Bohemian Gospel

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  She picked up a horse blanket, draped it over her head and torn tunic, and took the servants’ path up to Rozemberk Keep. She was surprised to find a fire lit in her room; no one had been expecting her. Shadows danced around the room, making everything seem unfamiliar. She sat down heavily on the bed.

  She knew she could not stay. Without Nicholas here, this was not home and never could be. She should never have come back.

  And then something else erupted in Mouse, full grown and blossoming with glee, as she realized what Vok’s death meant for her. Maybe God had not forsaken her; maybe, like Job, she had finally proven herself worthy and God had shaped a future for her. Mouse could stay here, as Vok’s widow, and live a comfortable life. With Nicholas. She could have her son back. The joy of it choked her, and despite her exhaustion, she jumped up ready to dress and ride back to Prague to find Ottakar and reclaim her son.

  She had not noticed the bundle until it slid to the floor with a dull thud. Mouse almost didn’t stop to pick it up. She was eager to start the new life that God had just opened for her, but she knew that would have to wait until morning. She needed to sleep and to change. She would have to deal with the consequences of Vok’s death. And then she would travel as his widow to bring home his heir.

  So she moved to a chair closer by the fire and laid the bundle in her lap. Firelight sparkled on the silk threads of the rich fabric as she unwound the ribbon. On top lay a note and, underneath, the leather satchel that held Mother Kazi’s medical tools. The note was from Sister Kveta at the abbey. It said simply, cruelly, that Mother Kazi was dead. There was no explanation for the medical tools, but Mouse understood. They had been dear to Mother Kazi, her only treasure and a means of empowerment in a world governed by men, her secret identity hidden behind her veil. And Mother Kazi would have wanted Mouse to have them.

  Tears spilled onto the leather, staining it, as Mouse grieved for her Mother. She opened the satchel and ran her hands gently along the bone and metal tools inside, neatly tied with leather straps. Mouse had sewn these straps herself, a gift for Mother Kazi, to replace the ones that had been broken and worn.

  Mouse was alone in the world now. Except for Nicholas. But he would be enough. She would bring him here and live a quiet life. She would not be special, no one’s angel, not a saint, not marked by God with gifts to do wonders. She would just be a mother. She would watch her son grow and tell him about Mother Kazi and Father Lucas. It would be enough.

  And then she saw it—at the top of the leather satchel, poking out from the binding where the seams had torn, was Father Lucas’s breviary. He had read the Psalms to Mouse from that little book, had bid her memorize them and seemed overjoyed when she did it so quickly, after just one reading.

  As Mouse opened it, a letter fell into her lap. The portrait of herself she’d given Father Lucas as a girl, its edges worn from handling, slid out as she unfolded the parchment. The girl in the drawing was wide-eyed, and bits of unruly hair swept across her face half-hiding a soft smile.

  Mouse turned to the letter. Though the script was shaky and difficult to read, she knew Father Lucas’s hand at once. It was addressed to her.

  My little andílek,

  Forgive me. I have burned the books.

  Bishop Miklaus writes that Rome is sending someone here to Houska soon, before Easter. This troubles me.

  As I watch the ancient covers curl and turn to ash, I confess that fear drove me to lay them in the fire. The bishop from Rome will have questions. He will want what answers I have. If the books are not here, he will not ask about them.

  I pray he will ask nothing at all.

  But the Psalmist warns me—“For thou, O God, hast tested us; thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.” I know what is coming and I am ready.

  And so must you be.

  You must know who you are so you may guard yourself against the dangers without. And within.

  That night at Houska—before I died—I started to tell you about your father. But I am a coward. I wanted to keep you as my own for as long as I could.

  Please, little one, keep me in your heart as Father despite what I am about to tell you. And I beg you, do not turn your back on what is right and good. Do not turn away from who you are—for you are good, little andílek, though you may not believe it.

  Consider what others would have done with your power, how they would have used it for gain. But not you. You have only ever wished to be just a girl. You fear what you cannot find in yourself, that glow of a soul you see in others, but I tell you: I see your light shine bright and pure every day. You think of others first and yourself last. You are a healer of body and spirit, a ministering angel.

