Morold silenced her with another punch. “Hold your tongue, trollop,” he growled. “You’ll get the chance to scream. Just wait a while.”
“Don’t you dare hit her!” yelled Reynevan.
“We’ll give you a chance to scream, too, little rooster,” Wolfher added, still menacingly calm. “Come on, out with him.”
The Stercza brothers threw Reynevan down the garret’s steep stairs and the boy tumbled onto the landing, splintering part of the wooden balustrade. Before he could get up, they seized him again and threw him out into the courtyard, onto sand strewn with steaming piles of horse shit.
“Well, well, well,” said Nicolaus of Stercza, the youngest of the brothers, barely a stripling, who was holding the horses. “Look who’s stopped by. Could it be Reinmar of Bielawa?”
“The scholarly braggart Bielawa,” snorted Jentsch of Knobelsdorf, known as Eagle Owl, a comrade and relative of the Sterczas. “The arrogant know-all Bielawa!”
“Shitty poet,” added Dieter Haxt, another friend of the family. “Bloody Abélard!”
“And to prove to him we’re well read, too,” said Wolfher as he descended the stairs, “we’ll do to him what they did to Abélard when he was caught with Héloïse. Well, Bielawa? How do you fancy being a capon?”
“Go fuck yourself, Stercza.”
“What? What?” Although it seemed impossible, Wolfher Stercza had turned even paler. “The rooster still has the audacity to open his beak? To crow? The bullwhip, Jentsch!”
“Don’t you dare beat him!” Adèle called impotently as she was led down the stairs, now clothed, albeit incompletely. “Don’t you dare! Or I’ll tell everyone what you are like! That you courted me yourself, pawed me and tried to debauch me behind your brother’s back! That you swore vengeance on me if I spurned you! Which is why you are so… so…”
She couldn’t find the German word and the entire tirade fell apart. Wolfher just laughed.
“Verily!” he mocked. “People will listen to the Frenchwoman, the lewd strumpet. The bullwhip, Eagle Owl!”
The courtyard was suddenly awash with black Augustinian habits.
“What is happening here?” shouted the venerable Prior Erasmus Steinkeller, a bony and sallow old man. “Christians, what are you doing?”
“Begone!” bellowed Wolfher, cracking the bullwhip. “Begone, shaven-heads, hurry off to your prayer books! Don’t interfere in knightly affairs, or woe betide you, blackbacks!”
“Good Lord.” The prior put his liver-spotted hands together. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do. In nomine Patris, et Filii—”
“Morold, Wittich!” roared Wolfher. “Bring the harlot here! Jentsch, Dieter, bind her paramour!”
“Or perhaps,” snarled Stefan Rotkirch, another friend of the family who had been silent until then, “we’ll drag him behind a horse a little?”
“We could. But first, we’ll give him a flogging!”
Wolfher aimed a blow with the horsewhip at the still-prone Reynevan but did not connect, as his wrist was seized by Brother Innocent, nicknamed by his fellow friars “Brother Insolent,” whose impressive height and build were apparent despite his humble monkish stoop. His vicelike grip held Wolfher’s arm motionless.
Stercza swore coarsely, jerked himself away and gave the monk a hard shove. But he might as well have shoved the tower in Oleśnica Castle for all the effect it had. Brother Innocent didn’t budge an inch. He shoved Wolfher back, propelling him halfway across the courtyard and dumping him in a pile of muck.
For a moment, there was silence. And then they all rushed the huge monk. Eagle Owl, the first to attack, was punched in the teeth and tumbled across the sand. Morold of Stercza took a thump to the ear and staggered off to one side, staring vacantly. The others swarmed over the Augustinian like ants, raining blows on the monk’s huge form. Brother Insolent retaliated just as savagely and in a distinctly unchristian way, quite at odds with Saint Augustine’s rule of humility.
The sight enraged the old prior. He flushed like a beetroot, roared like a lion and rushed into the fray, striking left and right with heavy blows of his rosewood crucifix.
“Pax!” he bellowed as he struck. “Pax! Vobiscum! Love thy neighbour! Proximum tuum! Sicut te ipsum! Whoresons!”
Dieter Haxt punched him hard. The old man was flung over backwards and his sandals flew up, describing pretty trajectories in the air. The Augustinians cried out and several of them charged into battle, unable to restrain themselves. The courtyard was seething in earnest.
Wolfher of Stercza, who had been shoved out of the confusion, drew a short sword and brandished it—bloodshed looked inevitable. But Reynevan, who had finally managed to stand up, whacked him in the back of the head with the handle of the bullwhip he had picked up. Stercza held his head and turned around, only for Reynevan to lash him across the face. As Wolfher fell to the ground, Reynevan rushed towards the horses.
“Adèle! Here! To me!”
Adèle didn’t even budge, and the indifference painted on her face was alarming. Reynevan leaped into the saddle. The horse neighed and fidgeted.
“Adèèèèle!”
Morold, Wittich, Haxt and Eagle Owl were now running towards him. Reynevan reined the horse around, whistled piercingly and spurred it hard, making for the gate.
“After him!” yelled Wolfher. “To your horses and get after him!”
Reynevan’s first thought was to head towards Saint Mary’s Gate and out of the town into the woods, but the stretch of Cattle Street leading to the gate was totally crammed with wagons. Furthermore, the horse, urged on and frightened by the cries of an unfamiliar rider, was showing great individual initiative, so before he knew it, Reynevan was hurtling along at a gallop towards the town square, splashing mud and scattering passers-by. He didn’t have to look back to know the others were hot on his heels given the thudding of hooves, the neighing of horses, the angry roaring of the Sterczas and the furious yelling of people being jostled.
He jabbed the horse to a full gallop with his heels, hitting and knocking over a baker carrying a basket. A shower of loaves and pastries flew into the mud, soon to be trodden beneath the hooves of the Sterczas’ horses. Reynevan didn’t even look back, more concerned with what was ahead of him than behind. A cart piled high with faggots of brushwood loomed up before his eyes. The cart was blocking almost the entire street, the rest of which was occupied by a group of half-clothed urchins, kneeling down and busily digging something extremely engrossing out of the muck.
“We have you, Bielawa!” thundered Wolfher from behind, also seeing the obstruction.
Reynevan’s horse was racing so swiftly there was no chance of stopping it. He pressed himself against its mane and closed his eyes. As a result, he didn’t see the half-naked children scatter with the speed and grace of rats. He didn’t look back, so nor did he see a peasant in a sheepskin jerkin turn around, somewhat stupefied, as he hauled a cart into the road. Nor did he see the Sterczas riding broadside into the cart. Nor Jentsch of Knobelsdorf soaring from the saddle and sweeping half of the faggots from the cart with his body.