Authors: Gael Baudino
Touched by Manarel's loyalty, Jacob did as he was told. Manarel bent over the sill for a moment, examined the one-hundred-foot drop, and then he swung a leg through the window and took hold of the rope. As though unaware of the weight of the old man on his back, he descended quickly to the ground, the rope slipping through his gloved hands with an audible whir.
The fast plunge made Jacob dizzy, but when his sight cleared, he found himself in an alley outside the walls of the House of God. The traffic in Furze was as light as the trade, and the alley was, in fact, deserted. Manarel's strategy had worked: if anyone had noticed the odd but fleeting sight of two men descending pick-a-back down the outside of the tower, they had not yet appeared to ask any questions.
“We'll have to hurry,” said Manarel. “In a minute they'll discover what we've done and have the city gates closed.”
Jacob looked up and down the alley, then up at the tower from which they had escaped. He still could not believe it. “What . . . what about the rest of the men?”
Manarel's voice was matter-of-fact. “They'll cut their way out if they can. I gave them orders before we went into the tower. There's nothing more we can do for them.” A horn blew within the House of God. Manarel looked up with a white face. “We'll have to run.”
“We'll never make it through the gates.”
“Master . . .”
Jacob was still shocky: he could speak of capture and death as though they were relevant only to someone else. “We'll never make it.”
Another horn call. Shouting.
Jacob thought of Siegfried, wished that he had been able to smash his nose on the table once or twice more. “That son of a bitch.”
“Master, please.”
“All right, Manarel. Let's run. You'll have to carry me, and we'll have to find a place to hide.”
The steward stooped, helped Jacob clamber onto his back. Hands cupped beneath his master's knees, he started off. “Shall we go to the house of Paul Drego, Mister Jacob?”
Jacob hung on, bouncing with each step. “That's the first place they'll look. And by now Paul's probably in trouble himself.” Jacob was casting about in his mind for something that he could do, but all he could recall about Furze was the fact that its inhabitants—with a few marked exceptions—would do anything for a handful of gold.
Two guards appeared before them as they burst out of the alley. Manarel freed a fist, knocked them down, resumed his grip on Jacob, and took off around a corner. Zig-zagging through the maze of narrow, rubbish-choked streets, he wove among old and ill-kept carts, darted past startled housewives with empty baskets, cut between despondent horses. Always, though, no matter how he turned, he was moving away from the House of God.
Jacob jounced and bumped on Manarel's back. The fear was finally beginning to sink in now, and he felt the chill in his chest deepen. He had thought himself safe because of his money, but it was the odor of money that was drawing Siegfried and his hounds ever closer, just as it had drawn Francis, just as it had drawn Edvard and Norman, just as it had drawn Marjorie.
He could expect little from his family. Josef was dead, and with the entire estate in danger of confiscation, Francis and the rest would doubtless do anything in their power to preserve it, even if that meant denouncing the family patriarch.
As though denunciation would accomplish anything in the long run! Jacob knew about the Inquisition, and he was beginning to understand Siegfried, too. The Dominican had gotten a whiff of gold and now would not be satisfied until he had every last penny of the Aldernacht millions.
Manarel stumbled, almost fell. Jacob's heart throbbed, and a deep ache suddenly flowed like oil down his left arm. Siegfried, he reflected, would probably n ever have the chance to burn him, or, if he did, he would only be burning a corpse as dead as those he occasionally evicted from the churchyard so as to try and punish a heretic dead fifty years or more.
Recovering, Manarel ran on. No pursuers. Yet.
But Jacob was not worried about death, for death could not worry someone who had come to find life a tedious affair of betrayal and disappointment. It was, rather, a raging sense of pride and anger that shoved his heart back to its duty and burned out the ache in his arm with outraged fire. His fortune, given over to the Inquisition? Never!
But there did not seem to be much that he could do about it, and without a generous supply of gold at hand, he was going to find that hiding places in Furze were going to be very hard to come by in a few hours.
Where did one find honesty and courage in a place as hungry as Furze?
And the answer suddenly came to him. Yes. Of course. It was obvious. The one place in Furze where Siegfried and his hounds would not think to look. The one place in Furze where Jacob could be assured of a fair hearing, a hand of friendship, and not a single question about money.
