Borrower of the Night: The First Vicky Bliss Mystery Read Free Page B

century and hearing other voices.
    The old man.
    Riemenschneider was born in 1455. He would be seventy years old in 1525. He had been imprisoned, and tortured—“put to the question,” as the pretty euphemism of the day had it.
    I glanced at Tony, who was still hunched over his typing. Without looking up he threw down the book he had finished, and groped for another. I slid the remaining volume into his hand. He muttered an absent word of thanks and went on working; and I returned to The Peasants’ Revolt .
    There were two more letters from Count Burckhardt of Drachenstein. He had been one of the knights called up by the Bishop of Würzburg when that worthy’s subjects got out of hand. Not all the knights fought against the peasants. Götz von Berlichingen, the romantic robber knight known as Götz of the Iron Hand, had led a group of rebels from Oden-wald. True, he maintained later that he had been forced into this action, and an imperial court acquitted him of treason. One is justified in being cynical about both the avowal and the acquittal.
    For Burckhardt von und zu Drachenstein, radical chic had no appeal. He marched out to defend the status quo and the Church. His description of the siege, where he had wielded his battle-ax with bloody effect, made me wince, not so much because of the descriptions of lopped-off heads and split carcasses as because of the tone in which they were couched. He counted bodies the way kids count the stamps in their collections.
    The clincher came in the third letter.

Today, my beloved wife, the old man finally broke under the question. I have the thing itself now in my hands. I will make plans to send it home, but this will not be easy, since the countryside is still unsafe. The old man cursed me as I left. I care nothing for that. God will protect his true knight .

    The glittering vision that had taken shape in my imagination faded, to be replaced by another picture, equally vivid and far less appealing. My imagination is excellent, and it had plenty of information to work with; in my naïve youth I had visited several torture museums, before it occurred to me that my subsequent nightmares might have some connection with the grisly exhibits. You don’t forget things like that—ugly things like thumbscrews and the rack, the iron boot that crushed flesh and bone, the black metal shape of the Maiden, with her sickly archaic smile. I could see the old man in my mind’s eye too. There is a self-portrait of Riemenschneider on the altarpiece he did for the church at Creglingen. His face is jowly and a little plump in that carving. It wouldn’t have been plump after a few weeks in the bishop’s prison. It would have been emaciated and smeared with filth, like his aging body—marred by festering rat-bites and the marks of pincer, awl, and fire. Oh, yes, I could see the whole thing only too clearly, and I could see Burckhardt standing by, cheering the torturers on. One of the great creative artists of his century, gloated over by a lout whose skull was as thick as his armor—who couldn’t even write his own name.
    I worked myself into such a state of rage and horror that I made a fatal mistake. I didn’t feel Tony’s breath on the back of my neck until he let it out in a windy gasp.
    Clutching the book to my bosom, I turned my head. My forehead hit Tony on the nose. A blow on that appendage hurts; it maddens the victim. Holding his nose with one hand, Tony grabbed with the other. Instinctively I resisted. An undignified struggle ensued. I gave up the book, finally, rather than see it damaged. Tony was mad enough to tear the pages apart.
    He was panting when he sat back, clutching his prize and eyeing me warily.
    “Don’t worry,” I said coldly. “You’re safe from me.”
    “Thanks. You female Benedict Arnold, were you going to keep this a secret?”
    “Keep what a secret?”
    “Don’t be cute, it doesn’t suit you. I was reading over your shoulder for some time, Vicky. And I