“I did. Archbishop Gunter of Schwarzburg is too prudent to underestimate the Hussites. He doesn’t rule out a crusade and calls enthusiastically for defensive alliances. He is systematically building an army; he now has more than a thousand men under his command. But certain problems, I tell you sincerely, have arisen. For the Archbishop is most irate. With you, Bishop Konrad.”

“Indeed,” said Konrad bluntly.

“He is irate about an individual who enjoys your good graces,” continued Hejncze. “I refer to Birkart Grellenort. The archbishop presented me with a long list of charges. I won’t bore you with them, for most are trivial matters: murder, rape, black magic. Also robbery: Archbishop Gunter accuses Grellenort of the theft committed in September 1425 of five hundred grzywna in taxes. But what arouses the greatest fury in the archbishop is a certain non-human, a sverg named—I believe—Skirfir, an alchemist and a sorcerer whom the archbishop wanted to torture and burn, but whom Grellenort impudently abducted. In order to make use of him.”

Bishop Konrad chortled. Hejncze eyed him coldly.

“Yes, quite ridiculous,” he said and nodded coldly. “And sickeningly banal. But it harms the alliance between Saxony and Silesia, an alliance essential in the face of the Hussite peril. One that is crucial to Silesia’s survival. Thus I should like to know what Your Eminence intends to do in this matter.”

Konrad became serious and fixed the Inquisitor with his gaze.

“What matter?” he drawled. “I don’t see one. Do you, Grzesiu? Are you trying to tell me that even though he is my favourite—and according to common gossip my bastard—I ought to drive him out, curse him, declare him an outlaw, secretly imprison or eliminate him? That I ought to do so for the cause, since Birkart Grellenort is a persona turpis, who damages our alliances and relations with our neighbours? I might respond, Grzesiu, by saying that alliances and relations with our neighbours are damaged by idiotic, petty-minded church dignitaries who sulk like children deprived of their toys. I might, but I won’t. I’ll answer otherwise, concisely and to the point. If anybody—bishop, cardinal, suffragan or Inquisitor, it matters not—tries to bully Birkart Grellenort, he will bitterly regret it, by the Good Lord above.”

“The Good Lord above,” replied Hejncze without batting an eyelid, “sees and hears everything. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”