The sentence was carried out swiftly, on the fifteenth of January, the Thursday before the second Sunday after Epiphany. Gelfrad Stercza went to his death calmly, bravely, but without swagger. He didn’t give a speech from the scaffold. He just looked at Duke Jan and uttered a single sentence, in Latin.

“What?” Reynevan asked softly. “What did he say?”

“Hodie mihi, cras tibi.”

Reynevan couldn’t hide his dejection, it was too visible and conspicuous. Feeling the need to confide, to unburden himself, he told the company everything. About Adèle, Duke Jan and Gelfrad Stercza. About his revenge. No one said anything. Except Drosselbart.

“Revenge, they say, is a delight,” pronounced the beanpole. “But usually it’s the meaningless delight of a fool, delighting in a dream of delight. Only a fool puts his head on the block when he doesn’t have to. Hodie mihi, cras tibi, what happens to me today will happen to you tomorrow… Your eyes shine at the sound of those words, Reinmar of Bielawa, I see it. I know what you’re thinking. And I have one request: don’t be foolish. Will you promise me? Promise us all?”

Reynevan nodded.

Just as abruptly and suddenly—like the frost before it—came a thaw. Reynevan, missing Jutta, saddled his horse and galloped to White Church. There was actually less galloping and more laborious forcing his way through melting snowdrifts. The expedition lasted several hours, and the result was learning from the nun at the gate that Jutta had gone to her sister’s wedding and was in Schönau.

Reynevan couldn’t risk the ride to Schönau. He returned to Gdziemierz after dusk. And the following day had to part with Jon Malevolt, the beguiler anarchist.

“Won’t you stay with us?” he asked the beguiler as the latter was leading his shaggy horse from the stable. “Won’t you ally with us? What you helped Tybald with has a natural consequence. Wouldn’t you like to be part of it?”

“No, Reinmar. I wouldn’t.”

“But you claim that you are in favour of revolution, that you support insurrections. That it’s time to transform the old order, to shake the world at its foundation. Stay with us. We shall transform the order, and we shall give the world a good shake, believe me. At any moment—”