The Tower of Fools

by Andrzej Sapkowski

“A happy day has dawned for us, my dears! We are being honoured by a long-awaited visit to our diocese by the prior of the Wrocław Dominicans, the inspector of the Holy Office, defensoret candor fidei catholicae, the Right Reverend Inquisitor a Sede Apostolica. Some of those present—don’t think I don’t know—are afflicted with a different malady from what we usually treat here. His Excellency the Inquisitor will now take care of their health and well-being. And certainly cure them! For His Excellency the Inquisitor has ordered from the town hall a number of burly physicians and a range of medical instruments. Thus, prepare yourselves spiritually, dear brothers, for the treatment is about to begin.”

  That day, the herring tasted even worse than usual. Furthermore, there was no conversation in the Narrenturm that evening. Silence reigned.

  For the whole next day—it happened to be a Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent—the atmosphere in the Tower of Fools was very strained. The inmates listened out in the unsettling silence for every rattling from above. They finally began to react to them with symptoms of panic and nervous collapse. Nicolaus Koppirnig hid away in a corner. The Institor began to weep, curled up in a foetal position on his pallet. Bonaventure sat motionless, staring vacantly ahead. Tomasz Alpha trembled, buried in the straw. The Camaldolite prayed softly with his face turned to the wall.

  “See?” Urban Horn finally burst out. “See how it works? See what they’re doing to us? Just look at them!”

  “Are you surprised?” asked Scharley, squinting. “Hand on your heart, Horn, are you surprised at them?”

  “I see nonsense. What’s happening here is the result of a planned, carefully prepared operation. The interrogations haven’t yet started, but the Inquisition has already brought these men to the brink of mental collapse, made them into beasts cringing at the crack of a whip.”

  “I repeat: are you surprised?”

  “I am. Because one must fight back, not surrender!”

  Scharley gave an evil grin.

  “I trust you’ll show us how it’s done when the time comes.”

  Urban Horn said nothing for a long time.

  “I’m no hero,” he finally declared. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I’m hauled out, when they begin tightening the screws and driving in the wedges. When they take the red-hot irons out of the fire. But I know one thing: it won’t help me if I abase myself by weeping, sobbing and begging for mercy. You have to be tough with the Brother Inquisitors.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes, indeed. They are too used to people shaking with fear before them and shitting themselves at the very sight of them. These almighty lords of life and death love the power, grow drunk on the terror they sow. And who are they really? Nobodies, curs from the Dominican kennel, semi-literate, superstitious ignoramuses, deviants and cowards. Don’t shake your head, Scharley, it’s normal for satraps, tyrants and torturers—they are cowards, and their cowardice, when combined with absolute power, releases a bestiality in them that their victims’ subservience and inaction only heightens. It’s the same with the Inquisitors. Hidden behind their terrifying hoods are unremarkable cowards. And one must not prostrate oneself before them and beg for mercy, because that only results in even greater bestiality and cruelty on their part. You need to look them proudly in the eyes! Although it won’t save us, I tell you, it might at least unsettle their feigned self-assurance. We can remind them of Konrad of Marburg!”

  “Who?” asked Reynevan.

  “Konrad of Marburg,” explained Scharley. “The Inquisitor of the Rhineland, Thuringia and Hesse. When he nettled the Hesse nobility with his duplicity, entrapments and atrocities, they waylaid him and hacked him and his entire entourage to pieces. No one got out alive.”

  “I vouch that every Inquisitor has that name and event permanently etched on his memory,” added Horn, standing up and walking towards the piss pot. “So mark my advice!”

  “What do you think of his advice?” mumbled Reynevan.

  “Mine is different,” Scharley mumbled back. “When they start on you in earnest, speak. Testify. Confess. Sing. Collaborate. And make a hero of yourself later, when you write your memoirs.”

  Nicolaus Koppirnig was the first to be taken for questioning. The astronomer, who until then had been putting on a brave face, lost his head completely at the sight of the sturdy Inquisitor’s lackeys. First, he made a desperate attempt to flee—with nowhere to run to. When he was caught, the poor wretch shouted, wept, kicked, struggled and wriggled like an eel in the thugs’ arms. He achieved nothing by it, of course, except a sound beating. They smashed his nose, among other appendages, and his blubbering sounded amusingly nasal as he was carried out.

