The House of War and Witness

by Mike Carey

  I knelt beside his bed and put a hand on his throat. Etalia yelped in alarm – the gesture is a strange one, and easy to misinterpret. I explained to her that I was feeling the movement of his humours, whose vigour is a broad indicator of health or sickness. And I reassured her that the passage of vital spirits through the canals of the boy’s chest and gorge seemed promisingly rapid and forceful.

  I might have suggested a phlebotomy, but forbore to do so. I had read widely among classical sources, if not deeply, and was aware of how contentious bloodletting had been to the ancients. Only in our own day had it become unquestioned orthodoxy.

  Instead, I examined the vomitus more closely. I found black threads there, in among the remains of food and the boy’s natural effluvia. Melancholia must be the natural diagnosis, and yet that tended to progress over a period of weeks or months. The violence, the sudden onset of the boy’s symptoms suggested some other, more proximate cause for his current crisis. I asked Etalia what Tomas had eaten the night before, and she gave me a most exact account. Only what everyone around the table had eaten, she said. The bread and the smoked oscypek cheese and a small bowl of barley groats. And what had he drunk? Only water. Not even the small beer that was on the table, though Alojzy had offered him some.

  At this point we were interrupted by the arrival of two of the lay brothers. They entered in haste, and told us that the abbot required our presence in the great hall. He had heard of Tomas’s affliction and wished to speak with us about it.

  It was apparent from the first that Father Ignacio had an agenda, and that it concerned me. He asked the Lauzens how much contact I had had with Tomas both on the road and then once we had arrived within the abbey itself. He took particular interest in the digestive powder I had given to Frau Lauzen to administer to Tomas, and raised his eyebrows when he heard that I was the last to say goodnight to him.

  In short, as you’ve probably guessed, he accused me of poisoning the child. When I asked him why he thought I would do such a thing, he answered that I was a Jew. A Jew would commit any vileness against Christian folk for no other reason than innate wickedness and perversity.

  I appealed to fact and to reason – two crutches that would not carry me. I reminded the father abbot that I had renounced my religion. And I pointed out that Tomas had begun to show the symptoms of his illness before I gave the nostrum to his mother. Before I said goodnight to him, for that matter.

  ‘But you sat opposite the boy at table,’ the abbot responded, glaring down on me from the eminence of a joint stool set on a wooden dais. It was a pathetic throne indeed, and I almost laughed at his pretension, but the threat to my person was far from amusing. Father Ignacio had already sent word to the local landowner, Count Kurnatowski, requesting that one of the count’s reeves come to Pokoj to sit on the matter. At such a hearing the abbot’s word would carry a great deal of weight, and mine none at all. And against the reeve’s arrival, he ordered me confined to one of the monks’ cells with the door barred from the outside.

  Here at least I was able to assert myself against his authority, by reminding him that it had limits. He was a functionary of the church, not of the state, and though his influence was vast his temporal power was circumscribed. If I had sworn myself to the order, he would have power over my body and my soul. I had not, and he did not. I refused to surrender myself into the brothers’ hands, and being mostly aged men of a peaceful and meditative bent, they did not press the point.

  Yet I was conscious as I walked from the hall of my fellow pilgrims’ eyes upon me. There was a muttering where I passed, and some two or three spat upon the ground as men do when a hearse goes by to make Death look the other way. Even the Lauzens wouldn’t meet my gaze, and when I tried to speak to them they turned away.

  I have said that I had little time for the doctrines of the church, or indeed any religion. Common sense prevented me from seeing the hand of God in a world so disordered and arbitrary as the one I saw around me every day. That same common sense told me now that there was no good way for this to end. Even if Tomas rallied and made a full recovery, the wheels of church and state had been set in motion. They were unlikely to stop until they’d run their course.

  I had been thinking about the boy’s sickness, coming so soon after our arrival at the abbey. Its abrupt onset suggested food poisoning, but he had eaten nothing at table that had not also been eaten by others. Unless – which was always a possibility – his mother had lied to me.

