The Heretic

by David Pilling

  “And because creeping in and out of places unobserved is part of your trade,” I said, rising, “very well. I'll assume you're a spy. What do you want with me?”

  Hans gave a tight little grin. “Straight to business, Sir John. Good. We have much in common. Like you, I am a mercenary of sorts. Currently I am in the employ of the King of Hungary. He sent me here to talk with you.”

  I tried not to let my surprise show. “Why should Sigismund have any interest in me?”

  “His Majesty takes a great deal of interest,” answered the spy, “you are quite famous outside Bohemia, Sir John. The Englishman who deserted his King to join the enemies of God and became a great captain under the arch-heretic, Jan Zizka. Sigismund's court poets compose rhymes about you. Not very complimentary rhymes, I'm afraid.”

  “In other words, they lie about me,” I replied shortly, though it flattered my vanity to think of Sigismund's tame poets singing of my deeds. I had a gift for earning popular fame, deserved or otherwise. In Normandy I was known, half-jokingly, as the Hero of Caen and the Poet of Rouen. Now my reputation had spread to the royal courts of Hungary.

  “The poets speak of you as an English devil,” said Hans with another of his unsettling grins, “seven feet high, with curling black whiskers and the strength of a bull. Green flames leap from your eyes as you charge into battle, wielding a broadsword no ordinary man could even lift. At your belt dangles a cluster of skulls. They once belonged to good Christian knights whom you slaughtered in single combat.”

  “I'm sorry to disappoint you,” I said, “as you can see, I'm just an ordinary man.”

  Hans moved a step closer. “Not so. His Majesty does not risk the lives of his agents for the sake of ordinary men. You have risen high under Zizka, thanks to your ability and the death or treachery of so many of his native captains. Yet you are still a foreigner in this land. You don't fight for God, or the memory of Jan Hus, or the good of Bohemia. You are a soldier of fortune. You fight for pay.”

  “Don't deny it,” he added before I could protest, “we have studied you from afar, Sir John. Dug into your past. I know all about you. A country esquire, born into gentle poverty in Sussex. Mother a widowed noblewoman of faded stock, father a base-born mercenary who suffered an ignoble death, murdered by a rival. You fled England after killing your cousin in a brawl. Ran with outlaws for a time before taking ship for Normandy. Shall I go on?”

  I stood very still, trying to marshal my thoughts. Where had this little reptile got his information from? The darkly beautiful face of Constanza de Santaella rose in my mind. She and Hans were both spies, employed on secret missions by the crowned heads of Christendom. Perhaps they knew each other, and he had sought her out. Constanza would require little persuasion to spill everything she knew of my history. Certainly no other living soul knew as much about me.

  “Whatever you know,” I said slowly, choosing my words, “or think you know, is of little relevance. Yes, I committed certain crimes in England. Doubtless a hangman's rope waits for me there. What of it? This is not England.”

  The little man chuckled softly. “I didn't mean to threaten you, Sir John. I was merely illustrating the point. Discover a man's origins, and you learn much of his nature. I judge you to be a man who looks to his own interests first. A typical sell-sword.”

  “My royal master agreed with me. His Majesty also agreed with my assessment of your worth. Three hundred gold florins. The money awaits you at Pilsen. All you need do is collect it. In return you will quit Zizka's service and leave Bohemia. Forever.”

  I caught my breath. Sigismund's wealth was famous, and relied in part on the extensive gold mines in Hungary. He must have been the richest prince on earth, if he could offer a lesser captain like myself such an enormous sum as a bribe: one gold florin, if not debased, was worth more than a labourer earned in a year.

  Hans' long white fingers toyed with the brooch. “I also know of your bastard child. Poor boy, hidden away in a French monastery with no father or mother to care for him.”

  “You know where he is?” I demanded.

  “Alas, no,” he replied quickly, “my source knows how to keep a secret. I was supplied with just enough information to gain an insight to your character. You have plenty of motive to leave Bohemia, and precious little to stay. All you need is money. Think on it, Sir John. With such a fortune you can set up somewhere else. A new life, a new home, far away from Bohemia and its troubles. My master's offer is the key to your future.”

