“Good morning,” Ivana answered, trying to maintain a cheerful tone. It wasn’t easy, given the workload and Jan’s unpredictable moods. She said her prayers every morning and evening and attended Mass each Sunday. She tried to see her work as a way of serving Christ in those around her, just as the priest at the church preached. She even tried to keep the fasting days from mid-November until Christmas (the St. Martin’s Fast, it was traditionally called), though fewer and fewer people did anymore. But it was difficult to see those making thoughtless demands on her as being Christ, and she often found herself giving way to anger and frustration but unable to share her feelings with either Susanna or David until much later in the day or even late at night, after the last pot was washed and the last dish put away and the last guest gone to bed.
Ivana got up off her knees and brushed the wrinkles from her soggy, suds-streaked skirt and apron. The overcast sunrise promised another cold and dreary winter day. She sighed. She could tell this would be a long, hard day.
A few days later, Sunday arrived. Ivana was not expected to work in the inn until much later in the afternoon and always looked forward to the Mass on Sunday morning at the church of St. Nicholas around the corner. This church was a recently established parish and building. The senior priest at the St. Nicholas’ parish where Ivana attended was an older man named Fr. Krystof, who preached elaborate sermons that Ivana enjoyed as much as the olfactory, visual, and auditory spectacle of the High Mass: the billowing incense, the rich and colorful vestments, the candles twinkling through the clouds of frankincense like stars, the angelic singing of the choir, the clanking chains of the thurible swinging through the air. Occasionally, her mind would wander, but the sermon always kept her attention. Few priests in Prague preached, much less regularly. One exception had been Fr. Conrad, the priest at Our Lady of Tyn who had led the crowd in burning Fen’ka, then killed Lucrezia in the church (on account of which the building on the Old Town Square now stood silent and empty), and was himself murdered shortly thereafter.
Fr. Krystof was the other exception. He was well-educated, having studied at the famous cathedral school in Köln and been influenced by the Dominican preachers that occasionally came through Bohemia. His sermons were popular throughout the Little Town, in large part because he followed the recent practice of using exampla in his sermons, stories that illustrated his points and were easy for the congregation to both understand and remember.
Fr. Krystof mounted the elaborately carved wooden pulpit. “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” he muttered in Czech. Ivana and the congregation crossed themselves, devout preparation to hear the sermon to come.
The priest began by summarizing the Gospel lesson for the day, the last Sunday before Christmas. He always needed to begin by retelling the Gospel lesson in Czech, as he could not rely on most of the congregation to understand the Latin in which the Gospel was solemnly chanted by the deacon, standing in the midst of the church facing north. Ivana recognized today’s Gospel lesson as Fr. Krystof recounted it: the scribes and Pharisees went out to John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness near Jerusalem, to ask if he was the promised Messiah or if they should continue looking for another to fill that role.
“The crowds of common folk flocked to hear John the Baptist preach on the banks of the Jordan River,” Fr. Krystof reminded his own flock. “They were impressed by both his preaching and his life, his words and his works. What was it about his life that impressed them so? His simplicity and his poverty. John the Baptist owned nothing and used little. He wore a coat of camel skins and ate nothing but the locusts and wild honey that he could find in the wilderness.”
Ivana, standing further back in the congregation than she preferred, attempted to move closer to the pulpit to hear better.
“Nothing but locusts and wild honey,” the priest repeated. “What is the Gospel telling us by describing what St. John ate? St. John was content with simple foods, food that did not tie his soul to the earth and allowed his soul to fly to heaven as locusts fly about the earth unhindered by earthly borders or constraints. His words were sweet, sweet as the honey that he ate, sweet with the Good News of the coming of Christ.”
Ivana had heard about the necessity of eating light food before. That was why Christians were urged to fast before Christmas and during Lent: by avoiding the heavy meat the devout eschewed, their souls were less weighed down by earthly concerns, and the coils that bound them to the passions and vices were loosed as well.