  I made a circuit of the abbey grounds. They were not extensive, and I had a clear sense by then of what it was I was looking for. In a secluded corner, close to the stable yard, there was a patch of weeds whose flowers grew in tight, white clusters like the explosion of sparks from damp wood when it finally catches fire. Apocynum. Dogbane. Dimly, I began to see a way of saving myself. Not with the innocence of the dove – though I was free from any taint of blame – but with the wisdom of the serpent.

  I lingered in the stables a little while longer. Then I returned to the abbey and gave myself into the hands of the brothers, saying I was ready to be judged.

  But they were not ready yet to judge me. For all that he hated me, Father Ignacio wished to adhere to the forms of law. He had me committed to a cell to await the reeve’s arrival. The door did not lock, but two men guarded it constantly in case I should change my mind and attempt to leave.

  Several hours after my incarceration I heard shouts and running footsteps, which persisted for some time. It seemed that a further outrage had been committed. Erment, the Lauzens’ cow, had been slaughtered in her stall. The guards outside my door were questioned as to whether I had left at any point, but they were able to say that I had not. Possibly, they hazarded, I had killed the cow in the afternoon before I surrendered myself into captivity.

  In the morning I was brought before the reeve, Meister Ruprecht Ganso. It was in the refectory, the largest room in the abbey. The space was needed in order to accommodate the audience, which consisted of most of the brothers and all of my fellow pilgrims. The tables had been removed, the benches set out in rows. Tomas was there, in the front row between his parents, wrapped in a frieze blanket. The stare he bestowed on me was full of fear and uncertainty.

  The reeve set out the terms of the accusation. The Lauzens and others testified that I had sat close to the boy on the night when he fell ill, and had plentiful opportunities to add poison to his food. Etalia added that I had given her a powder (she said sold, not given, which perhaps hurt me most of all) and that she had stirred this simple into a glass of milk and given it to Tomas in the course of the night.

  The reeve asked me whether I denied any of this. Not a word, I assured him.

  ‘Then have you any evidence to offer in your own defence?’ he demanded.

  ‘None.’

  A babel of voices arose in the wake of this word, most of them demanding a judgment. The reeve raised his hand to stem the tumult, and I spoke again into the silence that followed.

  ‘I ask for an ordeal.’

  ‘An ordeal?’ The reeve was somewhat scandalised. ‘How will an ordeal serve when your guilt is already clear?’

  ‘If I’m guilty, it will serve me not at all. It will merely remove all doubt.’

  ‘There is no doubt!’ Father Ignacio proclaimed. But other voices called out for fire and water to be brought. Some of the pilgrims were on their feet now, shaking their fists and stamping their feet upon the floor. The reeve saw which way the wind was blowing and gave order for a fire to be lit and a cauldron set upon it.

  This being the refectory, the order was swiftly obeyed. The fireplace, indeed, was already set for the evening and only needed the stroke of a tinderbox. An iron trivet was brought by one of the cook’s boys, and then a cooking pot big enough to make pottage for a great multitude. As they set the trivet on the fire and the pot on the trivet, the audience moved the benches around to face this new spectacle.

  Then this same serving boy filled the pot with water from the
well in the abbey grounds. I stepped forward before I was even told to, and took my place before the fire. But before I put my hand into the water, I turned to look at the Lauzens. The parents, first. And then the boy.

  ‘Tomas,’ I said. ‘Do you believe I tried to harm you?’

  ‘It matters nothing what the boy believes,’ Father Ignacio cried, perhaps genuinely indignant or perhaps trying to drown out any answer.

  Tomas Lauzen shook his head, his eyes on mine.

  ‘Your faith will give me strength,’ I said. ‘And in the face of your innocence, all evil will find itself abashed.’

  I thrust my hand into the pot. My hand and half my forearm, for it was very deep.

  ‘The water has not boiled yet!’ Father Ignacio sneered, as though I was trying to cheat in some way.

  ‘Then let us wait it out,’ I said.