  You are my child as sure as anyone’s.

  And you belong to God.

  Even though it was His enemy who gave you life.

  Some call him Semjaza or Satariel. Others call him Abaddon, the Destroyer. The Father of Lies. Satan.

  This is what sired you. This is your father.

  But this does not frighten me. I am frightened by what others would do to you if they knew. What makes me tremble is what I fear you will do to yourself now that you know.

  Please, little one, protect yourself from harm. Guard yourself against the darkness that will come.

  Remember what the Psalmist tells us, even in the fires of torment—“Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me.”

  For my sake, little andílek, be strong and believe in your goodness as I do.

  Your loving Father.

  Mouse’s hand curled around the edges of the little girl portrait of herself; she crushed it and tossed it on the fire.

  She hated that girl and her naïve love of the world and all she met in it. She hated her for her hope and her belief in herself. That girl who shriveled in the flame was a lie. Mouse was a lie. The daughter of the Father of Lies. She was not an angel, not gifted by God as she had always believed.

  Father Lucas might have kept faith; Mouse had none.

  Her life made sense now. She was an abomination like the children born of the Watchers in the Book of Enoch; evil spirits, God had called them, demons. Of course God would hate her.

  Mouse thought of Nicholas and bit her tongue to keep from crying out. That future was dead to her now.

  Her hands shook as she put the letter back in the book and the book back in the case—just as it had been, as if it would undo what she’d read. She wrapped the satchel carefully in the bundle again, sliding her fingers over the soft silk of the ribbon, and then shoved it into her bag. She bound her broken wrist with linen she ripped from the bed, pulling it tight against the swollen skin, making it hurt. Then she went down the hall and into Vok’s room. It was empty.

  She found his hunting knife on the table by his bed and sat on the floor before the fire. She sat there for a long time twisting the knife in her hand and watching the flames dance along the blade. She was too dead to mourn anymore.

  Finally, she lifted a handful of her long hair and began to saw at it with Vok’s knife. After she was done, she gathered the pile of hair and threw it in the fire. The bitter stench made her gag as she watched the strands undulate in the heat like a mass of snakes.

  Shorn and dressed again in men’s clothes, Mouse walked past a sleeping guard at the gate. She walked beyond the edge of the castle grounds. And then, just as the sun lifted over the low rise of hills behind her, she stepped into the black of the Sumava forest.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Mouse sat on the shore of a dark lake, clenching her teeth as she dug a knife into the rotted flesh at the heel of her foot. Like the Israelites, she had been wandering in the wilderness. The Sumava forest belonged to bears and wildcats and the rare wanderer looking for the same thing Mouse had been looking for—someplace to disappear. Her hair, once shaved, now hung in matted ropes over her shoulders and down her back; this wasn’t the first time her feet had bled and blistered and turned foul.

  Mouse had been wandering th
e woods for more than fifteen years.

  After reading Father Lucas’s letter, her only thought had been to run—away from the truth of what she was, away from anyone she might hurt, far enough away that Nicholas and Ottakar would seem impossibly out of reach. She hoped distance would quell her want of them. It didn’t.

  During those early years in the forest, Mouse found herself sliding always north and east toward Prague, as if her little golden-haired boy pulled at her like some primal force calling her home. “Mama!” But then the woods would grow lighter, and she would smell the hearth fires and the livestock or hear the calls of the farmers to their wives. She would scurry like a wild thing back deeper into the Sumava. Like a leper, she needed to keep herself isolated so she would not spread her curse to anyone else, especially not to Nicholas.

  But to think of him daily, to know that he lived and yet not be able to see him or hold him or sing to him—it was more than she could bear. She feared that sooner or later she would give in and drag herself, cursed or not, to plead at Ottakar’s feet to be reunited with her son. To keep Nicholas safe, Mouse needed him gone from her as if he were dead. She tried to trick her mind into believing it, torturing herself with imagined details of tragedies that could have befallen her little boy. She imagined what his dead weight would feel like in her arms, the pallor of his skin, his mouth gone slack. She wore her grief so well, it began to feel real to her.