  But no one laughed.

  Koppirnig didn’t return. When the following day the bruisers came for the Institor, he didn’t make any violent scenes, but remained calm. He just wept and snivelled, resigned to his fate. But as they were picking him up, he soiled his trousers. Judging it a form of resistance, the bruisers gave him a severe beating before dragging him out.

  The Institor didn’t return, either.

  The next one to go—the same day—was Bonaventure. Having utterly lost his mind out of fear, the municipal scribe began to berate the bruisers, shouting and threatening them with his connections. The bruisers, naturally, weren’t afraid of his threats and didn’t give a damn if he played piquet with the burgermeister, the parish priest, the master of the mint and the elder of the brewers’ guild. Bonaventure was given a sound thrashing and dragged out.

  He didn’t return.

  The fourth man on the Inquisitor’s list was not, contrary to his own predictions, Tomasz Alpha, who spent the entire night by turns weeping and praying, but the Camaldolite. He offered no resistance, so the thugs didn’t even have to touch him. Murmuring a soft farewell to his fellow prisoners, the Niemodlin deacon crossed himself and walked towards the stairs with his head meekly bowed, but with a sure and calm step of which the first martyrs walking into Nero’s or Diocletian’s arenas wouldn’t have been ashamed.

  The Camaldolite didn’t return.

  “I’ll be next,” said Urban Horn with gloomy conviction.

  He was mistaken.

  Reynevan was only certain of his fate the moment the door at the top boomed and the stairs, flooded with slanting rays of sunlight, thudded and creaked beneath the feet of the heavies, who this time were accompanied by Brother Tranquillus.

  Reynevan stood up and squeezed Scharley’s hand. The penitent returned the squeeze, very hard, and in his face Reynevan saw for the first time something resembling extremely grave concern. Urban Horn’s expression spoke eloquently for itself.

  “Take care, Brother,” he muttered, painfully crushing Reynevan’s hand. “Remember Konrad of Marburg.”

  “And remember my advice, too,” added Scharley.

  Reynevan remembered both, but it didn’t make things any easier.

  Perhaps his expression or some imprudent movement made the bruisers suddenly leap at him. One seized him by the collar. And very quickly released him, bending forward, swearing and rubbing his elbow.

  “Easy does it,” admonished Brother Tranquillus firmly, lowering his club. “Don’t use force. This is, after all, a hospital, in spite of appearances. Understood?”

  The lackeys grunted, nodding. The canon of the Holy Sepulchre directed Reynevan towards the stairs with his truncheon.

  The crisp, cold air almost knocked him off his feet. When he breathed in, he wobbled and staggered, stunned, like after a gulp of aqua vitae on an empty stomach. He would probably have fallen, but the experienced bruisers caught him under the arms. And that was the end of his desperate plan to escape. Or of dying fighting. As they dragged him, all he could do was shuffle his feet.

  He saw the hospice for the first time. The tower he was being escorted from formed a corner set between two walls. Several buildings, probably including the hospital and the medicinarium, clung to the opposite wall by the gate. The kitchen was also there, judging from the
smells of cooking. There were a great many horses under an awning by the wall, stamping their hooves in puddles of urine. And soldiers were moving around everywhere. The Inquisitor, guessed Reynevan, had come with a sizeable escort.

  Desperate, high-pitched screams were coming from the medicinarium up ahead. Reynevan thought he heard Bonaventure’s voice. Tranquillus caught his eye and quietened him with a finger to his lips.

  Half-dazed, he found himself in a brightly lit chamber inside the building. His trance was interrupted by a pain in his knees as he was thrown forward to kneel in front of a table, behind which were sitting three monks in habits: Brother Tranquillus and two Dominicans. He blinked and shook his head. The Dominican sitting in the middle spoke first, a thin man with a bald head dotted with liver spots inside the narrow garland of his tonsure. His voice was unpleasant. Slippery.

  “Reinmar of Bielawa. Say the Lord’s Prayer and Ave.”

