Hurland found us soon after that. Apparently he’d had to buy the fork from the vendor in order to pacify him, and as soon as Godke saw it he bent it into useless metal and tossed it aside. Hurland was curious what had happened between us but he asked nothing.
Godke led us to the witch house where the rest of the warband was gathered. Thies was still inside with Bohdan, and as Godke led us inside I noticed that Thies had placed another thumbscrew on Bohdan’s other big toe. Bohdan occasionally whimpered, but Thies said that we had missed the worst of the screaming.
‘And he hasn’t confessed?’ Godke asked.
‘No,’ Thies responded.
‘Very well, it has been a long day already. Remove the screws and we shall begin anew tomorrow,’ Godke commanded, and Thies obeyed. When Godke led me back out of the witch house, I questioned the decision despite the precarious footing of my relationship with Godke. I took many stupid risks as a young man. It’s possible that I’m being harsh due to the benefit of hindsight and the ability to perceive the folly of youth from afar, but even for my age I could be dangerously headstrong.
‘It’s not even midday, why are we stopping?’ I asked him, perhaps driven by the last vestiges of ale still in my system. Thankfully he did not seem to mind the question. In fact, he gave no indication that the incident earlier had affected our relationship at all.
‘The game we play with the Devil takes place not only in the body, but in the mind. And Bohdan’s mind needs rest. It needs time to consider what has happened and what is yet to come,’ he said. I knew from Godke’s original gift to me that there was more to pain than physical torment.
Godke gave the group leave to explore Pilsen at our own leisure, and I chose to follow Jacob. Gunnar was told to guard Jaromil until dusk and after what had happened earlier I didn’t want to go with Godke, so Jacob seemed like an obvious choice. I didn’t really understand him and I wanted to find out why he didn’t like churches.
‘We shouldn’t stay here,’ he told me as we wandered the streets.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘This place isn’t safe,’ he replied, and I had noticed that the people here weren’t as friendly as back in Bielefeld, not least of all because Godke had told us to stay on our guard. But that wasn’t why Jacob was worried. ‘The Protestants won’t let this city stand as a refuge for Catholic Bohemians.’
‘Why not?’ I repeated, and Jacob looked at me as if assessing my mental capacity.
‘The Bohemians have started a revolution, Karl,’ he told me. ‘They want to be a Protestant kingdom, and they won’t abide Pilsen’s defiance.’
‘The warband has faced battle before,’ I said confidently and a flash of fear – or was it regret – crossed Jacob’s eyes.
‘We number only six, and only three of us are warriors. Our best hope lies in avoiding battle,’ he replied and I thought him a coward, though now I know that he was the most sensible member of our group that day. The effects of the Reformation were coming to an early climax in Bohemia, and though Godke feared the coming war and the potential for it to entangle other Catholic and Protestant entities in Europe and the Empire, his greed and overconfidence tainted his leadership.
Several times that afternoon I pressed Jacob, wanting to know what he had done that had caused him to become a penitent, but each time he responded only with silence. We visited several orphanages and Jacob volunteered us for much manual labour that day, including working several wells and minding a large number of unwashed children. I realised that this was part of Jacob’s penance. He would probably have spent his entire life helping the poor if he hadn’t found Godke and his mission to assist in the purging of the Devil from the souls of evil men and women.
The day came to an end after several hours of wandering and the night passed even more quickly. Jaromil was still locked in our tavern lodgings and Godke was kind enough to present him with food, though the ungrateful brat refused to so much as touch it. Gunnar was happy to consume his share.
Our third day in Pilsen began similarly to the second. The warband left the tavern and sought supplies from Ros’ carriage, leaving Jacob behind to watch Jaromil. I noticed that it had been stocked with non-perishable food; clearly someone had been more productive during their free time than Jacob and I.
We walked back to the witch house and I got the impression that this was when most confessions were obtained. There was a sense of finality about the warband’s movements and Thies was carrying his thatch basket of torture devices again.
This time the whole group entered the crowded witch house and I think Bohdan could sense what was coming because he started crying at the mere sight of us.
Thies reached into the basket and withdrew a massive metal object which had barely been concealed by the basket. It was immediately apparent that it was a legscrew, and Bohdan began kicking wildly to avoid having his leg put into the massive vice.
Godke motioned to Gunnar and they each grabbed one of Bohdan’s ankles and held them down. Thies placed the screw over his left ankle and tightened it only so much that it would not be removed without being unscrewed. At this point Godke let go of Bohdan’s leg as it had become too heavy to lift easily. He spoke to Bohdan who seemed to seriously contemplate what Godke had said for a moment. Despite the coolness of the air a drop of sweat slithered down Bohdan’s forehead.
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He looked up at Godke, shook his head, and Godke told Thies to begin.
It was pretty gruesome to watch even though Thies went slowly, and I attempted to distract myself with conversation. I turned to Hurland.
‘How many people died because this man poisoned the well?’ I asked.
‘Died? No one died,’ Hurland said. ‘But one of the burghers drank from the well and became very ill the next day.’
I nodded. It seems disproportionate, but I rationalised that he was really being punished not for giving a burgher food poisoning but for having made a pact with the Devil. Back in 1618 it never occurred to me to ask why this man out of all of Pilsen had been chosen as the culprit of the burgher’s illness. Looking back I can say that it was probably because he’d somehow earned the ire of the town’s aristocracy and had no family to speak for him.
