The Silver Sword

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  Novak

  Seven

  The sun had not yet risen when Petrov shook Anika awake. “Wake up, Kafka,” he murmured, a note of pride in his voice. “Today we journey to Chlum.”

  Anika sat up, ran her fingers through the fuzzy ends of her shorn hair, then stepped into her boots, remembering to hide the dagger beneath the cuff as Petrov had taught her. Within five minutes she was dressed and ready to go, her gunnysack packed with a comb, her pen, and two small books: a copy of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (her favorite epistle of late because Paul wrote of putting on the whole armor of God) and The Art of Courtly Love.

  She stood in the doorway and held out her hands, inviting Petrov’s inspection, but frowned when his brow furrowed. “What is wrong?” she asked, glancing down to make certain she had not forgotten some necessary article of clothing.

  “You are missing one thing every squire needs,” the old man answered, his hands moving toward his own belt. Slowly, lovingly, he unbuckled the silver sword that hung at his waist, then proffered it to Anika like a king granting gifts.

  “Your sword,” she breathed, awed by the significance of his gesture. “It is yours, Sir Petrov. I cannot take something your master gave you.”

  “You cannot train at Chlum Castle with a stick, Squire Kafka.” He gave her a rare, intimate smile, beautifully bright, and his voice was uncompromising, yet oddly gentle. “Take it. My master gave it to me, and so I give it to you. Use it well, but only in the defense of truth.”

  Anika extended her hand and took the hilt, her body vibrating with new energy and purpose. “Thank you, Sir Petrov.” She inclined her head in a deep gesture of thanks. “I pray I will honor you with it.”

  As devoutly religious as he was proud, Petrov refused to escort Anika to Chlum until they had stopped by the church to pray. “But what if Master Hus sees us?” Anika protested, horrified. “He may recognize me and will not approve, Sir Petrov. He thinks I am fit only to become a governess or kitchen maid.”

  “I’ve heard that the preacher has been detained at the archbishop’s house for at least two days.” Uncertainty crept into his expression as he paused by the door. For the first time that morning she heard doubt in his voice. “I will not do this unless we have the Lord’s blessing, little bird. I must know that God approves. ’Tis a strange and dangerous thing we are doing.”

  “Let us go to the church, then,” she answered, gathering her cloak from the peg on the wall. “I would not have you going soft on me now, Sir Petrov. ’Tis too late to turn back; my hair is all shorn off, and my dresses are locked away.”

  Outside, the eastern sky blazed in shades of copper and sapphire as the glowing rim of the sun pushed its way over the rooftops of Prague. A lighted window of the church spilled a golden glimmer onto the stone pathway as Anika and Petrov walked up to Bethlehem Chapel, but Anika was relieved to see that Master Hus’s small house was dark. Petrov walked with long, purposeful strides—probably eager to be rid of his obligation, Anika thought—and they found the large chapel empty. A half-dozen torches and lamps illuminated the altar, but shadows canopied the far-off ceiling while darkness shrouded the side walls. Anika had never been inside a deserted church. She felt almost as though she had stumbled upon God himself and disturbed his privacy.

  A wave of apprehension and last-minute doubt swept through her as she and Petrov approached the altar. Was her plan a sin? Was she being presumptuous to ask God’s blessing on this expressly duplicitous venture?

  Petrov’s knees cracked through the silence as he knelt on the stone floor. “In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti,” he said, lifting his eyes to the huge wooden crucifix behind the altar. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  As Anika slipped down beside him, she saw a priest enter from a side doorway. Seeing them, he stopped and folded his hands, allowing a pair of spiritual seekers a moment of private colloquy. Anika thanked God that she had thought to lift the hood of her cloak over her head.

  She raised her hand to make the sign of the cross. With three fingers to symbolize the Trinity, she began her prayer. “I touch my forehead in recognition of the Deity in Heaven,” she said, turning her eyes toward the floor, “I touch my belly to show that Jesus descended into Hades, I touch my right shoulder because the Son is seated on the right hand of the Father, I touch my left shoulder to expel Satan from my heart.”

