The Silver Sword

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  She lowered her pen, an idea slowly germinating within her. Jan Hus would never be defeated. They might take his life, they might destroy his body, but his soul and intellect lived on in the pages of his books! And books traveled as far as the wings of the morning, especially when released in a university city like Prague. She could earn a living copying and renting Hus’s works, supporting herself and enlightening souls at the same time.

  Her father and Petrov would have approved this plan. Maybe, she thought, her lips twisting in a wry smile, even Lord John would approve, providing she gave up her knight’s armor.

  She gave herself a stern mental shake. She loved writing, and she believed in Hus’s work, but she was not yet ready to give up her sword and surcoat. She had worked too hard to become a knight, and she would not surrender her silver sword as long as evil prelates like D’Ailly held control over Bohemia. She had sworn to take vengeance, and she would not be denied.

  She shook her fanciful ideas from her head and picked up her pen again, then dipped it in the inkwell. She and Jan Hus had both been set on an irrevocable course. They had no choice but to follow the path to whatever lay ahead.

  On July 5, the Friday after St. Procopius, John prepared to obey a command which had come to him from Sigismund the day before. He, Lord Venceslas of Duba, and four bishops were to visit Jan Hus and see if the preacher could be convinced to recant. This would be the emperor’s final effort on Hus’s behalf, John realized. That thought rose above all others, killing any hope of joy.

  Shortly after John and the others arrived at the prison, a pair of guards brought a pitifully bedraggled Hus out to them. Hus’s hands were shackled behind his back, his beard untrimmed and foul, his hair matted. But he walked between his jailers in an attitude of self-command and studied relaxation, and John felt his heart twist in a feeling akin to envy. Would he conduct himself nearly as well if he found himself on trial for his faith?

  Jan stood before him, his deep brown eyes large and surrounded by dark shadows.

  “Look, Master Hus,” John began, goaded by frustration and a desire to preserve his dear friend’s life, “we are laymen and know not how to advise you; therefore see if you feel yourself guilty in anything of that which is charged against you. Do not fear to be instructed therein and to recant. But,” John struggled to maintain an even, conciliatory tone, “if indeed you do not feel guilty of those things charged against you, follow the dictates of your conscience. Under no circumstances do anything against your conscience or lie in the sight of God; but rather be steadfast until death in what you know to be the truth.”

  It was a fitting time and place for tears, and Hus hung his head and wept them. Slowly, humbly, he answered: “Lord John, be sure that if I knew that I had written or preached anything erroneous against the law and against the Holy Mother Church, I would desire humbly to recant it—God is my witness! I have ever desired to be shown better and more relevant Scripture than those I have written and taught. And if they were shown me, I am ready most willingly to recant.”

  One of the bishops sneered. “See how obstinate he is in his heresy?” The prelate gestured to the guard. “Take him back to his cell. This matter is finished.”

  The guards pulled on Hus’s arm, turning him, but the preacher’s gaze caught and held John’s. “Remember you the Goose!” Hus said, looking at John with a smile hidden in his eyes. “Go with God, my friend.”

  As he turned to leave, John clenched his hands into hard fists, fighting back his own tears of anger and frustration. Now, at least, he understood some of the passion that filled Anika’s heart. If he did not take care, he would soon be as vengeful as that little knight.

  But the prayer inscribed in Hus’s last letter sustained him. O holy Christ, Hus had written, draw us after you. We are weak, and if you do not draw us, we cannot follow you. Give us a strong and willing spirit, and when the weakness of the flesh appears, let Your Grace go on before us, accompany, and follow us. For without you we can do nothing, least of all suffer a cruel death for your sake. Grant a willing spirit, a fearless heart, true faith, steadfast hope, perfect love, that for your sake we may, with patience and joy, surrender our lives. Amen.

  On Saturday morning, July 6, the archbishop of Riga led Master Jan Hus to the cathedral of the city of Constance. Inside the cathedral, a general session of the prelates had convened with Emperor Sigismund presiding. The archbishop accompanying Hus had to wait outside the building while mass was being celebrated within, for no incorrigible heretic could be present where the sacred body of the Lord was being consumed.

