I strained my eyes to pick out the black and yellow arms of Lord Cenek himself, assuming he still lived. His standard was nowhere to be seen, and I guessed he had either fallen or quit the field.
A roll of drums sounded at the top of the hill, followed by a blast of trumpets. The banners of the chalice waved above the chaos. My blood coursed swifter in my veins as I recognised the Hussite signal to advance. Zizka was about to unleash his infantry.
The barricades between the wagons were thrown down. A terrific yell rose, and our footsoldiers poured through the gaps like a swarm of angry bees. Howling for blood and led by droves of ragged, mace-wielding priests, they tore into the broken phalanxes.
Lord Cenek's men, bloodied and battered as they were, refused to yield a step. Now it was Bohemian peasant against Bohemian noble in a struggle to the death, flail against pole-axe, awlpike against halberd, fighting-club against broadsword.
Zizka's gunners switched back to roundshot, firing over the heads of the fighters into the mass of enemy infantry stuck on the lower part of the hill. Unwilling to take such punishment, they ignored their officers and started to press forward, stumbling into the rear ranks of the hard-pressed vanguard. Soon the northern slopes of the hill were covered by a dense forest of spears and banners, divisions hopelessly mixed together, captains shouting futile orders as the rebel host dissolved into a confused mob.
“Time we joined the dance,” I said, signalling to my trumpeter.
Our cavalry surged forward. I led the charge, sabre in hand, my horse flying beneath me. We swept across the plain and curved around the flank of the rebel pikemen as they laboured up the hill.
The enemy failed to spot us in time to swing round. We slammed into their rear like an armoured fist punching through glass, trampling and spearing dozens of men before their comrades at the front knew what was happening. Rank after rank vanished under our hoofs.
We might have swept away the entire company, but the angle of the slope slowed our momentum. “Saint George!” I shouted, sabring right and left, “Saint George and Saint Crispian!”
We had driven right into the heart of the rebel infantry. Above me was a host of pikes, waving like so many giant reeds. Cannons boomed on the heights. The red-hot iron shot whined as they streaked high over my head or plunged into the throng, knocking men over like skittles.
I hacked at the sea of faces, fingers numbed as my blade rebounded off a helm. A footsoldier tripped over a fallen pike and stumbled to his knees in front of me, screaming in terror. He raised his hands, covered by thickly padded leather gauntlets, to protect his face. I leaned down and thrust a foot of steel between his fingers, through an eyeball into the brain. He screamed again, once, and rolled onto his side, almost tearing the sabre from my grasp.
Another man tried to club me from the saddle with his pike. I ducked under his clumsy sweep and slashed his throat. Two more came at me with knives. One stabbed at my thigh. The blade scraped harmlessly against the skirts of my mail, and I was able to put my foot on his chest and kick him away. He fell, shrieking, under the hoofs of another horseman.
I twisted and lashed out at his comrade. He leaped aside, dropped his knife and tried to run. I spurred after him, hacked at the nape of his neck. My blade cut through the leather of his hooded cape and ground on flesh and bone. His head snapped backwards, eyes wide, mouth gaping in silent agony. He flopped forward and went into violent death-throes, writhing like a gaffed salmon as his blood spurted into the dust.
“Zizka! Zizka! Hrr na ně! Hrr na ně!"
This time the war-cry burst from the throats of our men. Zizka's troops pushed hard against the remains of Cenek's vanguard, while my cavalry butchered his peasant soldiers. Assailed from front and rear, shattered by gunfire, the rebel battalions slowly collapsed.
Horice was a messy, drawn-out business. In places the rebel knights closed up around their banners and fought to the end, preferring to die on their feet than submit to prison or execution. Zizka had his guns wheeled up to these stubborn men, and offered them a choice: surrender, or be blown to pieces. They threw his offer back in his face and cursed him for a traitor.
Zizka saluted them. “God bless your courage, my children,” he said heavily, his haggard face grey as death. Then he turned and gave the order to fire.
