“Indeed? I’ve heard other views. I’ve heard you don’t hesitate to reprimand Jagiełło, you’re even wont to dress him down. That’s nothing new, the Polish Church was always the power behind the throne, don’t try to persuade me otherwise. And Poland also has the nobility, lords, estates and the people, which the king has to take into account. Don’t fib, Bishop Zbigniew. Clara pacta, boni amici! Will you, in exchange for the friendly favour I shall render unto you in the matter of Witold, make sure that the Czech Hussites will stop receiving support from Poland? Even more so: that they will become hated in Poland. Hated by everybody, from the king down to the meanest serf?”

“Will you advise me how? Since you’re so wise.”

“Now it is I who doesn’t wish to listen,” said Konrad, chuckling. “Conspiracies, provocation? It doesn’t befit a clergyman, a simple toiler in the Lord’s vineyard. News from France reaches Poland, I presume, Zbyszek? News about Jehanne d’Arc, called La Pucelle? About how she liberated Orléans from a siege? And defeated the English at the Battle of Patay? Brought about the coronation of Charles VII at Reims Cathedral? About her besieging Paris?”

“And what of it?”

“La Pucelle is a symbol. And symbols are key. You cannot underestimate their significance. And now another parable: in 1426 and 1427, the Hussites carried out two other forays into Austria. The first time they attacked the Cistercian monastery in Zwettl, the second, the convent in Altenburg. As is their custom, they murdered the monks, sacked the monasteries and set them on fire. Nothing new, I hear you say. But you’re in error. In both cases, the Czechs smashed the organ into matchwood, destroyed the bells, splintered the altars. They knocked the heads off statues or destroyed them. They desecrated holy paintings and cut them to ribbons. They committed similar iconoclasm in the Bavarian monasteries of Walderbach and Schonthal in 1428, and in Silesia the same year.”

“And what of it?”

“It’s a symbol. During wars everybody murders, burns and robs, it’s normal and is the order of the day. But only emissaries of the Devil knock the head off a figure of Saint Florian, smear shit over a portrait of Saint Ursula and chop up a miraculous Pietà into splinters. Only the hordes of the Antichrist raise their iconoclastic hands against symbols. And emissaries of the Devil and hordes of the Antichrist are hideous and hated. By everybody. From the king down to the meanest serf.”

“I understand,” said Zbigniew Oleśnicki, nodding. “And I admit that you are right. Regarding symbols.”

“I would even have the men to do it,” said the Bishop of Wrocław, smiling. “A select band, rescued from the noose. Prepared to do anything. To any designated symbol. All that remains is for you to designate them, O Bishop of Krakow. Do we understand each other?”

“We do.”