  Anika, dressed in her armor, stood outside the cathedral with the other knights of Chlum. The brooding sorrow present within each of them seemed to spawn and spread until it mingled with a million sorrows of past and present. Watching Master Hus’s tired face, Anika wondered if she would ever feel joy again.

  At the conclusion of the high mass, the archbishop led Jan Hus into the cathedral. At once, the massive crowd surged forward behind him. This assembly was open to anyone who wanted to attend, for the Council wanted to demonstrate in public the fate which awaited heretics.

  Lord John had said little to her all morning, yet Anika stayed close to his side. She did not want to suffer alone. A future without Jan Hus seemed dark and dim indeed. Of all the Bohemians, she, Lord John, and Peter Mladenovic had been closest to Master Hus, probably because they spent so much time listening to and transcribing his thoughts.

  Anika crowded into a pew, then gasped when she saw Hus kneeling upon a small temporary platform in the center of the church. Next to him on the platform stood a table laden with a priest’s vestments. Hus was praying silently, the marks of suffering clearly evident upon his ashen face. Anika had never seen his cheeks so sunken, his limbs so weak and trembling. But his eyes, when he lifted his head, flashed with an unbroken spirit.

  The heretic’s platform rose from a sea of gold and purple and red robes, finery worn by the prelates. Sigismund sat on a throne near the high altar, his courtiers clad in splendid armor and nodding plumes. The treacherous Cardinal D’Ailly was also present, garbed in an ornate cassock and wearing a jeweled miter. Before this spangled gathering Hus rose to his feet in silent poverty, his poor brown robe soiled and worn.

  Eager to begin, the Bishop of Lodi offered a short and nonsensical sermon on the text “that the body of sin might be destroyed.” A second bishop then read a report of the council’s past proceedings, including the articles cited as heretical from Hus’s writings. As another prelate read the articles, Hus tried to explain his views but was immediately commanded to remain silent.

  Anika stared in a paralysis of astonishment when one of the bishops charged that Hus had claimed to be a fourth member of the Godhead. “Name the doctor who testified that against me!” Hus objected, stunned.

  The bishop looked up and frowned. “There is no need that he be named now.”

  Hus shook his head. “Be it far from me, a miserable wretch, that I should want to name myself the fourth person of the Godhead, for that has never entered my heart. I unswervingly assert that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, one essence, and a trinity of persons.”

  On and on the charges went, ranging from minute twistings of Hus’s words to blatantly ridiculous claims. At the conclusion of the list, Hus looked directly at Emperor Sigismund and reminded everyone present how he had come to Constance: “I came to this council freely, having the safe conduct of the lord king here present, desiring to show my innocence and to give account of my faith.”

  The flush on the emperor’s face receded, leaving two red spots on his pale cheeks.

  Anika felt Lord John stiffen beside her, then heard his whisper, tense and clipped: “This emperor is a disgrace. If honor were banished from every other home, it ought to find a refuge in the heart of kings.”

  When all the articles had been read, an aged Italian prelate proclaimed the formal sentence of condemnation. Hus’s writings, both in Latin and Bohem
ian, were to be committed to the flames. Hus himself was declared to be a true and manifest heretic, to be delivered over to the secular authorities for punishment.

  At this point, Hus knelt and prayed with a stentorian voice that echoed through the vast cathedral: “Lord Jesus, I implore you, forgive mine enemies! You know that they have borne false witness against me. Forgive them for your boundless mercy’s sake!”

  At the sound of his prayer, Cardinal D’Ailly burst out in loud, sardonic laughter.

  “Sir Kafka,” Lord John whispered, leaning so that his arm nudged Anika’s shoulder, “Perhaps you should leave now.”

  “No,” she answered, staring at Master Hus’s helpless form. “I will remain until it is over.”

  “It will not be easy to bear,” her master answered, unspoken pain alive and glowing in his eyes. “I have never seen one of these trials, but I know there is great suffering to come.”