  She also returned to the discipline she’d learned at the abbey: solitude, silence, suffering. These were easy in the Sumava. Avoiding the trade paths, she saw no one. A stone on her tongue helped her turn from the temptation of speaking out loud when she was so desperate to hear a human voice that even her own would do. And the wilderness offered plenty of suffering—bare feet abused on rough terrain and in bitter weather, broken bones after a fall, piercing cold and frostbite, the hollow ache of nearly constant hunger.

  A chunk of dead flesh fell from the knife at her foot, bright red blood flooding the wound. Thoughtlessly, she bound her heel with a strip of cloth. It would heal soon enough with or without her ministrations, and then it would be time to walk again. After fifteen years, Mouse was sick of walking. She was sick of gathering berries and gnawing the flesh from the back of a piece of bark to silence her hunger, sick of seeking shelter from the storms. These things she did out of habit, like an animal—which was what she was. Anything human in her had been worn away by her years in the woods. She was tired. Tired of trees. Tired of skies. Tired of climbing up mountains and tired of stumbling back down them. She wanted it all to end.

  Mouse looked around the dark lake at the spruce and fir that bent themselves down, their tips reaching out over the water like penitents praying to some god at the center. The tops of the mountains stretched up around her, a giant hand holding her and the water in its palm. This would be a good place to die.

  As night fell, she lit a fire on the stony shore. The lake looked like it was full of stars, their twinkling lights reflected in the still water and bringing the impossible close to hand. Mouse drifted off, wondering if God would stretch out her life and keep her wandering in her wilderness for forty years like the Israelites. She wasn’t even halfway there. This did not make her sad; Mouse didn’t think she could feel anything anymore—not anything but tired. A last thought came to her before sleep: Perhaps God would have mercy.

  When Mouse woke the next morning, she knew immediately she was not alone. At the edge of the thick fog that lay over the lake, she could see a dark mound on the shore. The smell of the thing had woken her—a wildness made pungent in the wet air. She shifted her head slightly, trying to get a better look without alerting the thing that she was awake and aware of its presence. But it remained shapeless and unmoving. Convinced that whatever it was, it was likely dead, Mouse started to push herself up. At the first low snarl, she jumped to her feet, crouched and ready for the thing to lunge at her.

  She tensed as the mound turned and amber eyes glared at her through the heavy mist. A wolf. Its muzzle drew back with another snarl, revealing sharp fangs, the growl rumbling deep in its chest. Mouse’s heart raced, her instinct screaming at her to run before it attacked, but something stopped her. Perhaps her thoughts had been heard last night. Perhaps this was God’s mercy.

  She took a step forward, swallowing as she pictured the wolf ripping out her throat. But she held her ground, closing her eyes when she heard the ping of scattered rocks as the wolf moved. Soon. It would be soon.

  A whimper interrupted the low growl, and Mouse opened her eyes. The wolf sat on its haunches, teeth still bared, watching her warily. It was nearly starved—Mouse could see the skin sinking between each rib—and its front leg was badly broken. As she crouched, trying to study the injury, the wolf flopped onto its side, its eyes still on Mouse, but its mouth open, panting. It was done. It, too, had come to the lake to die.

  A few more days of suffering, she thought numbly, and it would all be over. She wondered if she should take mercy on it, put it out of its misery. She looked up from the wounded leg and into the wolf’s eyes. She expected the pain she saw there, but it was something else that made her catch her breath. The wolf was looking at her with hope. It wanted healing, not mercy.

  And Mouse was a healer.

  The truth of it slipped inside her and twisted, bringing tears to her eyes—the first in a long time.

  The wolf watched her cautiously as she headed into the woods, her stride purposeful and her gaze determined. When she came back, he didn’t even raise his head. Mouse pulled the linen strips from her own feet and scattered them with the crushed herbs she’d gathered. The wolf snarled again as she took its injured leg in both hands, feeling where the bone jutted out and where it was supposed to fit underneath the skin; she turned it, sliding it back in place, as the wolf yelped. Mouse splinted the leg and wrapped it with the cloth.

