“Eugene IV. And the English burned Joan of Arc alive in the old town square in Rouen. A Vatican Council began in Basel. A crusade was launched against Bohemia—the fifth—and it was crushed at the Battle of Domažlice. Prokop sent the entire Duchy of Oleśnica up in smoke and then led a plundering raid all the way to Bernau, three miles beyond Berlin. Bolko, Duke of Cieszyn, died. Konrád of Vechta, the Archbishop of Prague, died. Bishop Jan Szafraniec, the brother of Piotr Szafraniec, died. Frederick of Aufsess, Bishop of Bamberg, died… Where are you going?”

“To throw up.”

“Dulce lumen,” Reynevan suddenly declared, “et delectabile est oculis videre solem.”

“What?”

“Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. Ecclesiastes.”

“By which you mean,” said Scharley, “that the medicine has helped a little?”

“A little. But that’s not the point. At least, not the main one.”

Having gorged himself at the demijohn, the recently released prisoner declared he’d had enough of taverns, complaining of the stuffiness. So they left in search of a medicament for his eyes. They eventually found extract of fennel, verbena, rose, celandine and rue, a dependable remedy for infections of the eyes and the eyelids, in an apothecary’s shop in Siewierz, for there was neither an apothecary’s shop nor any barber-surgeons in Niegowa. Not far from Siewierz, they stopped for a while in the open air, in a roadside birch wood. Reynevan applied the medicament himself, but they had to wait some time for it to take effect and had to repeat the treatment several times. Each time he washed his eyes with the fluid, he repeated as he did so the magical formulae, in order, as the recipe on the flacon announced: “For the natural potency of the medicine to be more effective in its treatment thanks to supernatural power.”

Faeniculum, Verbena,

Rosa, Chelidonia, Ruta Lumina reddit acuta.

“Go on, Scharley,” said Reynevan, pressing a poultice to his eyelids. “The last thing you said was that a few bishops died. Who else died while I was inside? Among the people of more interest to me?”

“Christine of Pisan, the French poetess. Does that ring a bell? Seulete sui et seulete vueil estre… Ah, Witold, Grand Duke of Lithuania, also died. Towards the end of October 1430.”

“The cause?”

“He was injured falling from a horse and was then ill for a long time.”

“Was he cut with iron when he fell?”

“I don’t know. He may have been. Among other events: Sigismund of Luxembourg was crowned emperor. And King Władysław Jagiełło entered into an alliance with the Hussites and an offensive alliance against the Teutonic Order in Pabianice. Last June, the Orphans of Jan Čapek of Sány invaded the Margraviate of Brandenburg shoulder to shoulder with the Poles—”