The Tower of Fools

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  It turned out not to be so easy.

  Dorota Faber wasn’t much use, the old rabbi none at all. Although the scrawny mare doggedly beat her hooves on the rotten timbers and leaned into the collar, they barely shifted the wagon two yards. Reynevan was unable to lift the conveyance by himself. They finally sat down by the broken axle and stared panting at the gudgeon and lamprey teeming at the bottom of the stream.

  “So where do your world travels take you?” Reynevan asked the ginger-haired woman.

  “I’m looking for work,” she replied freely, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. “For now, since Master Jew graciously took me aboard, I’ll go with him to Strzelin, and then, who knows, maybe even to Wrocław itself. In my line of work, I can find employment anywhere, though I’d prefer the best…”

  “In your… line of work?” Reynevan began to twig. “You mean…”

  “Exactly. I am, as you would say, a strumpet. Until recently employed at the Crown whorehouse in Brzeg.”

  “I understand.” Reynevan nodded seriously. “And you are travelling together? Rabbi—you took as a passenger a… a woman of easy virtue?”

  “Shouldn’t I have done so?” Rabbi Hiram opened his eyes wide. “Well, I did. For, my young lord, I’d have looked a right prick if I hadn’t.”

  Footsteps boomed on the moss-covered timbers.

  “Problem?” asked one of the three men who had set foot on the bridge. “Do you need some help?”

  “It would come in handy,” admitted Reynevan, although he didn’t like the look of the potential helpers’ disagreeable faces and shifty eyes one little bit. With good reason, it turned out, as soon as several pairs of powerful hands had made quick work of pushing the wagon into the meadow beyond the bridge.

  “There!” said the tallest of the characters, chin covered in stubble, shaking a stout stick. “Job done, now it’s time to pay. Unhitch the horse from the wagon, Jew boy, take off your coat, give me your purse. And you, lordling, off with your jerkin and boots. And you, my lovely, off with everything, you’ll be paying in kind. Strip!”

  His comrades guffawed, baring rotten teeth. Reynevan stooped over and grasped the stake he had used to lever the wagon.

  “Look at the bold young master.” The unshaven man pointed his stick at him. “Life still hasn’t learned him that when someone orders you to hand your boots over, you do it. Because you can walk barefoot, but not on broken legs. Come on! Let’s ’ave ’im!”

  The thugs nimbly dodged the stake Reynevan was swinging. One ran up from behind and knocked him to the ground with a skilful kick to the backs of his knees, then himself cried out and staggered, shielding his eyes from the fingernails of Dorota Faber, who was clinging to his back. Reynevan shielded himself from kicks and blows and tried to intervene when he saw one of the thugs punching the Jew. And then he saw a demon.

  The thugs began yelling. In terror.

  Whatever had set upon the thugs was not, of course, a demon. It was a huge pitch-black mastiff with a spiked collar around its neck. The dog rushed the thugs like a bolt of black lightning, attacking like a wolf rather than a mastiff. It bit deeply and repeatedly. On the calves. On the thighs. On the crotch. And when the men fell over, on their arms and faces. The men’s cries became horribly high-pitched. Spine-chilling.

  A piercing, modulating whistle rang out. The black mastiff immediately sprang away from the thugs and sat motionless, ears pricked up, like a figure made of anthracite.

  A horseman appeared on the bridge. He was wearing a short grey cloak fastened with a silver clasp, a tight doublet and a chaperon with a long liripipe draped over one shoulder.

  “When the sun appears above that spruce,” said the stranger in a powerful voice, straightening his modest frame in the saddle atop a black stallion, “I shall set Beelzebub on you, you blackguards. Since time is short and Beelzebub swift, I suggest speed. And advise against rest breaks.”

  The rogues didn’t need to be told twice. They fled into the forest, limping, groaning and glancing back fearfully. Beelzebub, appearing to know how to scare them even more, didn’t look at them, but at the sun and the top of the spruce.

  The horseman gently urged on his mount, and from the height of his saddle examined Hiram ben Eliezer, Dorota Faber and Reynevan, who was getting to his feet, feeling his ribs and wiping blood from his nose. The horseman scrutinised Reynevan particularly closely—which didn’t escape the lad’s notice.

