Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 23

Archie


I kept my new cloak and hat on the rest of the day, and as much as possible stuck to shadows as I quartered the town below the monastery looking for the two who had mentioned my name. They were almost certainly Jesuits. I obviously didn’t know if they were part of a concerted effort to track me, which thought caused me no lack of dyspepsia and strain, or if they were here by the whims of Fortuna and chance. I wasn’t sure I liked that thought any better than the first—perhaps less, for plans and schemes can be defensed and misled, whereas what counter is there for the roll of the dice?

It was late afternoon when I finally saw them walking along the road before the monastery. They were together, which had made it easier to see them. One was stocky and thick-set, one was not exactly slender, but was slimmer than the other. I could see fringes of long light-colored hair trailing out from beneath the first man’s hat. Silver or gray, from what I could tell. The other one’s hair was too short to see under the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.

I trailed some distance behind them, at least a block at all times, if not two. They would pause and go into different shops, following a pattern for that movement that did not make my perception of their purposes any clearer. I did, however, decide they were indeed Jesuits, after watching them walk around the town for the best part of an hour. As my friend Heinrich in Jena had said, even dressed in plain clothing, there was still something about how they carried themselves that just rang of Jesuits. They must have to take classes or instructions in how to walk like a Jesuit.

I didn’t walk into any of the stores and ask what they were asking about. If they were looking for me, I didn’t want word of such conversations getting back to them. If they weren’t looking for me, then it didn’t matter.

There was a nice shadowed nook by the front door of The Spotted Hound where I stood for several moments watching their backs as they walked down the street. Until, that is, I was distracted by Brother Wilhelm walking around the corner and by me without a glance my way before he ducked into the tavern’s door. I was of a mind to follow him into the tavern and try to have a word with the man when he walked out again carrying a bucket with a lid on it. He carried it like it had some weight to it, by which I guessed that it was full of beer. Water is heavy stuff, mind you, and beer, being mostly water, is likewise heavy. My guess was that the bucket contained two gallons, and maybe as much as another half a gallon more, which would have put the weight of it at least twenty English pounds, plus the weight of the bucket itself. Not a load I would have wanted to carry far my own self, especially if I didn’t want to slop the beer.

I watched the monk, and once he was a half block away I followed. I did want to know where the man lived, after all. Plus I had most of a box of Sal Vin Betula to gift to him.

I doubt that it surprises you that I had more than one eye paying attention to the streets around me, not wanting to be caught unawares by the Jesuits, or by anyone who might be their friend. Yet nonetheless I managed to keep Brother Wilhelm in sight as he led the way into a less than impressive neighborhood. The houses were smaller, or even just small. Some were in such ill repair that if they had not leaned upon each other, they might have fallen down. He walked to one of the smallest and most colorless and most undistinctive of the houses near the city wall, paused in front of the door to cross himself, and then entered.

Twilight had advanced as we walked our way here from The Spotted Hound. Shadows abounded now, and few were the lanterns and torches to be seen in this part of Füssen. I stood before the house, undecided. I needed to talk to Brother Wilhelm, but I didn’t want to attract attention. Yet night was approaching, and no one in this part of the city knew who I was. Of course,, that was equally true of everyone else in the city, with the possible exception of the two Jesuits. There might be no better time than this. The cathedral clock struck the hour, and that decided me. I walked up to the door, bowed slightly to the crucifix—I may not be Catholic, but I am respectful of the Lord, as hard as that might be to believe—and knocked three times on the door.

After a moment, the door opened somewhat and Brother Wilhelm stood in the opening, with dim light from the room behind him leaving his front in shadow. There was enough light to show the habit he was wearing. “Yes?”

I brought out the box of Sal Vin Betula and held it up before him. “I brought you the rest of the box of blue pills you wanted to buy.” I turned my hand over and held it out to him. It took him a moment to decide to take it. I held it steady until he reached out to lift it from my hand. “Go ahead, open it.”

He took his left hand off the door and opened the box. A brief look down was followed by the closing of the box and enfolding it in his right hand. The left hand returned to the door and drew it open wider. “Please, come in.”

I nodded my thanks, and entered.

The Franciscan looked at me, and said, “Is this a gift, an offering, or is there somewhat I can do for you to balance the favor?”

“It is a gift, a free offering,” I said, “with no return gift necessary or required. But…”

His mouth twisted a bit. “That ‘But’ tells me that you do want something.”

“All men want something,” I replied. “I want a bit of information. If you have it and will share it with me, well enough. If not, I’ll leave you in peace.”

“Ask, then.”

I took a deep breath. “Do you know of a man—or a person—who has come to Füssen from the south, from Reschen Pass, perhaps from Tuscany, perhaps from Rome itself?”

His eyes widened momentarily, and his mouth seemed to tighten. “Why do you ask?”

“I seek a man from Rome with a package—a small package perhaps about this size.” I held my hands out.

“That’s not that small,” he observed.

“Small enough for one man to carry, provided it’s not filled with gold, iron, or lead.” I smiled at him to try and lighten the moment.

“Why do you seek it?”

“It’s of value to the right people, and it deserves to be removed far away from the grasp of Cardinal Borja.”

“Ah.”

Before the monk could say more, a hoarse voice came from behind him.

“Please bring him here, Brother Wilhelm.”

Wilhelm looked back over his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

“Please…” the other man’s voice said before it broke into coughing.