Much of the rebel foot dispersed, to be hunted down over the surrounding fields and ditches by our cavalry. I took part in the pursuit for a while, slaying without pity, until my horse misjudged a leap and threw me over a hedgerow. Shaken by the fall, I crouched under the leaves until darkness fell, along with a light rain.
I watched ragged black clouds scud over the hill, where thousands of dead men lay in heaps, and the Hussite banners fluttered in victory. Drums beat near the summit, accompanied by pipes and the deep, rhythmic chant of Hussite voices raised in a hymn of thanksgiving. In my dazed state, I thought the clouds were the shawls of witches, cackling as they flew over the dreadful carnage.
“Lord Cenek has lost his army,” I muttered, stroking my horse's muzzle, “but Lord Zizka has lost Bohemia.”
26.
You may think, it strange, O Sultan, that I thought Zizka was done for. After all, he had overcome every setback, and crushed a dangerous rebellion.
Nevertheless, Horice marked a turning point. Zizka was no longer the heroic leader of a united realm, fighting for God and independence against foreign invaders. Now he was seen by many Bohemians as a ruthless tyrant who spilled the blood of his countrymen. This judgement was terribly unfair. Zizka had not started the civil war, though he was the only man who could stop it.
Fairness was irrelevant, especially in a country so divided as Bohemia. To many Zizka had become an inconvenience, a bar to their ambitions. They wanted him gone, by fair means or foul. More to the point, once he was disposed of, my own chances of survival were slim. I was too closely associated with the man, and seen as a rascally foreigner to boot.
Jana might light of my fears. “We are both alive, and whole,” she told me, “God smiles on us. Is that not cause enough to be happy?”
She had come to my tent the morning after the battle. Outside the air was full of the hoarse croak of carrion-birds, glutting themselves on the bodies of the dead. Their dismal noise was echoed by the distant screams and groans of our wounded in the medical tents.
I made no effort to fend off her embrace. She gripped my neck tightly and kissed me on the cheek. Before the battle I might have thrilled to her touch. Now I was too drunk to even feel it.
“Two friends of mine died in the tender care of army surgeons,” I said quietly, listening to the terrible cries of men under the knife, “Herr Hartmann and Krusina of Trocnov. Both were such big, powerful men. I thought nothing could knock them over. Yet they are dead, and I still draw breath.”
The drink had made me maudlin. Disappointed by my cold reaction, Jana drew back and looked at me with gentle concern in her eyes. They were flecked with gold, I noticed. It would be easy to gaze into their depths for hours. Lose myself in them.
“Come, John,” she said, which made me smile (I was flattered by her English pronunciation of my name), “the war is over. You have seen too much fighting. Let us go back to Prague. Together.”
I raised my cup in her honour. “Nothing would make me happier,” I replied. She leaned forward to kiss me again, on the mouth this time, and I responded.
Jana was quite wrong. The wars were far from over. The next morning I learned that Lord Cenek had escaped the battlefield with a few followers. Even without an army, he could still make a nuisance of himself, and hatch fresh conspiracies with Zizka's growing legion of enemies.
Fresh fires broke out all over the country. A band of wealthy citizens in Prague suddenly declared for Sigismund and raised men to attack the Táborites. After some bloodshed the two parties took to fighting each other with words rather than swords: an indescribably tedious assembly was held, in which the clergymen and scholars of both parties wrangled over the meaning
of Holy Scripture, and said that this bit of doctrine was false, and that bit was true, and so on, croaking at each other like a pack of bald crows, and about as sensible.
Would you believe, O Sultan, they argued over such things as whether priests should have tonsures, or wear vestments during the Sacrament? This, while Hussite armies butchered each other in the field, and wolves stalked the desolate streets of ruined Bohemian towns.
They could argue until the Day of Judgement so far as I was concerned. Far more worrying was the state of affairs in Prague. I wanted to return to the city and see for myself what was happening in the streets. Zizka wouldn't let me go.
“The capital has grown too dangerous, Englis,” he rumbled at me, “several of my agents were lucky to escape with their lives. The people have turned against me.”
