“Your Highness ordered me to track the maid… the one they’re hiding. I was to inform you at once… I eavesdropped at the Church of Saint Adalbert… When some Inquisition agents were talking together. Dzierżka, the widow of Zbylut of Szarada, the horse trader from Skałka near Środa… She attended the horse fair in Karłowice. And a maid was with her. Pretending to be her daughter, when everybody knows that Dzierżka doesn’t have one… And there was a to-do among the merchants, for many wondered about marrying the widow, since the best stud in Silesia is part of her dowry… And here was an illegitimate or adopted maid, in line to inherit—”

“To the point.”

“Yes, sire. That maid, that supposed daughter, one agent said to another, appeared from nowhere, as though she fell out of the sky and into Skałka. So I thinks: Why, perhaps she’s the maid what Bielawa is seeking. And Your Grace, too? The age would seem to fit… For I heard them talking… They described what the wench looks like…”

“They did, did they? I want that description. Tell me precisely and in detail.”

Bishop Konrad listened. Apparently attentively, but the Wallcreeper knew him too well. The bishop was distracted, perhaps because he was sober. His attention was divided between the Wallcreeper, Klaudyna yelling in the ladies’ chambers and the shouting of Kuczera of Hunt coming from the courtyard.

“Aha,” he said finally. “Aha. So the maid who witnessed and survived the robbery of the tax collector is still alive. Although you’ve almost had her in your grasp twice, she escaped. And now, you claim, she is hiding in Skałka, on the estates of Dzierżka of Wirsing, the widow of Zbylut of Szarada.”

“And we ought, I believe, to do something in that regard.”

Konrad scratched the back of his head and poked a finger in his ear.

“But do what?” he asked, disdainfully pouting his lips. “Waste of time and effort. Dzierżka of Wirsing conducts herself in exemplary fashion, doesn’t trade with the Hussites any longer and generously supports the Church. I don’t see any reason to… But the wench? The wench is nobody. What kind of witness is she? Even if she remembers anything of those events, if she is even capable of identifying anybody, who would listen to her, lend credence to her? For it is well known that maidens imagine various peculiar phantasmagoria when the menstrual vapours assault their minds. Let us not concern ourselves with her. Let us forget about her. Let us forget completely about the misadventure that befell the tax collector. Almost four years have passed. I have forgotten. Everybody has.”