  A watched pot, they say, never boils – and surely no pot was ever as closely watched as this one. Yet it warmed quickly enough, and steam began to rise from it. I swirled the water around with my hand, as though I was stirring a bath, and let my gaze travel across the faces of my accusers. For by then, with one exception, there was nobody in the room who doubted my guilt.

  They began to doubt, perhaps, as the steam started to rise from the water and my face remained calm.

  When the water boiled, people gasped and cried out. But I kept my hand in the fire for a good while longer, not moving at all – except for my eyes, which now found the father abbot. He was staring at me in fear and consternation.

  Finally, I withdrew my hand from the roiling water and displayed it to the crowd. It was whole and unburned. It was not even red from the heat.

  ‘Am I innocent?’ I asked.

  ‘He needs to be fully immersed,’ Father Ignacio protested. ‘Not just his hand, but his whole—’

  ‘Whose court is this?’ I bellowed over him. ‘My question was for Count Kurnatowski, represented here by his reeve, Meister Ganso.’

  Sensible of the abbot’s slight, the reeve nodded. Sensible of the abbot’s status, the reeve made answer to him, not to me. ‘You agreed to the rite of ordeal, Father Ignacio, and so you must abide by it. The Jew is found innocent, and these proceedings are concluded.’

  There was a great noise and perturbation in the hall, which rose to a crescendo and then subsided as I raised both hands – the wet and the dry – and shook my head. ‘It is not concluded,’ I called out. ‘Unless the count’s law says it is enough to exonerate the innocent. What of the guilty?’

  ‘What of them?’ the reeve asked me testily.

  ‘They must be found,’ I said, ‘and punished. Someone tried to poison Tomas. Whoever this was, they sat at table with him and broke bread with him. Someone in this room is – by will and intent – a murderer. God forbid we should rise before we find him.’

  Murmurs of assent came from the pilgrims, and even from some of the friars.

  ‘I can’t question everyone here,’ the reeve protested.

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But the fire can.’

  The reeve gasped. ‘You suggest … putting everyone to ordeal?’

  I shook my head emphatically. ‘Not everyone. Only until one is found to be guilty.’

  The reeve and the father abbot looked at one another. It could easily be read in their faces that they felt they were losing control of these proceedings. ‘Masters,’ I said, ‘hear me out. These others’ – I gestured to the pilgrims – ‘are little versed in matters of law and religion. They see a fire, and a seething cauldron, and they fear it. But you’re different. You know that God finds out the truth and makes it manifest.’

  ‘Indeed he does,’ the father abbot agreed, nonetheless giving me a look forked with enmity.

  ‘Then put your hand into the fire,’ I told him, ‘and show them the way.’

  The abbot was stupefied at this suggestion. ‘My innocence is not in question!’ he yelped. ‘It does not need to be tested!’

  ‘No?’ I said. ‘What of your faith, Father Ignacio? Does that not need to be tested either? I would have said otherwise. If I, a Jew, didn’t fear the flame, why should you?’

  ‘I do not fear it!’ the abbot roared.

  I took a step back from the fire, and with outspread arms invited him to approach it. ‘Show us,’ I said.

  I meant only to humble him, but I had reckoned without the stern and stony virtue of the man. Full of hate he might be, but he was full of belief too. He hated Jews for scriptural reasons he thought impeccable.

  Ignacio rose, and stepped down from the dais.

  He rolled up the sleeve of his gown with finicky care, staring the while into the steam that rose from the rolling water.

  Having exposed his flesh, he stood where he was for a few moments in total stillness. Everyone in the room seemed seized with the same paralysis. Nobody even breathed.

  Then Ignacio thrust his hand into the pot.

  I watched the face rather than the hand. I know too well what boiling water does to flesh. I saw the shock on the father abbot’s face – the realisation, blossoming in sudden agony, that his faith was not strong enough nor his innocence unblemished.

  His shriek as he wrenched his hand back rose every echo of that ancient room in appalled protest. His sleeve, flopping down again, caught the rim of the cauldron and upended it, so that those nearest had to retreat hurriedly from the boiling water that slopped across the floor.

