The Silver Sword (52 page)

Anika blinked in astonished silence as the bishops then began to argue about how they should obliterate Hus's tonsure, the mark of the priest. Some wished to shave his head with a razor, others insisted that cutting it with scissors would be enough. In the midst of the bedlam, Hus turned to the emperor and called in a loud voice, “Look, these bishops cannot even agree in this vilification!”

Without hesitation, D'Ailly himself strode forward with scissors, disfiguring Hus's tonsure by cutting his hair to the scalp in four places—right, left, front, and back. When his tonsure had been thus distorted, another prelate gleefully lifted up a paper crown which had been painted with a picture of three horrible devils about to seize a soul and tear it with their claws. When he had placed the crown on Hus's head, he called out, “We commit your soul to the devil!”

At this Hus lifted both hands to heaven: “And I commit it to the most merciful Lord Jesus Christ.” His voice wasn't much above a whisper, but the effect was as great as if he'd shouted. Of the paper crown, he said, “My Lord Jesus Christ, on account of me, a miserable wretch, bore a much heavier and harsher crown of thorns. Being innocent, he was deemed deserving of the most shameful death. Therefore I, a miserable wretch and sinner, will humbly bear this much lighter.”

A mayhem of noise ripped the air and seemed to vibrate the very foundations of the cathedral. Many of the cardinals, furious at their inability to coerce this stalwart scholar, pounded their pews and vented their fury while Hus remained solid and unbending through the cacophony. Anika saw two or three cardinals, however, staring in silent pity and despair, their countenances marked by lines of heart-sickness and weariness. Not all the cardinals were evil, she realized with a pang of remorse. But far too many of this panel had been infected with Cardinal D'Ailly's malice and jealousy.

At the sight of Hus's lonely form, Anika's face twisted. Her eyes closed tight to trap the sudden rush of tears, but there were too
many. They streamed from her lashes down her cheeks, dripping onto her clasped hands.

When she opened her eyes again, Hus had disappeared from the platform and Lord John was tugging at her elbow. “They have taken him out to the churchyard,” he said, his voice—like her nerves—in tatters.

Without question, she rose and followed him.

A
stream of spectators—Hus's supporters, enemies, and a few folk who were merely curious—followed the preacher. His executioners led him through the churchyard where at that moment a group of prelates were setting fire to a collection of Hus's books. Lord John felt his spine stiffen as the tongues of flame lapped at the parchments. How many hours, how much sacrifice had gone into those books! A scribe like Anika had labored to produce them, a saint like Hus had labored to
live
them. And now they would be paid for with a martyr's blood.

John turned and lifted his head, trying to see over the crowd to catch a glimpse of Hus. The gaudy heretic's cap was easy to spot, for it rose nearly eighteen inches over Hus's head, and John felt his heart leap when he found the face he had been seeking. Hus was watching the fire with an expression of pained tolerance, then suddenly his countenance brightened in a smile. Had Hus seen him? John wondered. Or had his grief been lessened by a comforting touch from the Holy Spirit? Perhaps he had remembered that though his books might be destroyed at Constance, many more remained in Prague and throughout the castles of Bohemia.

The procession did not linger long at the churchyard, but continued to a quiet meadow known as the Bròhl. John saw the executioner's stake and stopped abruptly, anger and fear knotting inside him.
Why, God, has it come to this?

Talk wrapped around him like water around a rock, but John ignored it all as his eyes fastened on his friend. When Hus first
neared the stake, the buzz of conversation from the crowd ceased as he knelt and began to pray. In a resonant voice, Hus recited the Thirty-first and Fifty-first Psalms with such great emotion that the people around him wept. John overheard one man whisper to his companion, “I did not know how he acted or what he said formerly, but now in truth I know that he prays and speaks with holy words.”

As the executioner commanded Hus to rise, the preacher urged all who watched not to believe that he in any way held, preached, or taught the articles with which he had been charged by false witnesses.

John felt his face burn in humiliation when the guards then stripped Hus of all clothing but the horrid heretic's hat. As a choir of innocent sparrows sang in the trees bordering the meadow, the executioners tied Hus to the thick wooden stake with wet ropes, his hands behind his back. Then another man placed a blackened chain around Hus's neck.

In the midst of these dire ministrations, John saw another smile light Hus's face. “The Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer and Savior, was bound by a harder and heavier chain,” he said, his dark eyes roving over the crowd. “And I, a miserable wretch, am not ashamed to bear being bound for His name by this one.”