  “Well, well,” their rescuer finally said. “A classic situation, straight from a fairy tale—a bog, a bridge, a wheel and a problem, and help arrives right on cue. You didn’t summon me, did you? Aren’t you afraid I’ll take out a devilish pact and make you sign it?”

  “No,” said the rabbi. “It’s not that particular fairy tale.”

  The horseman snorted.

  “I am Urban Horn,” he announced, looking straight at Reynevan. “Whom have my Beelzebub and I helped?”

  “Rabbi Hiram ben Eliezer from Brzeg.”

  “Dorota Faber.”

  “The Knight of the Cart.” Reynevan, in spite of everything, didn’t trust him.

  Urban Horn snorted again and shrugged.

  “I expect you’re heading towards Strzelin. I overtook another traveller on the road heading there. I suggest you beg a lift from him rather than hang around over a broken wheel till nightfall. It would be better. And safer.”

  Rabbi Hiram ben Eliezer gave his conveyance a last, lingering look, but nodded in agreement.

  “And now farewell.” The stranger’s gaze shifted to the forest and the top of the spruce. “Duty calls.”

  “I thought,” Reynevan offered, “it was only to frighten them…”

  The horseman looked him in the eyes, and his eyes were cold. Icy.

  “It was,” he admitted. “But I, Lancelot, never make idle threats.”

  The traveller Urban Horn mentioned turned out to be a priest, a fat man with a high tonsure, wearing a cloak trimmed with polecat fur, driving a large wagon.

  The priest reined in his horse, listened to their account from the box seat, examined the wagon with the broken axle, scrutinised each of the three people standing imploringly before him, and finally understood what they were asking.

  “You want a ride?” he finally said in great disbelief. “To Strzelin? On my wagon?”

  The three of them struck even more imploring poses.

  “I, Filip Granciszek of Oława, parish priest of Our Lady of Consolation, a good Christian and Catholic, am to invite onto my wagon a Jew, a whore and a vagabond?”

  Reynevan, Dorota Faber and Rabbi Hiram ben Eliezer looked at each other bashfully.

  “Oh, get on,” the priest finally announced dryly. “I’d look a right twat if I didn’t.”

  Not an hour had passed before Beelzebub, shining with dew, ran up beside the dun gelding pulling the priest’s wagon. And a little later, Urban Horn appeared on the road on his black horse.

  “I’ll ride with you as far as Strzelin,” he announced. “If, naturally, you have nothing against it.”

  No one did.

  No one asked about the fate of the rogues. And Beelzebub’s wise eyes gave away nothing.

  Or everything.

  They rode along the Strzelin highway, along the Oława valley, now among dense forests, now across moors and vast meadows. The mastiff Beelzebub ran in front like a footman, patrolling the road, occasionally vanishing into the forest where he ferreted around in the undergrowth. The black dog didn’t chase or bark at hares or jays, however, since that was clearly beneath him. Urban Horn, the mysterious stranger with the cold eyes riding alongside the wagon on his black horse, never had to call or rebuke the dog.

  Dorota Faber drove the priest’s wagon, which was being pulled by a dun gelding. The red-haired harlot from Brzeg begged the parish priest to let her and evidently regarded it as a kind of payment for the ride. And she drove splendidly, with great skill. Thus, Father Filip Granciszek, who was sitting beside her on the coachman
’s seat, could doze or converse without worrying about the conveyance. Reynevan and Rabbi Hiram ben Eliezer sat on sacks of oats and dozed or chatted.

  The Jew’s scrawny mare shambled at the rear.

  Thus, they rode, dozed, conversed, took breaks, conversed and dozed. They ate this and that. They downed a clay pitcher of vodka that Father Granciszek found among his chests. They drank another that Rabbi Hiram pulled from his overcoat.

  It quickly came to light that the parish priest and the Jew were travelling to Strzelin for almost the same reason: an audience with the canon of the Wrocław Chapter, who was visiting the city and the parish. While Father Granciszek had been summoned to present himself, the rabbi was visiting uninvited, hoping to be granted an audience. The parish priest was doubtful of his chances.

  “The reverend canon,” he said, “has a great deal of work there, cases and trials and endless audiences. Most trying times are upon us.”

  “As though they were ever easy,” said Dorota Faber, tugging on the reins.

