The abbot ultimately decided it was God’s will to protect the innocent, and he said nothing to the Spanish priest. Though the Jesuit order was a staunch supporter of the crown and the Catholic Hapsburgs, the Krumlov priests could not bring themselves to betray one of their own and give comfort to Don Julius.
The Jesuits knew how to guard secrets.
Abbot Prochazka felt he owed his allegiance above all to God, then to Bohemia, not Rudolf II. The king’s obsession with the occult had left a sour taste in the abbot’s mouth. Better to protect an innocent girl than please a Hapsburg and bring about her certain death. Abbot Prochazka believed there was a higher reckoning in heaven than the judgment of the Hapsburg dynasty here on earth. If God had spared the girl’s life, He must have another plan for her.
Abbot Prochazka sighed, remembering his boyhood. Marketa’s aunt, Ludmilla of the Poor Clares, had been his childhood sweetheart, before she renounced him one night and took her vows. There was a special aura about Ludmilla that had passed to her niece. Marketa had been spared by divine intervention, of this the abbot was certain.
Abbot Prochazka was not convinced that Carlos Felipe would feel the same way. He thought the priest worked a bit too hard to cultivate favor with royalty, and the fact that he had once been confessor to the Spanish court of Felipe II made the abbot doubt his commitment to God’s work among the poor and innocent. Abbot Prochazka doubted that the Spanish priest would protect a simple Krumlovian girl, a bathmaid. Her fate would seem inconsequential to him in the great chess game of European politics and religion.
On the next occasion when the two priests met to discuss Don Julius’s soul, Abbot Prochazka mentioned nothing about Marketa’s plummet from Rozmberk Castle.
Under the leaking roof of the Poor Clares convent, Mother Superior Ludmilla Pichlerova was confined to bed. The old nuns whispered this disease had been long in coming, for her rattling coughs had echoed ominously through the convent for months.
As the summer days shortened toward autumn, the nuns knew she had little time left on this earth. They were certain she would not make it through these last hard winter months before God called her to Him.
Ludmilla coughed continuously, spitting up bright blood. She was so weak she could barely sit up for the nuns to spoon-feed her broth brewed of pork bones and marjoram. She invited her brother to visit her often, even though the rules of the convent prohibited men. As she was the mother superior and the other nuns, the Jesuit abbot, and the church priests made no trouble about her requests, her brother, Zigmund Pichler, spent many an hour by her sickbed.
“And how goes the healing process with Marketa?” she asked, as her own health diminished day by day.
“Splendidly, dear Ludmilla.”
“Ah, that is good.”
Ludmilla’s brother twisted his beard between his fingers.
“You know I only wanted the best for her. To protect her from the raging lunatic—that is why I brought her here.”
Ludmilla nodded weakly, a slow rocking of her head in rhythm to her ragged breath.
“Of course, Brother. You did what a good father should. You tried to protect and defend your daughter.”
Ludmilla struggled to focus her fever-glazed eyes on her brother, for she thought she heard a sob cracking his voice. When she reached her hand for his face, she touched his cheek, hot and wet with tears.
“Oh, Sister! I was a bad father, a selfish fiend! I let my wife sell her to a patron to procure gold and feed the twins better cuts of meat! I used the money earned by her body to purchase books!”
“I know,” said Ludmilla, turning her eyes toward her statue of the Holy Virgin on a shelf on the wall. She considered the saint’s forgiving smile, a woman who mourned her son but nevertheless faithfully protected wretched humanity and heard their prayers. Christ’s mother lived her entire life among the sinners, but she spends eternity forgiving them, her kind love intervening in their despair.
Sinners—humanity. Ludmilla heaved a sigh from the depths of her lungs, striking a sharp pain in her chest. She winced, clutching her breast. After a few shallow breaths, she composed herself to speak again.
“The nuns told me that the brewer was her patron,” she said. “They said she would lose her virtue to him if we did not intervene. I, too, wanted to protect her and bring her into our flock.” She looked toward the faint light that strayed through the leaded window, playing on the gray stones. This time of year, the sun offered only the weakest rays of sunlight to the Bohemian lands.
“You know my time is near, Zigmund,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I am called to meet Jesus and his Father, our God.”
Her brother sniffed back his tears, realizing what she was saying and wanting to be stronger for his sister, as strong as she was at this moment.
“Let Annabella brew a cure for you, Sister. She has cured even the sickest among us!”
“No,” said Ludmilla, coughing. She dabbed a white linen cloth to her white lips. “Annabella would look at me and ask me if I wanted to be cured, if I had a dream to pursue. I have heard of her ways. My dream is to meet Jesus our Lord and Savior. I am on that path.”
Pichler grasped his sister’s frail hand across the coarse woolen blanket. He was amazed how fine and white her skin remained, even after so many years. There were no wrinkles on the creamy skin that had rarely seen the sun or wind and snow, sheltered for a lifetime within the walls of the convent.
