And both were talking and moaning, moaning and talking.
“Silence!” shouted Richmodis.
It was as if St. Augustine had performed a miracle. They shut their mouths and looked at each other in bewilderment. The fat one grimaced, as if he had a headache.
“Why are you shouting, Richmodis, my child?” he asked.
“Jacob,” she said, without taking her eyes off the man, “this is my dearly beloved father, Goddert von Weiden. Beside him you see my uncle, the learned dean and physician, Dr. Jaspar Rodenkirchen, master of the seven liberal arts and professor of canon law at the Franciscan College. Both must have been sitting in this cellar since around midday yesterday, and they ask me why I’m shouting.”
“I quite agree with my daughter,” said Goddert von Weiden, in a voice as solemn as if he were laying a foundation stone. “Our behavior has been unchristian in the extreme. If you hadn’t gone and filled your cellar with wine, I could lead a life that was more pleasing in the sight of God.”
“Your birth wasn’t pleasing in the sight of God,” Jaspar teased him with a wink in Jacob’s direction. After a certain amount of toing and froing Richmodis and Jacob had managed to lure the two disputants out of the cellar. They continued their disputation as they made their way up to the surface, but turned out to be less drunk than Richmodis had feared. Now they were sitting under the oppressively low beams of the downstairs room, around a table with an elaborately woven cloth showing St. Francis preaching.
“You’re wearing my coat,” Goddert remarked.
Jacob felt weary and worn out. The pain in his shoulder was almost unbearable. He would have been quite happy to take off Goddert’s coat, but by now his arm was stiff and almost useless.
“He’s wearing your coat because he needs help.” Richmodis came out of the back room and placed a yeast cake on the table.
“Just the thing!” exclaimed Jaspar.
“Neither of you deserve it. Do you realize, Father, since early yesterday I’ve been looking after the house, seeing to the customers, dyeing the cloth, and slaving away from morning to night, not to mention having to invent the most ridiculous stories to stop the men pestering me?”
“Including that one?” asked Goddert warily, pointing at Jacob.
“Of course not!” She gave Jacob a look full of warmth and started to tear off pieces of the loaf and hand them around.
“Jacob gave me a whistle,” she said with unmistakable pride.
“And what did you give him in return?” Jaspar giggled.
“Father’s old clothes.”
Goddert von Weiden went even redder in the face, if that was possible, but instead of the expected lecture, he just cleared his throat and bit off a piece of his cake.
Jacob was totally baffled. “Weren’t you telling me he chased you all around the house crying blue murder?” he said in a low voice to Richmodis.
“I did,” she replied with an impenetrable smile.
“But he—”
She leaned down and said softly, “I was pulling your leg. He’s the most kindhearted of men. Only you must never tell him or he might start getting too full of himself.”
“Hey!” shouted Goddert, cheeks bulging. “Stop that whispering.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Jaspar snapped. “Just because no woman wants to whisper in your ear anymore.”
“I have them whispering in my ear all the time, blockhead. The only whispers you’ll get will be in the confessional.”
“If I waited for women to come from you with something to confess, I might as well close my confessional down.”
“You’d never do that. You’d have nowhere left to indulge your lascivious desires.”
“Do not blaspheme the sacrament of confession, Waldensian!”
“Waldensian? Me a Waldensian?”
“And a lying one, too.”
“Ridiculous. Accusing an honest craftsman of heresy! Anyway, the Waldenses are—”
“I know, I know.”
“You know nothing. You’re just not interested in ecclesiastical matters. Though I can well understand your dislike of the Waldenses. They want to ban people like you from saying mass and accepting presents.”
“What do you mean, people like me?”
“Unworthy priests who commit fornication.”
“The Waldenses never said anything like that, you simpleton, and I wouldn’t care if they did. Have you got rheumatism of the brain or something, trying to argue about the Waldenses with a scholar? Don’t you know they deny purgatory and their lay brothers preach against the veneration of saints?”
“They do not.”
“Oh, yes, they do. You won’t be able to pray to St. Francis when your back hurts, and when you’re dead there won’t be any requiem mass for your soul, no prayers, nothing. That’s what your Waldenses want, only they don’t even stick to their own rules.”
“You’re joking! They unmarried, every one of them, and—”
“And?”
“And they do nothing that is not according to the pure teaching of Christ.”
“They don’t? Then why were three of them put on trial in Aachen this summer?”
“Certainly not for going to that house in Schemmergasse.”
“I did not go to that house in Schemmergasse.”
“Pull the other one.”
“And I’ll tell you another thing, you son of an aardvark sow. They are heretics and were quite rightly placed under ban at the Synod of Verona.”
“The Synod of Verona was a joke, a bad joke. It was only called because the pope was worried about losing his income from indulgences.”
“The ban was promulgated jointly by God’s representative on earth, Pope Lucius III, and the emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, because, as you seem to know, astonishingly enough, your tatterdemalion Waldenses in their sandals are against indulgences. But I ask you, what will happen if we have no more indulgences? Do you want to deprive people of the God-given opportunity of buying their way out of the consequences of their minor transgressions? And I have to tell you, Goddert, there’s a disturbing tendency to overemphasize the poverty of the clergy. I sometimes worry we are turning into a nation of Cathars and Albigensians. Do you realize that our magnificent cathedral, which will tower over the Christian world, was only possible through indulgences?”
“Oh, you can keep your indulgences. That may be all well and good, but it can’t be right to condemn to death preachers who are against the death penalty themselves.”
“The Waldenses are only against it so they can spread their heretical beliefs unpunished.”
“Not at all. It’s the pure Christian faith they preach. I would even go so far as to say Christ himself is speaking through them.”
“Don’t let anyone else hear you say that.”
“I don’t care who hears me. I’m not saying I’m a Waldensian myself, but their insistence on the sacraments of penance, communion, and baptism seems to me more in keeping with the teachings of Christ than the outrageously dissolute behavior of the mendicant orders—or your expensive wine cellar.”
“What have you against my wine cellar?”
“Nothing. Shall we have another?”
“Enough!” Richmodis brought the flat of her hand down on the table.
“And what’s your opinion on this subject?” Goddert, who was obviously looking for allies, inquired of Jacob.
“I’m not interested in politics,” said Jacob in a weak voice. He could not repress a groan as he felt another vicious stab of pain in his shoulder.
“See what you’re doing?” said Richmodis angrily. “He needs help and here you two are, arguing like a pair of tinkers. Nobody’s having another drink here. Not even you, Father.”