The Silver Sword

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  Acquire for me a Bible and send it by this good man. If your scribe, Peter, has any ink, let him give me some, as well as several pens and a small inkwell. I know nothing about my Polish servant or about Master Cardinal, I only hear that your lordship is here and is with the lord king Sigismund. Accordingly, I beseech you to pray his royal majesty, both for my sake and for the cause of the Almighty God, who has so magnificently endowed him with his gifts, as well as for the sake of manifesting justice and truth to the honor of God and the welfare of the Church, to liberate me from captivity, that I may prepare myself for and come to a public hearing. You should know that I have been very ill, but am already convalescing.

  Written with my own hand, which your scribe Peter knows well. Given in prison.

  Sitting in the tiny closet that served as a lavatory in his vast apartments, Baldasarre Cossa blew out his cheeks and tried to ignore the rumbling in his stomach. He felt the grip again in his gut, the scratch of fear that had arisen to plague him ever since Sigismund’s arrival in Constance. For two months he had been the highest power within a week’s ride, the ruler of his immediate universe, but now he sensed a subtle shift in power, almost as though the stars overhead had turned on their axes to shine the light of authority upon someone else’s head.

  His nervous fingers found a bit of hardened skin along his cuticle, and he brought his finger to his lips, gnawing away the offending flesh. He had hoped to distract the council from the issue of papal power with the controversy surrounding Jan Hus, but while the preacher underwent examination, those who intended to heal the great schism worked, too. Three popes were too many, they said. Of course! So why didn’t the other two surrender to him? He was the one in Constance, cooperating with the council. The others, that cowardly Benedict and troublesome Gregory, hadn’t even bothered to appear.

  Baldasarre bit hard on his finger, ripping away a shred of skin, then cursed softly as the bite exposed the tender flesh. He should be more careful. Every man in the council room tomorrow would have to kiss his ring, and the shrewdest of them, in an unguarded moment, might notice his bitten fingernails and wonder if he had cause to be nervous. And if they wondered about him—as many of them already did, he knew—they’d soon be calling for his head. He might be imprisoned, even burned at the stake, for what the council would perceive as excesses and abuses of power.

  He had whited too many sepulchers to be easily deceived. Of all the men in Constance, he had the most reason to be wary because he had the most to lose. His spies had been busily ferreting out all sorts of information, including a report that the council was about to propose that Pope John follow the example of Christ, who willingly laid aside the glories of heaven to serve a fallen world.

  They were such fools! He’d lay down his crown when those cursed cardinals gave up their palaces, their rings, their wealth. They would never relent, and neither would he, which might make for a violent end unless …

  His mind drifted back to an Austrian castle he had visited on his way to Constance. Beside a roaring fire he promised Duke Frederick a fortune in exchange for a promise of help, should the need arise. Frederick had conveniently followed Baldasarre to Constance and now waited for the time when he might prove useful.

  Grunting, Baldasarre pulled himself up from the chamber pot, peering through a crack between the door and the doorframe to make certain no one lingered in the room outside. Without a doubt, the time had come to send word to Frederick. This impasse would not last long.

  Four days later, the knights of Chlum received an invitation to a spring tournament hosted by Duke Frederick of Austria, a nobleman who sought to provide comfort and entertainment for the hundreds of men who had to remain in Constance while the council conducted business. The council would adjourn for the special tournament, the messenger told them, so the cardinals and even His Holiness might witness the skillful knights’ exploits.

  “Should we enter?” Manville asked, turning to Novak. “’Twould give the men something to do besides hunting. Nervous energy does a man no good, and a tournament might take the edge off their raw nerves.”

  “The knights of Lidice have already entered,” Lev added hopefully. “Lord Laco has sent a contingent of men to prepare for the jousting. His captain rode by here earlier and asked if we would participate.”

  “We do not play games when one of our own is imprisoned,” Novak snapped, his eyes darting toward Anika at the mention of Laco’s name. “Let the knights of Austria and Lidice make sport. We are here for one reason only: to protect Jan Hus. And until he is free, we have no time for games.”

