“Then I would advise you to keep a close watch on him.” The Dominican’s eyes flashed above his spoon. “Loth as I am to make accusations, heresy is like soot, like pitch. Like dung! Whoever comes close to it must be fouled.”

Reynevan quickly lowered his head, once again feeling his ears burn and the blood rushing to his cheeks.

“Whatever next!” laughed the duke. “Our scholar a heretic? Why, he’s from a decent family and is studying to be a priest and a physician at the Prague Academy. Am I right, Reinmar?”

“By Your Grace’s leave,” Reynevan said, swallowing nervously, “I no longer study at Prague. On my brother’s advice, I left the Carolinum in 1419, soon after Saints Abdon and Sennen’s Day… I mean, right after the Defenestra— You know when. Now I’m thinking of studying in Krakow… Or in Leipzig, where most of the Prague masters fled… I won’t return to Bohemia while the unrest endures.”

“The unrest!” the Dominican spat, strands of cabbage flying from his mouth onto his scapular. “A nice little word, indeed! You here, in this peaceful land, cannot even imagine what heresy is afoot in Bohemia, what monstrosities that hapless land is witness to. Fomented by heretics, Wycliffites, Waldensians and other servants of Satan, the mob has directed its unthinking fury at faith and the Church. In Bohemia, God is being destroyed and His temples burned. God’s servants are being slaughtered!”

“Truly dreadful tidings reach us,” confirmed Melchior Barfuss. “One doesn’t want to believe—”

“But one must!” the Dominican insisted, his voice growing ever louder. “Because none of the accounts are exaggerated!”

The beer in his mug splashed around and Agnieszka shrank back involuntarily, shielding herself with the capon leg.

“Do you desire examples? I can oblige. The massacres of friars and chaplains in Český Brod, of Cistercians in Zbraslav, of Dominicans in Písek, of Benedictines in Kladruby and of Premonstrant nuns in Chotěšov. Monasteries looted and burned down, priests burned alive, altars and holy pictures desecrated… Sacrilege not even the Turk would stoop to, atrocities at the sight of which even Saracens would tremble! O God, how long will You refrain from avenging our spilled blood?”

The silence that followed, in which only the murmured prayers of the Oleśnica chaplain could be heard, was interrupted by the deep, resonant voice of Duke Konrad Kantner’s guest, the swarthy, broad-shouldered knight.

“It didn’t have to be like that.”

“I beg your pardon?” The Dominican raised his head. “What do mean by that, sir?”

“It could all easily have been avoided. Had Jan Huss not been burned at the stake in Constance.”

“You defended the heretic then,” said the Dominican, squinting, “by shouting, protesting, submitting petitions, I know you did. And you were as wrong then as you are now. Heresy spreads like a weed and the Bible orders the weed destroyed by fire. Papal bulls decree it—”