Bohemian Gospel

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  “Ate something not right by my guess, my Lady,” Gitta offered as she knelt to clean up the mess on the floor.

  Mouse agreed; most everything she ate last night was “not right.” Today she would fast, but first she wanted some mint to settle the nausea.

  The sun was not yet fully up when she slipped through the Black Tower gate and into the fog-covered woods near the castle. Her bare feet stung against the cold ground; Mouse stopped, bent her head, and let herself focus on the pain—pain as penance for yesterday’s indulgence. She laid her hand against a tree as another wave of queasiness took her, but it was more than just her stomach that caused it. She was embarrassed as she recalled what Ottakar had said; she didn’t want all the men looking at her, but she very much liked that he had been one of those who couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had heard the desire in his voice, and it had called to her own.

  Mouse wrapped the mantle more tightly around her and walked farther into the woods. For the first time in days, she relaxed, whistling back to the birds, running her hands along the smooth bark of the trees. She heard a small creek in the distance and made her way toward it, stopping to grab a handful of mint on the way. She squatted near the water, more careful than usual to keep her knees up and hem clear of the mud as she rinsed the leaves in the water and then put them in her mouth, chewing to release the sweet coolness that would calm her stomach.

  She was cresting a small hill when she saw the men hunched back against an outcropping. A deer was strung up from a tree and another two lay on the ground.

  Mouse wondered why she hadn’t smelled the blood. Even now her nose burned with mint though she could see the men covered in red, see the blood pouring like a waterfall from the deer’s slit throat. Two of the men steadied the hanging carcass as a third hacked at the thin tissue between flesh and skin. At first Mouse thought they were Ottakar’s men, but then she noticed their worn clothing, ragged hair and beards, haggard faces—peasants or thieves poaching the king’s deer.

  They’d be strung up for the crows to eat if they were caught. Mouse didn’t care about the law, actually thought it unjust and cruel, but the men wouldn’t know that if they saw her; they would be sure she meant to turn them in.

  Mouse eased back from the crest of the hill. She made no sound.

  But one man turned his face up anyway.

  Mouse bolted, pulling her skirts up as she could, and ran toward the castle. She heard the crunch of the fallen leaves and bracken as the men gave chase.

  “Catch her before she brings the king’s men down on us!” one of them yelled.

  She wove between the trees and underbrush easily except for her gown, which kept snagging and slowing her. She paused to rip the silk free, and as she turned to run again, Luka stepped out from behind a fir.

  “Ah, I found you. The guard said you had come—”

  “Go, go!” Mouse was pushing him, trying to turn him back toward the castle, but then she jerked backward. One of the men had grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked. She landed hard on her back, her head slamming into the ground, and for a moment she could not see. She heard sounds of fighting, but she was being dragged away from them. And then a knee was pressing on her chest and a hand closed around her throat.

  “My lads Belch and Toad’ll gut Master Pisspants back there while I wet my cock. Maybe I slit your throat before they take a turn.” He reeked of deer blood and sour breath. Mouse tried to turn her head, but the weight of him was crushing her. She couldn’t breathe.

  He shifted, clawing at her skirts with one hand and digging his fingers into the skin and cloth at her chest with the other. As he moved, Mouse twisted hard to the side away from him and then pushed up, throwing him off balance. She scrambled to get her footing, but she was too slow, and he was on her again. She planted her feet and threw herself back against him, but he was ready for her this time. His arms clamped around her, and he used his weight to shove her facedown into the dirt.

  Mouse spit blood and bracken from her mouth and let her body go limp. He was too big. She could not fight him. Not with her body. She turned her focus inward. Her nostrils flared as she reached deep and loosed the tickle of power in her throat.

  And then the man let her go.

  As she spun, she could see him scrambling off into the woods, and she put a hand to her mouth. She had not said a word. Was she able to command with a thought? And then she heard something behind her. Crouching, she turned and saw Luka, holding a sword covered in blood, running to her. He must have scared the man off.

  “My Lady, are you hurt? Did he—” Luka knelt beside her.

