“Adsumus,” the Teutonic Knight replied softly, bringing his hands together. “In the Lord’s name.”

“In the Lord’s name,” said the Wallcreeper, his head and shoulders twitching like a bird’s. “In the Lord’s name, Brother. What brings you here?”

“We are always ready,” said the Hospitaller in the same soft voice. “People keep coming. We diligently note down whatever information they bring.”

“And the Inquisition?”

“Suspects nothing. They have opened four new denunciation points, in four churches: Saint Adalbert’s, Saint Vincent’s, Saint Lazarus’s and Our Lady on the Sand’s. They won’t realise that ours is still functioning. On the same days and at the same hour, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, from the hour of—”

“I know when,” the Wallcreeper bluntly interrupted. “I have come at precisely the right hour. Direct me to the confessional, Brother. I’ll sit down, listen and find out what vexes the people.”

Barely a had minute passed before the first suppliant knelt at the screen.

“… has no respect for his superiors, Brother Titus… Once, God forgive him, he accused the prior himself of saying Mass under the influence, when the prior had only drunk a smidgeon—I mean, what’s a quart split between three? Then the prior ordered him to be watched closely, and for his cell to be searched in secret… And it revealed books and pamphlets hidden under the bed. Hard to believe… Wycliffe’s Trialogus… Huss’s De ecclesia… Lollardist and Waldensian writings… Whoever possesses and reads such things must be a secret Beghard. And since our superiors have ordered us to denounce Beghards, I am so doing… God forgive…”

“I humbly report that Gaston of Vaudenay, a troubadour who has inveigled his way into the good graces of the Duke of Głogów, is a soak, a bawd, a braggart, a heretic and a heathen. He panders to the lowest tastes of the peasantry with his pitiful doggerel, when God knows what they see in him or why his primitive rhymes are preferred to mine, written as they are by a native. Verily, the foreigner ought to be banished and return to his native Provence, for we have no need of his outlandish customs here!”

“… hid the fact that his brother is abroad, in Bohemia. And no wonder, for before 1419 his brother was deacon at Saint Štěpán’s in Prague. Now he also serves as a priest, but with Prokop in Tábor, he wears a beard, preaches out of doors without a chasuble or an alb and gives communion under both kinds. So, I ask, ought a good Catholic to conceal the fact that he has such a brother? And may I ask, can a good Catholic even have such a brother?”