Irina

by Philip Warren

  Just as they neared the Church of the Heart of Jesus, a lone rider galloped toward them. Aggressively, the man reined in his horse just short of Andrezski’s own mount, blocking any forward progress. For a moment or two, they exchanged words, none of them agreeable, before the rider turned and rode back to Poznan.

  Andrezski turned to see that Brother Paulus was curious about what had just transpired. “Yes, Brother?”

  “It may not be my concern, Pan Andrezski, but who was that very unpleasant man whose every word carried a sneer?”

  Andrezski laughed. “Brother Paulus, you do not mask your observations. You must learn to do so! That man, Tomasz Wodowicz, is the son of our own Pan Wodowicz at the monastery.

  He is not like his father, as you have seen!” Andrezski laughed again.

  “And what did he want? Are we in danger?”

  “I think not, Brother. This man, Tomasz—Tomasz the Terrible, they used to call him—is in service to Bishop Tirasewicz now, and at the moment, he thinks it his task to harass us. Why? Because we share no profits with his master. I think your Father Kaminski might tell you a thing or two about that,” he said, then thought to add, “Watch out for him. He will lurk in the shadows. Do your good work of protecting our wares, and all will be well.”

  …

  The solemnity and civility of the wind-swept November days in Paris were shattered with just a few words from on high. Once again, Europe’s nobles gathered in the Great Hall of le Palais du Louvre immediately after their mid-day repast. The Emperor convened the group with a prayer for resolution of the papal imbroglio. It was a nice touch, Madrosh thought, but misleading in the extreme.

  Everyone attending glittered, or thought they did, in all their finery. Varying shades of royal purple abounded, and those without crowns made sure to show off brocaded, tinseled damasks abundantly ornamented with lynx or civet furs. Dotted throughout the throng were elderly men dressed entirely in scarlet tinged with gold piping. Atop their heads were deep-pink zucchettos, a symbol of rank for the princes of the church then present.

  According to all that Madrosh had learned—and later relayed to Irina and Jan—the French king’s own theologians had decided that the election of the College of Cardinals in Rome was sacrosanct, and therefore, the only valid pope was the Archbishop of Bari, Prigamo Bartolomeo, as Urban VI, who had been selected on April 9 of that year. Yes, they acknowledged, Urban was a man of the people, a man of God, who, in its wisdom, the College chose to remedy the ills of Holy Mother Church. Most certainly, his election to fill the shoes of the Fisherman, the unbroken line of succession from Peter the apostle, could not be overthrown just because some of the French cardinals wanted to protect their wealth. Moreover, such a precedent of electing a pope of convenience caused them all a shudder of despair.

  Still others argued that the election by French cardinals of Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, only two months before, was the only valid expression of the holy men free from the mob intimidation that marked the earlier Roman election. Moreover, they pointed out that politically, it was much more to French advantage to have a direct influence over a pope on French soil, Clement or any other.

  It soon became apparent to all that Charles V, King of France, had already pondered these arguments, and made his own decision. Amongst most of the heads of state present, there appeared to be consensus for Urban, but at that time and place, the most important national voice was commanded by Charles of France rather than that of his uncle, the other Charles and Holy Roman Emperor.

  Keen observers would have noticed men at arms posted every ten feet or so the length of the hall. Each man wore mail and polished armor, carried a short sword at their waist belt, and held a lance with a tip honed to a fine point. Madrosh thought them there not just to display power, but to remind Charles’s guests to conduct themselves with care.

  On his throne, Charles spoke, as always, in the third person. As he did so, he cradled his aching arm in hopes of alleviating the pain. “His Majesty Charles, King of all the French, has decided that Cardinal Robert of Geneva, recently elected at Avignon as Clement VII, is the legitimate Pontiff for all Christendom. In this nation and in all its territories, counties, and states, now and in all those that shall be under the reign of Charles, Pope Clement VII and no other shall be recognized by any or all persons giving homage to the King.”