  She shook her head, running her hand along her face down to her chest, and realized that her gown had torn, exposing a breast. She fumbled at the cloth, trying to cover herself, but Luka kept grabbing at her arms as he tried to help her up. She couldn’t stand his breath on her face. His nearness. Him touching her.

  She pushed him away and pulled at her gown again. “You must not see!” The scream burned her throat.

  And then Luka’s sword was falling and he was clawing at his eyes, a high whine of panic slipping from his mouth as he dropped to his knees.

  “What is it?” she cried as she crawled to him, her body shaking with shock.

  She pulled at Luka’s hands, trying to see where he was hurt, but he fought her, spittle dripping from between his own hands as they shielded his face.

  She finally managed to wrestle one of his hands away for just a moment, and she saw his opened eye.

  It was covered in milky white like someone had poured hot wax over it.

  Mouse shoved herself away from him, wrapping her arms over her head as she cried. “What did I say? God, what did I say?”

  And then it came to her, loud and shrill—You must not see! That’s what she’d told Luka. But she didn’t understand. She hadn’t said it as a command. They were just words spoken out of fear—like when she had told the town boy to leave her alone. The boy who had left and never come back.

  “No,” she whimpered as she bent again to the ground, weighted with guilt. “It cannot be. I never meant—”

  A branch snapped.

  Snot and tears and blood dripped from her chin, and she raked her sleeve across it, leaving a nasty grin in its place as she looked into the face of the man who had tried to rape her. Mouse had never hated anyone before, but she let it run through her, burn her. “You came back.”

  “Heard a bit of trouble, I did,” the deer-slayer said as he took another step toward the curled and writhing Luka. “Sounded like a chance to come back and rid myself of some worry. If you two be dead and poor Belch and Toad, who’s left to talk of me?” He started to reach toward the knife at his waist, but Mouse was faster. She grabbed Luka’s sword and stuck it in the man’s gut, letting go of the hilt as he fell backward. She watched him shred his hands as he tried again and again to pull the blade free. And then he was still.

  Mouse crawled back over to Luka and laid her head on his back, trying to stop him from shaking, but she was shaking, too.

  She didn’t know who it was who lifted her from the forest floor. She didn’t care.

  Mouse had killed one man and blinded another.

  TEN

  Mouse rolled herself into a ball on the bed. She would not speak, not even to Ottakar. She was too afraid of what might happen.

  She wanted Father Lucas.

  It had been three days since the attack, and she had not eaten nor slept. Her tongue swelled from where she had chewed at it, bitten it until the blood poured down the back of her throat. She was too frightened of Hell to kill herself, but she must pay penance for what she had done. She had often treated cuts left by the whips the Sisters flung across their backs, or salved the inflamed, raw skin left from the hair shirts worn for weeks until they stuck in the blisters they made and crusted over. Mouse had learned the lesson well: Pain was penance and the righteous must not forget that they lived in a state of sin as well as a state of grace. She might not
ever reap the grace, but Mouse certainly sowed the sin.

  The door opened. She knew who it was. She had learned the sound of his footfall in the hall; it was always accompanied by the tinkle and clank of armed guards, four if Mouse’s ears could be trusted. She wondered what the new danger to him might be, but when the question rose in her mouth, she sank her teeth into her lips. She was far more dangerous than anything his guard might shield him from; she could kill him with a word.

  “My Lord,” Gitta said quietly from the other side of the room.

  Ottakar laid his hand on Mouse’s shoulder. “Will you please talk to me, Mouse?”

  She lay still until he left.

  She must have fallen asleep. It was dark outside, the fire in her room nothing but embers and a flicker now and then as the air stirred. Something had woken her.

  Mouse sat up quickly, scanning the room for the dark creatures but saw nothing. She looked over to Gitta’s pallet, but the girl was not there. And then she heard the scream.

  She snatched her mantle and jumped to her feet; stars exploded in her eyes and the room spun. She put her hand out to the bed, steadying herself until the dizziness passed—consequences of a lack of food and days spent in bed. She needed to move more slowly. As she took a step toward the door, it opened. Ottakar was there in the hall, holding a candle, but it was Damek who came to her.