  “We will bear it together, then,” Anika answered, sliding her hand to the hilt of her sword. The smooth coldness of the metal against her palm gave her little comfort. No matter what they did to her friend, when war came, she would make them pay—beginning with Cardinal D’Ailly, who was now smiling at Hus, his bulging cheeks reducing his eyes to sparkling black circles.

  Upon the platform, the cardinals had begun the cruelest and most bizarre ritual Anika could have imagined. Hus was commanded to array himself in the priestly vestments upon the table, then a chalice and paten were placed in his hands. As Hus held the containers for the wine and bread used in Holy Communion, he was once again exhorted to recant. Facing the vast crowd, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said in a trembling voice, “Behold, these bishops demand that I shall recant and abjure. I fear to do this. For, if I complied, I would be false in the eyes of God and sin against my own conscience and divine truth.”

  He looked out at the crowd with determination in the jut of his bearded chin. “There is another reason why I cannot recant. I would thereby not only offend the many souls to whom I have proclaimed the gospel, but others also who are preaching it in all faithfulness.”

  The prelates called him down from the platform. Through a blur of tears Anika saw them wrest the cup from his hands, then the paten. With each of the other vestments they removed from him—the stole, the chasuble, the alb—they pronounced a curse. And each time, Hus humbly and gladly embraced their defamations for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Anika blinked in astonished silence as the bishops then began to argue about how they should obliterate Hus’s tonsure, the mark of the priest. Some wished to shave his head with a razor, others insisted that cutting it with scissors would be enough. In the midst of the bedlam, Hus turned to the emperor and called in a loud voice, “Look, these bishops cannot even agree in this vilification!”

  Without hesitation, D’Ailly himself strode forward with scissors, disfiguring Hus’s tonsure by cutting his hair to the scalp in four places—right, left, front, and back. When his tonsure had been thus distorted, another prelate gleefully lifted up a paper crown which had been painted with a picture of three horrible devils about to seize a soul and tear it with their claws. When he had placed the crown on Hus’s head, he called out, “We commit your soul to the devil!”

  At this Hus lifted both hands to heaven: “And I commit it to the most merciful Lord Jesus Christ.” His voice wasn’t much above a whisper, but the effect was as great as if he’d shouted. Of the paper crown, he said, “My Lord Jesus Christ, on account of me, a miserable wretch, bore a much heavier and harsher crown of thorns. Being innocent, he was deemed deserving of the most shameful death. Therefore I, a miserable wretch and sinner, will humbly bear this much lighter.”

  A mayhem of noise ripped the air and seemed to vibrate the very foundations of the cathedral. Many of the cardinals, furious at their inability to coerce this stalwart scholar, pounded their pews and vented their fury while Hus remained solid and unbending through the cacophony. Anika saw two or three cardinals, however, staring in silent pity and despair, their countenances marked by lines of heart-sickness and weariness. Not all the cardinals were evil, she realized with a pang of remorse. But far too many of this panel had been infected with Cardinal D’Ailly’s malice and jealousy.

  At the sight of Hus’s lonely form, Anika’s face twisted. Her eyes closed tight to trap the sudden rush of tears, but there were too many. They streamed from her lashes down her cheeks, dripping onto her clasped hands.

  When she opened her eyes again, Hus had disappeared from the platform and Lord John was tugging at her elbow. “They have taken him out to the churchyard,” he said, his voice—like her nerves—in tatters.

  Without question, she rose and followed him.

  Thirty-Two

  A stream of spectators—Hus’s supporters, enemies, and a few folk who were merely curious—followed the preacher. His executioners led him through the churchyard where at that moment a group of prelates were setting fire to a collection of Hus’s books. Lord John felt his spine stiffen as the tongues of flame lapped at the parchments. How many hours, how much sacrifice had gone into those books! A scribe like Anika had labored to produce them, a saint like Hus had labored to live them. And now they would be paid for with a martyr’s blood.