  Anika pressed her lips together and smiled at Lev, signaling that she understood his intentions were innocent. Something in her would have liked to see if she could challenge one of the other knights, but the stronger voice of reason was content to let the challenge pass. She hated to admit it, but since she had worn Fida’s kirtle and seen Lord John’s eyes light in appreciation, her suit of armor had begun to lose its appeal.

  Five days after the tournament, Manville rode breathless into camp again. “Lord John!” he called, his voice hoarse. “Sir! The pope has escaped!”

  “What?” Lord John stepped out of his tent and gave the knight a sidelong glance of utter disbelief.

  “It’s true,” Manville answered, swinging his tree-trunk leg over the rear of his horse as he dismounted. “He has not been seen since the tournament. One of Frederick’s servants reports that the pontiff disguised himself as a groom and escaped in the crowd.”

  “He knew the council would destroy him,” Anika said, looking toward her master. “Lord John, if the cardinals would not spare one of their own, what do you think they will do to Master Hus? He has no opportunity for escape. While the pope dined on duck and beef in a palatial chamber, Master Hus has been chained in a dungeon—”

  She stopped, silenced by the guilty look on Lord John’s face.

  Vasek, who had been standing nearby, came forward and held up his hand as a strange livid hue overspread his face. “Is the pope’s retinue gone, too? His guards, his servants, everyone?”

  Manville nodded. “Yes. They are probably gathered around an Austrian banquet table by now. It is widely assumed that Duke Frederick helped that rascal escape.”

  Lord John’s brow creased with worry. “If the pope and his people are gone—who is tending Master Hus?”

  They found him in chains, faint and prostrate, but alive. Anika, Novak, and Lord John had ridden immediately for the monastery after hearing Manville’s news, and there they found a lone monk at the preacher’s cell door. Hus had received neither food nor drink since the pope’s departure and had survived by using his tongue to gather moisture from the damp walls and floor.

  Lord John would have removed Hus from the place by force, but the monk threw himself at the nobleman’s feet, declaring he would be imprisoned if the cardinals discovered that their prisoner had escaped. John finally relented but demanded that Anika and Novak be allowed to remain with the prisoner until he returned with news from the emperor.

  “With the pope gone, Sigismund is now the master of the city,” he told Anika, giving her a tentative smile as he prepared to go. “And since the emperor was willing to release Master Hus only a few weeks ago, we can certainly hope he intends to keep his word. I will return shortly with good news for all.”

  But Baldasarre Cossa was not the only authority to sense a shift in power. When Sigismund learned of Hus’s situation, he refused to hand the preacher over to Lord John, but instead sent word to the council. In consultation with Cardinal D’Ailly and other leaders, Sigismund decided that Hus should be committed to the custody of the Bishop of Constance. As the moon hid her face in the clouds on the evening of Palm Sunday, March 24, guards transferred the preacher from the monastery dungeon to Gottlieben, a castle on the Rhine.

  Situated four miles outside the city, Castle Gottlieben was a majestic, sturdy structure with two quadrangular towers, each nearly two hundred feet high. A small wooden
cage of two compartments had been built just beneath the roof of one tower, and into one of these Jan Hus was thrust. His jailers pinioned one arm to the wall, then chained his feet to a block.

  While Lord John and the other Bohemians continued their daily efforts to have the preacher released, Hus waited in solitary confinement, suffering from hunger, cold, and painful attacks of neuralgia and hemorrhage. The damp spring winds swept almost continually through a small ventilation window. His brutal keepers did nothing to assuage his misery, hoping his spirits would be brought low enough to confess to almost anything when he was finally brought before the council.

  Once he had been comforted by visits from his friends, but now only the commissioners assigned to torment him were allowed to enter his dismal cell. And while Hus endured their ridiculous questions and denied their false charges, he consoled himself with something Lord John had once told him: “There are many things worse than defeat, my friend, and compromise with evil is one of them.”

  Twenty-Nine

  You needn’t push me, young man,” Baldasarre snapped, turning to the chubby-faced guard who held his right arm. “Though it may give you pleasure to push one of your superiors up these stairs—”

  “Don’t mind him,” the other guard replied, sharing a smile with the clumsy youth. “He still thinks he’s the blessed pope.”