  Two of the lay brothers led Ignacio – carried him, almost – away to his rooms. He was hugging his hand to his chest and his face was slack with shock. The reeve, almost as shaken, declared the proceedings at an end, but forbore to pronounce on the abbot’s guilt or innocence. There are, of course, two different dispensations for Christians and for Jews – and for the church and the laity.

  There’s little else to tell. I parted company from the pilgrimage that day and took another path. I did not speak to the boy Tomas again or even see him, although he wrote to me some years later and we entered into a brief correspondence. His mother I did see, when I went to fetch my horse from the stables. She was washing with well water the pail in which she had formerly collected the milk of the cow, Erment, for her son’s libations.

  I gave her a nod, which she returned, and it seemed we would leave each other’s lives with no more said than that. But as I led my horse out through the doors she called out to me, and I turned. ‘I’m sorry, Meister Gelbfisc, that I suspected you,’ she said, ‘and that I spoke out against you. It was wrong of me.’

  I shrugged. ‘It was your grief and concern for your son that spoke. You don’t owe me any apology.’

  She wiped her eyes with a trembling hand. ‘I thought …’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what to think. Was it the abbot, then? Did he try to poison Tomas so as to have an accusation to throw against you?’

  ‘Is that what people are saying?’ I asked.

  Her answer was only a look, but it was an eloquent look.

  I might not have spoken even then. But there was such misery in her face. I could not leave her in a world like that when I possessed the truth that would free her from it. ‘There is your poisoner,’ I said. And I pointed to the patch of weeds beside the stable wall.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Frau Lauzen said.

  ‘That’s dogbane, madam. It’s a very potent pharmacon. The oil of dogbane twists the entrails and blinds the eyes. And it collects in the milk of those animals that feed on it, becoming even stronger through the titration of the animals’ own guts. It would have killed Erment eventually – my slaughtering her was a mercy in more ways than one – but until it did, her milk was killing Tomas.’

  Frau Lauzen’s face became a mummers’ show in which many different emotions were successively portrayed. ‘Would have killed …?’ she echoed me. I made no further answer but left her to her musings.

  ‘And that’s the story?’ Drozde demanded. ‘It seems unfinished.’ Gelbfisc held up a hand as if to entreat her patience.

  It was seven year
s later that I received Tomas’s letter. I had all but forgotten these events, or at least I did not think of them very often. Its arrival surprised me for many reasons, not least because it must have taken him some effort to find my address.

  He told me in the letter that his father and mother were both thriving. His father, not so young as he was and failing in strength, had taken Tomas on as an apprentice, but it turned out Tomas had no head for trade. He had entered the church instead, and was prospering there as the priest of a small parish in the municipality of Reshen.

  But science, and chiefly chimick, was his hobby. Was it not true, he asked me, that certain oils, themselves boiling at higher temperatures than water, might when combined with water produce an immiscible compound that boiled at a much lower temperature? He had heard that the oil of indigo, for example, had this property. And, this being the case, was it not also true that if a man secreted up his sleeve a cake of such oil, and thrust his arm into a cauldron, the water might reach a full boil without ever becoming hot enough to hurt him? But that afterwards, the oil being sublimed away, the water would reach its proper temperature and the natural order of things be restored?

  I wrote back, briefly, to wish Meister Lauzen joy and good fortune in his chosen career. The church, I told him, needs prelates of open and enquiring mind, and I was sure he would do much good in his life and bring credit to his family.

  Yes, I said, in answer to his query. Such tricks could be performed – not with indigo, which would make a difference of only a few degrees to the boiling point, but with other tinctures not dissimilar. But I reminded him that God watches all, and will not permit base stratagems to prosper unless it be his will.

  I added that I was only sorry for the cow, which was a dumb beast and guilty of nothing more than pursuing its natural appetites. Father Ignacio, being a man and therefore possessed of wit and conscience, deserved no such consideration.