Sinner: A Prequel to the Mongoliad

The remaining guard cleared his throat and rested his hands on the short hilt of the knife shoved into his belt.

Behind the Shield-Brethren, the innkeeper shouted to the room at large, “Drink up and go home. We’re closed.”

As the villagers took the hint and started a mass exodus toward the door of the inn, Andreas stalked past Raphael and sat down heavily at a table near the center of the room. He pulled his sword from its scabbard, causing a few of the nearby villagers to shove their way more quickly toward the door, and set it on the table.

“I’m staying,” Andreas announced loudly. “I am holding a vigil for that poor woman’s soul.”

The guard at the door chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment and then shrugged as if it made no difference to him what Andreas did as long as he kept his distance.

“There is time, Brother,” Andreas said, indicating the bench opposite him. “I would hear the explanation you were about to give.”

Raphael sighed and signaled to the innkeeper that the two Shield-Brethren would appreciate being served, regardless of the man’s insistence of the inn’s closure.

Gerda had tried so valiantly to get their attention, but the heavy brute sitting on her had covered her mouth. All she could do was try to communicate her desperate fear with her eyes, and when the blond-haired one with the shaggy beard had asked if anyone needed aid, she had tried to bite the hand over her mouth-gnawing her way out of the man’s grip if need be. But before she could get any purchase on his flesh, the two men had left. As the door latched behind them, she slumped to the floor. When the man removed his hand, all that came out of her mouth was a stream of weak sobs.

The inquisitor came around from behind the table and stood over Gerda. “There will be no more interruptions,” he said sternly. He turned his attention to the cringing magistrate. “I will gain a confession from this woman or I will judge her an unrepentant heretic. One of the questions I will ask her is for her to name her companions, her coconspirators who also seek the Devil’s favor. I will bring the full weight of my office and my holy duty upon those individuals as well.”

“Yes, yes, Your Grace.”

“Give me your belt.”

“Your Grace?”

“Your ignorance tires me,” the inquisitor snapped. “I am not a bishop, nor a man so easily flattered by such honorifics.” He held out his hand. “Your belt.”

Gerda heard the magistrate fumble with his belt, the rattle of his sword as it bumped against the table and chair, and she twisted her head so as to better see. The magistrate pulled his sword from its hanger, laying it on the table, and handed over the long leather belt. The inquisitor folded the belt over itself until he had a strap as thick as his wrist and as long as his forearm. “Put your hand on the table,” the inquisitor said.

The magistrate acquiesced, and the inquisitor slapped the length of leather against the magistrate’s extended hand. He yelped in pain, and his voice hummed in his throat thereafter, but he made no other sound. The inquisitor looked down at Gerda. “My questions will be answered directly,” he said, “or there will be punishment.”

He knelt and forced his hand under her chin. “You may pray to God during your ordeal, but remember that he hears your thoughts as readily as your words. If you cry out again, I will take that as a sign that you are attempting to summon demonic aid. I take no pleasure in condemning heretics to death, but I will not suffer the Devil to walk amongst good Christians.” He stood again, his knees popping, and thrashed the magistrate’s hand one more time with his lash. “Do we understand each other?” His gaze roved from Gerda to the magistrate and back again.

She offered him the tiniest of nods.

“Good,” he said. “Turn her over,” he commanded his man. “Uncover her back so that my displeasure may be felt more readily by her unrepentant flesh.”

Gerda bit her tongue so hard blood flowed in her mouth as the inquisitor’s men roughly turned her over. Her hands were pulled over her head and her shift was yanked upward, bunching the material at the top of her shoulder blades. She struggled for a moment, until she felt the inquisitor’s booted foot press down on the small of her back. “Lie still,” he said, rocking his foot back until the sharp point of his spur pierced her flesh.

“Now,” he said when she stopped moving, “let us start again. This woman, Gerda, you say that she is known for leading men astray, yes?”

She kept her eyes closed, listening to the magistrate answer the inquisitor’s questions. The inquisitor was ignoring the death of her husband-it was as if he had never existed-and he was asking questions about her now. She did not understand why, and the magistrate’s answers were equally as unreal. None of his responses were true, but the presence of the inquisitor’s foot on her back was a constant reminder of what would happen if she dared to open her mouth and speak. She could not contradict what the magistrate was saying, but that did not lessen the gravity of his lies.

The inquisitor was correct in his assessment that the Devil lived in her village, but it was not her house in which the fallen angel had taken residence. It was not her ear in which the serpent had whispered.

ACEDIA

“The horse you admired earlier?” Raphael began his explanation with a question, and when Andreas nodded, he continued. “It was a gift from Frederick the Second.”

Andreas nearly choked on a mouthful of ale. “The Holy Roman Emperor?”

“Aye. The Emperor and I enjoy a certain…friendship, I guess. I have, on occasion, been able to offer my services to him, and in no way have I ever expressed any desire for any recompense for such duties other than the pure pleasure of being useful to the Holy Roman Empire.”

“No,” Andreas coughed. “I can’t imagine anyone would have the audacity to think otherwise.”

Raphael offered the younger man a slight smile. “In this instance, I happened to be traveling in Italy when he was in the final months of assembling the Liber Augustalis.” On seeing Andreas’s blank gaze, he explained. “Frederick’s grandfather, Roger the Second, put together a code of laws known as the Assizes of Ariano that codified and laid out the rules of secular government for the Kingdom of Sicily. Frederick, in turn, has redrafted these laws twice-once in 1220 at Capua and more recently at Melfi.”

Raphael paused to wet his throat. “Mostly these accords affirm Frederick’s secular power of the lands he commands, but they also lay out a fair number of regulations concerning the welfare and safety of the individual citizens. As such, he wanted to be sure he had the opinion of a number of learned citizens in regards to this new constitution before he proclaimed it to be law.”

“And you happened to be one of these learned citizens?”

“The Emperor and I share five languages in common, more than most at his court. In fact, in any given conversation we enjoyed, he would switch between the five at his pleasure, mostly to maintain his fluency, but also-as he admitted to me at one point-to confuse his court. If they couldn’t understand what he was saying, they would think he was talking about them, and fearful of losing face, they tended to behave themselves.

“The reason he gave me the horse was not just for my assistance in the Liber Augustalis, but because of a favor I had done him several years prior. I heard you telling stories of the Crusades earlier. Was that the Sixth?”

Andreas lowered his mug and stared at Raphael for a long moment. “Aye,” he said, dropping his gaze to the knife-marred wood of the tabletop.

“You are a very florid storyteller, Andreas,” Raphael said with a smile. “Though I was not in the Levant at that time, I do recall that it was possibly the least contentious of any crusade. Not that it matters. Crusading in the Holy Land changes a man; God affords such a survivor some leniency when telling others of his actions in the service of God and kingdom.”

Andreas nodded, and his shoulders sagged slightly-the only visible sign of his relief that Raphael was not going to chastise him further for his embellishments. “You were at Damietta?” he asked. “During the Fifth?”