  “I may no longer wear the Crown of Christ,” Baldasarre answered, his voice brimming with distaste, “yet still I am your superior. I am, and I will always be. So mind your words and your actions lest they come back to haunt you.”

  The guards eased their grip on him then, though their smirking faces lost none of their insolence. Baldasarre lifted his robe and climbed steadily up the winding staircase, holding his chin as high as his fractured pride would allow.

  Duke Frederick had proved to be a fickle friend. Though he had been true enough to help Baldasarre escape from Constance, Frederick’s eagerness to ingratiate himself with Sigismund had been Baldasarre’s undoing. The price of Frederick’s friendship with the emperor was one ex-pope, bound and delivered. Two mornings ago Baldasarre had awakened in his plush bed at the Duke’s castle to find himself surrounded by half a dozen imperial guards.

  In a hastily arranged trial by the council, the former Pope John was convicted of fifty-four charges and declared to be “the mirror of infamy, an idolater of the flesh, and according to all who knew him a devil incarnate.” The audacious council—several of whom owed their cardinals’ robes to him—sentenced Baldasarre to imprisonment. In a fit of spiteful glee, Sigismund commanded that Baldasarre be brought to the Castle Gottlieben, only four miles from the brouhaha he had escaped at Constance.

  Baldasarre stopped and inhaled deeply when he and his guards reached the landing at the top of the tower. By a stream of light through a small window, Baldasarre could see a wooden cage with two compartments, one of which was occupied by a stooped, shadowed shape. The stench of rotting food, human waste, and infected air filled the atmosphere like a palpable fog, clogging his nostrils. He could not survive in this place, and he would not bear it.

  “Am I to be thrust in here like an animal?” He threw back his head and thumped his manacled hands against his chest. “I am no beast, not like this criminal. Tell your royal master that I protest. I have done nothing to warrant this kind of barbaric treatment.”

  His reaction seemed only to amuse the guards. A small rustling sound shattered the stillness in the cage; the shadowed man stirred. Did he dare to laugh, too?

  “In you go,” the older guard said, unlocking the wooden door on the first cell. Baldasarre resisted, but felt the insistent prick of a sword through his robe. Slowly and reluctantly, he moved into the cramped space.

  “Hear me!” he cried, even as the guard slammed and locked the door. Lifting his chained hands to the bars, Baldasarre fixed the younger guard in the stare that used to make subordinates cringe. “I am not an animal, that you can lock me in a cage! I am a man of God! I hold the power of life and death in my hands! Almighty God himself will punish you for this injustice!”

  Laughing, the two guards disappeared down the stairs, their light steps tripping over the stones like rhythmic applause.

  Baldasarre leaned his back against the wall and slowly sank downward, dimly aware that he was ruining what had been a very costly robe. Sigismund, the jealous fool, was doing this to teach him a lesson. The emperor was flaunting his power, but he had forgotten that Baldasarre always won in the end. Sigismund would free him as soon as he needed a favor. Or maybe the new pope, whomever the council elected, would need advice. In either case, Baldasarre would be freed. He might never again be pope, but he would return to the glorious life of a cardinal. He could accept no less.

  He glanced up, some sixth sense having brought him back to reality. As nightfall approached, the light was fading fast, color bleeding out of the air. The dark figure in the other chamber, even more shadowed and indistinct than a moment before, sat hunched in the corner, one limp arm hanging from the wall, the other resting on a bent knee. The bearded stranger sorely needed a haircut. The fingers of his hands seemed devilishly long and gaunt, but bright eyes burned from the center of that skeletal face.

  The head moved in a barely discernible nod as the apparition spoke: “Grace and peace to you, Baldasarre Cossa.” The words hung in the miasma between them.

  Baldasarre winced slightly, as if his flesh had been nipped. What sort of criminal was this, and how could he know Baldasarre’s name? “Who are you?” A sudden whisper of terror ran through him. “How do you know me?”

  “I am Jan Hus,” the man replied, his voice soft and eminently reasonable. “The man you persecuted.”

