Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [112]
“Let the Pope choose, you mean? Pfaugh! There would be French spies in every court of Europe. Drink!”
Dietrich pulled a chair across from Manfred and sat. “How has Berthold driven you to this intemperance?”
“This,” Manfred filled his cup, “is not intemperance. It’s what he’s not done. He’s lord o’ Strassburg, but does he lead? A few lances would’ve settled things.” He smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Where is that Unterbaum boy?”
“You sent him to the Swiss to learn the true state of affairs.”
“That was on St. Blaise’s Day. He should be back by now. If that gof has run off—”
“He’d not run from Anna Kohlmann,” Dietrich answered mildly. “Perhaps the road delays him. He took great pride in wearing the messenger’s cloak. He’d not lightly throw it over.”
“It makes nothing,” said the Herr in a sudden swing of temperament. “Learned all ‘n Benfeld. Y’know what happened in the Swiss?”
“I heard the Basler Jews were gathered up for banishment.”
“Would they had been banished. Mob stormed th’ compound an’ set it afire, so … All died.”
“Herr God in heaven!” Dietrich half-stood, crossing himself.
Manfred gave him a sour look. “I’ve no love for usurers, but … there was no charge, no trial, only th’ mob run wild. Berthold asked Strassburg what they intended regarding the Jews, and th’ councilors answered that they ‘knew no evil of them.’ An’ then … Berthold asked th’ bürgermeister, Peter Swaben, why he’d closed th’ wells and put th’ buckets away. By me, that was mere prudence, but there was great outcry against Strassburg’s hypocrisy.” Manfred emptied his cup again. “No man’s safe when the mob runs loose, Jew or no. Wants only a grudge—as well you know.”
At that reminder, Dietrich drained his own cup and it shook as he replenished it.
“Swaben an’ his council stood fast,” Manfred continued, “but the next morning, th’ minster bells ‘nounced a procession of the Cross-Brothers. Th’ bishop detests them—all th’ better folk do—but he daren’t speak while th’ vulgar favor them. They—Drink, Dietrich, drink! They marched two-by-two, the flagellants did, heads bowed, somber habits, cowls thrown up, bright red crosses front, back, cap. Up front, walked their Master, an’ two lieutenants with banners of purple velvet and cloth of gold. All this in utter silence. Utter silence. Unnerved me, that silence did. Had they shouted or danced, I might’ve laughed. But that quiet awed everyone who saw, so th’ only sound was th’ hissing breath of two-hundred brothers. I thought it some enormous serpent, winding through th’ streets. In th’ minster-place, they chanted their litany, and I could think of but one thing.”
“And what was that?”
“How bad th’ poetry was! Hah! Th’ cursed melody entangles m’ thoughts. I need Peter Minnesinger to exorcise it. Wish I’d laughed, now. Might’ve broken the spell. Cathedral chapter all ran off, naturally. Two Dominicans tried to halt a procession out near Miessen an’ were stoned for their troubles, so who dares oppose’m now? I was told Erfurt closed its gates against them, and Bishop Otto suppressed them in Magdeburg. An’ th’ tyrant of Milan erected three hundred welcoming gibbets outside the city walls, and the procession went elsewhere.”
“The Italians are a subtle folk,” Dietrich said.
“Hah! At least Umberto had a spine. The brothers stripped to the waist an’ processed slowly in a circle ‘til, at the Master’s signal, the singing stopped and they threw themselves prostrate on the ground. Then they rose and whipped themselves with leather straps while the three in the center kept a tempus, so that th’ smacking proceeded in unison. Meanwhile, th’ crowd groaned and shivered and wept in sympathy.”
“The brotherhoods were less quarrelsome in the beginning,” Dietrich ventured. “A man required his wife’s permission to join—”
“Which I suppose many were all too happy to give, hah!”
“—and provide four pence a day to support himself on the road. He made a full confession, vowed to neither bathe nor shave, nor change clothes nor sleep in a bed, and to maintain both silence