command,” said von Buxhövden. “Only give the word.”
“Not without better reason,” said von Salza. “If all they do is sing, well and good. Anything else, and they’re out of here at once. Is that clear?”
“Completely clear!” The uniformity of the response drew a quick look of query from Father-Inquisitor Arnald and Hermann von Salza returned it, adding an inclination of his head far more gracious than anything this Papal hangman could match. Being a nobleman from a long line of noblemen gave an advantage the Grand Master knew well, just as he knew the lack of it was a factor in the savagery of men like Dieter Balke. Lacking the ‘von’ prefix of even petty nobility, such warriors often chose to make up for their lack of breeding and blood by notoriety and other peoples’ blood. At least Balke was a knight, and occasionally remembered it; Arnald was only a Dominican priest, with an inflated idea of his own importance but without the laws of chivalry to moderate it.
It made him an easy man to hate.
The rite of purification began with a prayer and continued with psalms. The Grand Master and his officers didn’t join in and stood instead with arms folded, bowing their heads politely at appropriate moments. In the view of Father-Inquisitor Arnald they were already damned and burnt, and adding hypocrisy to the list of their crimes would have been a waste of time and effort.
Von Salza watched, remembering the words of a certain Saracen in Outremer. “Respected Grandmaster,” the man had said, speaking Norman French more easily than von Salza himself, “if your surgeons spent half the time cleansing their instruments as your priests do cleansing the souls of their patients, then fewer brave chevaliers would perish from attempts to heal them.”
That worthy Saracen had been no fanatic, a breed which infested both sides in the Holy Land. He’d simply been a physician expressing professional annoyance at the foolishness of waste. Better, said the Church, for a knight to die of a scratch in a state of grace after some priest had spent vital minutes gabbling over him, than to survive to fight for Christ again through the use of infidel knowledge.
Von Salza favoured the Saracen’s view. There were many such pragmatists in Palestine, and probably the most pragmatic of them all had been the excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich. He was less well-regarded than colourful characters like Richard Löwenherz of England but, being sensible rather than dramatic, he recovered Jerusalem and the Holy Places by negotiation after years of dashing courage had failed. That stuck in the throats of many, but Hermann von Salza had made no secret of his approval. The brethren of the Teutonic Order were the Emperor’s guard of honour and knightly escort at the Holy Sepulchre, and von Salza still wore his mark of commendation, the thin gold cross of the Kingdom of Jerusalem edged in black, fimbriated in the heraldic language of blazoning, on the hammer-headed cross of the Order.
Father Arnald sprinkled holy water to the cardinal points of the compass with a silver aspergillum, and began a lengthy benediction that was almost an exorcism directed at the Grand Master. Von Salza blessed himself absently and wondered if he might one day have to call on the Emperor for favour and protection once again.
If it had been Giacchetti’s and Arnald’s intention to be visually impressive as well as spiritually cleansing, they had succeeded. There were prayers and psalms, Te Deum and Non Nobis, musky smoke from the censer swung by Brother Johann, many signings with the cross in the air with fingers and incense smoke and across the floor with holy water, and much calling for aid to the appropriate saints and archangels.
Even though Hermann von Salza crossed himself at the proper responses, his gesture was automatic and prompted by the half-seen movement of other hands, often making him some fraction of a second late. The reason wasn’t disrespect: he was watching Baba Yaga, ready to stop any interruption by force if necessary. The mocking glitter in the witch’s eyes had warned him from the first instant, and he was relieved when the last prayer was intoned and the last psalm sung without incident.
Father Giacchetti stepped forward and leaned a handsome Italianate crucifix in a prominent place against the wall, said a Pater Noster in the hurried, slipshod Latin of a priest for whom the great prayer had become just one more part of any service in which it appeared, and gestured a dismissal to the impromptu choir of knights. Von Salza was quietly gratified that, though they first bowed to the Papal envoys, all five then turned to him and slammed a perfect salute before taking their leave.
It proved… something.