  John turned and lifted his head, trying to see over the crowd to catch a glimpse of Hus. The gaudy heretic’s cap was easy to spot, for it rose nearly eighteen inches over Hus’s head, and John felt his heart leap when he found the face he had been seeking. Hus was watching the fire with an expression of pained tolerance, then suddenly his countenance brightened in a smile. Had Hus seen him? John wondered. Or had his grief been lessened by a comforting touch from the Holy Spirit? Perhaps he had remembered that though his books might be destroyed at Constance, many more remained in Prague and throughout the castles of Bohemia.

  The procession did not linger long at the churchyard, but continued to a quiet meadow known as the Bròhl. John saw the executioner’s stake and stopped abruptly, anger and fear knotting inside him. Why, God, has it come to this?

  Talk wrapped around him like water around a rock, but John ignored it all as his eyes fastened on his friend. When Hus first neared the stake, the buzz of conversation from the crowd ceased as he knelt and began to pray. In a resonant voice, Hus recited the Thirty-first and Fifty-first Psalms with such great emotion that the people around him wept. John overheard one man whisper to his companion, “I did not know how he acted or what he said formerly, but now in truth I know that he prays and speaks with holy words.”

  As the executioner commanded Hus to rise, the preacher urged all who watched not to believe that he in any way held, preached, or taught the articles with which he had been charged by false witnesses.

  John felt his face burn in humiliation when the guards then stripped Hus of all clothing but the horrid heretic’s hat. As a choir of innocent sparrows sang in the trees bordering the meadow, the executioners tied Hus to the thick wooden stake with wet ropes, his hands behind his back. Then another man placed a blackened chain around Hus’s neck.

  In the midst of these dire ministrations, John saw another smile light Hus’s face. “The Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer and Savior, was bound by a harder and heavier chain,” he said, his dark eyes roving over the crowd. “And I, a miserable wretch, am not ashamed to bear being bound for His name by this one.”

  The executioners stacked two bundles of wood under Master Hus’s shackled feet. Systematically, the guards emptied two cartloads of wood and hay, piling the bundles around Hus’s body to the level of his chin.

  Before the fire was kindled, Sigismund’s imperial marshal, Hoppe of Poppenheim, approached to offer Hus one final chance to recant his preaching and teaching. But Hus, looking up to heaven, answered resolutely: “God is my witness.” His voice rang over the gathering and echoed on the wind. “Those things that are falsely ascribed to me I have never taught or preached. The principal intention of my preaching and of all my other acts or writings was solely to
turn men from sin. And in that truth of the Gospel I wrote, taught, and preached, I am willing gladly to die today.”

  Forgetting herself, Anika clasped Lord John’s arm and hid her face in his cloak. She heard the crackling of the flames, smelled the acrid scent of burning hay and wood, and listened in stunned disbelief as Hus’s song lifted above the roaring inferno: “Christ, son of the living God, have mercy upon us,” he sang in Bohemian. “Christ, son of the living God, have mercy upon me.”

  Flinching at the sound of her beloved friend’s voice, she lifted her eyes. The wood around Master Hus seemed to thirst for the flames that beset it. “Even so, my soul thirsts for you,” she murmured, recalling a Scripture verse Hus had often quoted in his writings.

  The flames leaped upon the straw with fiendish exuberance, but she could no longer see Master Hus. Around her several people murmured the “Our Father” as an incantation against evil. But Anika turned her back on the sight and rested her hand on Lord John’s strong shoulder as she resisted the nauseating sinking of despair.

  This battle was over. The cardinals had won again, and this time they would not be satisfied with mere murder. The executioners would pull the charred body down and add more wood, burning Hus’s remains until not even a bone was recognizable. Then the ashes would be strewn into the lake. The Church did not want any remnant of Jan Hus to remain, nothing that could serve as a relic or a bit of inspiration to those who sought the truth.

  The council, the clergy, the corrupt church had claimed another innocent soul—but they did not know about the books … or Anika’s sword.

  “Jan Hus,” she murmured, wondering how one horizon could look so peaceful while the opposite skyline boiled with fury and shame, “exustus non convictus. Burned but not convicted.” Her hand gripped the hilt of her sword. “Murdered, but not forgotten.”