  He did. In a hushed and somewhat shaky voice. The Dominican, meanwhile, picked his nose, seemingly only interested in what was on his finger.

  “Reinmar of Bielawa. The secular arm has serious delations and accusations against you, so we shall turn you over to the secular authorities for interrogation and trial. But first of all, the causa fidei must be assessed and settled. You are accused of practising witchcraft and heresy. Of professing and propagating things that are contrary to what the Holy Church professes and teaches. Do you admit your guilt?”

  “I do not…” Reynevan swallowed. “I do not confess. I am innocent. And I am a good Christian.”

  “Naturally, you think you are,” said the Dominican, curling his lips disdainfully, “for you consider us evil and false. I ask you: do you deem or have you ever deemed as true a faith other than the one that the Roman Church requires us to believe in and preaches? Confess the truth!”

  “I am speaking the truth. I believe what Rome teaches.”

  “Because no doubt your heretical sect has a branch in Rome.”

  “I’m not a heretic. I will swear!”

  “On what? On my cross and the faith that you mock? I know your heretical tricks! Confess! When did you join the Hussites? Who inducted you into the sect? Who introduced you to the writings of Huss and Wycliffe? When and where did you accept communion sub utraque?”

  “I have never—”

  “Silence! Your lies offend God! Did you study in Prague? Do you have any Czech friends?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So you admit it?”

  “Yes, but not—”

  “Silence! Write down: he confessed that he admits.”

  “I didn’t confess to or admit anything!”

  “He withdraws his testimony.” The Dominican’s mouth twisted in a grimace that was both cruel and cheerful. “He has tangled himself up in his lies and deceit! That is all I need. I move for the use of torture, otherwise we shall not arrive at the truth.”

  “Father Grzegorz,” the canon of the Holy Sepulchre cleared his throat hesitantly, “instructed us to refrain from… He wanted to question this man himself—”

  “Waste of time!” snorted the thin monk. “In any case, he’ll be more talkative if he’s softened up first.”

  “I don’t think there are any free stations at the moment. And both torturers are busy—”

  “There is a boot nearby and tightening a few screws is a piece of cake. An assistant will manage. If necessary, I’ll do it. Come on! Over here! Take him!”

  Reynevan, almost dead with fear, found himself once more in the heavies’ vice-like grip. He was hauled out and shoved into a side chamber. Before he understood the gravity and danger of his situation, he was already sitting in an oaken chair with his neck and hands in iron clasps, and a shaven-headed torturer in a leather apron was fitting a horrifying contraption to his left foot. The contraption resembled a metal-bound box; it was large, heavy and smelled of iron and rust. And also of old blood and decayed flesh, like a worn-out butcher’s block.

  “I’m innnoceeeent!” howled Reynevan. “Innoceeeeeent!”

  “Go on.” The bony Dominican beckoned the torturer. “Do the necessary.”

  The torturer stooped, something clanked metallically and something grated. Reynevan howled in pain, feeling the metal-edged boards squeezing and crushing his foot. He suddenly thought of the Institor and understood his behaviour. He was a hair’s breadth from shitting his trousers.

  “When did you join the Hussites? Who gave you the writings of Wycliffe? Where and from whom did you receive the heretical communion?”

  The screws grated; the torturer grunted. Reynevan howled.

  “Who is your accomplice? Who do you collude with from Bohemia? Where do you meet? Where are you hiding the heretical books, writings and postills? Where are the weapons hidden?”

  “I’m innnoceeeent!” he howled.

  “Tighter.”

  “Brother,” said the canon of the Holy Sepulchre. “Have some respect. Why, he’s a nobleman—”

  “You are taking the role of advocate a little too much to heart,” The thin Dominican scowled. “You were meant to be quiet and not interfere, I’ll remind you. Tighter.”

  Reynevan almost choked screaming.

  And just like in a fairy tale, somebody heard his cries and came to his aid.

  That somebody, standing in the doorway, turned out to be a well-built Dominican aged around thirty. “I asked you not to do that. You are guilty of overzealousness, Brother Arnulph. And—worse still—a lack of obedience.”

