Father Felicjan swallowed once more and his eyes flashed like a fox’s. The thug with the ordinary appearance bent over him and shone a lantern in his face.

“But know this: should you betray me…” he drawled. “Should you denounce me, should I be seized… Should any misfortune befall me, should I fall ill, be poisoned by food, choked by a fishbone, drowned in a clay pit pond or fall under the wheels of a speeding wagon… Then, Confessor, you may be sure that certain evidence will reach the people you have harmed. Whom you continue to try to harm. Included among them is Jan Sneschewicz, the bishop’s assistant curate. The latter is a determined fellow, as well you know. Should he learn of certain matters… They will fish you out of the Odra, Gwisdek. Before three days pass, they will fish your swollen corpse from the Sokolnicki weir. You see that, don’t you?”

Father Felicjan did. He cringed and nodded eagerly.

“You have ten days—and not a day longer—to obtain the information.”

“I shall do my best… If I succeed—”

“Better that you do… Better for you. Is that clear? And now you are free, you may go. Aha, Gwisdek.”

“Yes, m’lord?”

“Don’t roam about after dark. I’m counting on you, so it would be a shame for you to have your throat cut around here somewhere.”

The yellow curtain was still not hanging in the window of Otto Beess’s house in Shoemakers Street. Reynevan hadn’t especially expected to see it. He was there for a different reason. Their route simply led them along Shoemakers Street.

“Do you know where the canon went? To his home in Rogów?”

“Allerdings,” confirmed Allerdings. “He may stay there for some time. A hostile aura has settled on him in Wrocław.”

“Partly thanks to me.”

“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.”