“But the locusts and wild honey also signified those who came to hear the preaching of St. John the Baptist,” the priest continued. “Those who came to hear St. John embraced the way of repentance, jumping from sin and vice to grace and righteousness by turning from self-indulgence to simplicity and virtue. The crowds who came to hear him were able to fly to heaven by virtue of becoming as locusts through the sweetness of repentance—the honey of God’s love, which makes all bitter things sweet for those who love Him.
“Adam named the animals in Paradise,” Fr. Krystof pointed out, “and by naming them, he revealed the primary instinct of each creature. Now we have the animals to show us our own sin and how we must repent.
“It is the primary instincts of these creatures, revealed to us by the names Adam gave them in Paradise, that shows which of the deadly sins most besets each of us. Just as the crowds coming to hear St. John in the wilderness became spiritual locusts and thus found salvation, we must each see which animal inhabits our soul,” offered Fr. Krystof to his listeners.
“Pride is a peacock, strutting about and flaunting its brilliant plumes for all to marvel at. We see Greed in the marmots and squirrels, while Lechery is revealed by the toad. Mad dogs teach us the insanity of Rage. An ass is the very image of Sloth. A soul consumed by Gluttony has succumbed to the vice of goats and pigs. The envious soul is the soul of a serpent, such as the snake that, jealous of our first parents Adam and Eve, tempted them to disobey their Creator and fall prey to all the miseries of sin.”
Ivana was fascinated. She had never heard of animals revealing the sins which most beset humans explained so clearly and vividly. Which sin consumed her soul? Which of the animals mentioned by Fr. Krystof best described her inner life?
“It is now, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ our Savior, that we must drive these beasts from our hearts,” Fr. Krystof exhorted the people. “By coming to confession and Communion, by heeding the precepts of the Church, by paying the tithes due to God and His saints—these are the ways God has given us to drive these animals from our souls and become the repentant locusts He desires us to be.”
Murmurs of approval rippled through the congregation as Fr. Krystof climbed down from the pulpit and returned to the altar.
Monday dawned and the regular round of scrubbing, washing and serving at the inn began again. On Friday, two days before Christmas, Ivana found herself in the laundry scrubbing the sheets for the guest rooms with Susanna.
“So,” Susanna began, “who will you give a Christmas gift to at the inn?”
Ivana plunged her arms into the hot, soapy water and seized another sheet. “I will give David a gift, of course.” Susanna smiled at the thought. “I will give him a new shirt that I have been sewing for him since September, with embroidery on the sleeves and along the hems. I just finished it the day before yesterday!” The sheet slipped from her grasp and her knuckles scraped against the scrubbing board.
Susanna bent her head over the sheet she was half-heartedly scrubbing. “I don’t think that this year I will be giving a gift to anyone at the inn,” she replied to Ivana’s unasked question. “But my father said I could invite someone to Christmas dinner at our house, so I have to think about who would be good to ask. Or maybe I will bake cakes for everyone at the inn. I don’t know yet.”
“My mother would be furious if I did not eat Christmas dinner with my family,” Ivana answered after an uncomfortable pause. She wiped her knuckles against her apron a
nd returned to scrubbing the wayward sheet. Susanna‘s scrubbing slowed considerably and she gazed into the distance before setting aside the sheet she held. Taking another, she began to scrub furiously.
“Do you think David will give you a gift?” Susanna puffed out the words between scrubs.
“I hope so,” giggled Ivana.
“What do you hope he gives you?” Susanna seemed especially intent on this sheet.
Ivana wondered what fascinated Susanna so. “What do I hope he gives me?” Now it was Ivana’s turn to stare dreamily into the distance. “A betrothal,” she sighed.
A child’s dress appeared among the sheets in the laundry baskets. Another small girl’s dress appeared soon after and then a little boy’s shirt. Susanna heaved a deep sigh and grimaced.
“I hate it when Jan’s wife gives us their children’s clothes to launder. As if it wasn’t work enough to keep the sheets for the inn clean, she expects us to do her family wash as well!”
Ivana reached for one of the dresses and peered through the sheets that remained to be washed.