  “I’m talking about trying times for the Church,” stressed Father Granciszek. “And for those of real faith, since the evil of heresy is spreading. You meet somebody, he greets you in God’s name, and you can’t tell if he’s a heretic. Did you say something, Rabbi?”

  “Love thy neighbour,” muttered Hiram ben Eliezer, possibly in his sleep. “The prophet Elijah may appear with any face he wants.”

  “Jewish philosophy.” Father Filip waved a contemptuous hand. “But I say: vigilance, work and prayer. For Saint Peter’s rock trembles and sways, and the evil of heresy is spreading.”

  “You’ve already said that, Pater.” Urban Horn reined in his horse to ride beside the wagon.

  “For it is the truth,” said Father Granciszek, now fully awake. “However many times it is said, it is the truth. Heresy is spreading, apostasy is multiplying. False prophets are springing up like mushrooms, ready to distort Divine Law with their false teachings. Verily, the apostle Paul wrote prophetically to Timothy: ‘For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.’ And they will claim, Christ have mercy, that they do what they do in the name of truth.”

  “Everything in this world,” Urban Horn observed casually, “occurs under the banner of the fight for truth. And though it usually concerns all sorts of truths, one truth benefits from it. The real truth.”

  “What you’ve said sounds like heresy,” the priest replied, frowning. “If I may say so, regarding the truth, I agree more with what Master Johannes Nider wrote in his Formicarius, where he compares heretics to ants living in the Indies. They pick grains of gold out of the sand and carry them back to their anthill, although of course they have no use for it. Heretics, Master Nider writes in his Formicarius, are just the same, rummaging in the Holy Bible and searching for grains of truth, although of course they know not what to do with that truth.”

  “That was very nice.” Dorota Faber sighed, urging the gelding on. “The bit about the ants, I mean. Oh, truly, when I listen to someone that wise, it gets me right in the belly.”

  The priest ignored both her and her belly, launching into a lengthy diatribe about various heretical enemies of the faith, the Church and the Pope.

  “To make it even more amusing,” Urban Horn interjected with a smile, “all the sects you named consider themselves righteous and all the others as enemies of the faith. As far as the Pope is concerned, you must admit, Father, that it’s sometimes difficult to choose the one true sect among the many. While as far as the Church is concerned, to a man they appeal for reform, in capite et in membris. Doesn’t that make you wonder, Reverend?”

  “I don’t really understand your words,” confessed Filip Granciszek. “But if you mean that heresy is growing in the very bosom of the Church, you are right. They who err in their faith, arrogantly exaggerating their piety, are extremely close to that sin. Corruptio optimi pessima! Consider the well-known self-mortifiers or Flagellants. As early as 1349, Pope Clement VI had pronounced them heretics, excommunicated them and ordered them punished, but did it help?”

  “It didn’t help at all,” pronounced Horn. “They continued to roam throughout Germany, causing delight since plenty of maids travelled with them, who flogged themselves, naked to the waist with their tits out. The last Vatican Council has condemned them again, but it won’t change anything. Some pestilence or other calamity will occur and self-scourging processions will begin again. They must simply enjoy it.”

  “A certain learned master in Prague proved that it’s an affliction.” Reynevan joined the discussion a little dreamily. “That certain women find bliss in flogging themselves naked, in front of everybody’s eyes. Which is why there are so many women among the Flagellants.”

  “I advise against making reference to Prague masters at the present time,” suggested Father Filip caustically. “Nonetheless, there is something in it. The Order of Preachers show that much evil comes from corporeal intemperance, which is insatiable among women.”

  “Better leave women alone,” Dorota Faber said unexpectedly, “for you aren’t without sin yourselves.”

  “In paradise,” Granciszek glared at her, “the serpent chose Eve, not Adam, and he must have known what he was doing. So, too, must the Dominicans. I never meant to denigrate women, but simply to show that lust and promiscuity lie at the heart of many of the present heresies, probably owing to some sort of gleeful perversity. The Church forbids it? Let’s do it out of spite. The Church demands humility? Very well, let’s show our bare arses! Does it call for moderation and decorousness? Very well, let’s fornicate like cats in March!”

  “Fascinating,” Urban Horn said, lost in reverie.

  Reynevan blushed and Dorota snorted, showing that they weren’t unfamiliar with the matter, either.

