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It comes upon him suddenly, the feeling. It sits cold on his skin and won’t let him go, snaking up his legs and up through his stomach, higher and higher. It is uncomfortable, and he dislikes anything that causes this kind of discomfort, but it will not pass from him, no matter how much good red wine he drinks, or how many other pleasures he takes to sate it. Ištván Tóth can feel the weight of death on his chest, and he cannot shake it.
He first feels it whilst riding back to Trosky, looking at Radzig’s bastard all tied up like a chicken ready for the pot. The boy’s blue eyes bore through him almost the whole journey— when he’s not mooning over Capon, that is— like a dog seeking a command. It is admirable in a way, his singular, pressing need for vengeance and the many ways it sits on him: how his anger twists his still innocent features, the soft cow-eyed youth he remembers from Skalitz hidden under a bloody bruising and a growing sinewy lust for combat. Normally he would delight in it. There was something about the most obstinate ones that he liked the most; they break the most deliciously, and blue eyes tear up almost red. However, there is something else he has not seen, not expected, something that changes when they slap Lord Capon about his pretty face to bring him to his feet and take him from his squire’s side. He expects the boy to rant and rave, to try something stupid and give him a reason to slit his throat, but he is still, measured in a way he has not seen before.
It frightens him, to have judged him wrongly.
He enters Trosky as its acting Lord with churning guts and a dry mouth. The servants look for their Lord, look for the chancellor, and when they hear the news through furtive whispers their eyes settle on him with suspicion. He orders wine from the blue dressed wench and tries to drown it, but it will not settle. Erik comes to him, and he is soft-eyed and gentle in a way that makes bile rise. He sends him away, just for now, gives him a task like a hunter sending a dog forward into the woods. He needs a moment to collect himself, and that is how he finds himself at the very top of the towers, closest to heaven, facing the last door of the Maiden.
It comes upon him suddenly, and he wonders if this is what other men, lesser men, feel every day of their small lives, and if this is the voice of God. Perhaps God is just the hallucinations of a hungry gut, or the pressing need to take breath after being underwater. Perhaps God is only an imbalance of the humors that cannot be put right, the sense of something lingering just out of the line of sight.
Why now, then, does the voice of God chew at his ear like a carrion crow? Why does he feel a chill on his neck? He had suffered more, shouldered more, when he was a child. Elbow deep in the blood of his parents, with no protector to keep him safe from the ravages of war. Begging for some kind of salvation and finding only silence. Now he is a Lord of a Castle, at least for a night or so. His work over the past years has bought him this moment, and where he should feel victory he instead feels fear.
Fear has been his constant companion, and it is here now, as his feet stick and he looks at that damned door. Perhaps he can shake God from his skin like water from a lake by meeting him in his own house.
The priest rises from his vigil by the window, and stands by his side.
“Can I help you, my child?” The man’s voice is as soft as his doughy face, and Ištván laughs.
“I don’t think so, Father. I don’t think there is absolution waiting for men like me.”
The priest’s face is serious when Ištván looks again.
“Come. Join me in the chapel, won’t you?”
He says nothing, but his eyes follow him as the priest opens the entrance to heaven. The chapel at the top of the tower is much smaller than he imagined; barely wider than the open door, well appointed altar with every inch of the walls covered in murals. A golden cross, two alcoves for the saintly matters, and provision to take mass. In all the splendour of the towers, this is all the space there is for God.
“Come,” the priest says. “Join me. I will take your confession.”
“How do you know I came here to confess?”
“I know of the great struggles that happened beyond these walls. Word travels quickly. You are the man left in command, and therefore you carry all of what has come to pass, in place of our master.”
“Then I carry too much, surely.”
“My child, no man is beyond the grace of God. Repent, and do true penance, and there is always grace left for his children.”
And what, thinks Ištván, of those children who had shrugged away the trappings of what makes them a man? What about those who knew that the only way to survive this world and all its brutal lessons was to take on the mantle of the serpent, to gently carve away your skin and flesh to the bone until you were left something other than a man? People like him, like Ištván, they were useful to those in power. People able to shrug away those pesky parts of the moral needs of man could slip so easily into the open wounds that needed to be split open.