“We will not dwell on my future in the other world,” she said, “but in this world we live in, you and I. There is something I wish. It will shock you, I am sure. But hear me, I am adamant about this.”
“What, dear Sister? I promise you, I swear to you. Anything you wish,” said Pichler.
Ludmilla lifted her free hand to her eyebrow and scratched it, her arm trembling.
“Truly. You would swear?”
“I swear it.”
She let her hand fall, exhausted from lifting it to her face. She cleared her throat as she reached for the handkerchief on the coverlet. Pichler winced as crimson drops stained the linen.
“I want to give my body to your science, to Marketa and to you to further your investigation of anatomy.”
“Never!” said Pichler, his spine stiffening in revulsion at the thought. “I could never consent to that!” He squeezed her hand so hard, he could feel the fragile bones crush together.
His sister mewed in pain and drew back her hand, pressing it protectively against her concave chest. Then she gathered her strength and drew herself up, shaking with effort. She looked at her brother, her blue eyes deep in their sockets, wild animals in a cave.
“Marketa is right. What have I ever accomplished by not setting foot outside this convent? My last act should be to help humanity in the search for cures for the body’s disease. I have always attended scrupulously to my soul and that of others in my prayers. If I were to donate my body once the soul has departed, then I serve one last time, in a way I never could in life.”
It was all too much for Pichler. He convulsed with sobs, his big shoulders shaking as he wept for his sister.
Ultimately, it was neither a Jesuit nor a Krumlov citizen who told Don Julius that Marketa still walked the earth. He learned that news in a small tavern—a hunting lodge and salt traders’ rest stop—nestled in the dark pine mountains of Sumava, a long, cold day’s ride from Cesky Krumlov.
It was there on a cold February day that Don Julius overheard a drunken conversation between two salt traders.
Don Julius had become darkly morose, more melancholy than choleric. The Spanish priest, at wit’s end with his wailing, finally acquiesced to his companions’ pleas to take their swolleneyed friend on a week’s hunt in the wilds of southern Bohemia, where bears roamed the pine-studded mountains and wild cats prowled the steep embankments.
“He must be persuaded to forget this common girl! Her memory haunts him like a phantom!” they pleaded. “What good is it to watch the man cry like a woman
for the loss of a simple bathmaid? Let us take him away on the hunt. His soul will be recharged with the excitement of chasing prey where good winds blow with the scent of pine. The chase and bloodlust will restore his health so that he sleeps once more at night. As shall we!”
Finally Carlos Felipe agreed. He was to accompany them in a coach and lodge in the tavern in a room close to Don Julius.
The inn at Smrcina was large enough to host a dozen men, many of whom were salt traders from Austria who wended their way with mule trains to Prague or Cesky Budejovice. The food was simple, game roasted over an open fire, eaten with a knife, something all travelers carried with them, often around their necks. The Spanish priest found the fare simple and agreeable, reminiscent of the spit-roasted meats of Spain: fire-licked and unseasoned, except for salt.
Still the days of hunting in the cold mountain air had no effect on Don Julius, thought the priest. Carlos Felipe watched his morose charge brood, hunched over his ale, examining the tankard as the froth lost its vigor, receding slowly below the rim. He refused to converse with his companions or the priest and snapped that he was to be left alone.
But Don Julius and his party were not the only customers in the tavern, and those who shared the room were drunk and loose-tongued.
The two brawny salt merchants had swallowed jar after jar of ale and were slurring their words in loud voices as they exchanged gossip.
“He pitched her from the castle, screaming for mercy!” said one, his powerful hands clenched in a fist. “The bloody Hapsburgs think nothing of tossing a Bohemian out a window! To them, we are expendable as apple peelings and kitchen scraps!”
“He cut her, that’s what I hear,” answered his friend, a dirty scrap of leather worn as a patch over his eye. “My friend says he saw her enter the Gray Goose, her face stitched up with black thread. Eyes swollen—puffed up like she had been pummeled. Couldn’t walk on her own, the innkeeper had to carry her back to her room like a sack of salt. It was a miracle she was alive.”
He paused, taking a long gulp of beer and rubbing at his greasy eye patch with his knuckle.
The priest squinted hard at Don Julius to see how these words registered. At first, the melancholy eyes seemed to blink, as if struggling with a bad memory. Then Don Julius jumped up, snarling like mad dog, knocking over his ale.
The crash of broken crockery alerted the two traders. Suddenly a disheveled man with wild eyes stood before them with his rapier drawn.
“Where is she?” Don Julius demanded. “If you value your life’s blood, you will tell me this moment!”
The men jumped up from their table and unsheathed their own weapons, crouching, ready to spring at their attacker.
“Stop!” shouted the priest standing beside Don Julius, along with his two companions.