“I don’t see any more of the children’s clothes here,” she announced. “These must have gotten mixed into the sheets by accident. Or maybe little Timotej hid these as a joke.”
“A joke?” spat Susanna. “I’m not laughing. What makes you sure it was Timotej and not one of the twins, Anna or Milena? You know how they like to preen themselves and remind us that their father is the innkeeper. This is exactly the sort of trick they might try.”
“Well, maybe,” Ivana begrudgingly admitted. She began to scrub the boy’s shirt. “In any case, these will only take a moment to clean.” She thought about yesterday’s sermon and Susanna’s resentment of being expected to wash the innkeeper’s family clothing. What animal would the priest say was associated with resentment?
“A dog, probably,” Ivana thought after scrubbing silently a few minutes. “A mad dog. I guess resentment could be the first step towards Rage and therefore be the vice of a mad dog.” She thought more. “Or is she just slothful? Yes, she often attempts to do as little work at the inn as she can. What animal did Fr. Krystof say was Sloth?” She began scrubbing one of the dresses. “An ass!” she suddenly remembered. “Sloth is an ass!” She giggled as she pictured Susanna with the head of an ass.
Saturday afternoon finally arrived and Ivana found a spare moment to neatly fold the shirt she had just finished embroidering for David. She tied a ribbon around it and slipped across the hall to David’s room. She knocked. There was no answer. She pushed gently on the door and it opened an inch. There was no one there. She set the shirt gently on his bed and returned to what remained of the pre-Christmas preparations, assisting the family in decorating the inn’s common room with wreaths and garlands.
“David will be surprised by the shirt,” she thought. “Of course, he will know that it is a gift from me. Who else would give such a beautiful shirt to him? And placing it on his bed? If that doesn’t give him an idea or two, then nothing will!”
Later that afternoon, Jan the innkeeper dismissed the three young people until Monday morning, the day following Christmas. He gave them each an extra few coins as a Christmas gift and wished them a happy Christmas. The three ran from the inn, laughing and shouting “Happy Christmas!” to each other before being swallowed up by the throngs on the streets of the Little Town. Everyone was hurrying to complete their errands before the feast.
Ivana took a different turn than usual, heading down a street that led away from her family house. She wanted to stop somewhere along the way, before the festival began, to give herself a Christmas treat. One more turn down a narrow lane and she was there.
She stepped into the women’s bathhouse and paused to let her eyes adjust to the dim half-light and the steamy heat that pervaded the small structure. There were three pools and large caldrons that sat on beds of coals. The hot water from the cauldrons was poured into the first of the pools or mixed with cooler water in the second pool. The third pool was bracing, ice-cold water. There were girls and women to assist the bathers, scraping old skin and dirt from the naked bodies hanging along the edges of the pools or stretched out on ledges around the walls of the bathhouse. Some wielded bouquets of willow or birch branches to beat the bathers with, too.
An elderly woman near the entrance took Ivana’s coin and directed her to a stall where she could hang her clothing while she bathed. Sometimes the water in the first pool was too hot and she went directly to the second, but this afternoon the first pool was just steamy enough to comfort her weary body as she held her nose and slipped briefly beneath the water.
There were more bathers here on Christmas Eve afternoon than Ivana had expected. She couldn’t stay as long as she would have liked but she wanted to celebrate the holiday all washed and scrubbed sudsy clean, like the sheets she washed every week for the inn. She ducked under the water again. The heat surged through her and she felt herself surrender to its all-embracing comfort.
“Happy New Year!” Susanna welcomed Ivana on the morning of the second day of January as they each approached the door to the inn. It was early with few people on the street. There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground and the breath hung in steamy clouds before their lips. Holly wreaths still hung in many of the windows that lined the street or festooned the doors. The twelve days of the Christmas holiday were little more than half-done; five remained and the holiday would culminate on Epiphany, the feast of the arrival of the magi to worship the Christ Child with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The girls had returned to their work at the inn on the day after Christmas Day and washed, scrubbed and served as usual throughout the week. They had been allowed to return home to their families for the celebrations that marked the New Year and were returning to the inn for the remaining months of winter. Jan always hosted a festive Epiphany banquet for a handful of the more prominent merchants and citizens of the Little Town, so the girls had to remain at the inn to assist with the feast.