  They stayed by the lake, Mouse bringing him berries and bugs to eat, changing his dressing, brewing teas to fight the infection, until the wolf was able to put weight on his leg. He limped up the mountain after her, both of them stopping so he could rest, until they reached the shallow cave she’d found in an outcropping. She slept in the darkness of the cave, while he slept at the mouth, half inside, half out.

  The more he healed, the more Mouse expected him to be gone when she woke. Weeks later, when she removed the splint, he ran for the first time, not fully nor far and with a gait still favoring the leg. The next morning, he left at the sound of other wolves in the woods. When he had not come back by sunset, an unexpected regret settled on Mouse. Despondency and despair quickened in her as the sun dropped below the tree line, throwing a last shard of light onto the smooth water. In a few hours, the moon would rise and resurrect the lake in silver light, but Mouse didn’t care to watch alone.

  Later, when she felt the wolf’s warm body wriggle under her arm in the cold night, she wondered if this was her manna, her bohdan. A gift from God.

  Mouse smiled as Bohdan flopped down on the ground near the lakeside fire, his thick tongue lolling over his muzzle.

  She and Bohdan had survived two winters together, Mouse providing the heat and shelter, the wolf feeding her with squirrel and rabbit when her supply of nuts and berries ran out. Mouse had quit wondering how long he would stay or why he stayed; she was just glad he did. His acceptance of her had come at no cost with no expectation and no judgment; Mouse once again belonged to someone who loved her without fear or awe, loved her just as she was, like Nicholas had as a baby. Bohdan’s love proved a powerful healer, and Mouse came to heed Father Lucas’s last wish for her—that she not let the name of her father define her, that she believe in her own goodness. Bohdan thought her good regardless of whether the light of a soul shined in her or not. Mouse was working to see herself that way, too.

  Another part of her had also come back to life. She had started to carve again—mountain cornflower and monkshood, capercaillies and lynx; the artist in her found limitless inspiration in the primeval wood
s. She left her masterpieces scattered through the mountains, a half-smile playing on her lips as she imagined some traveler discovering them long after she was dead. She had even carved life-sized statues of the archangels—one for each of the seven peaks surrounding the lake—though she wasn’t sure if she meant them to be guardians watching over her or prison guards, Enoch’s Watchers made of wood.

  But despite her recovered skill and practice, her hand shook now as she pressed the blade against the thick log that lay between the fire and a sleeping Bohdan. It had taken Mouse days to drag the wood back to their camp. Already debarked, it was ready for her hand to shape it, but it took an act of courage and hope for her to make those first cuts, to peel away layers of the tree’s life and give birth to her art. Mouse wanted this to be her greatest work, the only marker she would leave as a testament to her own life—a statue of a little boy made of golden aspen.

  She worked by firelight through the night, Nicholas’s face emerging from the wood by the time she lay down her knife and rubbed her sore fingers. She hadn’t thought about him this way in a long time; after so many years of picturing him dead to harden her heart, it was difficult to think of him happy and still hers. She tossed a handful of shavings onto the fire and then took a longer limb to stoke the flame. The sun would be up soon, another beginning. And an ending. Tonight was Walpurgis Night and Mouse meant to burn a witch. She had carried the straw-witch she’d made at Hluboka with her all these years. Still smeared with her blood, it was shriveled and gray with age. The grass doll had come to signify everything Mouse hated about herself, and tonight she would rid herself of it.

  As the first pale light slid over the mountain, she tossed the straw-witch on the flame, not to burn away the darkness so much as to destroy her fear of it. The fire curled and blackened the skirt and arms, and Mouse’s eyes stung with sadness for the little doll. Then, as the flame licked at the blood-stained chest, she cried out in pain. Bohdan woke with a yelp as Mouse fell, arms wrapped around herself, writhing on the ground like she was burning, too. The power in her, quelled by Mouse’s discipline during the years of wandering, twisted and reared as if it were in the throes of death. Bohdan circled her frantically, whimpering, until the straw-witch turned to ash and fell apart and Mouse grew quiet.