  “Forget the formalities, say what is on your heart,” Petrov whispered, nudging her with his elbow. “We have a visitor. Master Jerome.”

  Anika pressed her lips together, thinking. The idea of hiding herself among knights had sprung from her imagination, but had the seed been planted by God himself? She knew that many in Prague would think her the worst sort of sinner for denying her gender and playing a squire’s part. Undoubtedly they would quote the Old Testament scripture that spoke of the sin of a woman putting on that which pertains to a man.

  But those same people would enjoy a nice pork roast on Sunday. They would wear garments of mixed fabrics, and none of them would send their women to dwell outside the city walls when they began their monthly issue. They kept only the Old Testament rules they found convenient, and Anika had a particularly convenient reason for hiding herself away.

  “Father God, holy and true, I don’t know if what I intend to do is right,” she muttered hastily. “But I promise to do my best to honor you. The chivalric ideals of knighthood are holy and true to your Word, and I will do my best to keep them. Guide me, Holy God, and lead me in the way I should go—”

  “Hurry.” Petrov spoke in a broken whisper. “Jerome comes.”

  “Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit coelum et terram,” she finished quickly. “Our help is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Amen.”

  She bowed her head in time to see the shadow of a robed priest fall upon the stone floor beside her.

  “May Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins, and bring you to everlasting life,” Jerome said, his voice low and smooth in the nearly empty church. “Is there something I can do for you, my children?”

  “No, Master Jerome.” Placing his hand on Anika’s shoulder for support, Petrov looked up at the priest and slowly rose to his feet. “My ward will today join the knights at Chlum Castle. We came to ask God’s blessing before we depart for Lord John’s estate.”

  “Then let me add my blessing as well.”

  Anika froze, keeping her eyes lowered, as the priest stepped closer. Jerome stared at her in silence while her heart raced and her fingers fluttered with fear. Then his patrician thumb firmly traced the sign of the cross upon her forehead.

  “Go with God,” he said in a formal voice, then added, “and may our blessed Jesus Christ calm your nerves, my son. Your hands are trembling like a frightened girl’s.”

  Panic rose in Anika’s throat and threatened to choke her, but Petrov merely laughed and patted her shoulder. “After a month at the castle, nothing will frighten this one,” he said, practically pulling Anika up from the floor. “Keep us in your prayers, Master Jerome. This young squire will need courage, and I will need comfort, for I shall be terribly lonesome when my house is again empty.”

  “Your name, my son?” Jerome asked.

  Anika looked up, finally daring to meet the priest’s gaze. She had not known Jerome nearly as well as she had known Master Hus, but she knew he was an honest man and an ardent defender of Hus’s efforts to expose and reform what had become a corrupt church.

  The priest’s mouth was curled as if on the edge of laughter. Was he smiling at her cowardice? Or because he knew he had just blessed a girl in a man’s hood and tunic?

  “Kafka,” she whispered in the deepest voice she could manage. “Please remember to pray for Kafka, Master Jerome.”

  “I will.” The priest gave her a warm smile. “If you will pray for me and our Master Hus. This is a difficult time for all.”

  “We will,” Petrov answered,
tugging on Anika’s sleeve. “Excuse us now, Master Jerome, but the sun has risen, and we have a journey to begin.”

  Since neither Petrov nor Anika owned a horse, they walked on the road leading toward Chlum until a farmer with an empty wagon passed by. Petrov offered the man a coin if he and Anika could ride in the back of the wagon, and the man grudgingly agreed.

  With her hose-clad legs dangling off the back of the hay wagon, Anika sat in silence beside Petrov and watched her world gradually slide into the distance. With a sudden pang, she realized that she had underestimated her attachment to the city. She had been so intent on preparing for the future that she had given very little thought to what would become her past. She might not see the bustling streets of Prague again for weeks, even months! And though most squires were taught to read and write, she was bidding farewell to her book collection, her writing, the stream of interesting students who brought her their essays and stayed to argue the finer points of apologetics. These encounters had enriched her life and sharpened her mind. Would she know anything like them out in the quiet countryside?

