The Confession of
Brother Matteus

The door to the cell creaked open and Father Ludwik entered the room where the dying went to die. The air in the chamber was thick and heavy with the lingering stench of death. A single, frail candle flame guttered in the sudden gust of chill air, throwing monstrous jerking shadow-phantoms on the wall above the bed.

At first Father Ludwik could hardly tell that there was anyone lying huddled under the blankets of the single pallet bed. It looked as if one of the brothers had cast off his robe and dumped it untidily on the bed. It was only when the apparently discarded piece of clothing moved, and the gathered material of the cowl fell away from a head that was little more than skin stretched over a skull, that the priest knew there was anybody there at all.

The figure was frail and looked old—ever so old. His head was entirely bald and dotted with liver spots, the only visible hair being grey wiry eyebrows. His bony hands had been constricted into claws by some cruel, degenerative disease. The old man’s skin was paper thin, drawn tight about the bones beneath, veins of a cold blue obvious against the cold, white marble of what little flesh there was covering his withered body. The bone structure of his face was clearly visible, his cheekbones sharp, his jaw angular and defined, the line of his nose aristocratic, outlined by the flickering candle flame.

Ludwik turned away. He had seen death in all its myriad forms in his thirty years as a priest of Morr—soldiers who had suffered brutal physical injuries on the battlefield, casualties of plague, those who had died through misadventure, victims of murder. But there was something about this individual that made Ludwik turn away in revulsion.

It was not so much his appearance; Ludwik had seen much worse in his time. It was something else that the old priest couldn’t quite put his finger on. The old man looked as if he should be dead already; it certainly smelt as if he were. Nothing that was still alive should ever smell like that.

Father Ludwik shivered and pulled his own black sackcloth robe tighter about him; the cell was damnably cold, despite the embers of a dying fire in the grate. The priest took the iron stick of the poker from its stand by the fireplace and set about the smouldering logs in the hearth, rattling the poker furiously.

“Father, is that you?”

The old man’s voice was high-pitched and cracked, with the timbre of a broken bell. The sound of it made Ludwik’s spine feel as if it were made of ice water.

He took a deep breath to compose himself.

“It’s Brother Matteus, isn’t it?”

That was the name Brother Oswald had said the old man had given on being admitted to the hospice. It had been as clear to Oswald as it was now to Ludwik that the old man did not have long left in this world. As they had laid his convulsing, frail body on the single pallet and tucked him in, making him comfortable in the waiting cell, the old man had asked to speak with the father who was responsible for the hospice. No other priest would do; on that matter the otherwise feeble old man, failing fast, had been adamant.

The old man’s breathing was laboured and heavy. For a moment it seemed to Ludwik that it was all he could do to breathe, let alone speak. But then, at last, speak again the old man did. “Brother Matteus will suffice, for now.”

Uncertainty creased Ludwik’s brow into a frown. What could the old man mean?

Now that he came to think of it, Father Ludwik was not certain how Brother Matteus had come to be here at the temple in Bregerstadt. Neither did he know what the old man was dying from, just that he was evidently on his deathbed now. Surely it had to be from the haggard effects of old age. And it was the Brethren of Morr’s duty and responsibility to make sure that Brother Matteus’ last hours were as comfortable and as free from care as possible, being as he was a fellow servant of the solemn god of death.

“You wished to speak with me, brother,” Ludwik said.

“Indeed. Indeed I did, father,” the old man wheezed. His voice was little more than a rasping death rattle.

Ludwik was used to being addressed as “father” by the brothers and those who came seeking Morr’s favour and the ministrations of a priest of death for their departed loved ones. But now, coming from this old man, old enough to be Ludwik’s own grandfather, the term of address seemed ridiculous. He had to be easily thirty or even forty years older than the fifty-five year-old Ludwik, perhaps even pushing a century, although such longevity was almost unheard of. It must be the ravaging effects of some terrible illness that had aged him so badly, Ludwik surmised.

“Indeed. Indeed I did,” the old man repeated.

The man coughed, a horrible phlegmy gargle. He clutched a hand that was barely more than a skeletal talon to his belly beneath the rough blanket.

“Brother, what is it?” Ludwik asked, anxiety evident in his own voice now, moving toward the old man. “Let me help you.”

“No.” A hand kept the aging priest of Morr at bay.

The dying wretch took several more laboured breaths before trying to speak again. “I beseech you. Hear my confession.”

