The Silver Sword (6 page)

“Lord Laco?” Petrov's breath caught in his throat. The previous Lord of Lidice had been a foe of Lord Honza's, and the name still made Petrov's heart pound. The present Lord of Lidice had to be descended from Petrov's old enemy, and apparently this Miloslav was cut from the same traitorous cloth.

“I have heard it suggested,” Hus went on, his brows drawing downward in a frown, “that the youth fancies our Anika. He has been told that Ernan has no great fortune, therefore the daughter might be compelled to seek employment as a serving maid.” His eyes caught and held Petrov's. “I do not need to tell you what sort of service
Miloslav has in mind. Unfortunately, the nobility think that lesser folk have neither brains nor morals, and they are not above taking whatever they desire.”

“Do not fear.” Petrov spread his feet and stood before the minister with the solidity of a fortress. “Anika will not be harmed. I will not let the young man within twenty paces of her.”

“But we must guard against Anika, too,” Hus warned, lifting his hand. “She is a romantic. She yearns for the love she reads about in books, and Miloslav may know the words to win a girl's heart. He is a handsome lad, and if she were won with lies and flattery, even so virtuous a girl as Anika might be brought to ruin and despair.”

“I would die before I would allow her to be hurt, Master Hus.” Petrov placed one hand across his chest and rested the other upon the priest's arm. “I have known the girl since she was a wee child of six or seven, and upon my oath as a knight, I promise both you and God that I shall protect our Anika.”

“Do not forget to guard your tongue,” Hus warned, nodding. “Do not reveal to Ernan O'Connor the names of either Lord Laco or Miloslav. Members of the nobility often visit his shop, and with one slip of the tongue he might place his life and his daughter's virtue in danger. If he were to erupt in anger …” Hus let the sentence trail off.

“Ernan O'Connor shall never know the lad's identity,” Petrov answered, his heart swelling with a feeling of purpose he had thought long dead. “As you trust in God, Jan Hus, you may trust in me.”

U
nrest moved like an ill wind over Prague as the papal legate arrived in the city. Citizens who attended the Roman churches knew about the papal bull and Pope John's awful curse against Ladislas. Those who attended Hus's Bethlehem Chapel had heard enough to realize that the pope's messenger would stir the smoldering fires of controversy and distrust. Rumors of a coming confrontation between the pope's prelates and the Bohemian preacher spread through the city like a wind-whipped grass fire.

Tucked away in the bookshop, Anika heard the rumors, too, but paid them little attention. Jan Hus had been in trouble with church authorities before, and his quick intellect won every debate. On the first Sunday in May, she rose with the sun, then slipped into her best dress, an emerald, floor-length gown with an empire waist and a simple white collar. Long flared sleeves with dagged edges extended to the floor, accenting her slender waistline.

Frowning at her reflection in her mirror, Anika brushed her mane of long red locks, then separated the stubborn strand of white hair and quickly plaited it into a delicate braid. She pulled it up and over, then pinned it beneath her hairline on the opposite side of her head. She had been troubled by this unusual white streak for years but lately had begun to arrange her hair in this braided fashion. Worn like this, under a veil of crispinette, the discolored braid appeared to be a false hairpiece cunningly tied into her own hair. No one had ever commented on it when she wore her hair this way, and
when she worked in the shop she tucked the offending streak up inside her cap so no one could see it.

Finally ready, she pulled back the curtain that separated her sleeping compartment from the rest of the family quarters. Her father sat on a chair by the table, already dressed for church. Apparently his thoughts were not fixed on worship, though, for his eyes were directed at a pamphlet in his hands, and his face had gone brick red.

Anika lifted a brow as she approached. “Good morrow, Papa. I trust your dreams were more pleasant than your present thoughts.”

“By all the saints, Daughter, Cardinal D'Ailly plans to attend services at Bethlehem Chapel today!”

Kneeling by the hearth, Anika reached for an iron poker and shoved the charred remains of last night's log onto the still-glowing coals. Despite the advent of spring, the morning air still snapped with cold.

“Perhaps nothing will come of it,” she told her father. “Our good Master Hus will not want to make trouble. He yearns to make peace with those who oppose him.”

“Hrumph!” was her father's only reply.

Later that morning, as Anika sat next to her father in the large hall known as Bethlehem Chapel, she blinked in amazement to see that her father had heard correctly. A red-robed cardinal, one of the virtual rulers of the Roman Catholic Church, sat in a front pew to the left of the pulpit. Beside him sat a richly dressed nobleman Anika did not recognize, and beside the nobleman fidgeted a young man probably only three or four years older than Anika herself.

Jan Hus seemed not to notice that his congregation included more illustrious company than usual. He mounted to the lectern and led his congregation in rousing song, into which Anika joined with her customary jubilation. The uplifting song, one Hus himself had written, inspired her worship, but her thoughts were distracted from their heavenly plane when her eyes fell upon the youth seated on the cardinal's pew at the front of the church. He was attractive, she
supposed, with clear blue eyes, classically handsome features, and a secretive expression. Reflected light from the chapel windows glimmered over his blond hair like beams of icy radiance, and indomitable pride shone through the eyes that caught and held her gaze.

