On the Saturday before Laetare Sunday, the women of Sovinec were doing their laundry, so all morning the entire castle was permeated with the smell of wet steam and the acrid odours of lye and soap suds. Meanwhile, by noon, after Reynevan and Horn had finished another round of questioning, the entire castle courtyard was decorated with laundry hanging out to dry. It was dominated by pairs of drawers, which Scharley and Samson counted out of boredom, stopping at a hundred and nine. Since they had previously counted thirty-two vassals and foot soldiers at the castle, it turned out that there was an abundance of drawers at Sovinec, but they were rarely washed.

The friends were sitting on a woodpile in the kitchen courtyard, not far from the stable, and Reynevan, enjoying the spring sunshine and not hiding his excitement, told them about the most recent revelations from the interrogations.

“That Bruno Schilling has been telling incredible, quite unbelievable stories. About Sensenberg Castle and the Kaczawskie Mountains. Magic has evidently been present there since the times of the Knights Templar, who built the castle. Schilling doesn’t know it and can’t even name it, but to a specialist like me there is no doubt that there is still present in Sensenberg a theoda, a spiritus purus, a kind of genius loci, the magical power of a long-dead but powerful mage. A theoda like that acts extremely powerfully on the mens of the people residing there, for it can very strongly distort the mens of people with lesser resistance and weaker will, or even utterly destroy it. Schilling confirmed that there were cases of mentis alienatio, and even cases of incurable amentia and paranoia.”

“Amentia and paranoia,” Scharley repeated, seemingly casually, as he contemplated the drawers. “Well, well. Who’d have thought it?”

“And in the field of alchemy,” said Reynevan, warming to his theme, “I have learned about things and matters that are quite breathtaking. I’ve already told you about the compositional poison Perferro and I’ve mentioned colloidal metals. Among those metals, just imagine, is the mysterious Potassium described by Flamel, which is still considered by some a fantasy. The mysterious Thallium, which was allegedly experimented on by Arnaldus of Villa Nova, who was close to creating the philosopher’s stone. Incredible, incredible!”

Scharley and Samson kept quiet, their eyes fixed on the drawers.