  “Sir Petrov,” she cried, suddenly squeezing his arm with both hands, “you will take good care of my books, won’t you? You’ll need to hire another copyist so the students will continue to come to the bookshop. And make sure the renters take good care of the books. Do not allow them to scratch grooves in the margin with their fingernails or use straws from the lecture room floor as place marks—”

  “I will mind the shop as if you were looking over my shoulder,” Petrov answered, firmly removing her hand from his arm. “And you must learn this, little Kafka. When one man wishes to gain the attention of another man, he does not grab his arm and threaten to pull it from its socket. He might nudge him with an elbow, or tap him on the shoulder, but he would never squeal and cling to his companion. Do you understand?”

  Petrov’s aged eyes squinted toward her with tenderness, and Anika wanted to fling her arms around him in gratitude. But instead she meekly lowered her head and murmured, “Yes, Sir Knight. I understand.”

  “Good.”

  For a long while they rode in silence through a verdant countryside. The kiss of sunrise had cast a rosy flush upon the western mountains, and an emerald ribbon of fields and summer foliage bordered the rutted road. The small mud-and-timber houses that had dotted the fields outlying Prague disappeared altogether, and Anika knew they were now entering the vast tracts of lands managed by the nobility. Many different lords owned most of the estates that composed the kingdom of Bohemia, and their lands extended over fields and mountains and plains.

  In the drowsy summer heat, Anika lay back on a pile of hay and fell into a shallow doze. When she awoke, the sun stood high in the sky. To her left she saw jagged mountains rising like armed warriors safeguarding Bohemia against the raging world beyond. To her right shimmered a vista of silver water and endless cobalt sky.

  “It is lovely here,” she whispered to Petrov, sighing deeply. “I had forgotten that the mountains were so beautiful.”

  “We don’t see many sights like this in the city,” Petrov admitted. “Prague has its pleasures, to be sure, but this sort of beauty is not one of them.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Chlum Manor.” Petrov extended his freckled hand, and Anika noticed that it trembled slightly, either from age or repressed emotion. “Lord John owns the land as far as you can see in any direction.”

  Anika stared at the horizon, letting the import of those words sink into her soul. Lord John was not only honorable, he was wealthy. “And this is where you grew up?”

  “Yes.” Petrov nodded. “I was twelve when my father left me with Lord Honza, Lord John’s father. I was a squire first, then became a knight. My master and I served in many battles together, including a winter in Livonia.” Raw hurt glittered in his faded eyes as he continued. “We were obeying the orders of an archbishop, but it was not what I thought a crusade for Christ should be. We set fire to everything, driving men, women, and children away from their villages in the cruelest month of winter. But nothing like that has happened in a long time.”

  “And then?”

  Petrov shrugged. “Lord John was only a boy when his father died. I had to choose between remaining at Chlum or returning to Prague to see what could be found of my old life. I chose the latter, and though I never found any trace of my family, I have not regretted my return to the city. I fear that knighthood—the chivalric code and the occupation—is not what it was when I served Lord Honza. And though I hear wonderful and noteworthy things about Lord John, I am too old to mount a horse and wield a sword again.” He flashed her a gap-toothed grin. “That shall be your duty, Kafka.”

  She was about to offer a spirited rejoinder when she realized they were passing through the gates of a small settlement. Rising to her knees, she turned and saw that the hay wagon had entered a village that seemed nearly insignificant when she compared it to Prague. From the center of the village a church steeple jutted from the rooflines, dragging up a cluster of wattle-and-daub houses that lay scattered around the edge of the churchyard. Next to the creek, the mill’s waterwheel lazily paddled the current. Even from this distance she could smell ale from the centrally located brewhouse and bread from the adjacent bakehouse. At the farthest point from the creek, a small pen held the commonly owned animals: a pair of cows, a half-dozen sheep, and, in a separate pen, a bull. Chickens had free rein—they scratched and clucked and roamed freely through the street and screeched from the villagers’ open windows. Anika gaped in surprise to see the mud-encrusted face of a pig peering at her from an open doorway. The pig looked for all the world like a stout peasant woman watching the world pass by.