  The wagon bounced so hard on one pothole that Rabbi Hiram woke up, and Father Granciszek, who was about to begin another lecture, almost bit his tongue off. Dorota Faber clicked at the gelding and flicked the reins. The priest adjusted his position on the coachman’s seat.

  “There were others,” he continued, “who sinned, like the Flagellants, with excessive piety, which is only a step away from degeneration and heresy. I’m talking about the Beghards from Świdnica and Nysa.”

  Reynevan, although he had a somewhat different view of the Beghards and Beguines, nodded. Urban Horn did not.

  “The Beghards,” he said calmly, “also known as the ‘willingly poor,’ could be an example for plenty of priests and monks. They also rendered considerable services to society. Suffice it to say that the Beguines curbed the plague in their hospitals in 1360 and prevented the epidemic from spreading, which saved thousands of people from death. The Beguines received a fine reward for that: accusations of heresy.”

  “There were indeed many devout, pious men among them,” agreed the priest, “but there were also apostates and sinners. Many Beguinages, including those hospices you mentioned, turned out to be hotbeds of sin, blasphemy, heresy and sordid lasciviousness. Much vice also occurred among the wandering Beghards.”

  “You are free to think thus.”

  “Me?” Granciszek bristled. “I am but a parish priest from Oława, what do I matter? The Beghards were condemned at the Council in Vienne and by Pope Clement, almost a hundred years before my birth. I wasn’t yet born when, in 1332, the Inquisition revealed practices as dreadful as the exhumation and desecration of corpses among the Beguines and Beghards. I wasn’t yet born when, in 1372, the Inquisition was reopened in Świdnica on the strength of fresh papal edicts. The Beghards and Beguines—”

  “The Beghards and Beguines,” Urban Horn continued, “were baited and dogged throughout Silesia. But you’ll probably wash your hands of that, too, O Oława priest, because it was also before your time. Know that it was also before mine, which doesn’t stop me knowing what r
eally happened. That most of the Beghards and Beguines when captured were tortured to death. Those who survived the torture were burned at the stake. And quite a large group, as is customary, saved their skin by denouncing others, turning in their companions, friends and even family to be tortured and killed. Some of the traitors later donned Dominican habits and displayed a veritable neophyte’s enthusiasm in the fight against heresy.”

  “Is that wrong?” The parish priest looked hard at him.

  “To denounce?”

  “To zealously fight against heresy. You judge that to be wrong?”

  Horn turned around suddenly in the saddle, and his face had changed.

  “Don’t try tricks like that on me, Pater,” he hissed. “What will you gain by catching me out with a trick question? Look around. We aren’t in a Dominican priory, but in the Brzeźmierz Forests. If I feel in danger, I’ll simply whack you on the head and toss you under a bush. And in Strzelin, I’ll say you died on the way from overheating of the blood and an influx of fluids and humours.”

  The priest paled.

  “Fortunately for us all,” Horn finished calmly, “it will not come to that, because I am not a Beghard, nor a heretic, nor a member of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. But don’t try any more Inquisitors’ tricks, Oława priest. Agreed?”

  Filip Granciszek didn’t reply, but nodded several times.

  When they stopped to stretch their legs, Reynevan couldn’t resist. He took Urban Horn to one side and asked what had caused his sharp reaction. Horn didn’t want to talk at first, limiting himself to a few oaths and grunts about sodding amateur Inquisitors. Seeing, however, that Reynevan wanted more, he sat down on a fallen tree and called his dog.

  “I don’t give a damn about any of their heresies, Lancelot,” he began quietly. “Even though only a halfwit—and I don’t consider myself one—would fail to notice that perhaps something ought to change, or be reformed. And I can understand that it piques the Church when they hear there’s no God, that no one cares about the Ten Commandments, and that we ought to worship Lucifer. I understand why they’d start yelling ‘heresy’ on hearing that kind of dictum. But what then? What infuriates them the most? Not apostasy and godlessness, not the denial of the sacraments. It is the call for evangelical poverty that enrages them the most. For humility. For sacrifice. For service to God and the people. They go into a frenzy when anybody asks them to renounce power and money. That’s why they attack the heretics so ferociously. Dammit, I consider it a miracle that Poverello, Francis the Pauper, wasn’t burned at the stake! But I fear that every day some anonymous Poverello, unknown and unrecognised by anyone, is thrown on the pyre.”