  At that, the chamberlain struck the floor with the Great Scepter. There were no cheers. Instead, there were murmurs amongst the assemblage, all present knowing there could be no opposition. Those from other nations might protest with impunity, but those within the domain of France kept a stoic, stony silence. The King stood and, with quiet dignity, left the hall, his fateful decision deadening the already chilled air around those remaining.

  Dismay and confusion reigned thenceforward. Within weeks, one by one, the monarchs and, eventually, the emperor himself, departed for home, leaving behind a deep wound dividing their only unifying force, the one church of God.

  …

  Tomasz Wodowicz knew the bishop would be angry, and to a large extent, it bothered him not at all. Though he was now the bishop’s man, he hadn’t forgotten the so-called man of God had forsaken him at a time when he needed it most. His loyalty to the Antony Tirasewicz was barely skin deep.

  As he had expected, Bishop Tirasewicz fumed, his nostrils flared. “How dare they!?” he shouted, challenging the only other man who could feel the hot breath of his anger. “For weeks, I, Antony Tirasewicz, Bishop of Poznan, have had to listen to churchmen, nobles, and petty merchants talk about the marvel of plain and colored glass fashioned in frames used to keep out the weather.”

  Wodowicz stood mute.

  The bishop mimicked Andrezski’s admirers: “Why, these new windows not only keep out the rain, the wind, and the snow, they also let in the light! Just think,” some have said to me, “we’ll save on candlelight, and this winter, we will be warm by our hearths!”

  “Those vile bastards,” he went on, letting Tomasz Wodowicz see a side of the churchman few outside the man’s study would ever glimpse. “Your harassment has had no effect, Wodowicz! I thought you were the one they called ‘Terrible,’” he said, mocking his underling.

  “Your Grace, everyone has come to know I am in your service now that the duke is gone. How would it be for people to see me interfere with a man and an invention so popular with so many? My doing so would only make you enemies, My Lord Bishop!”

  “You have failed me, Tomasz Wodowicz, the not-so-Terrible,” he said, mocking him again. “You have done nothing to add to my—er—the church’s coffers and neither have you elevated my prestige in any way.”

  Wodowicz said nothing.

  “Here is something else you should know. It is now November, and I suspect, given what I hear from Paris, Duke Zygmunt and his people will return here in the spring.”

  “Return in the spring, you say?” Wodowicz went cold. The duke should be dead or in a Hungarian prison!

  “Yes, my good man, and you know what that means. You give me no reason whatsoever not to turn you over to him so that at last you will enjoy the earthly punishment you deserve.” The bishop stared at his prey. “Can you give me one good reason I should not do so?”

  His heart beating fast, Wodowicz decided two could play that game. Cocking his thumbs in his sword belt, he displayed his infamous smirk. “Perhaps I can, Bishop. How can I be sure you’ll keep your word?”

  “Don’t be insolent with me, you scoundrel. If you have something of value for me, say it—and take your chances.” Seated at his desk, he looked up at the man before him, the set of his jaw framing the challenge laid upon his minion.

  Wodowicz nodded. “I’ll wager you’d like to know about Irina Kwasniewska, now wouldn’t you?”

  The bishop’s jaw dropped. He stood, his hands on his desk to balance his anger. He inhaled deeply. “So, Wodowicz, you have
me.”

  He nodded, wary.

  “What is it, then? I have learned there is no noble family with that name from Gniezno. Your information had better be good.”

  Wodowicz laughed. “Your information is correct, Your Grace. It was much simpler, after all,” he said, pausing for effect. “I’m quite sure she was a serving girl in the Joselewicz household.”

  “Nonsense. The girl is Catholic—I gave her Holy Communion myself.”

  “That’s because she comes from a peasant family in St. Michael,” he said, “so of course, she is Catholic—but she worked for the Jews.”

  The bishop pounded the desk, staring into the wall past his bargainer. Then, slowly, he sat down. Nodding in understanding, he said, “So she somehow pilfered some of the Joselewicz gold! How else to explain her wealth!? Madrosh, that scoundrel, must have known!” He was breathing hard, his chest heaving.

