The Silver Sword (45 page)

While the cardinals celebrated downstairs, Baldasarre poured wine and drank a toast to his new comrade, Vasek. “The fox is caught,” he said, pausing to sip the red wine. He smacked his lips appreciatively, then gestured to the country chaplain. “Try it, my friend. The vintage is a good one. Even the priests serving mass don't taste anything this fine.”

A commotion out in the hall broke his concentration, and Baldasarre heard a loud and angry voice rise above the babble of his guards. Vasek, the foolish chaplain, went pale in one instant and scurried toward the water closet in the next.

The doors to the chamber suddenly burst open. Startled, Baldasarre spilled wine onto his cassock, then looked up to scowl at the fool who dared disturb his privacy. He recognized the man before him: the Bohemian noble, Lord John of Chlum. Tonight the nobleman was red faced with anger, his hair tousled by the wind, his eyes smoldering with fire.

“Who let him in?” Baldasarre demanded of his servants, jabbing a finger toward John of Chlum.

The nobleman ignored the gesture. “What of your promise to Jan Hus?” he said, bitterness edging his voice. “He has today been arrested.”

Baldasarre lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I am powerless in the matter.”

“You are the pope! Whether rightly or not, you wield power enough to have this man released!”

“I am helpless,” Baldasarre continued, idly stirring his wine with his finger. “My brethren the cardinals, as you know, have more authority than I. They are quite beyond my control.”

Through narrowed eyes, Baldasarre watched the man carefully. John of Chlum was in an Old Testament mood now, unwilling to turn the other cheek, unable to play the games of power and position.

“You—” John of Chlum lifted an accusing finger toward Baldasarre, “you will pay for this. In this life or the next, you will pay for this treachery.”

“You forget,” Baldasarre countered gamely, “that as the pope I hold the keys to heaven and hell. I decide who pays—in this life
and
the next.”

Their eyes locked in open warfare for a moment, anger hanging in the air between them like an invisible dagger. Then John of Chlum whirled and stalked away, probably to vent his anger in the apartments of a succession of cardinals.

But it wouldn't matter, Baldasarre thought, dipping his finger into the wine again. He ran his wet finger across his lips, then smiled at the cowardly chaplain who peered from behind the door to the water closet.

“Come out,” he told the little man. “You have done nothing worthy of shame.”

“I only wish I could agree with you,” Vasek croaked, his face red and blotchy with humiliation as he crossed the room to resume his seat.

Baldasarre shot him a twisted smile. “Have no fear. As long as you please me, you'll enter heaven. Eventually.”

“My poor lord John.” The chaplain's eyes bore a tinge of sadness and regret. “He is so caught up in this matter with Master Hus. I fear he has been deceived, and yet I know him for an honest and godly man—”

“That is why you must return to his camp,” Baldasarre answered, setting his cup on the table at his side. “You will be of more use to God there than here. Go back to Lord John of Chlum, act as my eyes and ears. And if your master and his comrades plan anything that would injure our cause, report immediately to me.”

Vasek the chaplain looked up, his eyes like black holes in his pale, unhappy face. But he nodded in agreement, and Baldasarre leaned back, content with the knowledge he had enlisted another spy.

The next morning, Anika rose from her place in the straw at the knights' camp and took a quick inventory of her women's garments. After returning to the widow's house, the woman had helped Anika dress again in her armor but had insisted that she keep the gown,
cloak, and hat. “You do not know when you will need these things again,” Fida had whispered, a strong note of approval in her voice. “I don't know how you did it, child, but I applaud the service you have done Master Hus. I am pleased to know you.”

The garments were now wrapped in an oilcloth and hidden at the bottom of a trunk filled with kitchen supplies. Anika thought she would be able to find them again if needed, and if someone else stumbled upon them she would not necessarily be exposed. Anyone in the camp could have placed them there.

One of the knights had slain a buck in the nearby forest, so after a brief breakfast of roasted venison, Anika looked up to see an armored knight in blue galloping down the pathway leading to their camp. “Master John!” the knight called, his voice muffled through his visor.

Lev caught the man's foaming mount. Then the knight dismounted and removed his helmet. Anika recognized Manville, who had been sent into town to keep watch over Hus.

“They removed him in the night!” Manville shouted, hurrying toward the canopy under which the master had breakfasted with Anika and Novak. “They took him from the episcopal palace to the house of the precentor of the cathedral. Hus is closely guarded.”

Lord John took in Manville's harried appearance in one swift glance. “Did you see them move him?”

The knight nodded. “Aye, my lord. I have been so long in returning only because I was not able to find a mount until I reached a stable on the outskirts of the city. All I had to do was speak the name of Master Hus, though, and the smithy there gave me his own mare and wished me Godspeed.”

