The Heretic

by David Pilling

  It may sound strange, O Sultan, to hear of men eating in calm silence while a battle still raged and missiles streaked overhead. Yet the Hussites were supremely confident in their faith. The meanest peasant among them was as brave as any janissary, and fought with a similar zeal and disregard for physical safety. Their souls had already clinched a berth in Paradise.

  I didn’t share their complacency. My own faith was weak, and I was by no means certain of salvation. There were too many sins on my head, murders and thefts and betrayals. The blood of a kinsman, my cousin Sir William, whom I had killed in a duel, was a permanent stain. No amount of prayer could wash it out.

  My mind turned in on itself. Why had I come to this cold eastern land, riven by war and schism? I had never paid more than lip-service to God, and was only attracted to the Hussite cause by their desire to root out evil in the church. The theology was beyond me. What did it matter if men took communion in one kind or two? The bread was just bread, the wine remained wine. Yet I could be burned alive for saying as much. Perhaps I was a Lollard after all.

  The priesthood, to my mind, should be returned to their original state of poverty, as Christ intended. What right had they to live in gilded palaces, wage war, accrue massive estates, make beggars of honest men? What right had Christ’s ministers to profit from their work?

  “God preserve us,” exclaimed one of the men next to me, “look there.”

  To the east, the darkened skies over Kutna Hora were lit by hellfire. Not content with mere slaughter, Pippo's men had set light to the city. Gouts of smoke and tongues of orange flame rose over the walls, mingled with the shrieks of the damned caught inside.

  We could do nothing but listen to their torment. The city gates were closed against us, and Zizka needed every man to hold off Sigismund’s troops.

  The artillery barrage slackened as true darkness fell. “Sigismund is saving his powder,” one of my companions remarked gloomily, “come first light, the guns will start to pound us again.”

  “We are dead men,” said another, “come noon tomorrow, the crows shall have our corpses for supper.”

  I might have picked a more cheerful crowd to spend my last night on earth with. Happily, Zizka was not content to sit and wait for death. Shortly after we had finished our meal, trumpets sounded through the wagon-square. Mounted officers galloped about, barking orders.

  The men around the fire scattered back to their companies. I stood up, wrapped in my blue cloak, and tried to make sense of the sudden burst of activity.

  I listened to the musicians rather than the officers. The Hussites used a system of trumpets, drums and banners as signals to control the movements of their army. Unlike their language, the system was relatively straightforward, and I had taken pains to learn it.

  Zizka was giving the order to advance. He was going to try a frontal attack, in the dark, against the might of Sigismund's army.

  I thought he had gone mad. Our only hope of victory was to stay behind the wagons and soak up pressure. Granted, it was a slender hope. Sigismund held all the advantages.

  Men ran towards the enclosure at the rear of our position. The dray horses were kept here, inside a fence of chains and stakes. These beasts were more precious than our limited number of cavalry horses. Without them the wagons were stranded. Zizka had placed them at the rear, as far as possible from enemy gunfire.

  A Hussite archer beckoned at me. “Come, Englis,” he shouted, “don't stand there gaping like a scarecrow. Make yourself useful.”

  I went after him, and together we joined the crowd of bodies surging towards the enclosure. Some of the horses had already been dragged out. Their usually placid temper was shattered by the din and stench of battle. One of the huge beasts kicked out and broke a man’s thigh. Others plunged and fought wildly against the men struggling to bring them under control.

  We laboured to get the horses yoked to their wagons. I was worse than useless, repeatedly barged over, kicked several times, almost had my fingers bitten off. At last I gave up and limped away to nurse my bruised hand. This was work for peasants, not gentlemen. As our men laboured to get the beasts harnessed, officers moved among them with lanterns, rasping out a single order:

  “Umlčet!” (Silence!)

  Fortunately the royalists were complacent. The troops in Sigismund’s camp gambled, drank and sang, while their comrades inside Kutna Hora practised all the usual evils on defenceless citizens. Their cruelty lived long in the memory of Bohemia, fuelling a hatred that shall, I suspect, never quite die away.

