After scolding me about Krystyana and the other ladies-in-waiting, he said, “All this fighting! I hope you realize that I never thought that you would be in such anger when I found you that position with the merchant, Novacek.”
“I’ve never found fault with you, Father.”
“You are generous, my son. So. You attained wealth, lands, and power of a scope that most men can only ream about and it seems that two days ago you threw it all away.”
“What is this problem you have with the Knights of the Cross? On your first day in this century, you insulted one of them and got your head bashed in the bargain. Now you have attacked one of their caravans and caused the death of five or six of their number. You should know hat very few men are truly evil, and certainly there could not be an entire order of them. The Crossmen do valuable service to our country, keeping the Mazovian orders free from invasion.”
“They do it by murdering entire villages.”
“Then we both know that such an event was probably in retaliation for some atrocity by the Pruthenians.”
“Father, I know nothing of the sort.”
“Do you think that the northern barbarians are innocent, peaceful dwellers of the forests? They are heathens and worship barbarous gods.”
“There must be better ways to convert them.”
“One would think so. Many missionaries have tried it over the past three hundred years, but to no avail. Many have died, martyrs to Christ.”
“It’s not some simple matter of putting a new image in their church. Those people practice human sacrifice! And cannibalism! Those ‘innocent children’ you ‘rescued’ have every one of them eaten human flesh!”
“Now that’s news to me, Father. But I’ll make Christians out of them. And no matter what the heathens have done, it doesn’t excuse what the Crossmen have done. You don’t know their whole history.”
“Perhaps you should tell me about them.”
“Well, you know that their organization was formed forty years ago in Jerusalem, a German imitation of the Knights Templar. They soon lost interest in the Holy Lands, I suppose because there wasn’t much profit in it.”
“They tried to set up in Hungary, but King Andrew found out the truth about them in time and threw them out. Duke Conrad of Mazovia wasn’t that intelligent. He invited them in-what?-seven years ago?-to guard his northern borders. Their way of doing that has been to murder every non-Christian in sight and to take as much Polish soil as they do Prussian.”
“In the future, they will do nothing but grow and many of the most murderous battles of the medieval period–”
“The what?”
“Forgive me, Father, but that is what this current period of history will eventually be called. The middle period between the ancient world of the Romans and the Renaissance, or awakening, that led to the modem world.”
“Now that is a shock. I’d always thought of this as being the modem world.”
“Hmm. Then again, I don’t know what generations future to mine will call my own civilization. Perhaps they won’t be as polite.”
“Some time you must teach me more of your history. But for now, return to your story of the Crossmen.”
“Yes, Father. Eventually their murderous ways became so notorious that they were censored by the Pope. This didn’t bother them a bit. They simply became a secular order and went on doing as they had been. Many long wars and bloody battles were fought by the kings of Poland against them.”
“Then Poland will again have a king?”
“Of course, Father. We’re but a century from the time of King Casimir the Great!”
“Praise God! But continue your story.”
“Eventually, they were defeated at the Battle of Grunwald or Tannenberg, it’s sometimes called. This was -will be-the bloodiest battle fought by Christians in the Middle Ages.”
“The surviving Crossmen became vassals of the Polish Crown, as the Duchy of Prussia. By that time they had completely eradicated the Slavic tribe of Prussians, or Pruthenians as they are sometimes called, and had taken that name for themselves, the way a barbaric warrior takes the clothing of his victim.”
“But despite their vassalage, they never became Polish. Six hundred years from now, they were instrumental in organizing and dominating all the German states.”
“Their spirit was that of another German group, the Nazis, which conquered Poland as well as most of the rest of Europe. Their crimes were so horrible as to be unimaginable. Not far from where we sit, they built a death camp called Auschwitz where they systematically killed four and a half million people. That is half again as many people as there are in all of present-day Poland.”
“This was not a matter of the sack and slaughter of a city, done in the heat of passion. This was a matter of Germans going to work each day for four years and killing their quota of men, women, and children.”
“And that was not the only camp, and the camps were not the only atrocity. In the end, more than fifty million people died in six years. That’s twice as many people as lived in the entire Roman Empire at its peak.”
Father Ignacy was silent for a while. “I cannot comprehend the numbers of people you speak of, but I have never known you to lie. You are saying then that this is a great evil that must be fought?”
“Yes, I guess so, Father.”
“I take it then that you are not intending to run away, as many men would.”
“I don’t see how I can. If I did, they’d probably take those children back and sell them to the Moslems. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can. But you are only one man, and they are many thousands.”
“I know that I can’t lick them alone,” I said, my eyes blurring with tears. “But I intend to do everything that one man can. If I die, well, I die. Father, you once told me that I might be an instrument of God, and I didn’t believe you. Well, in this matter, I know that I have God on my side.” I think I was crying a little.
“Very well, my son. For what small worth it might be, know that in this matter you have me on your side as well. Go with God, my son. I give you no penance for your sins, for I think that you will soon be punished more than you deserve, and more than you can bear.”
I had to stop a while in the vestibule to compose myself before I joined the others. It doesn’t do to be tear-streaked when your friends are worried about you.
But the others were in a merry mood when I joined them in front of the monastery, and the girls were prattling about all the wondrous sights they’d seen. I leaned back on Anna and soaked up their gaiety. I needed it.
Vladimir informed us that the dinner hour at Wawel Castle would be over by then, and we hadn’t eaten lately. I suggested an inn that I had stopped at last fall.
A healthy-looking, well-filled-out young woman took our order, then did a double take at me.
“Oh my God! You’re Sir Conrad!”
“Guilty. Then you must be Malenka.”
“Oh my God! Zygmunt! Zygmunt! Quickly! Look who’s here!”
She ran out of the room to get her husband.
“What was that all about?” asked Annastashia.
“Oh, once I played matchmaker,” I said.
The innkeeper came back with his wife, wiping his hands on his apron and smiling. Introductions were made and he announced that the meal was on the house and so were the next five, if we’d come back.
Soon, their other duties called them away and we could eat.
“They certainly were happy with you,” Krystyana said. “How did you happen to bring them together?”
“Well, I hired her.”
“Hired her?”
“Hired her.”
“There’s more to the story than you’re telling.”
“You are right. But that’s all of it that you’re going to hear. A man deserves some secrets.”
They complained, but I wouldn’t say another word. Actually, Malenka had been a prostitute and I’d hired her just to keep her from being used by a young friend of mine; it wouldn’t have been good for him just then.
She was very young and hungry-looking at the time, and I had to report to a new job. So I told her that she had to do honest work for the innkeeper for the three days that I had hired her. The upshot was that she married the innkeeper, my friend became a monk, and all three of them are very happy. Pretty fair mileage out of three silver pennies.
But to talk about it would only embarrass Malenka, so I kept silent.
“They must have a lot of knights to guard all these walls,” Annastashia said, as we rode again through the city.