Then Baba Yaga stood up. Squirming off the corner seat where she’d perched with her bony legs drawn up well clear of the splashes of holy water, she advanced on the crucifix and stalked all around it, subjecting the silverwork and its anguished subject to a close scrutiny.
“Why,” she said at last, “do you believe a Russian Firebird would be disturbed by the presence of such an image? It’s just the supposed execution of the presumed son of a desert peoples’ god.” There were gasps, even an oath or two, and much crossing of breasts. She swung on Father Arnald, one thin arm stabbing out at his face like a spear so that the Dominican flinched backwards, grasping the heavy pectoral cross he wore around his neck and raising it like a shield between them.
“Yet you and your so-Holy Inquisition,” she shrilled, “burn the people who worship that same god, and you call your executions ‘Acts of Faith’. You honour this image with fire, and you expect the image will frighten Fire. Know this, inquisitor: there was fire before your god made the world, and there will be fire to eat the world when your god is long forgotten. So when all’s said and done,” she slapped at the crucifix with her open hand so it scraped crookedly against the wall, “what use is this?”
Father Arnald showed more courage than Hermann von Salza would have given him credit for when he stepped past the witch to set the holy image straight. Certainly he’d come to Castle Thorn prepared to accuse, and condemn if necessary, with no more force to back his words than an old monk and a pretty boy. Perhaps the inquisitor knew, as von Salza had already guessed, that her supposed rage was no more than the same ugly teasing she’d already tried.
“That you have to ask the question, hag,” said Arnald softly, “tells me that any answer I might give is far beyond your comprehension. But rest assured, we of the Holy Apostolic Office will endeavour to enlighten you. If you play with fire, you’ll be burned.”
“Not by such as you.” Baba Yaga leered at him and turned her back for whatever dagger he dared to stick in it. There was no chance of that, and von Salza didn’t even tense himself to prevent it. Arnald was an inquisitor, who did his violence at second hand. Baba Yaga was safe enough, and knew it.
She set about lighting first the circle of candles, then oils and scented gums in a metal dish. Their perfumes were almost nauseatingly sweet, so that when they mingled with the fragrance of holy incense and the smell of burning, the result became drifting skeins of smoke that pricked at nostrils and made eyes water. Baba Yaga inhaled the sickly heaviness as if there was some nourishment in it, and grinned so the rust on her ragged teeth gleamed wetly in the candlelight.
Then she spoke a phrase in jarring, dissonant words that seemed all cons
onants, and drew symbols in coloured powder on the floor until their complexity rivalled the illuminations of an Irish missal. Finally she clapped her hands, cried a single harsh word to the empty air and waited. The candleflames fluttered, then the candles themselves sagged as the temperature in the library soared past that of midsummer in Jerusalem. Harsh light and harsher shadows filled the room.
And suddenly the cage was full of Firebird.
The grey outline of its iron bars wavered and seemed to billow outward, as though they were restraining the bird’s heat as much as they restrained its wings. Both of those constrictions seemed to anger it, because the Firebird stamped its monstrous glowing talons against the wooden platter and the floor of the cage – von Salza saw sparks go spitting from the iron bars and realized why they had been raised on bricks – and threw back its head in a high, shrill screech like that of a hawk the Grand Master had once owned.
Then the hackles rose on his neck and he crossed himself again with absolute sincerity, for there were words in that wild, savage voice, words neither in Russian nor High German, but words he could understand.
“Once more you have called me, witch,” cried the Firebird, “and once more I have come at your bidding!”
“Then take the offerings laid before you,” said Baba Yaga in a voice whose harshness was a sharp contrast to her normal ingratiating tones, “and make your offering to me.”
The Firebird looked from side to side in the confines of its cage. The platter was charring black, its surface acrawl with embers like tiny glowing insects, and the smouldering horn cup filled the air with stink. Cutting through that heavy organic smell was the sharper tang of alcohol coming to a rolling boil. Von Salza had smelt it before, during a fire among the storage in Castle Starkenberg, and had never forgotten the source or what happened next. That cup contained Kornschnaps, the harsh grain spirit drunk by sentries to keep them warm in chilly weather, and it wouldn’t boil for very long.
Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 22