  As we struggled with the horses, the wagons were unchained and shifted into line of march. The smaller baggage wagons were put in the centre and the war-wagons in wide columns on the flanks.

  I lent my shoulder to the task of pushing the wagons into column. This was also no fit work for a gentleman, shoving farm carts about in the snow, but I couldn't stand idle for long. Too many of the Hussites still regarded me with suspicion.

  Eventually the job was done. Not a soul was left behind. The wounded were carried into the baggage wagons at the rear, while even the dead were loaded aboard, to be given proper Christian burial once the army was safe. Our cavalry were drawn up behind the wagons, commanded by Lord Cenek. I retrieved my horse and joined them.

  Zizka’s strategy was obvious. Rather than attack Sigismund, he meant to roll his wagons forward in a single compact body and smash through the royalist lines. Victory at Kutna Hora was impossible, given our position and the numbers ranged against us, yet the army could still escape and fight another day.

  Lord Cenek spotted me among the ranks of his cavalry. “Sir John,” he drawled, lifting his visor (he was one of the few Hussites to use my proper name), “I'll wager my second best destrier you wish you were back in England.”

  “Gambling is forbidden, my lord,” I replied, to snorts of laughter from the men around us. They were knights, lesser Bohemian gentry for the most part. Unlike Sigismund's nobles, they couldn't afford to clothe their bodies in plate armour, and so made do with humble mail and leather jerkins.

  Cenek grimaced. “A great deal is forbidden in this army,” he said, “at times it feels like marching with the angels. A host of saints and martyrs. Happy sinners like myself are quite out of place.”

  More laughter. I wasn't surprised. The nobles didn't regard Zizka's Regulations of War with the same reverence as the priests and peasants. At least, I thought, I would die among my own kind.

  It was a bitterly cold night. Our horses tossed their heads and pawed at the frosty ground, eager to be off. Before us the last of the infantry were boarding their wagons. The only light, beside the pale glow of a half-moon, came from the lanterns in the hands of the drivers. Save for the occasional prayer, silence reigned.

  “God help us,” I heard Lord Cenek mutter. Under his visor he looked ghastly, pale as death, a bright sheen of sweat on his brow. I must have looked no better myself. My entire body trembled with exhaustion and fear.

  It sounded at last, the brazen chorus of trumpets, tearing through the still night air. The shrill notes died away, echoed by a barrage of shouts from our drivers. Goaded by whips and yells, the big horses lurched forward. The wheels of the massive timber boxes they drew crunched over the snow. Our host rumbled and shuddered into life.

  The column of war-wagons slowly picked up speed as the horses were urged into a canter. I stood up in my stirrups and peered west, trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy camp. Before me the icy plain was lit by hundreds of campfires. Sigismund’s troops lay at rest, blissfully unaware of the monstrous weight of iron and timber and flesh bearing down on them.

  The element of surprise was brief. Above the rattle of our wheels, I heard the panicked wail of bugles. The enemy had sounded the alarm. Too late. Sigismund must have been lax in posting sentries. I heard the bang and crackle of gunfire, glimpsed the red tongues of flame shooting in the dark.

  Cenek raised his sword. “Follow the left-hand column,” he shouted, “ride hard, straight
through the camp, and don't stop to plunder. Stragglers will be left behind. On!”

  He dug in his spurs and galloped off, following the trail of the rearmost wagon. The rest of us gave a shout and surged after him. I was somewhere in the middle, revelling in the excitement of the charge, the cold wind lashing at my face, the horse surging under me, the wild yells and war-shouts of my companions.

  "Hrr na ně!"

  The Hussite war-cry - “At them!” - burst from twelve thousand throats. It roared across the midnight plain, swiftly joined by the screech of trumpets, the rumble of wagons and thunder of racing hoofs as our wagons crashed through the royalist outposts.

  Their sentries scattered into the path of our onrushing cavalry. A German fell into my path. I rode straight over him. Two more stood frozen in shock. I missed one with a sweep of my sword, half-decapitated the other. The top half of his head, a sliver of bone and hair, spun away into the night.