Oh, money would come up eventually. Jacob would make sure that it did. But certainly it would not come up in any way that Siegfried expected, and Francis and his little nest of snakes would certainly not approve. But that was all right. Jacob approved. In fact, as he thudded up and down on Manarel's back like a sack of rusty coins, he suddenly found it quite funny, and his old, cracked voice suddenly cut loose with a joyous guffaw.
“Master?” Manarel sounded worried.
“It's all right, man,” said Jacob. “I haven't lost my senses.” Though the air was rank with heat and ripe with the pollution of the city, he inhaled deeply and grinned. No dungeons for t his old man, Siegfried! “No, not at all. In fact, I think I've just found them!”
At the end of five hours, the church bells were ringing nones, Siegfried's broken and hugely swollen nose was swathed in a mass of white bandages, and, despite the powers of the Inquisition, which admitted no interference from any agency, earthly or spiritual, Jacob Aldernacht had not been found.
The complex network of informers that Siegfried had built up over twenty years could ensnare even the smallest and most insignificant heresy, but it could not catch Jacob. No matter that the gates of the city had been sealed within minutes after Manarel had slammed and barred the office door, no matter that it was physically impossible for the two men even to have reached the gates before the alarm had been sounded: Jacob and Manarel had, apparently, vanished.
“Look again,” said Siegfried, his damaged nose precluding anything approximating his usually precise speech.
Fra Giovanni spread his hands. “Brother, they are gone.”
“They caddot fly over the wall. They are dot debods.” But by his own words, Siegfried was reminded uneasily of Natil, who still hung in chains in the dungeon. Perhaps some of them were not demons, but others had admitted to his face that they were indeed just that.
But Jacob himself was human. Of that Siegfried was certain. Human and heretical. “They are here,” he said. “Id Furze. Fid theb. Search the streets, look in the basebedts, the cellars, whatever. Fid theb!”
And the searchers looked, hunted, questioned. And since they still could not find Jacob, Siegfried, panicked, ordered them to take others. Paul Drego and his family were arrested in the early evening. So was Simon the Jew. James the furrier and his sweetheart were surprised in the middle of feeding early strawberries to one another. Singly and in groups, all the members of the cooperative were led off to the House of God to join the Aldernacht men, who had been arrested after a bloody fight in the courtyard that morning.
Siegfried questioned them himself, his bandaged nose waving and bobbing as he alternately raged, pleaded, and pounded on the wooden surface of the tribunal desk, setting the quills of his secretaries and scribes flying over their pages in an attempt to keep pace both with the Inquisitor's furious flow of interrogation and his adenoidal parody of nasal consonants.
“I dod't wadt to hear about your biserable bodey! I wadt you to tell me about Elves!”
“Elves?” said James, who, still as naked as he had been when dragged from his bed, terrified at the suddenness of his arrest, and worried nearly to tears about his beloved, appeared to be determined to cooperate if anyone would tell him what he was supposed to cooperate with.
Siegfried flushed, pounded. “Elves! Dabbit! Do dot pretedt to be stupid!”
Even Fra Giovanni was taken aback by the Inquisitor's oath. Siegfried was a pious man. Siegfried never swore.
But Siegfried was swearing now with all the passionate rage of a man who had just found himself within arm's reach of his most bitter and deathless enemy. These wretched idolaters and demon worshipers were not going to get away with feigning ignorance in
his
tribunal. He would torture them all himself if he had to. He would strip their skin and muscle down to the bone. He would twist the needles into their joints until they wept for mercy. Even now he could feel the mechanisms under his thumbs: the knives, the oil smooth twist of the screws, the quick scoop that would leave a man's eyeball dangling on his cheek as he screamed . . .
“Dabbit!” he cried. “
Elves!
”
“Elves,” seconded Giovanni, who was, himself, still shaking from the interview with Natil. “You know.” He looked with uncertainty at Siegfried. “Elves.”
“I . . . d-dan understand,” said James, who now began to stammer with confusion and fright. “What about Elves? I d-d-din't know they were heretical.” Siegfried glared at him, and he fell to his knees, lifted clasped hands. “I didn't e'en know they were real.”