  “I… Reverend… Forgive me—”

  “Be gone. To the chapel. Pray, wait in humility, and perhaps you will feel the grace of revelation. You there, release the prisoner, at the double. And be off with you. Everybody!”

  “Reverend Father—”

  “I said everybody!”

  The Inquisitor sat down at the table in the place vacated by Brother Arnulph and shifted a crucifix blocking his view a little to one side.

  He pointed to the bench without a word. Reynevan stood up, groaned, grunted, hobbled over and sat down. The Dominican slipped his hands into the sleeves of his white habit and examined him for a long time from beneath bushy, menacingly joined eyebrows.

  “Reinmar of Bielawa,” he finally said, “you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

  Reynevan nodded to confirm that he knew, for it couldn’t be denied.

  “You’re lucky I was passing,” repeated the Inquisitor. “Another two or three turns of that screw… Do you know what would have happened?”

  “I can imagine—”

  “No. You can’t, I assure you. Oh, Reynevan, Reynevan, how do we come to be meeting in a torture chamber! Although, to tell the truth, it could have been foreseen back at university. Debauched views, a fondness for revelry and drinking, not to mention wanton females… Bloody hell, back in Prague, when I used to see you at The Dragon in Celetná Street, I prophesied that you’d meet a sticky end, and that whoring would be your undoing.”

  Reynevan said nothing, although he had thought and prophesied identically in Prague’s Old Town, in all the scholars’ favourite brothels in the backstreet behind the Churches of Saint Nicolaus and Valentine. Grzegorz Hejncze, undergraduate scholar—and soon after master—at the Department of Theology at Charles University was also a frequent and cheerful patron of those establishments. Reynevan would never have imagined that the enthusiastic reveller Grzegorz Hejncze would last in a priest’s vestments, but evidently he had. Lucky for me indeed, he thought, massaging his wrists and left foot. Which—if not for his intervention—the boot would certainly have crushed into a bloody pulp by now.

  In spite of the relief resulting from the miraculous rescue, panicky fear still kept his hair sticking up and his back bowed. He knew it wasn’t over. The well-built, keen-eyed Dominican with the bushy eyebrows and angular jaw was not, in spite of appearances, by any means his mischievous companion from the drinking dens and brothels of Prague. He was—it was clear from the expressions and bows of the
monks and torturers exiting the chamber—the superior, the prior. The fear-inspiring Inspector of the Holy Office, the defensor et candor fidei catholicae, the Right Reverend Inquisitor a Sede Apostolica for the entire diocese of Wrocław. Reynevan must not forget that. The gruesome boot stinking of rust and blood lay two paces away where the torturer had cast it down. The torturer could be summoned at any moment and the boot put back on. Reynevan had no illusions in this regard.

  “But every cloud has a silver lining.” Grzegorz Hejncze interrupted the short silence. “I hadn’t planned to use torture on you, comrade. You wouldn’t have borne any marks or cuts on your return to the tower. But now you’ll return limping, painfully injured by the dreadful Inquisition, without arousing suspicion. And you ought not to arouse suspicion.”

  Reynevan said nothing. In fact, all he understood of the speech was that he was going back to the tower. The other words were taking time to reach him, and when they did, they aroused once more the terror that had been briefly lulled.

  “I shall take sustenance. Perhaps you are hungry? Would you like a herring?”

  “No… I’ll decline… the herring…”

  “I can’t offer you anything else—it’s a fast day, and in my position, I have to set an example.”

  Hejncze clapped his hands together and issued some orders. Fast day or not, example or not, the fish he was brought were much fatter than the ones given to the Narrenturm’s inmates. The Inquisitor murmured a short Benedic Domine and without further delay began to eat the herring accompanied by thick hunks of wholemeal bread to counteract the saltness.

  “Let’s get down to business,” he began, without interrupting his meal. “You’re in deep water, comrade. Very deep water. I closed the investigation into your alleged sorcerer’s workshop in Oleśnica, for I know you, I support progress in medicine, and the divine spirit blows where it will. Nothing, including progress in medicine, occurs without His will. Admittedly, the offence of adulterium sickens me, but I was not charged to prosecute it. As far as your other alleged secular crimes go, I choose not to believe in them. For I know you.”