Looking at the feeble old man, Ludwik wondered what an old priest of Morr could have to confess on his deathbed that the god of death and dreams did not know already. But there were a thousand and one things that might trouble a man standing on the threshold of the portal to the otherworldly realm of the departed. A thousand and one things that could concern a man staring death in the face, as his eyes began to fail and see beyond the veil of this temporary world, looking into the grim shadow-eyed face of Morr himself.

“Of course, brother,” Ludwik said, sitting down on the chair that had been left next to Matteus’ bed.

If having his confession heard would make Brother Matteus’ final hours more bearable and help prepare him better for passage through that dread portal into the world beyond, then that was what Father Ludwik would do. It was little for a dying man to ask of a fellow priest of Morr.

As well as dealing with the dead, it was not uncommon for those at death’s door to come to the hospice asking to have their confession heard before they died, that they might enter the afterlife free of the burden of their sins in the hope that their passage through to the fields of the Morr might be accomplished more readily.

“Yes, that is what I need. A father figure to confess all to. A father figure who can grant me absolution.” The old man laughed. It was a bitter, mirthless sound. “How ironic.”

“I’m sorry, brother. What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Of course not.” The old man chuckled phlegmily. “But no matter. It is of no consequence. Like so much in our brief, pitiful lives. It is of no consequence at all.”

The old man coughed again and a fleck of spittle escaped from the white-crusted corner of his mouth, between the old man’s drawn, pale lips.

“But where to start? Where to start?” the old man repeated.

“You could start by telling me your true name,” Ludwik said.

“Yes, that would be sensible, if you are to hear my confession. It would be pointless confessing under another name. After all, where would that get me with austere Morr?”

The old man shifted himself onto his back, groaning painfully as he did so. “Very well. Let me tell you everything. My name is Dieter Heydrich, son of Albrecht Heydrich, and I was born and grew up in the village of Hangenholz, six leagues east and north of Bögenhafen at the edge of the Skaag Hills, twelve leagues from that accursed Sigmarite den of Altdorf. I was born three years into the reign of the renowned emperor Magnus, known as the Pious.”

Father Ludwik let out a slight gasp and sat back in his chair as though startled.

“What?” The old man fixed his confessor with beady black eyes that appeared needle-sharp in the flickering light of the candle.

“You are mistaken, brother,” Ludwik said. “That would make you over—”

“Two hundred years old,” the dying priest interrupted, wheezily. “Yes, I know. Two hundred and thirteen to be exact.”

Brother Matteus’—or rather Dieter Heydrich’s—mind must be addled, Ludwik thought. He didn’t know what he was saying. He looked old certainly, but over two hundred years?

“Go on,” Ludwik said, settling himself back in the chair.

“As I said, I was born during the reign of Magnus the Pious. You wonder how I can have lived for over two hundred years. Well, I shall confess that too. It’s simple really. I am a necromancer.”

The look the old man threw Ludwik with those words froze the father into stunned silence. The old man, Matteus or Heydrich, or whatever he was called, was clearly mad. First of all that he could have lived for over two centuries was ridiculous. Secondly, how could he be a necromancer, a dark wizard, a summoner of spirits? Necromancers were an anathema to the servants of Morr, the bane of their brotherhood. They desecrated the sacred resting places of the dead and despoiled Morr’s otherworldly realm with their depraved, morbid enchantments.

Ludwik obviously could not trust a word the man said.

What had caused this man to run mad and lose his mind like this, Ludwik wondered? Perhaps it was a consequence of all his years dealing with the dying and the dead, the horrors he had witnessed? Perhaps it was something else that had happened to him more recently. Perhaps it was his own dealings with a true conjuror of the dead.

Was this to be his own fate, Ludwik considered darkly, distracted for a moment?

“Do I shock you?” the old man wheezed.

“N-no, brother. No, of course not. It is just—”

“You agreed to hear my confession,” the old man reminded him sharply.

Ludwik tried to settle himself again, despite feeling intensely uncomfortable but still not entirely sure why.

Was it an understandable unease when confronted by such mental instability? Or did he secretly find the old priest’s claim plausible?

He had indeed agreed to hear the old man’s confession but there was blatantly doubt regarding the veracity of anything he might hear. But listen he would, if only to make the old priest’s final hours more bearable. It was his duty after all, Ludwik reminded himself. Although at this moment, it was a duty he honestly wished he did not have, no matter how many confessions he had heard before now.

“Go on, brother. I will hear your confession.”

“Then I shall begin at the beginning.”

And as the old man spoke, despite the crackling warmth of the roused fire, Ludwik felt the cold draw in about him like the chill hand of death itself.