Still, he is here. He came here for something, and will not find it through cowardice. He slips into the room and lets the priest shut the door behind them. It feels like a cell.
The priest kneels by the altar and crosses himself, and invites Ištván to do the same. As he comes to his knees, an old fear wriggles free from its holdings.
He does not kneel for any man.
“I do not know that I repent,” Ištván says, as much to himself as to the priest. “I do not know that I would undo the things I have done. Tell me, Father…”
“Nicodemus.”
“Nicodemus. Does God know when we do not truly repent our sins?”
He thinks for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I believe he does. There is no point seeking absolution without piety.”
Ištván looks to the great chest in the corner of the room, lacquered red as blood. “But the wealthy can buy their indulgences, can they not?”
“They can. But is their gold not a symbol of their commitment?”
The laugh that escapes him this time sounds like it has come from hell itself. “Well then. It is easy! Here.”
He stands, and takes his coin purse from his belt, and spills the silver across the altar. More than thirty, certainly. The pieces scatter and echo against the floor, and he turns back to Nicodemus, who is standing and wringing his hands.
“I trade this coin, won by my very sins, for absolution, if God will take me,” he says, taking the sword from his belt. “This. Bless this, please, Father! This sword, taken by my men from the burning ruins of a village, my companion through my righteous journey through these lands. I used it to liberate the very silver that will line your coffers. Bless it! Bless the armour that kept me safe, bless my boots that keep me on my toes! Bless all of me, that I might be God’s chosen in these days to come!”
Nicodemus does not move. Ištván realises he is almost panting. He must look like a frothing hound to this man. It is so hot up here, the air feels heavy, and the hair on his neck is sticking to his skin.
“Father,” he tries again. “I have murdered men. With my own hands, and with the orders I have given. Does God forgive me?”
Nicodemus nods softly, his chin pressed into his neck. “Yes. If you repent.”
“But that’s the thing! That is the damned thing, Father!” He looks to the sword again, the craft of it, the beauty of the balance at the hilt. “I am proud of it. God wouldn’t like that, would he? I worked myself into the dirt and I am proud that I have lived.”
He feels lighter, saying it out loud. Why should he repent for things which have brought him the life he has deserved? Why should he feel shame for the services rendered to the King? The King, his majesty with his hair of fire. Who cares if he is a rightful, righteous King? Sigismund paid him money, and he will take that money. He gave him his trust, his love, and surely that is only one step away from God’s love. What is the point of the fear in his chest?
“If you live in the sin of pride, and do not do penance for the righteous deaths in the name of the crown, which, as you say, are in the service of the King and therefore might be forgiven, then those sins will become eternal. Repent now, or carry them to hell.”
To hell, he says, and Ištván laughs. He has spent so long with no fear of hell, no fear of anything past his luck running low, and… and the other, deeper fear, the fear he cannot name. The voice of God again is boring into his head like a pike.
“There is something else, my son. Something you wish to confess.” Nicodemus’ voice is not as strong as it was. Ištván knows the timbre of a man’s voice so well, the delightful sound of doubt.
“Is there? Is there really?” Something rises in the storm within him. A familiar, certain feeling that he gets when he is facing down a foe he knows he can best in moments. Is that really all that is left to him? This futile sparring with this servant? Making a man of God cower like a frightened child?
“You will not repent for the sin of taking a life. God may have mercy on you yet, if you come to him in modest penance. But you have come here for something. So tell me. What other sins weigh on your soul?”
There have been rumours that he knows swirl around them. Whispers of the white knight in the stables, brought to his knees — rumours only, of course, he would not be so reckless with Erik’s safety — and he can only imagine those rumours have met the priest’s ears.
“Am I greedy, Father? Is that it? How so, when I will give the church all the coin on my person, and commit all my riches to the glory of the King. For is the King not chosen by God, hm?”
