“It may hurt your pride,” said Allerdings, glancing at him over his shoulder, “but I’ll tell you: you flatter yourself too much. If indeed you were the reason, you are but one of many. And not the most important. Bishop Konrad has looked askance at Canon Otto for some time now, ever searching for an opportunity to trip him up. Finally, just imagine, he has rummaged around in genealogy and decided that the canon is a Pole, and declared that he is not ‘Beess’ but ‘Bies’—a run-of-the-mill, commonplace Polish ‘Bies.’ And there is no place in the Wrocław Diocese for a Polish Bies. Did the Polish Bies dream of a prelature in the cathedral? Then may he make for Gniezno or Krakow, where there are also cathedrals.

“In fact, there are several cathedrals in Poland: in Poznań, Włocławek, Płock and Lwów. And the Beess family, to be precise, are not Poles. The family originates in Croatia.”

“Whether Croatia, Poland, Bohemia, Serbia or Moldova, it’s all one to the bishop.” Allerdings pouted. “All one damned thing. All Slavic nations. Enemy nations. And thus hostile to us, good Germans.”

“Ha, ha. Very droll.”

“I swear. And do you see the paradox?”

“I do not.”

“By harming the canon, the bishop harms himself. Otto Beess was almost the only person in the Wrocław Chapter who still supported the bishop regarding papal supremacy; increasingly, the rest of the prelates and canons openly support conciliarism. Thanks to his intrigues, the bishop has rid himself of allies and things may end poorly for him. The Vatican Council in Basel approaches. That council may bring about many changes. Are you listening to me? What are you doing there?”

“Cleaning my boot. I’ve trodden in some shit.”

After the spring of 1428, Wrocław was an island in a sea of warfare, an oasis in a desert of destruction. Even so, although fenced off from the world by the waters of the Oława and the Odra, although defended by mighty walls, the Silesian metropolis was far from basking in the blissful luxury of safety and the certainty of tomorrow. Wrocław recalled the previous spring too vividly. Its recollections were so vivid and realistic as to be almost palpable. The glow as Brzeg, Ryczyn, Sobótka, Gniechowice, Środa Śląska and the nearby Kątów burned still lived on in them. Wrocław recalled the beginning of May, when it looked down at the army of Prokop the Shaven from the city walls through eyes running from the smoke drifting from Żerniki and Muchobór as they burned. And six weeks hadn’t even passed since the day the Orphans had marched downstream beside the Odra from the south, when all the bells in the metropolis had sounded the alarm of their arrival at Oława, barely a day’s ride away.