  Baldasarre waited, knowing the man would gloat, curse, or rail against him … but darkness fell, and the Bohemian preacher spoke only once more: “May the Lord bless you and bring you peace.”

  Half-blind with unreasoning terror, Baldasarre leapt to his feet and pounded on the door, screaming that he would go mad unless his captors released him.

  Vasek stood as tense and quivering as a bowstring, but managed to bow before the assembled council. A letter from Lord John lay on the table before the prelate in charge. “Your master begs us to release Hus from custody that he might recover his health for a public examination,” the cardinal read, summarizing the letter for those assembled. “And he offers to provide sureties to guarantee Hus will not attempt to leave Constance before his case is judged.”

  “That is correct, Your Eminence,” Vasek said, inclining his head. He took a deep breath to quell the leaping pulse beneath his ribs. “There are several noble lords in league with Lord John of Chlum, and they have all promised to lend their men and their resources to abet my master.”

  “The request is absolutely refused.” The prelate laid the paper on the table and folded his hands over it. “We will not release Jan Hus under any circumstances, and we are not inclined to grant him a public hearing. The key to containing apostasy is to prevent its spread; how then can we willingly allow the public to receive seeds of heresy from this apostate’s lips?”

  “I agree with you that heresy should not be spread,” Vasek said, opening his hands to the council. “But I am employed to convey my master’s wishes. And—are we certain that Master Hus is a heretic? The council has not yet decided.”

  “The council will decide soon enough.” Cardinal D’Ailly leaned forward, his eyes dark and powerful. “But where do your sympathies lie? There are some, Chaplain Vasek, who fear you were close to that deposed pope.”

  “I have always supported the Holy Mother Church.” Vasek had been forcing a smile, but now he felt it fade as he looked into D’Ailly’s hypocritical eyes. Hadn’t he been in league with Pope John? But that no longer mattered. The tide had turned, and D’Ailly now rode at the pinnacle of power. “I have always stood against heresy,” Vasek continued, his blood pounding thickly in his ears. “Even when Master Hus visited Lord John at Castle Chlum, I was faithful to point ou
t the fallacies of his teaching.”

  “Then why do you still serve this Bohemian lord?” Another cardinal shot the question from across the chamber.

  “I had thought,” Vasek dropped his gaze before a dozen pairs of steady eyes, “that I might prove useful to the Church in my present position.”

  Vasek paused, weighing the impact of his words. When the pontiff fled only to be arrested and convicted, Vasek had lived for days in a state of terror, afraid he would be charged with some crime as well. But apparently only D’Ailly and a few other cardinals knew of Vasek’s papal connections, and they were not eager to advertise their own visits to that miscreant.

  By God’s merciful grace Vasek had escaped his lord’s notice the night Lord John stormed into the pope’s chamber. He had been spared not once, but twice. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps there might still be a place of power and influence for him, even with the former pontiff in chains. If he could only manage to balance himself between his ecclesiastical superiors and his master.

  “My brother the chaplain is a noble priest,” D’Ailly said, his gaze darting toward his fellow cardinals. “A weapon against Lucifer stands before you, so why do we not use him?” When he turned back to Vasek, his faint smile held a touch of sadness. “Go back to your master, Chaplain Vasek, and continue to serve him with the best of your ability. But know that we are opposed to a public hearing for Hus just as we are opposed to Hus’s release. His heresy is like the plague: It moves swiftly and fatally, and we would not infect Constance with it.” His dark eyes narrowed. “Do you understand?”

  For no reason he could name, D’Ailly’s voice raised the hairs on the back of the chaplain’s neck. Slowly he nodded. “I understand completely, Your Eminence.”

  The days fell like autumn leaves from an oak tree, one after the other, indistinguishable. While the Bohemian nobles continued their efforts to obtain a hearing or release for Jan Hus, their knights chafed in uselessness. Spring greened into summer; the days ticked by with tedious monotony, but Anika knew the impasse would not last forever. Her father had always predicted that war would come, but now it appeared that the conflict would extend far beyond Bohemia’s borders. Both the forces of freedom and the warriors of Holy Mother Church were readying for battle, and the resulting clash would be heard round the world.