For a moment he looked at her with an interested and somewhat surprised expression, then his mouth took on an unpleasant twist. As Anika went mute with surprise, his lips puckered—and he sent her an undeniable kiss, in front of her father, the entire church, even Holy God Himself!

Anika lowered her head, coloring fiercely. What was he doing? What if someone saw him? What if someone thought she had
invited
such a greeting? They would think her the lowest kind of wench. No honorable woman would offer her attention to a man while her thoughts ought to be turned toward God!

As the congregation sang on around her, Anika took a deep breath and forced herself to calm her feelings. Her father had not commented; maybe he had not noticed. The couple seated in front of her had not turned around in surprise or revulsion; perhaps they had not seen. Perhaps no one had noted it. If Anika could ignore the forward youth surely nothing else would happen.

She lifted her eyes to the preacher, the image of the young man blurring her peripheral vision. She could feel heat in her face, and she knew he was still looking in her direction—probably grinning. Mocking her. Why? What on earth had she ever done to him?

The song ended, and Master Hus bowed his head for prayer. Anika followed suit, but the top of her head burned with the touch of the man's eyes upon her. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Surely she was imagining things! A perfect stranger had no cause to smile at her; perhaps he was smiling at someone seated in the pew beyond. Perhaps his betrothed, or even his mother or a dear aunt sat right behind Anika, and she had misinterpreted his affectionate greeting.

She sighed in relief. What a fool she was, how overwrought her imagination! She had spent too much time reading
The Art of Courtly
Love;
all that prattle about stolen glances and displays of public affection had addled her brain. She had imagined everything, including the young man's continued glances in her direction. After all, she hadn't actually looked up at him again, and he probably wasn't looking toward her at all. She could check now, just to be sure.

In the midst of her pastor's prayer, she sneaked one disobedient look upward. The young man
was
still staring at her, openly flouting everything right and holy. His blue eyes glinted with mischief as he grinned and gave her a conspiratorial wink.

No. She had to be mistaken. Quickly, quietly, she lowered her head and turned slightly so she could look behind her. Surely another young woman sat there, the object of this man's unseemly affection—but no one sat behind her but the miller and his wife, a blowzy woman with many chins and many children.

Anika lowered her head, her stomach churning in disgust. She leaned closer to her father's protecting arm and closed her eyes tightly, blocking out all thoughts and sights of the froward youth who had no business behaving so rudely in God's own church.

“Papa,” she whispered when the preacher's prayer had concluded, “who are the men seated in the pews next to the pulpit?”

Her father's face hardened into a marble effigy of contempt as he looked up. “That, Daughter,” he answered, barely troubling to lower his voice, “is the Cardinal D'Ailly and Lord Laco of Lidice. I don't know who the younger man is, but I'd guess we're looking at Lord Laco's son.”

Anika looked down again, her flush deepening to crimson. A nobleman's son! At least her worries were unfounded. Once he learned she was only a merchant's daughter, he would take his attentions elsewhere. Even
The Art of Courtly Love
admitted that love between upper- and middle-class folk was a poor idea.

Jan Hus stepped slowly to the lectern, well aware of the forbidding presence on the front pew at his right hand. Cardinal D'Ailly had not wandered into Prague and into this church by mere happenstance, but Jan could not say with a clear conscience that God
had led the cardinal to this church for spiritual edification. No, D'Ailly's presence had less to do with the plans of God than the plots of men, and those plots were yet to be revealed.

“Friends,” Hus began, placing his copy of the Scriptures on the lectern before him. “I would like to read to you from the gospel according to Saint Matthew.”

“Stop.”

Like an echo from an empty tomb, the cardinal's voice echoed through the large sanctuary.

“Your Eminence?” Jan obediently turned and lifted an eyebrow. “Do you wish to address the congregation?”

Slowly, as if weighted down by his own self-importance, Cardinal D'Ailly rose to his feet. A short, plump polyp of a man, the cardinal gave Hus a fixed and meaningless smile, then took a deep breath, swelled his chest, and faced the startled congregation. “Pope John has sent his representative, bearing the sacred pallium as a token of authority, to publish a bull throughout the kingdom of Christ. Yet I have heard that the bull has not been published or posted upon the doors of this church.”

Jan bit his lip, resisting the urge to rebel.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God …

The cardinal extended a hand toward a cowled priest seated in the front row. As the man stood to his feet, D'Ailly made a simple introduction: “This man, Master Hus, is the holy father's legate.”

Conscious that two thousand pairs of curious eyes watched from the pews, Jan bowed in respect. “Grace and peace unto you, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

The emissary's eyes gleamed like glassy volcanic rock, his emotions and intents impossible to read. “Will you, Jan Hus,” the priest called, his thin voice cutting through the silence of the chamber, “obey the apostolic mandates?”

Hus did not hesitate to fill his role in what was obviously a scripted drama. “I am ready with all my heart to obey the apostolic mandates.”

The surprised messenger's shoulders dropped slightly, then he
smiled. “Did you hear?” he said, glancing up at D'Ailly in what looked like relief. “The master is quite ready to obey the apostolic mandates.”

Jan resisted the impulse to shake his head in utter disbelief. Another trap—this one sprung in his own church. Well, the hunter could be snared as easily as the prey if God so willed.