The Tower of Fools Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Original text copyright © 2002 by Andrzej Sapkowski

  English translation copyright © 2020 by David French

  Excerpt from The Blade Itself copyright © 2006 by Joe Abercrombie

  Cover design copyright © by Blacksheep-uk.com

  Cover images copyright © by Depositphoto

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  Originally published in Polish as Narrenturm

  Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  orbitbooks.net

  First Edition: October 2020

  Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Gollancz

  Published in arrangement with the Patricia Pasqualini Literary Agency

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  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937432

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-70535-6 (hardcover), 978-0-316-42369-4 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-42368-7 (ebook)

  E3-20200909-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Discover More

  Extras Meet the Author

  A Preview of The Blade Itself

  Also by Andrzej Sapkowski

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  Prologue

  The end of the world did not occur in the Year of Our Lord 1420, although much had indicated that it would.

  The chiliasts’ dark prophecies that predicted the End quite precisely—on the Monday after Saint Scholastica’s Day in the month of February of the year 1420—did not come true. Monday came and went, Tuesday, too, then Wednesday: still nothing. The Days of Punishment and Vengeance preceding the coming of the Kingdom of the Lord never arrived. Although a thousand years had passed, Satan was not loosed from his prison, nor did he go out to deceive the nations in the four quarters of the Earth. No sinners or foes of God perished from sword, fire, hunger, hailstones, fangs of beasts, stings of scorpions or venom of snakes. The faithful waited in vain on the peaks of Tábor, Beránek, Oreb, Sion and the Mount of Olives, and in the quinque civitates, the five chosen cities, for the second coming of Christ, as foretold in the Prophecy of Isaiah. The end of the world did not come to pass. The world neither perished nor went up in flames. Not all of it, at least.

  But things certainly weren’t dull.

  My, but this pottage is truly delicious. Thick, spicy and creamy. I haven’t eaten soup like this for ages. Thank you, noble gentlemen, for the repast, and thank you, young miss innkeeper. What would I say to beer, you ask? Yes. By all means. Comedamus tandem, et bibamus, cras enim moriemur.

  Where was I? Ah, yes—time passed, and the end of the world still did not occur, and events transpired according to their rightful order. Wars were waged, plagues proliferated, mors nigra raged, hunger abounded. Neighbour robbed and killed neighbour and lusted after his wife, and men behaved like wolves towards one another. The Jews were treated to a little pogrom from time to time and the heretics to a bit of burning at the stake. Other notable events included skeletons cavorting around burial grounds, Death roaming the Earth with his scythe, an incubus forcing its way between the trembling thighs of sleeping maids, and a striga alighting on the back of a lone rider in the wilds. Clearly, the Devil was involving himself in Earthly affairs, wandering around like a roaring lion wondering who to devour next.

  Plenty of esteemed people died during that time. Plenty were also born, of course, but dates of birth aren’t written down in chronicles and no one ever remembers them, with the possible exception of mothers, and in cases when a babe is born with two heads or two cocks. But deaths? Such things are carved in stone.

  Wherefore in 1421, on the Monday following Laetare Sunday, Jan apellatus Kropidło, Piast duke and episcopus wloclaviensis, died in Opole, having attained a well-deserved three score years. Before his death, he had made a donation of six hundred grzywna to the city of Opole. It is said that part of the sum, representing the dying man’s last will, went to Red-headed Kundzia’s, a celebrated Opole brothel. The bishop had availed himself of the services of that establishment, located at the rear of the Franciscan monastery, right up until his death—though towards the end he was more voyeur than active participant.

  In the summer of 1422—I do not recall the exact date—Henry V, King of England and victor at Agincourt, died in Vincennes. Charles VI, King of France, having been quite mad for five years, outlived him by a mere two months. The madman’s son, Charles the Dauphin, laid claim to the crown, but the English refused to recognise him. The Dauphin’s mother, Queen Isabelle, had, after all, much earlier proclaimed him a bastard, conceived some distance from the marital bed and with a man of sound mind. And since bastards don’t ascend the throne, an Englishman, little Harry, the son of Henry V, became the rightful ruler of France aged only nine months. Harry’s uncle, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, became Regent of France. He, together with the Burgundian faction, held northern France—including Paris—while the south was controlled by the Dauphin Charles and the Armagnac faction. And dogs howled among the corpses on battlefields between the two demesnes.

  At Pentecost in 1423, Pedro de Luna, the Avignon antipope, an anathematized schismatic, entitling himself Benedict XIII—contrary to the resolutions of two ecumenical councils—died in Pensicola Castle, not far from Valencia.