The executioners stacked two bundles of wood under Master Hus's shackled feet. Systematically, the guards emptied two cartloads of wood and hay, piling the bundles around Hus's body to the level of his chin.

Before the fire was kindled, Sigismund's imperial marshal, Hoppe of Poppenheim, approached to offer Hus one final chance to recant his preaching and teaching. But Hus, looking up to heaven, answered resolutely: “God is my witness.” His voice rang over the gathering and echoed on the wind. “Those things that are falsely ascribed to me I have never taught or preached. The principal intention of my preaching and of all my other acts or writings was solely to turn men from sin. And in that truth of the Gospel I wrote, taught, and preached, I am willing gladly to die today.”

Forgetting herself, Anika clasped Lord John's arm and hid her face in his cloak. She heard the crackling of the flames, smelled the acrid scent of burning hay and wood, and listened in stunned disbelief as Hus's song lifted above the roaring inferno: “Christ, son of the living God, have mercy upon us,” he sang in Bohemian. “Christ, son of the living God, have mercy upon me.”

Flinching at the sound of her beloved friend's voice, she lifted her eyes. The wood around Master Hus seemed to thirst for the flames that beset it. “Even so, my soul thirsts for you,” she murmured, recalling a Scripture verse Hus had often quoted in his writings.

The flames leaped upon the straw with fiendish exuberance, but she could no longer see Master Hus. Around her several people murmured the “Our Father” as an incantation against evil. But Anika turned her back on the sight and rested her hand on Lord John's strong shoulder as she resisted the nauseating sinking of despair.

This battle was over. The cardinals had won again, and this time they would not be satisfied with mere murder. The executioners would pull the charred body down and add more wood, burning Hus's remains until not even a bone was recognizable. Then the ashes would be strewn into the lake. The Church did not want any remnant of Jan Hus to remain, nothing that could serve as a relic or a bit of inspiration to those who sought the truth.

The council, the clergy, the corrupt church had claimed another innocent soul—but they did not know about the books … or Anika's sword.

“Jan Hus,” she murmured, wondering how one horizon could look so peaceful while the opposite skyline boiled with fury and shame, “
exustus non convictus.
Burned but not convicted.” Her hand gripped the hilt of her sword. “Murdered, but not forgotten.”

I
n the late summer of 1415, Lord John and his party returned home to find Bohemia in tumult. All classes, from the serfs to the nobility, had been profoundly moved by Jan Hus's death. Many who had been timid followers of his teachings stepped boldly forward to proclaim their belief in scriptural authority.

In Prague, home to the university and the kingdom's foremost scholars, mobs drove ungodly priests from the city, plundered their houses, and filled their places of leadership with clergymen who followed Hus's teachings. Even Archbishop Albik found himself besieged in his palace and was forced to flee the kingdom.

Just as the Roman sword of persecution scattered believers and fanned the flames of belief in the years following Christ's death, so Jan Hus's blood proved to be seed. Everywhere the tale of his death was told, men were compelled to question why church authorities could execute a priest who steadfastly adhered to the gospel of Christ.

Though the misery of Constance still haunted her, Anika was privately delighted by the religious fervor sweeping the kingdom. Her father had been right all along—and she, his fiery-haired daughter, would yet live to fight in the coming confrontation. The battle was as inevitable as birth and death, and Anika entered into her duties at Chlum with renewed vigor. She spent her mornings training with Lev and Svec, sharpening both her skills and theirs, and passed the afternoons copying Hus's letters and treatises. The council had taken his life, but the
spirit
of the man lived on in his words.

That spirit—for God and truth and righteousness—could not be allowed to die. Men like Cardinal D'Ailly had nearly vanquished it, but she had seen heartfelt sorrow on some of the other cardinals' faces. The Church had not become entirely evil. The spark of holy purity still lived in some men of God, and as soon as she was fully prepared and in reach of her goal, she would do her part to excise the malignant tumor that drained Christ's church of her lifeblood. With the killing of Cardinal D'Ailly, her vengeance would be well under way.

She passed her days contentedly, but with an ear toward Lord John's intentions. He had originally said she could serve him as long as he served Master Hus, and she knew he could rightfully dismiss her at any time. So she labored diligently on Hus's manuscripts, hoping Lord John would see that she was continuing to promote Hus's cause. If he asked her to leave, she sternly told herself, she could. She would simply go to another castle and establish herself there. But she would never find friends as true as the Chlum knights or a master as wonderful as Lord John.