  “It's a bare-faced bribe,” I sneered, “your master knows he can't beat Zizka in the field. Instead he tries to buy off Zizka's captains, hoping to leave his enemy isolated. I knew Sigismund was a snake, but this is low, even for him.”

  Hans shrugged off my contempt. “Think poorly of His Majesty if you wish. Sigismund is a great man, a king of kings. Such men cannot afford to cling to petty morals. The offer still stands.”

  He could see I was tempted, curse him. “Your master's promises are worth nothing,” I said venomously, “how could anyone trust the man who betrayed Jan Hus to his death at Constance? I'm not some hapless preacher. As soon as I walked through the gates at Pilsen, your master's soldiers would slit my throat.”

  “You need not come in person,” Hans replied, “between Prague and Pilsen there is a town called Zdice. Inside the town, not far from the western gate, stands a tavern, The Rose and Sceptre. The innkeeper, Svamberg, is an associate of mine. Should you accept my master's generous offer, all you need do is send a message to Svamberg. Mention my name. I will arrange the rest. The gold will brought to Zdice in a covered litter. Under guard of course. My soldiers will then escort you and your retinue to the border.”

  I chewed my thumbnail. Sigismund and his creature had it all worked out. In my mind's eye I beheld an ironbound chest full of heavy gold coins. Mine for the taking, if only I broke my oath to the Hussites.

  As Hans said, the money would enable me to go away – far away – and start anew. Set up in business as a merchant, perhaps, though soldiering was the only trade I really knew. Or travel south, to the Italian city-states, where any halfway competent mercenary captain with adequate funds could hope to prosper. Resurrect the Company of Wolves. I could almost hear my father's restless spirit, urging me on.

  “You need not rush to any decisions,” said Hans, “the gold is safe enough at Pilsen. There it will stay.”

  His soft voice was like a caress. “For how long?” I asked, almost choking on the words. Sheer greed, the promise of unexpected wealth, threatened to overwhelm my better instincts.

  “His Majesty is patient,” he said, “and Lord Zizka is old. He cannot live forever. The gold will stay at Pilsen until you have need of it. That time will come soon.”

  He bowed gracefully. “The Rose and Sceptre, Sir John. Remember the name of the tavern. All you need do is send a message. A few words scribbled on a bit of parchment. That's all.”

  With that he flickered outside, into the night. I was left alone to dream of forbidden treasure and glorious futures.

  31.

  I did not betray Zizka. Even mercenaries have a code of honour, and I had signed a formal indenture of service. To break it, as I broke my previous indenture in Normandy, was too much for even my feeble conscience to bear. It would also have left a black mark on my reputation. No employer with a degree of sense hires a captain with a history of broken contracts.

  Such a betrayal also came with its own risks. Zizka's negotiations with the Praguers were successful, and left him the supreme power in Bohemia, with effective control over the capital and all the largest towns. The reversal in his fortunes, from the lowest ebb to the highest point in just a few months, was spectacular. None could doubt that this was an extraordinary man, a titan of the age, unbeatable in war, wise in council, blessed with good fortune. The chosen of God, as the Táborites called him.

  It made sense, at least for the time, to hang onto the triumphant general's coat-tails for a while longer. The gold in
Pilsen wasn't going anywhere (if Sigismund's promises could be trusted, which was far from certain) and Zizka was generous to the handful of loyal captains who had stuck by him when all seemed lost.

  I was granted a mansion in the Malá Strana, the district of Prague on the western bank of the Vltava, once the home of the capital's German citizens. The district was in ruins the last time I saw it, deserted save for a few beggars. Since then the Praguers had cleared away much of the rubble, driven away the squatters from the derelict, fire-gutted buildings, and repaired some of the grander churches and houses. Life returned to the desolation, as it does if given a chance. Many rich merchant families and nobles, both Catholic and Utraquist, were quick to seize the best land and property abandoned by the Germans.

