The Bishop's Knight

I lost my faith in God a long time ago.

Wait, allow me to correct that. I lost all belief in God at a very specific moment in my life.

They say that I am cynical. Born with a bad word for my mother’s chamber and the water I was nourished on. That my tongue was my chief weapon, and rarely did I leave it in its scabbard. Such might say this has left me on the side of the cynical, which walks in hand with the sceptical. Perhaps this is true. All my life however, I had lived with accepting the fundamental ‘truth’ that Christ Almighty was a force upon earth and his love the path to salvation.

I am a knight who is in service to a bishop, as I had served his predecessor.

On my loss of belief this is a very important thing to remember. My service was spent in the halls of holy men, guarding their door and their secrets. Through this I learned they are men like any other, full of venal desires and appetites. Very few had I met that could resist that which seems to drive all men.

That is to say, the guiding light that is the gash between a woman’s thighs.

Bishops, priests, monks, what have you. Only those that lived full lives secluded from the frail sex had much chance to defy this sinful drive, or those concerned with the holes of men, in which case fire awaited the sodomite.

All women of every kind are responsive to the attention of men so powerful in standing, even holy women that have sworn their chastity to Christ.

This did not bother me, nor trouble my faith. Humans are by nature sinful and weak, no matter their station, and that his earthly representatives were so weak offered no reflection on the power of eternity.

The bishop I served when faith left me was not the bishop I serve currently, nor the one before him. This bishop, long in sermonizing the dangers of flesh and fast to indulge in it, has been dead now for some years. Gone a natural and peaceful death in a bed surrounded by his adored ones.

One day he had spied a pretty peasant girl, maybe all of twelve years, who had been serving the residence of a lady acquaintance. Bare foot and strong backed, dark of hair and eye. The best look of peasant breeding. I did not blame him for his weakness on seeing, as she’d caught my passing eye as well.

It was my job, along with some other picked men, to procure the interest of women on behalf of his holiness. I am quite skilful at this. For my own pleasure and for my master’s. Few men can claim to be as accomplished. I state only a fact attested to by my conquests, which is a long list.

If it seems boastful that says more of the insecurity of jealous men.

This girl was easy enough to bring to the bishop’s bed. What woman would resist the bishop, who could secure for them every comfort and raise their station with a word? None that I had met, either holy, wed or otherwise.

This did not trouble me. Women are weaker than men in the bed games. This is well known. They are creatures controlled by their sex. So it was known by the ancients, so it is known now, so shall it ever be.

The bishop was pleased with the girl for a time. Her soft flesh, supple bodied and pliable. Young enough to mould and inexperienced enough to pleasure easily. She was a moment’s distraction, gobbled up by a greedy man.

He did not care to keep her past a month.

By the week after she had failed to have her moon blood. Her father discovered this and thrashed her. For all that we are all hypocrites in talk of faithfulness and chastity, women suffer for it the most.

She came to the bishop’s house begging to be let in. It was a pitiful sight, her bruised face, long fingers clutching ruined cloth to her battered body. Few would be unmoved.

The bishop was unmoved.

He would not receive her. He would not have a bastard on his name.

He asked me for a favour. In exchange I would be elevated to high station, the official head of his household. It was too tempting. The bishop was always one to know just what to offer for a man’s service, no matter how black the deed.

When we did it we did it as we had done before. A bishop has enemies. Priests, troublesome merchants, Jews, the furious cuckolds his dalliances would occasionally create. Sometimes just younger, handsomer men he wished to scare away from the current doe he hunted.

We had dealt with these things.

But this girl was all of twelve and pregnant besides.

We took her far into the woods on the bishop’s estate. She came so trusting to me. She thought it was another rendezvous with her lover. One like a dozen others I’d arranged. She thought I was a man of honour.

None of us looked her in the eye. We had all liked her. She had an air about her. Half with the spirits, ready to take flight. A joyful young creature who could draw a smile from even the most ornery of bastards.

It was Obert that suggest she kneel and pray away from us. She did so with some confusion. He told her it was to fill her time.
We talked amongst ourselves who should do it. Hermann would not touch his blade. Franz had refused to accompany us. Obert would have, but he was clumsy and it would not have been quick.

It came to me, as such things often did. A bit of poison or a knife in the ribs. The solution to the problem of a man was always ready when it came to the doing of it. But for her I had no idea what I should do. I did not want to hurt her, but my lord commanded.

And the bishop had promised me so much. And I had a woman I hoped to make a wife.

She knew something was wrong when I knelt beside her. I could not look at her. She asked me what was wrong. I could hear her fear even before I drew the dagger. One long straight thrust to the heart was my intention. Over quick, a gasp at most before life fled her.

But as I drew it, the long poniard blade meant to part metal chain, she scrambled away quick like a little squirrel, and gave frightened cries that the forest swallowed whole, shouting for help like hell was on her to the birds and little beasts that watched.

Obert and Hermann grabbed her before she scurried far, pulled her to the dirt. Gritted their teeth against her shrieks and thrashing body. The way she thrashed, her lean body squirming, her limbs flailing out, pinned down by two large men with her face pushed into the dirt.

“Please,” she said through snot and streaming tears, “Jesus, please.” She had such a child’s voice, calling to Christ.

“Do it,” Obert said, his voice thick and vicious.

“Do the cunt,” Hermann said, eyes very wide upon her.

My dagger came down upon her back. Her whole little body jolted. She gave a moaning scream no child should make. I almost lost grip on my knife and left it there.

“Again, the whore, do her,” Obert insisted, pushing hard on her skinny shoulder that I heard it pop, twist in an unnatural manner.

Again my dagger, opening bloody mouths on her back. Again and again until the moaning stopped and the thrashing jolts settled to little spasms that were soon gone as well.

Obert climbed to his feet, pushing up off the back of the girl’s head. He panted as if he were the one that had done it. Looked at the woman-child’s corpse than up to me. There was something like damnation in his eyes.

“Christ,” he said, and then he staggered away into the woods. We never saw Obert again.

Hermann clapped my shoulder and drew me to him.

“We bury her, we go get piss roaring drunk, and it’ll be all gone tomorrow,” he kissed my cheek, “The bishop has already given us indulgence for this.”

And that was it that killed my faith, and all belief that went with it. There was no forgiving such an act. No power in heaven and earth. It seemed such a joke now.

So we buried her. We went and got piss roaring drunk. We bedded the same whore. And the next day it was as if nothing had happened. Except that Obert was gone, my station much raised, and Hermann no longer was so bold with his blade. It was the start of his turn from cavalier to coward.

We were all of us hollow men now. And all of life had lost its lustre.

I am Sir Wilhelm of Koblenz. I am wed to a dry woman. I still serve a bishop. And standing for years in my reward for that black deed, I see now how much of a nothing it was. I would not be punished for that murder, in this life or the next, yet I had never lived a free day since.

By this murder my family prospered, comfortable in their station. And comfort breeds its own troubles. My sons grew bold and spurned service and duty for adventure. My daughters grew beautiful and restless. Lost to the fervour that was the Holy Land.