  “Tak!”

  “Well done, Wodowicz.” He paused, catching his breath. “St. Michael, you say! Shimanski! He should have known, too. I’ll deal with him later,” he snarled. He turned to Wodowicz. “Very well, you’ll be spared—but you’ll have to leave the city. I do not want to have to make explanations to the duke.” Then, apparently, he remembered the other reason for his anger. His voice rising along with his frame, the bishop demanded, “Where is this man Andrezski now?”

  “Your Grace, they are not far away. I am told they are cutting and installing new glass in the house of Henryk Mazurski, the leather dealer.”

  “Mazurski! A leather scraper?! A mere peasant in new clothes with new money? This rectory has not been windowed as yet, and the skin man is getting them?” His rage grew. Tirasewicz stalked out the door even as he called for his horse, his furor growing by the moment. Once mounted, he clasped his riding crop and trotted up the lane. “Come along!” he commanded Wodowicz.

  A few minutes later, the bishop rounded the corner of a new street called Merchants’ Row. All the shops and houses had been built in the last year or so, and were of the latest designs with large rooms for living. It was the perfect place for Jerzy Andrezski to market his wares, Tomasz knew. Installing such glass in one house would soon mean cries for the same luxury from all the others within view. As his master galloped ahead, Tomasz hung back.

  His long black robes flying behind him, Bishop Tirasewicz cropped his black horse. Just ahead was Andrezski’s four-wheeled cart, and Tomasz held himself close enough to see the man perched atop the driver’s bench shiver in the November cold.

  …

  The bishop’s horse clattered across the new cobbles and came to a sharp halt near the glass maker’s cart. His face sheened in anger, Bishop Tirasewicz dismounted and took a few steps closer. “Where is Andrezski!” he demanded of the driver who yanked the reins to steady the horses.

  “Why, Your Grace,” the driver began with a half-smile, his full attention still on the horses gone skittish in front of him. Finally, he said, “He is inside with Master Mazurski. If you’d be good enough to wait…”

  “Wait! Wait? You insolent bug. You’d make your bishop wait?” He swung his riding crop at the driver. Missing his target, he began striking out wildly in his anger. The crack of the leather against the air resounded in the street, as another of his lashes missed the driver, but struck one of the horses. Steam filled the air as the horses lurched and panted their warm breath into the cold day. A small number of people had appeared, including Jerzy Andrezski and his newest customer. Seeing the bishop’s frenzy, their mouths hung open.

  Struck again, the animal closest to the bishop snorted and leapt ahead, yanking the other horse along with it. The driver used all of his strength to control his startled animals and managed to keep them from going more than a few feet, but the violence of their movement was enough to loosen the leather thongs used to secure the large glass rounds to the wooden ribs on the cart’s upper level.

  On racks below were two more layers of rounds to be cut and installed, all in a particular order to keep the load in balance. As they had been cut to size for Mazurski’s windowpanes earlier that morning, the remaining edge pieces, each shaped like a quarter moon, had been tossed loosely on top of the rick. These leftover pieces, unsecured, had no value and would be returned to the monks for a second melt.

  As the horses jerked to and fro, two of the quarter moon pieces left their nests and took flight.

  One of the projectiles landed harmlessly onto the cobbles, shards tinkling the air. Not so, the other. Where Bishop Tirasewicz had positioned himself foretold his fate. The second quarter moon, a weapon on its own path of destruction, pierced the churchman’s richly embroidered black garments, wedging deep into his chest.

  The bishop stumbled backward, surprise frozen on his face as he struggled to remain upright. His lips moved, but no sound came. Grasping the quarter moon with both hands, he wrenched it free, granting the air a gush of red to match the buttons on his cassock. He looked up only to glimpse his own demise.

  In a wink of time, a full round slid free of the cart, and like a shining, sharp-edged platter, it caught the bishop’s neck, partially separating his head from the rest of his body.

