Well Dead

XI. Back to the Books

The next morning, Harun was for once not awakened by the cockcrow. He was not overtly thankful for it, however. The only reason he wasn't awakened at five in the morning by the ghastly animal was that he hadn't slept during the night at all. Barrels of pitch do not make a very comfortable bed, especially when the barrel next to you happens to be occupied by a snoring soldier who long ago had learned to sleep in all kinds of circumstances.

Sir Christian and Father Ignatius had continued their discussion on the works of countless clerics seemingly forever, and when they finally finished, the Father’s voice increasingly sounding tired irritated, Sir Christian had insisted on taking out his pilgrim’s robes and showing them to the good Father. And why not try them on if one was already at it? It had continued long into the night, by which time Harun had not the strength to get up and drag himself to his room.

The next morning, when he had heard Sir Christian leave, he got up himself and followed. Eyelids drooping, head bent low, trotted down the stairs. He did not wake Wenzel. He just could not bear at this moment for someone to wake up, yawn and ask him whether he had slept well.

Slowly he made his way to the main hall. There his usual breakfast already waited. Not a particularly delicious but enough for him to be able to stand straight and especially think straight again. He needed his wits about him now.

Wenzel had not at all been forthcoming regarding his part in gathering evidence to prove that one of his best friends was guilty of murder, though Harun had argued with him long into the night. The scribe would have to do most of the work himself. Not only most of it, but the dangerous bits as well, and that was especially vexing. Intellectuals like himself should not have to put life and limb at risk – they were there for thinking up ingenious plans and other people with less brains should put them into practice. But Wenzel did not seem to share this opinion.

At the breakfast table, the matters of Lukas the corpse and Henrik the convicted murderer-to-be were driven out of his mind with abrupt and overwhelming fervor. Sir Christian had seemingly used up his reserves of grieve thoroughly in the past few days over a series of masses and a fine funeral, and was now determined to return to his usual routine. A fact not altogether congenial to Harun, for this routine consisted mostly of instructing his scribe to copy lengthy, long-winded texts about the Christian faith in general and the nature of the Almighty in particular.

Harun had never been able to divine whether this was just part of Sir Christian’s general obsession with devotion, or whether it was his way of trying to convince Harun of swapping gods at last. If that was the object of the religious writing sessions, they had failed utterly, for nothing could make the Christian faith seem less appetizing to Harun than having to copy complicated discussions on whether one God was one God or three or one in three or a dual concept in conflict with the devil or maybe something entirely different, totally beyond human comprehension. If anything, Harun would have been inclined towards the last opinion, since it would have eliminated any need for him to write about the subject ever again.

Today, there was an additional religious irritation, for Sir Christian was full of the news of the devout pilgrim who had visited the burial of Lukas the day before and had been such an inspiration to everybody. Harun bent his head low over his gruel bowl, shoveled gruel into his mouth industriously, in the hope that the embarrassment on his face would remain unnoticed. When Sir Christian, for about the seventh time, was saying: “You should have seen him, Harun – kneeling there and praying with such a devotion that St. Augustine himself could not have surpassed him,” Harun was more than a little exasperated. Yet there were also occasions at which his sense of humor was provoked, at remarks such as “The perfect Christian – I will forever live after his example” or “If only you were to decide on that holy path and become like him.”