  My house, a fine half-timbered residence with two storeys and twelve rooms, formerly owned by a wealthy German vintner, was close to the river. It had lain empty since the riots, almost five years gone. Gangs of looters had methodically stripped it of anything remotely valuable, down to the last set of curtains.

  “No fire damage, at least,” I remarked to Jana when we inspected our new home for the first time. It was a ghostly place, full of strange echoes, shadowy corners and creaking floorboards.

  Jana, a far more sensitive soul than her brutish husband, loathed the house from the start. “There is something else here,” she whispered, hugging my arm, her green eyes wide with fright, “something evil. A dark memory. Death. Murder.”

  “It wouldn't surprise me,” I replied with a shrug, “the rioters killed every German they could catch. Perhaps the vintner and his family failed to get out in time. What of it? I'm a soldier. I live with death grinning at my elbow. He may as well share my house.”

  She denounced me as a blasphemous English devil, to which I laughed and brushed aside her fears. Fool. Short-sighted fool.

  I had only a few days to oversee the furnishing of my new home before Zizka summoned me to his side. He had patched up a truce with the disgruntled factions in Prague, but there was still much work to be done. The German princes again menaced the western border, and there were reports of Hungarian forces gathering in Moravia.

  With much of Bohemia united behind him, Zizka was able to march to deal with these threats. His allies included Prince Korybut, who had put aside his pretensions to the crown in exchange for peace. The prince's decision surprised everyone, including myself, who had thought him little more than a selfish Lithuanian princeling, as brainless as he was ambitious.

  As Zizka's captain of horse, I was obliged to follow his banner in all the hard campaigns that followed. Months passed, during which I was barely out of the saddle. No actual battles were fought – our enemies had learned from bitter experience to avoid facing Zizka in the field – and instead the war bogged down in a weary sequence of sieges, forced marches, raids and counter-raids.

  Poor Bohemia, battered by five years of nearly constant fighting, was once again subjected to all the horrors of war. Much of the land was waste, the crops left to rot in the fields for lack of men to gather in the harvest. We marched through a strangely empty, desolate landscape; burned farmsteads and abandoned villages, where deer cropped grass in the silent streets. Even the larger towns were only partially occupied, entire districts given over to the ghosts of their former inhabitants.

  In this ruined country, slowly bleeding to death from innumerable wounds, I prospered. The wars had thinned out the Bohemian peasantry to the point where Zizka struggled to find native troops to replace the dead. At last he was forced to use some of his plunder to hire foreign mercenaries.

  “Heaven forgive me for inviting these wolves into Bohemia,” he said heavily, “as if we didn't have enough wolves already. Such beasts do not fight for God. They will pick us clean.”

  “I was a wolf once, my lord,” I said cheerfully, “yet you made me your dog.”

  He smiled mirthlessly. My own mood, depressed by the long absence from Jana and our unborn children, was lifted by his decision to hire the fighting scum of Christendom. They flocked to Bohemia in droves, eager to serve under the famous general. Veterans from Normandy, Englishmen, Burgundians, French, Gascons, pikemen and arbalasters from Switzerland, German routiers, Scots, even a few Basque and Catalan crossbowmen.

  As Zizka said, such hirelings do not fight for God. They knew little and cared less about Jan Hus, or the holy war waged by the Hussites against the Pope. These noble principles, which had first drawn me to Bohemia, were little more than a fond dream now, cherished by the surviving Táborites and a few other Hussite loyalists.

  I had cast aside my own idealism in favour of a more realistic aim. Instead of hoping to change the world, I would milk it for profit. To that end I volunteered to serve as Zizka's paymaster, overseeing the recruitment and payment of his mercenaries. I used my new office to carefully sort the wheat from the chaff, hiring the best of the newcomers– the best fighters, you understand, often men of the worst character – to serve in the Company of the Wolf.

  When the company had swelled to four hundred men, almost all foreigners, I unwrapped my father's banner from the leather and oilskin parcel I had carried it in, ever since Baugé. The wolf banner, beautifully reworked in gold and purple silk by a French seamstress, flew at the head of my cavalry as we stormed across Bohemia in the van of the Hussite army, driving our enemies like sheep before us. Sigismund's German allies were as disorganised as ever, while his Moravian troops proved reluctant to fight. They retired swiftly before our advance, back to their own country.