  The crowd gasped, their breath taken away by a life lost at no hand but the dead man’s own. The mass of black stained by a stream of scarlet suggested not the end of a man’s life, but the essence of his soul seeping into the dirt between the cobbles.

  Tomasz the Terrible saw it all, and while he would not have wished such an end on any man, he felt a certain satisfaction about the churchman who denied him at St. Stephen’s. Quietly, he backed his horse away and faded from the gawkers around the corpse. To himself, he muttered, “Tirasewicz may be finished, but I will have another day.”

  …

  In early December, the name of Stanislaus Brezchwa was entered into the baptismal records of the Church of St. Denis, the infant having entered the world in the morning hours of All Saints’ Day, 1378—several weeks earlier than expected. Kalmus had done her job well as a midwife, and so mother and child were healthy and strong. With blue eyes and soft, auburn hair, little Stashu reminded Irina not of Berek, she said, but of his parents—there was a glint in the baby’s eye one could not mistake.

  Overjoyed to have become a husband and father all in the same month, Jan Brezchwa could not have been happier had the boy been his very own. He had no desire to ask Irina about Stanislaus’s forebears, savoring his own secret in the matter. His new wife was comely, he had a handsome new son, and Irina had months before made him aware of the fortune she carried with her. It was he, in fact, who’d arranged to have her ball of melded metal cut for her use. Although Duke Zygmunt, his patron, had been most generous with him, a squire without patrimony could not have asked for more.

  The duke was a proud substitute grandfather, and both Zygmunt and Jan remarked just how fair, how “Polish” the boy looked. The duke was even heard to say he’d be delighted to have him as a knight in his own household. Throughout it all, Irina kept her thoughts to herself, and never considered sharing with Jan her conclusions about the duke’s role in the slaughter of Poznan’s Jews.

  As Father Madrosh washed Holy Water across the infant’s forehead and pronounced him a child of Christ, Little Stashu Brezchwa looked up at his admirers with a faraway gaze suggesting a vision far beyond his age.

  …

  Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, was one of the first to leave the city of Paris. Though he departed with disappointment and reproach, he was powerless to change the king’s ruling on the papacy, which reminded everyone how little real power the occupant of the Empire’s throne enjoyed. One thing was certain to him, however. His position was secure, and he believed that though his nephew had made a very wrong decision in supporting Clement, it would soon sort itself out. Before he left France, there was one thing in his power he would not forget to do.

  On their travels west from Tangermunde, t
he emperor had had ample opportunity to observe the members of his large party, and had taken a somewhat distant interest in one of the women with child. He watched with both pleasure and admiration when Madrosh, counselor to the Polish nobleman, quietly and gently brought her together with a very eligible young squire. In an age of arranged marriages for convenience, power, and greed, a marriage for love proved a rare thing—of that he was certain, and it gave him great pleasure.

  About to take his leave, the emperor made a point to summon the young couple into his royal presence, and he arranged the audience to be a private one.

  The surprised Brezchwas had been asked to bring along their little Stashu, barely a month old. In the best finery they could manage, they met Charles IV in his chambers. There, too, purples and blues decorated the walls and even the chairs on which they sat. Because they had become so used to light, highly sophisticated court conversation, they were again surprised when the Emperor spoke to them in Polish, and complimented them on their decision to wed.

  It was a short visit, ending only when the emperor made them a special presentation. “I give to Master Stanislaus Brezchwa this token of my hope for him and his descendants.” It was a small cross of gold, faced with brilliant white diamonds. The Emperor pinned it on the baby’s gown himself and said to the wide-eyed infant, “May the light in the eyes of God himself guide your way.”

  …

  Jerzy Andrezski had been profoundly affected by the bishop’s grisly demise. Those who had been gathered around, including the Mazurski family, all blessed themselves in true Catholic fashion. Yet Andrezski had to admit he wasn’t sure if people were asking blessings for the soul of the dead man before them, or thanking God for having taken this particular creature into eternity.