Sinner: A Prequel to the Mongoliad

IRA

The door leading to the back room opened suddenly, bumping the man who was standing in front of it. Andreas, who had been shaking his head slowly as Raphael ended his narrative, grabbed his sword and leaped to his feet.

“No,” Raphael admonished. “Wait.”

Andreas ignored him, striding across the common room. The man at the door stepped forward, drawing the long knife from his belt, and Raphael caught sight of the other guard drawing his own sword as he crossed the common room toward Andreas.

The situation, already fraught with tension, was going to erupt in violence.

The inquisitor stepped out of the back room and stopped at the sight of the approaching Shield-Brethren. He stared at Andreas coolly, no hint of panic on his flat face. The guard who had been standing at the door raised his knife in a defensive position and readied himself for Andreas’s attack.

Andreas’s hand tightened on his sword, and though he kept it at his side, Raphael knew the guard was an excellent choice, both offensively and defensively. Andreas might look like he was not ready to fight, but such lassitude was merely an illusion.

The inquisitor’s gaze flickered from Andreas to Raphael and back. “I thought I made myself abundantly clear,” he said, his voice cold and authoritative.

“You did,” Raphael said as he stood from the table. “We were just leaving.”

The inquisitor raised an eyebrow but did not move otherwise. For all his bluster, he knew not to provoke the young man standing before him.

“Brother Andreas,” Raphael said. “We are leaving.”

The second man had paused halfway across the room, his sword drawn but not yet raised aggressively. Raphael measured the distance between them as well as the obstacle presented by the table and the distance between the man and Andreas. He would not be able to stop the man from attacking Andreas from behind, but he would be able to warn the Shield-Brother with a word.

Andreas stepped back and turned so that he could see both men and the priest. His grip did not lessen on his sword as he split his attention between both men, waiting for them to put their weapons away. The priest made a noise with his tongue and put his hand on the arm of the knife-wielder next to him.

The other swordsman lowered his weapon.

Andreas, his weapon still held at his side, walked slowly past the second man, his eyes never leaving the other’s face. Watching for some change of heart, some flicker of aggression.

“I have rendered a judgment,” the inquisitor said.

Andreas froze, not quite past the second man, and Raphael slowly shook his head in dismay.

“She is an unrepentant heretic,” the inquisitor continued, a grim smile tugging at his lips. “I tried to help her back to God, but she refused. She has tasted the blood of the Devil and she does not wish to return to God’s embrace.” He made the sign of the cross. “I have given her to the secular authorities-what little exists in this speck of a village-and they have declared that she will be burned at the stake. Tomorrow, at dawn.”

Raphael cleared his throat carefully. “Why are you telling us this?”

The inquisitor made a face. “This village is rife with superstitious fools. Your friend spoke earlier of offering aid to any who might require it. My duty is done, and I have no desire to stay here overnight. You will guard the woman and make sure she does not try to avoid her due punishment.”

Andreas let loose a short bray of incredulous laughter. The man nearest him flinched.

Raphael regarded the inquisitor coldly. “With all due respect, Father,” he said, “but we are leaving.”

“A pity,” the inquisitor said, “but I am not terribly surprised. It is, after all, a habit of yours, is it not, Raphael of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae?”

“We’re just going to let them kill her?”

Raphael whirled on Andreas as they crossed the expanse of the village green. “What other choice do we have? Would you take up arms against the entire Holy Roman Catholic Church?”

“Aye, I would,” Andreas said, standing his ground. The afternoon sun hung behind him, making his blond hair even lighter.

Raphael turned away, the memory of another boy and another time surfacing in his mind, a ghost image that floated over Andreas’s face. “You are all too young,” he said. “Too eager to sacrifice yourselves.”

“Is self-sacrifice not the glory we seek in upholding our vows?” Andreas countered.

“There is no glory in dying,” Raphael snapped.

“No,” Andreas said. “Which is something Gerda is going to discover for herself when the sun rises on the morrow.”

Raphael glanced around the green, exhaling slowly. After the crowded confusion of the mob earlier in the day, the square was deserted. Even the onlookers who had been hanging around the pyre of wood were no longer loitering, waiting for something to happen. The village had, it seemed, slipped into a lazy slumber. “What would you have us do?” he asked Andreas, his voice softening and losing its edge.

“Find some way to save her,” Andreas said.

“How?” Raphael asked. “The inquisitor has rendered his verdict.”

“Yes, but he has handed her over to the local magistrate for punishment. It is his decision that she burns.”