Nicodemus steps back sharply, and Ištván realises he has moved towards him quite suddenly. Despite the priest’s age, his soft features and weak chin, he finds himself stirred by the sight of it. That kind of fear in the eyes of those who should have faith in God to save them is a rare jewel.
“I am no glutton, not past the needs of any man,” he continues. “Nor am I ruled by my lusts.”
“Obstinancy,” Nicodemus replies, his voice thin as a reed. “Your very sin in this room, of seeking pardon without true repentance. These are known affronts to the Holy Spirit. And beyond that…”
“Name it,” he spits. Sodomy. How many of these great men are sodomites, taking their pleasure like weak women in the flesh of anything they see fit? How many are fornicators who only seek the pleasure of the flesh, and do not seek anything higher? He is not weak like those men. They may look on men like him— like Erik— as unnatural, but there is nothing unholy about his love, he believes that. How can weak men who rut against every woman they see with no love in their hearts ever understand what men like them carry?
“Adulation,” Nicodemus says, so softly Ištván almost does not hear. “That is your greatest sin.”
“Adulation?”
“When we lead those who love us into greater sin, that is one of the greatest acts of malice we can commit. When we turn the pure love of a child to the service of evil, when we let ourselves take the place of our Holy Mother in the hearts of our children. That boy. Your… son?”
Ištván’s throat dries. “Yes.”
“He haunts these towers like a demon.”
“Do not speak of him!”
His hand is on the hilt of the sword, but Nicodemus does not flinch. His softness has been forged in this place and, Ištván thinks, the light of God shines on him through the small windows of the tower and God speaks through him.
“Do you not think he deserves to be saved?” Nicodemus’ voice is strong now, as he reaches to take the sword. “You may own your own sin, but is it right to drag him to hell with you?”
There it is again. The voice of God. Now he can name it, now he remembers it. It is the sound he made when his parents were killed. The sound he heard from Erik’s chest, his stomach, when he looked upon him bathed in his own parent’s blood. It is the sound of your soul trying to escape you, to reunite with what you have lost, and if there is no one to bless you, surely a demon nestles in the empty space within. The Holy Spirit emptied from their bodies the moment they did not fight to keep their innocence.
“Bless this sword,” Ištván asks again. “Bless my armour. Bless me so that I might keep this castle safe. Keep you safe.”
Nicodemus draws the sign of the cross over the sword, over his head. “I can place blessings, but if you will not accept them with an open heart, open to God in modesty, then it will mean nothing for you. I pray that its next owner finds more peace.”
“Next owner?” The words make him pale, and he moves, raising the blade to the man’s neck. “Next owner? What do you mean by that?”
“Peace!” He looks frightened as he backs up against the door. Fear of death is in every man, it seems, even those in God’s light. “None of us will live forever.”
“And some of us might die this day!”
“Peace, please.” His hands are against the blade, and Ištván sees red blooming against his palms as he pulls the blade away. To murder a priest in his chapel would be foolish, especially one in the service of his betters. He breathes, looking at the cross on the altar, the coin spread across the cloth. It looks so paltry. Is that all a man’s life is worth? What riches would he part with, to keep the boy he loves safe?
“If I send him here,” he asks, “Will you absolve him? If I tell him to repent the sins he carries, will you hear him?”
“Y…yes. If he is true.”
But he would only be doing it because Ištván told him to. He has made himself a God in the eyes of his love, and there is no cure for that. It was beautiful, he wants to say. It has been so beautiful, to carve away into the flesh of the boy and to make the man he has become, capable and strong and always by his side. Perhaps, he thinks, he should kill them both this night, while they are safe enough in the towers. Perhaps that will be the only thing that truly frees them, sets them into a hell where they will at least have each other. Death awaits him, he is sure of it, by his own hand or the hands of a poisoner or in the eyes of those he has wronged, who will pursue him into the grave themselves.
“Forgive me Father,” he says.
He cannot find the rest of the words.