“The cake was delicious! Thank you!” Ivana greeted Susanna, who had given her a small cake before they left the inn for New Year’s.
Jan stood just inside the door. “Blahopřání! Congratulations!” he exclaimed on seeing the girls enter. He seized Susanna in a great hug and kissed her on both cheeks. He turned to Ivana.
“Did you hear, Ivana? The great news for the New Year? Susanna is betrothed! Her father made the match yesterday and was in here last evening to celebrate!” He tipped Susanna’s chin upwards with one finger. “May your marriage be long and fruitful!” He kissed her again on the cheeks.
Susanna blushed and yet managed to glance towards Ivana and look smug. Something was wrong. Ivana knew it, but managed to stumble “Congratulations, Susanna! May your marriage be long and fruitful!” from her lips. The two girls went upstairs for their aprons.
Ivana closed the door to their room behind her and turned to confront Susanna, but before she said a word, Susanna—her back towards Ivana as she reached for her apron and tied it around her waist—spoke. “You were foolish to simply leave the shirt you made for David in his room.”
“How… how do you know that?” Ivana stuttered.
“Because he asked me.” Susanna turned to face Ivana. “It was when we came back to the inn last week, after Christmas Day. He asked me if I knew who might have left it for him. He thought it might have been Jan’s wife, but I told him no, it was not. I told him that I had left it. I told him that I had been sewing the shirt for him since early fall and that it was my Christmas gift to him.”
“What?” exclaimed Ivana. “How could you say that? You knew I had been making that shirt for him!” Ivana was furious. Tears stung her eyes. “How could he believe that? You can hardly make a stitch!”
“It was easy to convince him,” the other girl retorted. “There was no way he could know that it was you that had made the shirt. Besides,” she added, “he had already eaten the Christmas cake I made for him.”
“A cake?” Ivana could not believe her ears. “You gave him a cake and claimed that you had made the shirt for him, and because of a cake and a shirt, he asked your father to betroth you?”
Susanna smirked. “Well, it was a special Christmas cake. My mother told me how to make it. Just like the one she made for my father before he married her. I added a few drops of my monthly blood into it. I gave him a second cake, just before New Year, with a few more drops of my monthly blood. The drops of blood and the usual Christmas cake spices—coriander and cardamom and cloves—proved effective. Very effective.”
Ivana was aghast. “That— that’s trickery!” she choked out. “He had no choice but to desire you! He couldn’t have resisted you, let alone in combination with the coriander and cardamom and cloves! How dare you!”
“How dare I?” demanded Susanna. “You accuse me of trickery simply because you didn’t think of doing anything like that first? Don’t blame me because you were too foolish to take the appropriate steps!” Susanna pushed her way past Ivana and out the door.
Ivana stood with tears streaming down her face. Her life was in ruins now. How could Susanna have stolen David from her like that? She knew how much Ivana had been counting on marriage to David, how much work went into making a shirt like the one she had made. Now what could she do? If she told him she, not Susanna, had made the shirt, he would not believe her.
Under other circumstances, he might have listened to what Ivana said, but having eaten one cake made with Susanna’s menstrual blood was enough to cloud his mind. But to have eaten two cakes, combined with the amatory effects of the Christmas spices, was enough to befuddle any man’s thinking past remedy.
Ivana collapsed on her bed and wept as she had never wept before.
That evening, David the apprentice cook and the two girls ate their supper, as usual, at the table in the kitchen as Michael the cook put the finishing touches on the stew for the inn’s guests. David and Susanna sat silently but smiled contentedly at each other. Ivana ate her stew silently, glum, depressed and exhausted from alternatively sniffling and sobbing all day. Her nose was raw from wiping it and her eyes were red. She glanced across the table at Susanna and David.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 56