  Other men passed during this time. The Habsburg, Ernest the Iron, Duke of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Istria and Trieste. Jan of Racibórz—a duke of both Piast and Přemyslid blood—also dead. Wacław, dux Lubiniensis, died young; Duke Henryk, Lord of Ziębice with his brother Jan, died. Henryk dictus Rumpoldus, Duke of Głogów, died in exile. Mikołaj Trąba,
Archbishop of Gniezno, an upright and judicious wise man, died. Michael Küchmeister, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, died in Malbork. Jakub Pęczak known as “Fish,” a miller from near Bytom, also died. I admit he was a mite less famous and celebrated than the above-mentioned men, but he had the advantage over them that I knew him personally and used to drink with him, which I never did with the others.

  Meanwhile, important cultural developments were also taking place. Bernardino of Sienna, John Cantius and John Capistrano preached, Jean Gerson and Paweł Włodkowic taught, Christine de Pisan and Thomas Hemerken à Kempis wrote eruditely. Laurentius of Březová was writing his exquisite chronicle. Andrei Rublev painted icons, Tommaso Masaccio painted, Robert Campin painted. Jan van Eyck, Duke John of Bavaria’s artist, painted the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb altarpiece for Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent. It is a most gorgeous polyptych, now adorning Jodocus Vijd’s chapel. In Florence, the master Pippo Brunelleschi finished building the marvellous dome over the four naves of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. And we in Silesia were not to be outdone—here, Piotr of Frankenstein completed a most impressive church dedicated to Saint James in the town of Nysa. It’s not far from here in Milicz, so you should take the chance to see it if you haven’t yet been.

  In that year of 1422, at Shrovetide, King Władysław II of Poland, born Jogaila of Lithuania, held his nuptials with great pomp in the city of Lida, wedding Sophia of Halshany, a blushing young maid of seventeen—more than half a century younger than he. It was said that the maid was more famous for her looks than her morals, which would cause many a problem later. For Jogaila, forgetting his duty to satisfy a young wife, set off to fight the Prussian lords—I mean the Teutonic Knights—in early summer. Thus the new Grand Master of the Order, Paul von Rusdorf, Küchmeister’s successor, met the full force of the Polish army soon after taking office—and felt it keenly. You may hear nothing of his prowess in Sophia’s bedchamber, but Jogaila was still spry enough to give the Teutonic Knights a sound thrashing.

  At that time, a host of important events also took place in the Kingdom of Bohemia. There was great unrest there, with much bloodletting and unceasing war. About which I can in no way speak… Please forgive an old man, m’lords, but to fear is human, and I’ve felt the rod too often for rash words. After all, gentlemen, I see on your tunics the Polish Nałęcze and Habdanki arms, and on yours, noble Czechs, the cockerels of the lords of Dobrá Voda and the arrows of the knights of Strakonice… And you, grim sir, are a Zettritz, judging by the bison’s head on your escutcheon. Though I’m unable even to place your slanting chequerboard and gryphons, m’lord. Neither can it be ruled out that you, a friar of the Order of Saint Francis, won’t inform to the Holy Office, which one can be certain about in your regard, friars of Saint Dominic. Given such diverse and international company, you may see for yourselves why I can’t breathe a word about Czech matters, not knowing who among you supports Albrecht, and who the Polish king and heir. Who among you supports Meinhard of Hradec and Oldřich of Rožmberk, and who supports Hynce Ptáček of Pirkštejn and Jan Kolda of Žampach. Who here supports Count Spytko of Melsztyn, and who is a partisan of Bishop Oleśnicki. I have no desire for a flogging, but I know I’ll get one, because I often have. Why so, you ask? Why thus: if I say that during these years the valiant Czech Hussites trounced the Germans, crushing three successive papist crusades, before I know it, I’ll get it in the neck from one side. But if I say instead that the heretics clobbered the crusaders at the battles of Vítkov Hill, Vyšehrad, Žatec and Německý Brod with the help of the Devil, the others will seize and flog me. Wherefore I prefer to keep my counsel, and if I’m to say anything, to do so with the impartiality of an envoy—reporting, as they say, sine ira et studio, concisely, to the point and adding nothing.

  Thus I’ll say in short: in the autumn of 1420, Jogaila, the King of Poland, refused to accept the Bohemian crown that the Hussites had offered him. It had been decided in Kraków that the Lithuanian dux Witold, who had always wanted to reign, would take it. However, so as not to vex the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund or the Pope, Witold’s nephew, Sigismund, son of Korybut was sent to Bohemia. Sigismund, commanding a force of five thousand Polish knights, arrived in Golden Prague in 1422, on Saint Stanisław’s day. But around Epiphany of the following year, the prince had to return to Lithuania—Sigismund of Luxembourg and Otto Colonna, at that time Holy Father Martin V, being so enraged by that Bohemian succession. What do you say to that? Then in 1424, on the eve of the Visitation, Korybut’s son was back in Prague. This time, though, against the will of Jogaila and Witold, against the wishes of the Pope and of the Holy Roman Emperor. Meaning as an outlaw and an exile. At the head of outlaws and exiles like himself. And not numbering thousands, as previously, but only hundreds.