  “Where is everyone?” Anika asked, noticing that no people watched from the small buildings. “Have they had plague here?”

  “They are all at work in the lord’s fields,” Petrov answered, picking his teeth with a hay straw. “The miller is in his mill, no doubt, and the ale maker is probably at his brew pot. But everyone else will work until setting sun forces them to stop weeding.”

  Anika lifted her head to feel the warmth of the sun on her face. “I thought Lord John would have more tenants than these,” she remarked idly. “These are not so many to serve such a great lord.”

  Petrov’s mouth quirked with humor. “This is but one village, little bird. There are at least two dozen others like it outlying the master’s fields. Lord John is one of the wealthiest lords in Bohemia, probably second only to Lord Laco and the king.”

  Anika felt a flicker of apprehension course through her at the mention of her enemy’s name. Would Laco try to find her when she did not show up at his estate today? How determined was his vile son?

  “Sir Petrov, you must keep a quiet tongue and never say that name again,” she murmured, studying the road behind them as if at any moment a cavalcade of horses might suddenly appear in full pursuit. “Do not mention my name in the bookshop, and never speak of that lord or of my failure to appear at his house. It may be that he will forget all about me. Or he may petition the city council to discover my whereabouts—”

  “Have no fear,” Petrov answered, a look of implacable determination on his lined face. “No word of you or of that depraved man shall cross my lips unless I am asked directly. And then I shall do all in my power to safeguard your secret.”

  “I know you will, my friend,” Anika answered. Carefully, teasingly she nudged him with her elbow in a properly masculine gesture. “I know you will.”

  Setting her trepidation and nervousness aside, she straightened her back and tried to concentrate on the task ahead. She simply had to be accepted as a squire. Lord John might be willing to grant her refuge if she approached as a woman and in her own name, but some spy from Lidice would be certain to find her in time. Any nobleman who could bribe magistrates and get away with murder would have no trouble passing a few silver coins and learning the whereabouts of a frightened young woman.

  Anika remember
ed the look of steely determination in Miloslav’s cold blue eyes, then shivered. A man like that did not give up easily.

  Petrov felt his pulse quicken when the hay cart turned onto a smoother, wider road. Within half an hour he would be in the courtyard of Chlum Castle itself, and he had not set foot inside that place in—how many years? At least twenty. Lord John had been a boy of thirteen when Petrov left; he was now a respected nobleman with two fine sons of his own. He would have few memories of Petrov, if he retained any at all, but perhaps he would honor his father’s old captain and grant Petrov the boon he sought.

  They had passed through four villages like the one Anika first noticed, each larger and more prosperous than the last. Shifting in his seat, Petrov glanced at the road ahead and saw the tower of the castle looming over the trees ahead—almost home! Odd that he should automatically consider this place his home. But it was, and if all went well, it would be Anika’s, too … for a little while.

  He heard Anika gasp when the tall walls of the castle chemise moved into view. The castle, built by the first lords of Chlum in the mid-thirteenth century, rose with loftiness, majesty, and grandeur from the summit of a hill. The girl—now the squire, he corrected himself firmly—had probably never seen a structure quite like it.

  “It is so—big!” she whispered, turning wide eyes upon him.

  “Such walls! Why does a peace-loving man need a house with such tall walls around it?”

  “Because not all men love peace as he does,” Petrov answered dryly. He gave her a gentle rebuking smile. “You must not let your face reveal your surprise and naiveté, Kafka. Guard your emotions. Weigh every word before you speak. You may be yourself around me, but let no one else see into your heart, or your secret will be as obvious as the sun above our heads.”

  She nodded, mutely accepting his advice. Grateful that for once she had not argued with him, he turned toward the walls and pointed out several aspects of their construction: “Listen carefully, for you will need to know these things. The overhanging projections you see are machicolations, from which missiles and boiling liquids can be dropped through openings at the top. Those holes you see below the battlements are flared to the inside; they give an archer room to move from right to left and cover a broad field of fire while presenting only the narrow slit as a target. The outworks of the castle are strong, but the main lines of defense are centered around the castle inside.”