“The Canticle of the Three Young Men,” he declared confidently. “Called the Benedicite Dominum.”

“Sing it.”

“What?”

“Sing it!” yelled the captain. “And loud! Or we’ll make a fucking pincushion out of you!”

“Benedicite, omnia opera Domini, Domino! ” bellowed the penitent, out of tune, saving the day again. “Laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula! Benedicite, caeli, Domino, benedicite, angeli Domini…”

“They are monks, in truth,” said the canon of the Holy Sepulchre gravely. “We must let them in. Draw back the bolts! Make haste, make haste!”

The Augustinian chronicler leaned over his parchment and resumed writing.

But it proved to be treachery, for they were not monachi but heretics, qui se Orphanos appellaverunt, dressed in habits stripped from the Cistercians, when in feria III pasce they attacked the monasterium Cisterciense de Kamenz, which monasterium eodem die efractum et concrematum est. They were not the Lord’s flock but wolves, lupi in vestimento ovium, the same notorious traitors who called themselves the Vogelsang: traitors, Judases, scoundrels with neither honour nor faith. Those blackguards forced their way through the imprudently opened gate and fell on the guard. Behind them was a horde of further Orphani, previously hidden under a tarpaulin on a wagon like the Achaeans in the wooden horse. The guard having been killed and the gates opened wide, in galloped the heretics’ equites, behind them rushed the infantry and, in no time, there were five and a half hundred heretics, with more coming anon. And dreadful terror occurred…

No one dared to oppose them as they ran through the new town, down New Street. There were scarcely two dozen of them, but they made enough noise and racket for a hundred. The Hussites yelled and whooped, clattering on wooden clappers. Bisclavret and Rzehors were blowing into brass trumpets and Scharley was beating a metal cymbal. Horror-struck and stupefied by the deafening hullabaloo, the citizens of Frankenstein fled before them, running towards the town square. Only once were crossbows and harquebuses fired at them, from the windows of the brewery, but they didn’t even slow or stop making a racket. The yells and gunfire intensified from the Kłodzko Gate, which had been breached deceitfully, to the south, and soon also from the west; the Orphans were evidently storming the castle and the Church of Saint Anne.

They ran. They were shot at again in Lower Bathhouse Street, this time to some effect; two bodies were left lying in the muddy gutter. The small garrison of the Ziębice Gate also greeted them with a chaotic crossbow salvo, but the bowmen’s hands were shaking, and no wonder: they had already seen the black smoke rising above the roofs and heard the cries of the slaughtered.

They attacked the guards with fury at once and it appeared as though the Orphans wanted to take out their anger after the reckless run through the streets.