  “Please. My wife . . . she needs you.”

  Mouse could feel his fear. She nodded, grabbing her leather bag from the table and following him as he rushed down the hallway.

  The room sweltered with heat from the fire and candles. Lady Harrach lay still on the bed. Mouse went to her, putting a hand on her forehead. Gitta closed the door, leaving the men in the hall.

  “The baby?” Lady Harrach asked.

  “He lives,” Mouse said. She could hear the baby’s heartbeat. It raced and then slowed to a near stop with the contractions. She turned to the midwife.

  “Turned wrong, it is,” the old woman said. “There is no hope.”

  “I will get it out,” Mouse whispered.

  She gave Gitta and the midwife quiet orders for what she needed as she took her tools from her bag, laid them on the bed, and cleaned them with wine. Mouse climbed over the footboard and straddled Lady Harrach’s legs while the other two women held the Lady’s arms. Mouse hesitated as she looked down on the smooth, creamy skin. She had seen the bloody effects of Happy Vilém’s attempts to cut out a baby; no one lived.

  Mouse shook herself and then made the cuts quickly, first the skin in a widening red line down the stomach and then the muscle underneath, until she saw the womb, which tightened like a squeezing fist. Lady Harrach screamed and writhed.

  But as the contraction passed, the baby did not move. Mouse could not hear its heartbeat.

  She cut through the uterine tissue quickly; a tiny blue hand popped out as Mouse slid her own through the opening and under the baby’s shoulders, gently pulling him out. His lips were blue, his chest still, and the knotty cord wrapped twice around his neck. Mouse ran her fingers behind the slimy rope and eased it over his head until he was free.

  It was too quiet in the room. Lady Harrach had passed out from the pain.

  Mouse crawled back down the footboard, cradling the bloody infant against her chest and trailing the umbilical cord behind him. She crouched on the floor, laying him in her lap on his side; his limp arms flopped against his chest. She slid her finger in his mouth, dragging out thick fluid, and rubbed his back with her other hand.

  She waited.

  He did not breathe.

  Mouse shook with anger and grief. She would not let this happen. She needed this baby to live.

  “Breathe,” she whispered in the baby’s ear, letting her power lace her words.

  But nothing happened.

  Mouse’s hands closed around the baby’s chest, holding him to her own. She didn’t know she was crying until the salt burned her tongue as she licked her lips.

  A guttural moan built in her chest as she rocked the baby.

  “You will live.” The power erupted in her throat, and the words spewed out in a gasp.

  The baby wailed, filling his lungs, and his hands and feet and lips slowly turned the same dusky pink that had blanketed Teplá the day Mouse left. After tying and cutting the cord, she stood slowly and handed the crying baby to the laughing midwife.

  Mouse had more work to do. Pulling gently at the cut cord as she watched the womb contract, she delivered the afterbirth, and then bent over the incision. Her fingers were stiff and aching by the time she tied off the last stitch, but she refused to let the other women take over the cleaning and bandaging. Penance, she thought, the muscles in her back spasming as she stood.

  The midwife gave Lady Harrach sips of chamomile and comfrey tea; Gitta cleaned the baby and laid him beside his mother. The bedclothes were soaked in blood, like in the mural on Mouse’s wall at Teplá, like at her own birth, but this time both mother and child lived. Mouse wondered how different her life might be if this had happened for her, too; she wondered if saving this mother and child might somehow give her another chance for a happy ending.

  “Come see the baby,” Gitta said.

  Mouse shook her head. The picture was too full of joy, the baby too new and clean, innocent. She walked out of the room, tears in her eyes.

  “Oh, God, no,” Damek said as he saw her bloody mantle.

  “You have a son. Your wife lives.” She let him throw his arms around her. “Let the midwife clean up and then you can go in.”

  “Thank you, my Lady.”

  “Thank God,” she said as she pulled away.

