My, but this pottage is truly delicious. Thick, spicy and creamy. I haven’t eaten soup like this for ages. Thank you, noble gentlemen, for the repast, and thank you, young miss innkeeper. What would I say to beer, you ask? Yes. By all means. Comedamus tandem, et bibamus, cras enim moriemur.

Where was I? Ah, yes—time passed, and the end of the world still did not occur, and events transpired according to their rightful order. Wars were waged, plagues proliferated, mors nigra raged, hunger abounded. Neighbour robbed and killed neighbour and lusted after his wife, and men behaved like wolves towards one another. The Jews were treated to a little pogrom from time to time and the heretics to a bit of burning at the stake. Other notable events included skeletons cavorting around burial grounds, Death roaming the Earth with his scythe, an incubus forcing its way between the trembling thighs of sleeping maids, and a striga alighting on the back of a lone rider in the wilds. Clearly, the Devil was involving himself in Earthly affairs, wandering around like a roaring lion wondering who to devour next.

Plenty of esteemed people died during that time. Plenty were also born, of course, but dates of birth aren’t written down in chronicles and no one ever remembers them, with the possible exception of mothers, and in cases when a babe is born with two heads or two cocks. But deaths? Such things are carved in stone.

Wherefore in 1421, on the Monday following Laetare Sunday, Jan apellatus Kropidło, Piast duke and episcopus wloclaviensis, died in Opole, having attained a well-deserved three score years. Before his death, he had made a donation of six hundred grzywna to the city of Opole. It is said that part of the sum, representing the dying man’s last will, went to Red-headed Kundzia’s, a celebrated Opole brothel. The bishop had availed himself of the services of that establishment, located at the rear of the Franciscan monastery, right up until his death—though towards the end he was more voyeur than active participant.