  Our wagons ploughed straight into the orderly rows of tents and pavilions. My ears rang to shrieks of agony, the crunch of bone, as royalist soldiers vanished under the churning wheels.

  I galloped on, knocked over a couple of braziers and hacked through the guy-ropes of a knightly pavilion. It collapsed like a burst bladder, trapping its occupant in heavy folds of silk. His panicked curses died away behind me. Lines of tents flashed past, standards and streamers and racks of war-gear, flickering braziers and the silhouettes of men. Hundreds of utterly bewildered men, running in all directions, many still in their night-shirts.

  A kind of madness, born of fatigue and exhilaration, took hold me. “King Harry!” I shouted, “God for King Harry and England!”

  The Hussite pipe-guns wreaked havoc. They probably caused more terror than damage - firing one of those clumsy weapons with any accuracy from the back of a moving wagon is no mean feat - but that was all to the good. Horses are terrified of gunfire, and the royalist camp was full of stampeding beasts, cattle as well, broken free of their stalls and galloping in all directions.

  Taken unawares, thrown into utter confusion by Zizka’s audacity, the enemy could do little to stop us. Few of their captains, least of all Sigismund, kept their heads and tried to scrape together some kind of resistance. I saw only one baggage wagon overturned, the horses shot down by crossbows. Our soldiers inside, most of them already wounded, were knifed on the ground as they tumbled out.

  A few of Lord Cenek's knights forgot their orders and ran berserk. They speared and sabred the hapless royalists, overturned braziers, trampled already fallen tents. I risked a glance over my shoulder, and saw one of the knights surrounded by a group of German pikemen. He hacked right and left at the forest of steel points, laughing like a madman.

  "Hrr na ně! Hrr na ně! Hrr na ně!"

  The pikes gored his horse, bringing her down in a frenzy of animal screams and threshing limbs. I might have turned back to save him, but fear drove me on. His yells, as the Germans stabbed him to death, echoed in my sleep for days afterwards.

  All this passed in an instant, a blur of noise. Within moments we were through the camp and onto the broad white plains beyond. The wagons lumbered on, following the road north-west to Kolin.

  17.

  Hussite chroniclers like to claim Kutna Hora was a victory. This is nonsense. True, Zizka's desperate break-out did succeed in preserving the larger part of his army. If it had failed, the war would have ended then and there. The outnumbered Hussites were always one bad defeat away from extinction. Sigismund, on the other hand, might lose a dozen battles, and still have enough men and gold to carry on fighting.

  Kutna Hora was a defeat. We had lost the town, with its important strategic position just a few miles from Prague, and perhaps a third of our men and horses, not to mention thousands of loyal Hussite citizens massacred by Pippo Spano's troops.

  Fortunately the royalists made no great effort to pursue our battered army. Demoralised by the unexpected attack on their camp, they followed slowly, giving Zizka time to arrange his wagons into another defensive square on a hill north-east of Kutna Hora. There, in the biting cold, short of provisions and winter clothing, we awaited their onslaught.

  Sigismund's troops didn't have the stomach for it. Reluctant to advance, they stood at a safe distance and watched us watch them. After dusk Zizka ordered his field guns to fire on the royalist lines, to distract the enemy while our wagons moved off towards the safety of Kolin.

  As part of the cavalry reserve, I was among the last to quit the hill. It was one of the bleakest nights of my life. Shortly after dusk a blizzard started to fall. We could do little save huddle together on that bare hillside, with no cover, doing our best to keep the horses warm against the damp. The guns boomed – our crewmen set up canvas shelters to keep their powder dry – and I thought longingly of hot wine and roasting fires.

  “Hello, John.”

  The comforting images in my head evaporated at the sound of this voice. An English voice, the first I had heard for months, ever since I was separated from my companions in Nuremberg.

  Not only English, but with a familiar northern burr. I turned, blinking through the heavy snowfall, and saw Ralf.

  He was barely recognisable. His cropped military haircut had sprouted into a greasy shoulder-length mane, and his beard trailed down past his waist. In place of his armour he wore the garb of a Bohemian peasant, stained and grubby. A mace hung from a loop at his belt, and a small wooden crucifix from a leather thong about his neck. All in all, he was the very picture of a Hussite demagogue.

