Limmat

It was the fifth of January, fifteen twenty-seven.

Where the Limmat leaves the lake at Zurich it runs fast, and in winter the water comes straight down from the mountains.

A crowd had gathered along the bank.

A preacher from the city's main church had walked beside Manz all the way from the prison, urging him to take back what he had said and save himself.

She's a member of the church now by her own choice, and the bishop moves on to the next in line.

There is no font and no river, only a farmhouse room full of benches and a few cupfuls of water.

It is very nearly the gesture that Conrad Grebel made with a kitchen dipper in Zurich in January mil quinientos y veinticinco, the gesture the city answered with a Limmat.

Five hundred years later, it is still being repeated in farmhouses across North America, usually in the spring or the autumn.