Thies turned the screw, slowly but surely, and I became sure that Bohdan’s ankle could not take any more pressure. Bohdan’s arms were scrambling around the floor of the witch house as if trying to grasp something.
Finally, Bohdan began screaming. Not incoherently, in fact I could tell immediately from Godke’s face that Bohdan was confessing to being a witch and poisoning the well.
Hurland burst into action and shoved a piece of paper under Bohdan’s nose. ‘Sign this! Sign this!’ he was saying, and Godke quickly translated for him.
Bohdan took the paper and hesistated. He then looked down at his leg, clamped in the screw, and signed the document. Silent tears began to roll down his cheek as he signed the document, and Hurland took it out of his reach before he could change his mind. The legscrew was removed. Godke and Hurland left the witch house immediately, assumedly to seek the permission of the town’s rulers to execute Bohdan.
I stepped out of the witch house to avoid having to listen to Bohdan cry. His tears made me remember Bielefeld and the memories I’d left behind. Jacob pulled his rosary from Bohdan’s neck and joined me.
‘Remember Karl, we are doing the Lord’s work,’ he said.
I didn’t respond, but Thies soon emerged from the witch house.
‘We should get Gunnar. Let’s get this execution done and get out of this cesspit before anything bad happens,’ he suggested and Jacob agreed.
Leaving only the town guardsman standing watch outside the witch house, we travelled back to the tavern and collected Gunnar and Jaromil. Gunnar had been trying to teach him German by holding objects up and making Jaromil guess the name of the object. Gunnar was holding a cup in his left hand and on the floor beside him sat a cauldron of steaming water, which I suspected had recently been boiled. No doubt he’d been throwing a cup of the water at Jaromil everytime he got a word wrong, but I didn’t speak up on Jaromil’s behalf. Even though a part of me had begun to sympathise with his plight after the realisation that Godke had done the same thing to my father that he was going to do to Bohdan, I knew that Gunnar would have just laughed at my protestations.
The five of us returned to the witch house and met up with Godke and Hurland, who informed us that they had been told to carry out the legal execution of Bohdan for the crime of witchcraft.
A discussion ensued regarding the correct method of execution to be used for Bohdan. Gunnar was in favour of beheading, but Hurland thought that burning would please God more. Eventually Godke decided in favour of beheading after Jacob pointed out that burning would take longer. We were all itching to get out of Pilsen before something bad happened.
We freed Bohdan from his manacles and bound his wrists together with rope and marched him and his brother to the city square. The town guard there were expecting us and led us onto a raised wooden platform. Several bystanders on the courtyard below began to watch us, and Godke addressed the growing crowd with a speech no doubt convincing the Bohemians of Bohdan’s guilt.
When he finished Gunnar had another question. ‘What about the brother?’ he whispered to Godke, referring to Jaromil. ‘If we let him live he might bear a grudge or try and stop us from taking the witch’s wealth.’
In response, Godke walked to Bohdan and asked him something in Bohemian. Godke returned to Gunnar and said, ‘the witch says his brother didn’t help him.’
‘Like we can trust the witch,’ Gunnar sneered.
Godke seemed to accept this, but he was also weighing up the distaste of the townspeople for executing a child for witchcraft without a confession. He could probably extract a confession, but Jaromil hadn’t been accused and we were eager to leave Pilsen.
Instead Godke thought of a novel solution, though I have since heard that it is a Spanish invention. Gunnar held the tip of Jaromil’s tongue and Godke instructed Thies to strike a nail through the tongue. Jaromil screamed and cried as the procedure took place, and at the end of it Godke clapped his hands together as if wiping them free of dirt.
‘If he is a heretic, he shan’t be able to blaspheme now,’ Godke said and Gunnar laughed.
By now the townspeople were milling around and several had shouted at Thies when he’d pierced Jaromil’s tongue. Godke addressed the crowd once more and Gunnar pushed Bohdan to the front of the stage and kicked him to his knees.
Godke talked for a few more seconds in Bohemian before drawing his sword and passing it to Gunnar. For the first time I noticed that Gunnar did not carry a sword. Instead he carried a tall hammer with a long metal point at its tip that he called a Lucerne Hammer.
‘Any last words?’ Godke asked Bohdan, kneeling beside him.
‘I…’ Bohdan began, but he never finished that thought.
Godke waited for a few seconds, but when it became obvious that Bohdan’s voice had deserted him he moved aside. He nodded to Gunnar and Gunnar lifted the sword above his head and brought it down on Bohdan’s neck in one massive blow. Jacob was saying a prayer, and Hurland made the sign of the cross. Bohdan’s head rolled away from his body and off the front of the stage into the large crowd below.
I wasn’t sure whether they were grateful or angry, but after several seconds of hesitation they began cheering and clapping and I realised that we’d done them a service. The man had confessed to being a witch, after all, and no one wants to live in a town where witches poison the well your family drinks from.
Godke shouted something the crowd that was met with even more cheering, and then he led us off the stage. We followed him with Jaromil in tow, though he required several kicks to get moving as he had both hands over his mouth as if holding his head would unpierce his tongue.