  Ottakar had been leaning against the wall behind Damek with guards on either side of him. As he turned to walk beside her, he glanced at Mouse but said nothing. She stopped after a few steps. Her teeth chattered as her body shook from exhaustion. She buried her face in her hands, turning toward Ottakar, who pulled her to him.

  She only cried a little. “I am tired,” she mumbled into his chest.

  “Sit,” he said. And so they sat on the floor near the landing of the stairs. The hall was dark except for a flickering candle on a sconce in the wall.

  Mouse laid her head against her knees as she pulled them to her chest. They were sticky with blood, but she didn’t care.

  “I killed the man,” Mouse said. The confession she really wanted to make was what she had done to Luka and to the baby and to the squirrel, but she was too afraid.

  “You saved Luka,” Ottakar said softly.

  “No. Luka was brave.” She ran her fingers in her hair. “He told me not to go walking in the woods alone. I thought I . . . it was all my fault.”

  “It was the dead man’s fault,” he said angrily. “A thief and a . . . Mouse, did he—”

  She shook her head.

  One of the guards shifted, reminding Mouse of the question she’d wanted to ask earlier and giving her a chance to change the conversation.

  “Why the extra guards? Someone else try to kill you?”

  Ottakar chuckled. “No. But someone did try to kill my father.”

  “Your father is here?”

  “No. On his way back from Austria, he stopped at Rozemberk Castle. Vok’s father is a friend to mine. It was there that it happened—poison. But my father still lives. Now Vok insists on making a servant taste my food and drink.”

  “Lord Rozemberk is back?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I had sent him to Plzen to talk to Gernandus’s family and to look for Evzen. He found him. You were right. Evzen is dead. Vok was returning to Prague when he found you in the woods. He heard the—”

  “Lord Rozemberk found me? I owe him my thanks, then.” She was not pleased with the obligation, especially since she also bore the guilt for blinding his nephew. “Where is Lord Rozemberk?” She laid her head back against the wall, closing her eyes.

  “Interrogating Lord Olomouc, I imagine. He has been at it for days. It seems that it was Olomouc who tried to p
oison my father and paid Gernandus to kill me. But he has yet to admit it. He is secretly a Slavnik, a family that has been long-time enemies to mine. We thought we had killed them all. We will finish that task soon enough. Vok wants to get names of any other conspirators first.”

  Mouse shuddered again. She imagined what methods of torture Lord Rozemberk used, and she doubted that his sole ambition was to garner information.

  Mouse still kept mostly to her room the next day, letting Ottakar’s visits and Gitta’s chatty gossip ease her back into the world. She missed the public torture and eventual beheading of Lord Olomouc, though everyone still seemed festive at week’s end when she went down to the Great Hall. Mouse got her chance to thank Lord Rozemberk, which she did quickly. Trying to apologize for what happened to his nephew hurt more.

  “How is Luka?”

  “He is resting with the Brothers at Strahov.”

  “And he is recovering?”

  “Why? Are you so great a healer that you can recover him his sight?”

  Mouse felt the sting. She deserved it and much worse. “He was very brave.”

  “And you were very stupid.”

  “That is enough, Vok,” Ottakar said. He took Mouse’s hand, turning it so that her arm lay on his. “It was not your fault,” he said, leaning toward her.

  Mouse wanted to argue with him, but she was still afraid of herself, of accidentally unleashing her power with the wrong words, so she kept quiet, laid her head back against the chair and focused on the soft, warm pulse of Ottakar’s wrist resting against the underside of her forearm.

  Since the attack, she had not wanted anyone to touch her, flinching when Gitta helped her dress, holding herself tightly like a coiled snake, but the rawness of Ottakar’s skin on hers, simple and safe, made her hungry for more.

  “I sent your bracelet with one of the Brothers from Strahov,” he said. “He was traveling to the university in Paris. I asked him to have someone there look at it. He should be there by now. Soon enough we will have answers about your family.” She wanted to ask questions, but her words got caught in the tightness of her throat. All she could think about was how Ottakar was running his thumb along her wrist. The future that spilled out in her mind danced with her desire and left her breathless.