“What other alternative does he have? He’s not going to cross the Church.”

“I do not know. But we have until dawn to find a solution.” Andreas offered Raphael a wry smile. “Is it not better to act than to stand idly by?”

Raphael sighed. “Is there really any choice?”

Andreas shook his head, though his grin widened.

The inquisitor and his men were still in the inn, along with the magistrate and the woman, Gerda. There was no opportunity to speak with the accused directly, and so they turned to the villagers instead. At the first few houses, no one answered their summons, and when timid faces did begin to respond, they would pretend not to understand Raphael’s German. It was Andreas who finally managed to get the townsfolk to open up to them. His breezy insouciance and obliviousness to their resistance to talking of the incident earlier in the day gradually broke through barriers, both real and imagined.

They were pointed toward Gerda and Otto’s tiny shack on the edge of the village, not far from the dense wood that ran all the way to the banks of the Rhine. They knew they had found the right house from the blood staining the stones of a rectangular plot in front of the house. Inside, much to Andreas’s dismay, there were signs of both looting and a struggle. Whatever meager possessions owned by Gerda and Otto had already been pilfered by greedy neighbors.

Mounted to the stone wall above the soot-darkened hearth was a narrow wooden icon, a depiction of a dark-eyed maiden with garlands of flowers wreathing her hair. Andreas rested his fingertips against the wood, his eyes half-closed, and Raphael did not interrupt the other man’s prayer.

The Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae had a Christianized name, but that did not mean they had forgotten their ancient origins. Many of the Shield-Brethren observed the rituals and rules of the Roman Catholic Church, but a fair number still used the Virgin Mary as a shield for devotion to a much older, though equally chaste goddess.

“There is very little to support a claim of witchcraft,” Raphael mused, kneeling next the bloody ground outside. “She finds her husband’s head left as a cruel offering, but no one will speak ill of her or her relationship with her husband.” Many feet had stirred up the ground and trampled the wild grasses around the narrow plot of flat stones. It was frustratingly impossible to discern any clue as to the identity of who might have brought the severed head.

“The body has not been found,” Andreas said, appearing in the doorway behind Raphael. “Though there was talk of a struggle in the woods, not far from here.”

“But why bring the head here? Why reveal the existence of this murder unless, in doing so, you achieve some other end. Was it meant to frighten Gerda?”

“It certainly did.”

“No, I wonder if it was meant as a symbol of some pagan ritual. An old warning that would have had some significance to her.”

Andreas pursed his lips, warily eying Raphael. “You think she is still a pagan?”

“Don’t you?” Raphael asked, somewhat guilelessly.

“If she is,” Andreas said, side-stepping Raphael’s inference, “I do not suspect she tried to deliberately hide it. The other villagers would know.”

Raphael indicated the bloodstained stones. “What triggered this rage, then? This was not an act of isolated passion. The villain-”

“Or villains,” Andreas interjected. “If what we have heard is true, Otto was torn open and his viscera removed. Such deviltry would be more readily accomplished if there were more than one assailant.”

“Villains then,” Raphael nodded. “So they slaughtered Otto elsewhere and then brought the head here where it would be discovered. But why did her neighbors leap to the conclusion that she had perpetrated this crime?”

“You ask curious questions, Brother, and I do not think we will find easy answers. I suspect we have been granted all the aid we are going to receive from the people of this village.”

“Aye,” Raphael said. “Our inquiry begins to frame an accusation to be laid against other folk, and though it is entirely un-Christian of them to protest otherwise, we have not seen any evidence that these individuals are willing to come forward and admit culpability in the crime. No one is going to volunteer to take Gerda’s place, and given the Inquisition’s predilection for casting a wide net in its capture of heretics, anyone who casts aspersions on their fellows could very easily find themselves named as a coconspirator in the ensuing tribunal.”

“And yet Gerda did not name anyone else in her confession,” Andreas noted. “Either she does not know who might wish her and her husband ill, or…”

“Or she thought her sentence might be lessened if she were to be the only culprit in this crime,” Raphael said, finishing Andreas’s thought for him. “Which would imply that she knows who is responsible.”

“Or suspects.”

“The magistrate?” Raphael posited.

“I would not be averse to asking him a few questions.”

“He has seen the enmity between us and the inquisitor; he will hide behind the priest. If he protests his innocence, the inquisitor will agree with him.” Raphael shook his head. “No, we need irrefutable proof, and I suspect the truth may be more readily revealed by seeking the knowledge of others.”