  In early autumn, while the army lay encamped near the Moravian border, I received a note from my servant, Nicholas. The contents alarmed me. Jana's moods, it said, were becoming increasingly erratic as she neared full term. She was so heavy with child now the doctors suspected she was carrying twins, which reminded me of the nightmare I experienced on the road to Malesov. Two green-eyed children haunting the empty streets of Prague, laughing at me as I sank into the mire.

  I read on: “My lord, I grieve to report that your wife is much changed since we came to the house. Often she refuses to come out of her chamber in the day, and the maids have seen her wander the corridors at night, clad in just her shift, with a taper to light the way. I myself have seen livid cuts on her wrists and forearms. Self-inflicted with a knife. I fear for her peace of mind, and the safety of the lives she carries...”

  I cast down the note and went to ask Zizka for leave. He was taken aback at the request, but granted it when I explained my concerns for Jana and the children. “No more than a week, Englis,” he warned, “I can't spare you a moment longer.”

  With a dozen Burgundian lancers for an escort, I sped back to Prague. Nicholas admitted me to the house, his face sombre, and nodded at the stair as he took my cloak.

  “Your wife is upstairs, my lord,” he said, “she has been in her chamber all day. The door is unlocked.”

  “Has she eaten today?” I demanded, one foot on the stair.

  Nicholas hesitated. “No, my lord, but....”

  “What?” I snapped, “spit it out.”

  “There...there is a mirror, my lord. The fine oval one you purchased from an Italian merchant, some months ago. My lady sits in front of it for hours on end. The maids claim she talks to it.”

  Muttering an oath, I hurried up the stairs, along the gallery and put my boot to the nailed and timbered door of our bedchamber. It swung open noiselessly. The room inside was dark, the heavy purple curtains drawn. Jana sat in silhouette before her mirror, perfectly still, hands folded on her lap.

  “Jana,” I said. She didn't move. I stepped inside, squinting in the gloom to get a better look at her. Her hair was unbound, and she was still in her night-gown, though the day was far advanced. The swell of her belly was enormous, and it was clear the doctors were right. Twins, for certain.

  “Jana,” I repeated, “it's me. Your husband. Why do you sit in darkness? Speak.”

  She slowly raised one hand to her cheek, then lowered it again. “I
can see them, John,” she said in a low voice, full of dread. “Their eyes in the glass. Sometimes I hear them. They whisper to me.”

  I quietly pushed the door shut and crossed the room to stand behind her. The glass of the mirror was covered in dust. Our reflections were silhouettes in the deeper darkness.

  “Who are they?” I asked gently, resting my hands on her shoulders. Her bones felt dangerously light and brittle, as though I could crush them without much effort. I wondered how long she had fasted, and silently cursed Nicholas for not summoning me sooner.

  “Ulrich,” she said, so quietly I had to bend my head to hear, “and Sophia.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. These were the names of her late husband and daughter, slain in the skirmish at Graz and buried in the village cemetery.

  “They haunt me,” she went on, “it is my fault. I was so lonely here, in this house of shadows, after you left. I asked God to let me speak to the spirits of my loved ones. It was blasphemous, I know. Only priests can communicate with the departed. But I miss them. I miss them more than anything. Ulrich was my cousin. I had known him since we were children. Our souls were merged.”

  “There are no spirits,” I said, “you are imagining things, my love. You should get some sleep. Eat a meal, in Heaven's name. Remember, you are eating for three now.”

  The fear in my voice was palpable. My hands shook a little. I believe Christ intended his priests to guard mankind from the shadowy evils that lie beyond the grave: spirits, demons, devils, call them what you will. If one is foolish enough to call them, they can enter the world of the living.

  Jana, in her folly, may have brought two such hell-sprites into our house, disguised as the shades of her slaughtered family. Either that, or my wife had gone truly mad. I pictured her locked up for the rest of her days in some quiet house of religion, where the sisters could look after her. Both possibilities filled me with despair.