I had not seen him at close quarters for months. He was ageing fast, buried under the weight of years and ceaseless pressure. His sparse hair was white now, and the skin of his ravaged face hung loose, tinged by an unhealthy grey pallor. I glanced fearfully at his heavy shoulders, and wondered how much longer they could bear the weight of an entire kingdom.
“My lord,” I said, “we cannot lose Prague. There are still many inside the city who love you. March on the city and secure it, before your enemies grow too bold.”
He rubbed his corrugated brow, like a tired old bear. “I will not attack Prague unless absolutely necessary. Great God! Has it come to this? Besieging my own capital. Slaying my own folk.”
“Listen hard, Englis,” he rumbled, turning his blind head towards me, “listen hard, and you can hear the Devil's laughter.”
Any hope of peace and unity in Bohemia crumbled away in the next few months. More of Zizka's former allies deserted him, and he was forced to fight a battle against a coalition of rebel nobles and Prague citizens. The battle took place in the east, near a farm called Strachov, where for the first time Hussite war-wagons were ranged against each other. A grim slugging match followed, in which Jana killed three men and I was shot in the thigh. Fortunately the bullet passed clean through, sparing me the torture of a surgeon trying to pick it out.
The doctors, curse them, still made a mess of it. One zealous young orderly decided the best way to stop the bleeding was to clamp a red-hot iron into the wound. I fainted, though not before the stench of my own roasting flesh filled my nostrils. To this day my leg aches in cold weather.
Zizka won his battle, but took little joy in the victory. Enraged by the loss in Hussite lives, he had one of the captives brought before him – a priest, no less – and brained the man with his mace.
Along with the rest of the wounded, I was lifted aboard a wagon and carried to Zizka's hilltop stronghold at Oreb. Delirious with pain, I remember little of the journey, or the weeks that followed. Laid up in a hut with twenty other casualties, I apparently spent my waking hours singing in English. This must have caused my fellow sufferers great pain, since I have a voice like a strangled cat. Sometimes I called on the soul of King Harry for forgiveness. I doubt he heard me.
Jana stayed at Oreb to nurse me. In my lucid moments I saw her through a gauze of pain, patting my feverish brow with a damp cloth, trying to force a little warm gruel through my lips.
“You must eat, John,” she would say crossly when I turned my head aside or spat the gruel out, like a spoiled baby. It is a measure of Jana's love for me that she persevered. Eventually, to the jeers of the men in the other beds, she would grip the back of my head and stuff the spoon into my mouth. Faced with a choice of swallowing or choking, I gulped the revolting slop down.
While I was coaxed and bullied into recovery, Zizka invaded Hungary. It was a desperate step, a last-ditch effort to heal the divisions in Bohemia. If he took the fight to Sigismund, Zizka reasoned (previously the Hussites had always been on the defensive), the country might unite behind him.
The invasion achieved little, except the not very difficult task of frightening Sigismund. He was in his palace at Buda when Zizka's wagons rumbled over the Hungarian border. True to his craven nature, Sigismund ran away and left his generals to deal with the crisis. They hurriedly assembled a vast horse of cavalry, including thousands of Magyars.
Wisely, the Hungarians avoided a pitched battle. Instead their cavalry harried Zizka's columns on the march, attacking the baggage wagons and attempting to seize our guns, loaded in the carts at the rear. Our crossbowmen drove away their horse-archers, while every attempt to entrap the Hussite army in the densely wooded hills of Hungary was foiled, thanks to Zizka's superb generalship. When it became obvious that nothing could be done to stop him, the Hungarians started to whisper that he was no man but a devil, and could not be defeated by earthly means.
For all the general's skill, little was accomplished. Shadowed by a much larger host, our army dared not stay in one place for too long, or even think of laying siege to any Hungarian towns or fortresses. After marching about for a few weeks in a futile display of strength, Zizka gave the order to retreat. With the Magyars snapping at his heels, he led the army safely into Moravia and then back to his own country.
While Zizka marched in circles around Hungary, I recuperated quickly under Jana's tender care. By the autumn I was back on my feet, hobbling around the fortress on a crutch. Jana was at my side when I wanted her, and instinctively knew when to leave me alone. I spent much time on the timber ramparts, gazing west.