The monk turned and moved to a pallet on the floor that had been hidden behind him in the dim light. He helped the man on the pallet to sit up and take a sip of something from a cup. Once the coughing stopped, he moved a small chest to place behind the invalid so that he could sit back against it and look at me.

It was a young man, for all that he looked to be somewhat gaunt. He peered at me intently, then raised a somewhat shaky hand and beckoned me forward. I lingered, not wanting to risk who knew what kind of illness. He beckoned again. “Marsh fever,” he husked. “You’ll take no illness from me.” I looked to the monk, who nodded. I took my cloak off and dropped it on table, then stepped forward into the light from the fireplace and dropped to one knee, to put us more on the same level and to allow me to look at him closer.

The light of fever was indeed in his eyes. They almost glittered in the flickering firelight. His cheeks were sunken, his very short hair was matted, and his bristly cheeks were sunken. Yet his face held a good-natured smile as he tilted his head to one side and looked at me from where he reclined a bit with one hand resting on a knapsack.

“Are you…the friend I wait for?” His voice wavered a bit, but his smile didn’t dim. “I think…you are. You must be. You even…look like him. You have…the nose.”

I felt my face frown. “Look like him? Look like who?”

His smile broadened a bit. “St. Jerome.” It broadened more at the look of astonishment I knew was on my visage.

“I don’t know the man,” I muttered.

“Of course you don’t,” the invalid said. “He’s been dead for hundreds of years. But you look very like him, trust me.”

“So you have seen him?”

“Yes.” The young man’s smile became beatific for a moment, then faded as he looked at me intently again. “What is your name?”

I looked back over my shoulder at Brother Wilhelm, who correctly interpreted my frown and stepped back a couple of paces. I faced forward and leaned closer to the invalid. “Archie Gottesfreund.”

His smile returned and clapped his hands. “Wonderful! You are God’s friend indeed, and are the one I have been waiting for.”

He started coughing again, and Brother Wilhelm approached to help him drink from his cup. Not all the liquid went into his mouth, and the smell of beer wafted my direction. The monk took a scrap of toweling and wiped sputum and drops of beer from his chin.

Brother Wilhelm stepped back again, and the invalid sat and breathed for several moments, then looked up at me again. His hand patted the knapsack a couple of times. “Do you know what I have here, friend?”

I nodded. “I suspect I do.”

“Are you Catholic?”

“I was raised Lutheran, but I have kin who are Catholic. I and my master respect and honor what is under your hand, we would treat it with reverence, and we believe it must not fall into the hands of the Spanish.”

His eyes closed for a moment, he sighed, and a small smile lifted the corners of his lips. “Then you are the one who was promised to take this. Take it to hiding, my friend, and preserve it for a time of greater peace and reverence and scholarship than the one we are now in.”

He reached to lift the knapsack, but was barely able to stir it. I will tell you my heart was in my mouth as I reached to take it from his hands. It is one thing to believe in God, it is another thing altogether to receive one of the greatest relics of God that was in existence.

The invalid sat back, obviously exhausted, and whispered, “Go with God, my friend.” He raised his eyes to the monk. “I would rest now, Brother Wilhelm.” I moved out of the way while Wilhelm helped his patient lie back on his pallet and smoothed his blankets for him.

After a moment, the monk stood and drew me back toward the door. By that time I had re-donned my cloak.

“Who is he?” I muttered.

“Gregorio, an Augustinian monk originally from Innsbruck. He says he was in the Vatican on the day of the Spaniards’ assault?”

“Do you know how he got here?”

“Only hints from his fever mutterings. He caught rides with merchants for part of the way, and walked the rest. He was struck down by the fever while in Florence, as well, which is probably where his head was shaved. He’s been here for several days, and has been in a fever the whole time. Tonight is the first time he has been rational.”

“Do you know what this is?” I hissed at him, hefting the knapsack.

His face showed weariness. “I could guess, based on a few things he muttered in his fevers, but no, I have not looked in that bag, so I do not know what is in it. And I suspect that it will be better for my own peace of mind and spirit if I do not know.”

“St. Jerome,” I whispered. “Did he really have visions of St. Jerome?”

“I’m a cleric,” he whispered back. “I’m inclined to believe in such things. But at the same time, it doesn’t match the stories of saints’ visions the church tells, and I have tended too many folk with fevers, and have heard and witnessed the most outlandish ravings, things you would never believe, so I am very doubtful of it. I certainly would not attempt to defend him before an Advocatus Diaboli. But really, at the end of all things, it doesn’t matter what you or I believe about it, does it?” He nodded toward the pallet. “He believes it.”

I looked back toward the young man—Gregorio—and nodded myself. He did seem to believe it.

I hooked the knapsack strap over one shoulder, then pulled one of my purses out and started counting coins into Brother Wilhelm’s palm. “…seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. That’s twenty guilders. You give young Gregorio the best care you can give him, all right? He deserves it. And if worse comes to worst, you see to it that he has a good funeral and a good mass. All right?”

Brother Wilhelm had a bit of a stunned look on his face, then stuffed the coins into his cassock and grasped my upper arm. “You know the Benedictines will not look kindly on this.”

I snorted. “I am less concerned about them and their monastery than I am the two Jesuits that rode into town this afternoon.”

His jaw dropped for a moment, then firmed up. He opened the door, and pushed me forward. “Get out of town as soon as you can, and…go with God.”



Back | Next
Framed