“They are real,” said Siegfried, pounding once again. He remembered Natil's pale, lovely face, her long dark hair, the way her slender hands had clenched when she had spoken. A demon. A demon with all the pernicious beauty and eloquence of demons. And she had possessed the audacity to condemn the Inquisition itself! Well, her insolent words had done nothing for her, and since they had in fact alerted him to her plot, Siegfried decided that she could rot in her dark cell until all of her co-conspirators—including Jacob—joined her. They could all burn together, then, just like the Spirituals and the Dolcinians. “I know they are real. I heard it frob the lips of od of theb this bordig!”
“This morning,” Giovanni translated.
“Shutup, Giovaddi!”
The friar cringed. The pens of the secretaries scratched frantically.
“Please, Brother Siegfried,” said James, “I dan know anything about this! I really dan! I a'ways thought Elves were a fairy tale!”
“Take hib away! Brig id de dext od!”
Weeping, James was dragged away. But the next defendant to be brought before the tribunal was his sweetheart, and, with a cry, he reached out to her as they passed one another by the door . . . for which temerity he was cuffed senseless.
And Jacob was still missing.
***
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Uh . . . should I say
Your Excellency
?”
“Father is fine, my son. How long has it been since your last confession?”
“Oh . . . Lord . . . I don't know. Years.”
Albrecht looked aghast at the man who knelt before him in the quiet dimness of the curtained study. “Years?”
Jacob shrugged and, in order to satisfy the bishop, dredged up unpleasant memories. “I think Francis made his first Communion about then.” Yes, Francis had made his first Communion, and then Marjorie had left. And then Marjorie had returned. And how long had that been? “Thirty years or so.”
Albrecht crossed himself. “Go on, my son.”
Jacob looked up, exasperated. “Excellency, I'm as old as you are. Don't call me
my son
. Anyway, sons and grandsons don't do anything except stick a whore in your room and hope she fucks you to death.”
Albrecht crossed himself again. “As . . . ah . . . as you say. I'm sure you know more about that than I do, Jacob.” He brightened. “Jacob. Is that better?”
“Much.”
“Go on, then. What have you to confess?”
Jacob almost laughed. Where did one start? “I've been a wretch, Excellency. I've lied and cheated all my life. And I've gotten money together just for the pleasure of getting money . . . so I guess that makes me covetous, too.”
“We're all sinners, Jacob.”
“Not like me, Excellency.”
“But—”
“Leave it at that!” Jacob lifted his wizened face, glared. “I took pride in my faults.” He chortled. “So there's another one.”
“You're still proud.”
“Of course I'm still proud! And I'm still covetous and vengeful and devious and generally nasty.” Jacob cleared his throat, squared his shoulders. “I'm an Aldernacht.”
Albrecht looked unnerved. “Ah . . . just so.”
“But I want you to know, Excellency, that I've never, never had anything to do with any heresy.” Jacob considered for a moment, then added: “I've been too busy making money to worry about anything like that.”
“Indeed.” Albrecht all but squirmed, and Jacob could understand his discomfort. Two men, obviously on the run, had knocked at his back door in the middle of the afternoon and asked for shelter. No questions for now, thank you. Explanations will be coming later.
And, yes, explanations were indeed coming, but Albrecht already looked as though he might well have preferred that they had been indefinitely postponed. “Well, I believe you, Jacob.”
“You do?” Jacob squinted at Albrecht through glinting spectacles. The bishop had been so matter-of-fact about his opinion that Jacob could not help but wonder whether he were a little simple-minded. Or at least naive.
Albrecht examined Jacob, puzzled. “I said that I believed you. I ate with you and drank with you. We told impious stories together. I know you better than you think, Jacob. And I certainly know that you're no heretic.”
“Does it bother you that Siegfried thinks otherwise?”
Understanding suddenly came to Albrecht. “Siegfried? What . . . what about Siegfried?”
“Do you remember Natil, my harper?”
“Ah, yes. Natil. Charming woman.”
“Siegfried's taken her. He's going to burn her.”
Albrecht clenched his hands and could not manage words for some time, but at last he shrugged helplessly. “He's burned many. And I've been able to do nothing about any of it.”