My heart ached for home. I wanted to see England's soft green hills and quiet woods again, feel her rain on my face. Bohemia was no substitute. The landscape had its own stark beauty, but it wasn't the same. Even the light fell in subtly different ways. After the best part of two years I still felt like an alien, an outsider, fighting someone else's war for little purpose or reward.
Yet there were compensations. One night, as I stood at my usual post with Jana, I asked her to marry me. I could hardly do otherwise. As yet we hadn't slept together, for I thought too much of Jana to treat her as a concubine.
“Yes,” she answered, and the happiness in her eyes scorched my heart.
We were married the next day by an elderly priest with a fluffy white tonsure and a kind smile. Such gentle old men did not exist among the Orebites, and this one was no exception. I had last seen him in the forefront of the battle at Habry, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog as he beat the brains from an Austrian bowman.
For the time being, I chose not to tell Jana of my bastard son in Normandy. I didn't want to spoil her happiness, and it pained me to speak or even think of him. Someday I would find the boy. Get him out of that accursed monastery. The possibility that he might not want to leave was something I preferred not to consider.
Our wedded bliss lasted three weeks, a rare interlude of peace in my turbulent life. At the beginning of October, when the cold winds once again swept the plains, heralding the inevitable white winter, Zizka sent an urgent message to Oreb. All troops were to leave the stronghold and march at once to join him in the region of Hradec Králové, to help crush an uprising. Only the sick and old should stay behind to guard the fortress.
I still needed a crutch to walk, but was well enough to ride. Jana, who rode badly and was nervous of horses, again marched with the infantry. I never knew such a warlike woman. She seemed happiest marching off to battle, lustily bawling Ye Who Are Warriors of God with her comrades, long skirts trailing in the dust, iron-shod mace resting on her shoulder.
My wife baffled me. She was either a fine actress and a shameless hypocrite, content to play the devout Hussite without believing any of it, or she had lied to me about her doubts. Possibly her mind was fractured, and she never truly knew herself.
Since we marched east, I assumed Lord Cenek had emerged from hiding to cause more trouble. In truth the whole of that part of Bohemia was in revolt against the Hussites, and Zizka in particular.
This was not the worst of it. Shortly after reaching Zizka's camp, not far west of Hradec Kralóvé, I limped into a council at his pavilion to find the general i
n low spirits. Perhaps the lowest I had ever seen him.
“Welcome, Englis,” he said bleakly, “at least you have stayed loyal. You, and a handful of others.”
Aside from his confessor, there were just four other captains present, hard-bitten veterans who had stood by Zizka since the beginning. Others were notably absent.
“I am abandoned,” he said heavily, “old friends and allies fall away from me. The earth shifts under our feet, Englis. Our people give way to the Devil.”
His tone horrified me. Zizka was the one man who never despaired, never entertained the slightest possibility of defeat. Like King Harry, he thought – no, he knew – that God was on his side. To see him tremble was unnatural somehow. And frightening. If the mightiest pillar of the Hussites splintered and fell, what remained to prop them up?
“Prague is lost,” explained one of his captains, a heavyset nobleman with thick, iron-grey hair and a scar bisecting his left cheek, “the Utraquists have settled their differences with the Catholics and other factions, and entered into talks with Sigismund. In return for the Pope's mercy, they have offered to take back the Catholic priesthood and...”
His voice tailed away, choked with anger. “And offer Sigismund the crown of Bohemia,” said another captain, “after the Hussites have been destroyed.”
My throat dried up. All was lost. Prague, the only major city in Bohemia, had gone over to the enemy. The lesser towns, always divided in their loyalties, would follow suit. A few isolated Hussite fortresses, chiefly Tábor and Oreb, might hold out for a while. Flickering embers of resistance, easily crushed by the overwhelming might of the Prague traitors and their foreign allies.
“My lord,” I croaked, “what...what is your plan?”
Zizka's hands, callused and swollen and fearsomely strong from a lifetime of war, slowly clenched into fists. His face hardened.
The Heretic Page 17