“When you return the horse, give the man my thanks,” Lord John answered. Without thinking, he lowered his gaze until it met Anika's, and she thrilled to think that he considered her a comrade. “What do we do now?” he murmured, almost speaking to himself.

“I cannot believe they will keep him at the precentor's house for long,” Anika answered, her mind racing. “If he was a threat in the widow Fida's house, the threat will not be removed as long as he remains
in Constance. There are too many here who love Jan Hus, and those who fear him will not rest if he sleeps behind the city walls.” She took a deep breath and moved her gaze into his, seeing nothing else. “They mean to kill him, my lord,” she said simply, tearing the words from her soul. “They are evil men, servants of Lucifer himself.”

“Anika!” He spoke her female name without thinking, and she blinked in surprise. Manville would think he had made a mistake, but she felt her heart turn over at the realization that he not only saw her as a comrade, but as a woman.

Abruptly he pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “I will not give up while breath remains in my body.”

Anika

T
he Bohemians passed the winter of 1414–15 in the darkest possible circumstances. Lord John and the knights of Chlum remained encamped outside Constance, not willing to return to Bohemia while Hus remained in prison. While they waited, the knights grew bored and restless, and many fell ill with diseases brought on by the cold, harsh weather.

Anika knew the nobles worried about matters back home. Both Lord John and Lord Venceslas had left their estates in their stewards' capable hands, but some things even a steward could not handle. With a pang of sorrow Anika recalled that Lord John had left his youngest son behind. Svec would be several months older by the time they returned, precious time that could never be recaptured in the child's life.

But Jan Hus fared far worse than his fellow Bohemians. After one week in the precentor's house, where he was closely guarded and allowed no visitors apart from council representatives, guards moved Hus to a Dominican monastery situated on a small island in the center of Lake Constance. When Anika first learned that Hus had been transferred to the graceful building near the water, she wept in relief, but her relief turned to despair when she learned Hus had been cast into the dungeon of a round tower only a few feet from the monastery sewer and the water's edge. In this dank and dismal place he remained for over two and a half months. Not until a noxious fever seized him did news of his pitiable condition reach those who prayed for and worried about him.

“The pope,” Lord John told his Bohemian allies one afternoon when he had returned from another fruitless round of meetings with the pope's emissaries, “does not want Master Hus to die a natural death. They tell me Master Hus was at death's door, but the pope sent his own physician to restore our friend to health. On the doctor's orders, Hus has been removed to a more healthful cell and treated with greater humanity.”

While the physicians worked over Jan Hus's body, prelates scoured his soul. After the doctors left Hus's cell each morning, witnesses from the council entered the small chamber and worried the preacher with complex questions. Once when Hus lay at his weakest, his mind wearied by fever and unrest, they brought fifteen witnesses who peppered him with sly questions, hoping to catch him in some mistake or heresy.

The attack against Hus advanced on a third front, as well. The council appointed three prelates to investigate and report on Hus's public statements. Michael de Causis and Stephen Palec drew up a series of accusations based on Hus's treatise on the church,
De Ecclesia.
Hus's beliefs, as set forth in this document, were a declaration of independence for the individual believer in Christ, for he effectively reduced the cumbersome system of priestly rule to rubbish. Hus stressed that faith, not connection with the Roman Catholic body, was the true basis of membership in the spiritual Church of Christ. And he steadfastly maintained that human distinctions of clerical rank paled to insignificance when considered in the light of Christ's admonition that “whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” The concepts of
De Ecclesia
frightened the cardinals, and with the aid of Palec and Michael de Causis, the commissioners twisted some of Hus's statements and fabricated others to make the document appear heretical.

And yet, through all his trials, Jan Hus did not slip or falter. He did ask for help, begging that he might be allowed to employ an advocate for his defense, only to hear that a man accused of heresy had no right to expect the protection of the law.

In the end, the council members had only lies and misrepresentations
with which to accuse him. Peter Mladenovic, Lord John's secretary, kept a careful account of the proceedings as news trickled out and wrote that the final formal accusations against Hus, forty-four articles drawn from
De Ecclesia,
were totally misleading. “These have been falsely and unfairly extracted from the book by Palec,” he wrote in his journal, “who has mutilated some sentences at the beginning, others in the middle, others at the end, and who has also invented things that are not contained in the book at all.”

For months, Anika and the other knights helped Lord John and Lord Venceslas of Duba attempt to free the Bohemian preacher. The nobles wrote countless letters to the emperor and badgered cardinals in their offices, trying to rouse all of Constance in Hus's defense. Their efforts were fruitless, but when Emperor Sigismund finally arrived in the city at the end of December, a ray of hope dawned. Anika knew Lord John placed great faith in the emperor—after all, Sigismund had provided Hus's safe conduct, and was King Wenceslas's brother. He should prove to be an ally.