Four men were sitting at a table on a bench behind the pillars on the ground floor. They were all moustachioed, broad-shouldered and dressed in knightly doublets. Reynevan knew two of them, so he also knew they were Poles. Even if he hadn’t, he could have guessed. Like all Poles abroad, these men were conducting themselves noisily and arrogantly, with ostentatious boorishness that in their opinion would emphasise their status and elevated social position. The funny thing was that since Easter, the status of Poles in Prague was extremely low and their social position even lower.

“Good day! Welcome, noble Asclepius!” One of the Poles, whom Reynevan knew as Adam Wejdnar, bearing the Rawicz coat of arms, greeted him. “Sit you down! Sit you down, both of you! Be our guests!”

“Why are you inviting him so readily?” said another of the Poles, grimacing with feigned disgust. He was also a Greater Pole, known to Reynevan as Mikołaj Żyrowski and sporting the Czewoja coat of arms. “Do you have a surfeit of cash or something? And besides, the quack works with lepers! He’s liable to infect us with leprosy—or something even worse!”

“I’m not working in the lazaretto now,” explained Reynevan patiently, not for the first time. “I’m working at Bohuslav’s hospice now, here in the Old Town by the Church of Saints Simon and Jude.”

“Yes, yes.” Żyrowski, who knew everything, waved a dismissive hand. “What are you drinking? Oh, blow it, forgive me. Let me introduce you. My lords Jan Kuropatwa of Łańcuchów bearing the Szreniawa arms and Jerzy Skirmunt bearing the Odrowąż. Excuse me, but what is that fucking smell?”

“Sludge. From the Vltava.”

Reynevan and Radim Tvrdík drank beer. The Poles were drinking Austrian wine and eating stewed mutton and bread. They were talking ostentatiously loudly in Polish, telling each other funny stories and responding to each one with thunderous guffaws. Passers-by turned their heads away, swearing under their breath. And occasionally spitting.

Since Easter, specifically since Maundy Thursday, the Czechs’ opinion of the Poles hadn’t been too high. Indeed, their position in Prague was also pretty low and evincing a downward trend.