eager to share the latest bit of idle gossip. However, despite all the excitement, the rain was growing worse and there were not enough places in the street to take shelter. So the arrival of Wilfred and his team of dogs was welcomed with relief.
As soon as the gate opened, the crowd rushed in to grab the best spots. As usual, the men positioned themselves nearest the altar, leaving the women and children at the back. The front row, reserved for the parents of the deceased, was occupied by the parchment-maker and his wife. Their two children who had been injured in the fire rested on sacks of straw beside them. The remains of the youngest, Caelius, lay wrapped in a linen burial cloth next to Theresa’s body. The dead lay on a table in front of the main altar. Gorgias and Rutgarda had declined Wilfred’s invitation to sit up front, instead sitting farther back to avoid any confrontation with Korne.
The count waited in the doorway for the last of the parishioners to take their places. When the murmuring subsided, he cracked his whip and made the dogs pull him down a side nave to the transept. There, two tonsured acolytes helped him position himselfbehind the altar, covered the dogs’ heads with leather hoods, then freed the count from the belts that kept him secured to his wooden contraption. The subdeacon then removed the cope that Wilfred was wearing and replaced it with a
tunica albata
, which he tightened with a
cingulum
. Over it he placed an embroidered
indumentum
with a string of silver bells hanging from its lower edging, and finally he crowned him with an impressive damask headdress. Once the count was appropriately dressed, the ostiarius washed his hands in a lavabo and placed a modest funerary chalice beside the chrismatories that contained the holy anointing oils. Two candelabras shed their weak light on the shrouds of the deceased.
A chubby cleric with an awkward gait approached the altar equipped with a psaltery. He calmly opened the volume. After wetting his index finger, he began the service, reciting the fourteen verses required by the Rule of Saint Benedict. He then intoned four psalms with antiphons, and chanted another eight, before offering a litany and the vigil of the dead. Then Wilfred took the floor, his mere presence ended the first murmurings. The count scrutinized the congregation as though he were looking for the perpetrator of the tragedy. It had been two years since he had worn the vestments of a priest.
“Be grateful to God that in His boundless mercy He has taken pity on us today,” he decreed. “Accustomed to living in complacency, to abandoning yourselves to the pleasures of your desires, you forget with despicable ease the reason why you were put on this earth. Your pious appearances, your prayers and offerings, your clouded understanding. These things make you believe that what you possess is the result of your own efforts. You insist on desiring women who are not your own. You envy others’ good fortune. And you allow your ears to be pulled from your head if it means obtaining the wealth that you so covet. You think that life is a banquet that you have been invited to, a feast in which to savor the finest meats and liqueurs. But only a selfish brain, aweak soul oozing ignorance, is capable of forgetting that nobody but the Holy Father is the owner of our lives. And just as a father thrashes his children when they disobey—and just as a bailiff cuts the tongue from a liar or severs the limbs of a poacher—God corrects those who forget His commandments with the most terrible of punishments.”
The church was filled with murmuring.
“Hunger calls at our door,” he continued. “It seeps into our homes and devours our children. The rain floods our crops. Disease decimates our livestock. And still you complain? God sends us signs, and you lament His ways? Pray! Pray until your souls cough up the phlegm of your greed and hatred. Pray for the glory of the Lord. He has taken lives
As soon as the gate opened, the crowd rushed in to grab the best spots. As usual, the men positioned themselves nearest the altar, leaving the women and children at the back. The front row, reserved for the parents of the deceased, was occupied by the parchment-maker and his wife. Their two children who had been injured in the fire rested on sacks of straw beside them. The remains of the youngest, Caelius, lay wrapped in a linen burial cloth next to Theresa’s body. The dead lay on a table in front of the main altar. Gorgias and Rutgarda had declined Wilfred’s invitation to sit up front, instead sitting farther back to avoid any confrontation with Korne.
The count waited in the doorway for the last of the parishioners to take their places. When the murmuring subsided, he cracked his whip and made the dogs pull him down a side nave to the transept. There, two tonsured acolytes helped him position himselfbehind the altar, covered the dogs’ heads with leather hoods, then freed the count from the belts that kept him secured to his wooden contraption. The subdeacon then removed the cope that Wilfred was wearing and replaced it with a
tunica albata
, which he tightened with a
cingulum
. Over it he placed an embroidered
indumentum
with a string of silver bells hanging from its lower edging, and finally he crowned him with an impressive damask headdress. Once the count was appropriately dressed, the ostiarius washed his hands in a lavabo and placed a modest funerary chalice beside the chrismatories that contained the holy anointing oils. Two candelabras shed their weak light on the shrouds of the deceased.
A chubby cleric with an awkward gait approached the altar equipped with a psaltery. He calmly opened the volume. After wetting his index finger, he began the service, reciting the fourteen verses required by the Rule of Saint Benedict. He then intoned four psalms with antiphons, and chanted another eight, before offering a litany and the vigil of the dead. Then Wilfred took the floor, his mere presence ended the first murmurings. The count scrutinized the congregation as though he were looking for the perpetrator of the tragedy. It had been two years since he had worn the vestments of a priest.
“Be grateful to God that in His boundless mercy He has taken pity on us today,” he decreed. “Accustomed to living in complacency, to abandoning yourselves to the pleasures of your desires, you forget with despicable ease the reason why you were put on this earth. Your pious appearances, your prayers and offerings, your clouded understanding. These things make you believe that what you possess is the result of your own efforts. You insist on desiring women who are not your own. You envy others’ good fortune. And you allow your ears to be pulled from your head if it means obtaining the wealth that you so covet. You think that life is a banquet that you have been invited to, a feast in which to savor the finest meats and liqueurs. But only a selfish brain, aweak soul oozing ignorance, is capable of forgetting that nobody but the Holy Father is the owner of our lives. And just as a father thrashes his children when they disobey—and just as a bailiff cuts the tongue from a liar or severs the limbs of a poacher—God corrects those who forget His commandments with the most terrible of punishments.”
The church was filled with murmuring.
“Hunger calls at our door,” he continued. “It seeps into our homes and devours our children. The rain floods our crops. Disease decimates our livestock. And still you complain? God sends us signs, and you lament His ways? Pray! Pray until your souls cough up the phlegm of your greed and hatred. Pray for the glory of the Lord. He has taken lives
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