  “Ralf?” I whispered, my teeth chattering with cold, “is it really you?”

  He gave a lopsided smile. His face, or what I could see of it under all the matted hair, had become terribly gaunt. The corners of his eyes were a mass of wrinkles, and he looked to have aged twenty years in a few months.

  “Yes,” he said, “though I have changed somewhat. I wager you thought I was dead.”

  I tried to overcome my shock. “I...I can scarce believe it,” I stammered, reaching for the flask at my belt, “have some wine. Let's drink to life.”

  He held up his hand, palm outwards. “Not for me. Water is my only drink these days. Except in communion, of course.”

  “I see you are full of questions,” he added, “I will answer them, and soon. But not here. I only wished to see you. Tales of an Englishman named John Page serving under Lord Zizka reached Tábor weeks ago.”

  Tábor lay somewhere in the hills south of Prague, near the banks of the Luznice river. I never had cause to visit that nest of fanatics, thank God. It seemed Ralf had made his way there somehow, and joined the Táborite ranks.

  “There will be more battles,” he said, “the Dragon must be driven from the sacred soil of Bohemia. We shall meet again, if God sees fit to spare us. Until then, John.”

  Now my surprise was over, I had to quell an urge to strike him. No servant – even a former servant – should presume to use my first name. I had sense enough to realise things had changed between us. Ralf had fallen in among an extreme Hussite sect. They believed all true Christians were brothers, who should deal with each other on an equal footing.

  I remembered the light in his eyes when he spoke of the peasant rebellions in Switzerland and Flanders. It was easy to understand why the Táborite creed appealed to him. Underneath his careful manners, he had always believed himself as good as any nobleman.

  He strode away, mace swinging at his belt, towards the bulky shape of a wagon. I heard voices raised in prayer behind it, and assumed he had gone to rejoin his new friends.

  I didn't care to follow him. It was good to hear a voice from the old days, when I had led my Company of the Wolf in Normandy, but reformed characters always make me nervous. I was too much a sinner, as Lord Cenek said, to be comfortable in the presence of saints. Still, I wanted to know how he escaped Nuremberg, and what had become of Thomas and Henry, my loyal Derbyshire archers. One day, I thought, I would seek him out.

  In the meantime there was a war
to win. Two days before Christmas, our army struggled gratefully into Kolin, where Zizka allowed us a few days of vital rest. I paid a family of peasants for bed and board, and slept for two whole days in a comfortable little garret at the top of their stairs. They were generous with food, and somewhat awed by my foreign accent and rich clothes and armour. I deliberately played up the lordly airs, speaking through my nose of the fine manors and castles I owned in England. This seemed to keep them happy.

  Outside the blizzards turned Bohemia into a white hell. While I loafed and slumbered and ate like a pig, Zizka turned his active mind to the conflict ahead. Needing more soldiers, he sent messengers out into the snow to summon all able-bodied peasants from the nearest villages. To my amazement, they flocked into Kolin in large numbers, slogging bravely through ice and snow and hailstorms. I doubt even King Harry, at the height of his popularity, could have inspired such a response.

  After a week in Kolin, Zizka summoned all his nobles and officers to a council of war, held inside the large townhouse he had requisitioned as his headquarters. Grumbling at the cold, and after stealing a quick kiss from my host's pretty daughter, I trudged my way through the icy streets.

  At least it had stopped snowing. The roofs of the half-timbered houses were heavy with snow, and long icicles, like the fingers of frost giants, dangled in rows from the gables. Children laughed as they hurled snowballs at each other (one of the little brutes caught me in the face with a direct hit) slid down banks on sledges of rough sacking, or piled up snowmen. The largest snowman was crowned with a circlet of twigs, and the children thrust sharpened sticks into his lumpen body as they danced around him, chanting “Death to Sigismund! Death to the Dragon!”

  I found Zizka holding court in a large dining room, warmed by a blazing fire in the grate. The cold and fatigue of the past few days didn't seem to affect him, though his officers had a pale, strained look about them. Defeat, and its terrible consequences, loomed large in their minds.