Perhaps the Flagellants have already arrived?

Terrible fear has seized on them all, making their hearts falter. They already see those forces, greedy for blood, men with faces flushed by wine, brandishing blazing torches and breaking violently into their homes. Already the stifled cries of their women ring in their ears, crying out for help as they pay the price of the murderers’ wild lust; they already feel the flashing weapons strike. It is like a clear and vivid dream.

The stranger listens for sounds in the room above, and when no one lets him in he knocks again. Once more the dull echo of his knock resounds through the silence and distress inside the building.

By now the master of the house, the prayer leader, whose flowing white beard and great age give him the look of a patriarch, has been the first to recover some composure. He quietly murmurs, “God’s will be done,” and then bends down to his granddaughter. She is a pretty girl and, in her fear resembles a deer turning its great, pleading eyes on the huntsman. “Look out and see who’s there, Lea.”

All eyes are on the girl’s face as she goes timidly to the window, and draws back the curtain with pale, trembling fingers. Then comes a cry from the depths of her heart. “Thank God, it’s only one man.”

“Praise the Lord.” It is a sound like a sigh of relief on all sides. Now movement returns to the still figures who had been oppressed by the dreadful nightmare. Separate groups form, some standing in silent prayer, others talking in frightened, uncertain voices, discussing the unexpected arrival of the stranger, who is now being let in through the front gate.

The whole room is full of the hot, stuffy aroma of logs burning and a large crowd of people, all of them gathered around the richly laid festive table on which the sign and symbol of this holy evening stands, the seven-branched candlestick. The candles shine with a dull light in the smouldering vapours. The women wear dresses adorned with jewellery, the men voluminous robes with white prayer bands. There is a sense of deep solemnity in the crowded room, a solemnity such as only genuine piety can bring.

Now the stranger’s quick footsteps are coming up the steps, and he enters the room.

At the same time a sharp gust of biting wind blows into the warm room through the open door. Icy cold streams in with the snow-scented air, chilling everyone. The draught puts out the flickering candles on the candlestick; only one of them still wavers unsteadily as it dies down. Suddenly the room is full of a heavy, oppressive twilight, as if cold night might suddenly fall within these walls. All at once the peace and comfort are gone. Everyone feels that the extinguishing of the sacred candles is a bad omen, and superstition makes them shiver again. But no one dares to say a word.

A tall, black-bearded man, who can hardly be more than thirty years old, stands at the door. He quickly divests himself of the scarves and coats in which he had been muffled up against the cold, and as soon as his face is revealed in the faint light of that last little flickering candle flame, Lea runs to him and embraces him.

This is Josua, her fiancé from the neighbouring town.

The others also crowd eagerly around him, greeting him happily, only to fall silent next moment, for he frees himself from his fiancée’s arms with a grave, sad expression, and the weight of his terrible knowledge has dug deep furrows on his brow. All eyes are anxiously turned on him, and he cannot defend himself and what he has to say from the raging torrent of his own emotions. He takes the girl’s hands as she stands beside him, and quietly forces himself to utter the fateful news.

“The Flagellants are here.”

The eyes that had been turned questioningly to him stare, fixed on his face, and he feels the pulse of the hands he is holding falter suddenly. The prayer leader clutches the edge of the heavy table, his fingers trembling, so that the crystal glasses begins to sing softly, sending quavering notes through the air. Fear digs its claws into desperate hearts again, draining the last drops of blood from the frightened, devastated faces staring at the bearer of the news.

The last candle flickers once more and goes out.

Only the lamp hanging from the ceiling now casts a faint light on the dismayed, distraught people; the news has struck them like a thunderbolt.

One voice softly murmurs the resigned phrase with which Fate has made them familiar. “It is God’s will.”

But the others still cannot grasp it.

However, the newcomer is continuing, his words brusque and disconnected, as if he could hardly bear to hear them himself.

“They’re coming—many of them—hundreds. And crowds of people with them—blood on their hands—they’ve murdered thousands—all our people in the East.