  In Prague, the uprising devoured its own children like Saturn, as faction battled faction. Jan of Želiv, executed on the Monday after Reminiscere Sunday in 1422, by May of that year was being mourned in every church as a martyr. Golden Prague also proudly stood up to the Tábor, but finally met its match in the shape of that great warrior, Jan Žižka. Žižka gave the Praguians a good hiding in the Year of Our Lord 1424, on the second day after the June Nones, at Malešov by the River Bohynka. There were many, many new widows and orphans in Prague after that defeat.

  Who knows, perhaps it was the orphans’ tears that caused Jan Žižka of Trocnov—and later of the Chalice—to die soon afterwards in Přibyslav, near the Moravian border, the Wednesday before Saint Gall’s Day. As before, some wept because of him and others wept at his passing, as at the loss of a father. Which is why they called themselves the Orphans…

  But surely you remember these details, for it was not so long ago. And yet it all feels like… history.

  And do you know, noble lords, how you can tell that a time is historical? Because much happens, and happens quickly.

  Although the world did not end, other prophecies were fulfilled, bringing down great wars and great misfortunes on Christian folk, and many men fell. It was as though God wanted the dawning of the new order to be preceded by the extinction of the old. Many believed that the Apocalypse was nigh. That the Ten-Horned Beast was emerging from the Abyss. That the dread Four Horsemen would soon appear amid the smoke of fires and blood-soaked fields. That any moment, trumpets would sound and seals be broken. That fire would tumble from the heavens. That the Wormwood Star would fall on a third part of the rivers and the fountains of waters. That a madman, when he espied the footprint of another man on the ashes, would, weeping, kiss that footprint.

  At times, it was so dreadful, it made your—if you’ll pardon me, m’lords—arse go numb with fear.

  It was an iniquitous time. Evil. And if you wish, m’lords, I’ll tell you about it, in order to allay the boredom, before the rains that keep us in the tavern relent. I shall tell you about the folk who lived then, and about those who also lived then but were by no means folk. I’ll tell how the former and the latter struggled with what that time brought. With fate. And with their very selves.

  This story begins agreeably and delightfully, dreamily and fondly—with pleasurable, tender lovemaking. But may that not delude you, good sirs.

  May that not delude you.

  Chapter One

  In which the reader makes the acquaintance of Reinmar of Bielawa, called Reynevan, and of his better features, including his knowledge of the ars amandi, the arcana of horse-riding, and the Old Testament, though not necessarily in that order.

  Through the small chamber’s window, against a background of the recently stormy sky, could be seen three towers. The first belonged to the town hall. Further off, the slender spire of the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, its shiny red tiles glistening in the sun. And beyond that, the round tower of the ducal castle. Swifts winged around the church spire, frightened by the recent tolling of the bells, the ozone-rich air still shuddering from the sound.

  The bells had also quite recently tolled in the towers of the
Churches of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Corpus Christi. Those towers, however, weren’t visible from the window of the chamber in the garret of a wooden building affixed like a swallow’s nest to the complex of the Augustinian hospice and priory.

  It was time for Sext. The monks began the Deus in adjutorium while Reinmar of Bielawa—known to his friends as “Reynevan”—kissed the sweat-covered collarbone of Adèle of Stercza, freed himself from her embrace and lay down beside her, panting, on bedclothes hot from lovemaking.

  Outside, Priory Street echoed with shouts, the rattle of wagons, the dull thud of empty barrels and the melodious clanking of tin and copper pots. It was Wednesday, market day, which always attracted large numbers of merchants and customers.

  Memento, salutis Auctor

  quod nostri quondam corporis,

  ex illibata Virgine

  nascendo, formam sumpseris.

  Maria mater gratiae,

  mater misericordiae,

  tu nos ab hoste protege,

  et hora mortis suscipe…

  They’re already singing the hymn, thought Reynevan, lazily embracing Adèle, a native of distant Burgundy and the wife of the knight Gelfrad of Stercza. The hymn has begun. It beggars belief how swiftly moments of happiness pass. One wishes they would last for ever, but they fade like a fleeting dream.

  “Reynevan… Mon amour… My divine boy…” Adèle interrupted his dreamy reverie. She, too, was aware of the passing of time, but evidently had no intention of wasting it on philosophical deliberations.

  Adèle was utterly, completely, totally naked.

  Every country has its customs, thought Reynevan. How fascinating it is to learn about the world and its peoples. Silesian and German women, for example, when they get down to it, never allow their shifts to be lifted higher than their navels. Polish and Czech women gladly lift theirs themselves, above their breasts, but not for all the world would they remove them completely. But Burgundians, oh, they cast off everything at once, their hot blood apparently unable to bear any cloth on their skin during the throes of passion. Ah, what a joy it is to learn about the world. The countryside of Burgundy must be beautiful. Lofty mountains… Steep hillsides… Vales…