The crowd cried out in a powerful voice. Something was happening by the stakes. Reynevan stood on tiptoe, but too late. The executioner was now behind the woman, possibly adjusting the rope around her neck. Her head lolled on her shoulder, softly, like a cut flower.

“He throttled her.” The priest sighed quietly, as though he had never seen anything like it before. “Broke her neck. He did the same to that teacher, too. They must have shown remorse during the interrogation.”

“And turned someone in,” added Urban Horn. “The usual story.”

The rabble howled and protested, displeased with the mercy shown to the teacher and the poisoner. The shouting grew louder when flames burst from the bundles of brushwood and suddenly exploded, in the blink of an eye engulfing the faggots, the stakes and the people tethered to them. As the fire roared and shot upwards, the crowd recoiled from the heat, making the crush even greater.

“A botch-up!” yelled the brickmaker. “Shoddy workmanship! They used dry bloody brushwood! It’s just like straw!”

“Verily, a botch-up,” said the thin man in the felt cap. “The Hussite didn’t even make a sound! They don’t know how to burn. Back home in Franconia, the Abbot of Fulda knew his stuff! Supervised the burnings himself. He had the logs arranged so that first only the legs fried, then the knees, then higher, to the stones, and then—”

“Thief!” A woman hidden in the crowd began to shriek. “Thiiieeef! Stop, thief!”

The fires roared, radiating waves of fierce heat. The wind blew towards the travellers, carrying the foul, choking, cloying smell of burning corpses. Reynevan covered his nose with his sleeve. Father Granciszek coughed, Dorota choked and Urban Horn spat, grimacing horribly. Rabbi Hiram, however, astonished everyone. The Jew leaned out from the wagon and vomited violently and copiously—on the pilgrim, the brickmaker, the townswoman, the Franconian and everybody else in the vicinity. People quickly dispersed.

“Please forgive me…” the rabbi managed to mumble between spasms. “It isn’t a political statement, just ordinary puking.”

Canon Otto Beess, the Provost of Saint John the Baptist’s, made himself comfortable in his chair, straightened his skullcap and examined the claret swilling around in a goblet.

“Please make sure,” he said in his usual grating voice, “that the site of the fire is thoroughly tidied and raked. All the remains—even the smallest—are to be gathered and tossed into the river. There has been an increase in the gathering of charred bones and the worshipping of them as relics. Honourable councillors, please take good care. And Brothers, see that they do.”

The Strzelin councillors present in the castle chamber bowed their heads in silence, and the Dominicans and the Friars Minor lowered their tonsured pates. Everyone present knew that the canon usually made requests rather than giving orders. They also knew the difference was only a formality.