“This is the son of His Majesty King Rudolf II. To harm him will bring you to the dungeons of the hrad!”
The traders kept their swords unsheathed and at the ready, but lowered them several degrees.
“Tell him to drop his weapon and we will do the same,” shouted the man with the eye patch. “We have not done him harm. By God, why does he menace us?”
“Where is she?” roared Don Julius, slicing the air with his rapier.
The priest drew close to his charge and whispered in his ear, “If you drop your sword, we can discover the secret. Dead men cannot talk, Don Julius. Secrets die with them.”
At this Don Julius moved his head, more of a sequence of trembles than a nod. He lowered his rapier, his movements as wooden as a marionette. The priest slowly and cautiously removed his hand from the hilt.
“Now,” said the priest, panting, “would you allow us to sit with you, and we can discuss the matter of the bathmaid.”
The two men quickly pulled out stools so that the prince and his priest could join them at the table. The stupor that the ale had cast just minutes before had evaporated. Everyone in Bohemia knew about the dungeons of the Prague Castle, the rack and the other machines of torture. The two salt traders had no intention of visiting those underground cells. They told Don Julius and the priest everything they knew of the mysterious bathmaid of Krumlov.
CHAPTER 39
A MAN IN ANNABELLA’S HOUSE
Marketa could smell him as she cracked open the trapdoor from the catacombs. A man’s sweat, a strong male musk permeating a house that had been so thoroughly scented with women for centuries.
Annabella no longer took the precaution of sliding the chest over the trapdoor—all of Krumlov was committed to Marketa’s protection. That, and her screaming nightmares of being sealed alive forever in the catacombs below made Annabella agree to leave the trapdoor covered with only with a coarse woolen rug.
Annabella had gone to the mountains two nights before to visit the graves of her dead mother and the previous Annabellas from throughout the centuries. It was a secret place in the depths of the forest, known only to the coven of witches who had lived in the house on Dlouha Street. Annabella had explained, flames leaping in her eyes, that she needed the spirits’ counsel to be prepared for the days to come.
That morning, Marketa arose at dawn. For months she had slept late, having no light underground to wake her. Those long hours of sleep had helped her heal, but now her body had adjusted to the rhythms of the sun and moon. She climbed up the lashed wooden ladder and pushed the trapdoor open as far as she could manage on her own. Even without the heavy chest to block the door, escape from the catacombs wasn’t easy if there was no one to help. She had to slide along the kitchen floor, wriggling under the massive weight of the door.
Her plan that morning was to make some tea and eat a heel of black bread for breakfast and then start her studies of the Book of Paracelsus by the first rays of the morning light. But as soon as she emerged, she was stopped by the scent of a man—and then, just as immediately, by the sight of a man.
He lay on the floor asleep, still in his muddy clothes and riding boots. The hard ride from Prague had left him exhausted.
As she stared, Jakub shuddered awake and blinked open his eyes.
“Marketa!” he cried, helping her from the gaping hole in the floor. He embraced her, pulling her tight to his chest. His lips kissed her hair as he rocked her in his arms.
“You are here! But Annabella warned you not to come.”
“I could not stay away any longer. I had to see you, I had to explain. There is something that weighs on my conscience. But first, where is Annabella?”
“She has gone to the mountains to visit her ancestors’ graves. She said she must confer with them about her plan.”
Jakub looked at her with wild eyes.
“Plan? What plan? If it involves Don Julius, you must not take part in it. Come away with me to Prague at once!”
“No,” said Marketa. “I have not yet heard the plan, but I trust Annabella. She has cared for me in my hour of need.”
Jakub dropped his gaze to the floor, and his face burned with shame. He thought how he and Annabella had both betrayed Marketa on that spring night in Prague. When he awoke that next morning to find the naked red-haired beauty beside him in bed, he grabbed his aching head in disbelief. He smelled the unfamiliar scent of lovemaking in the sheets.
“You have bewitched me!” he said, struggling to his feet.
Annabella only laughed. She pulled a long strand of her red hair over her breast. Her fingers worked at untangling the knots Jakub had made as his fingers raked through her hair in passion.
“Bewitched you! That is my profession, dear friend. But be not so accusing—I have taken your damnable virginity, and you will give us both a child. And an extraordinary one at that! An Annabella the likes of none before her!”
Jakub held his head in his hands, his fingers clutching at his hair in despair.
“Do not look at me with the eyes of a complete innocent,” she chided him. “Dare not feign that you cannot remember our night together. Such passion and prowess, such hungry desire cannot be attributed
solely to my potion. I shall have the child I long for, and you—you no longer have your priestly virtue to confuse your heart and deny love. I have set you free.”
As Jakub now remembered that night for the thousandth time, he looked at Marketa in his arms. He thought of the child that grew in Annabella’s womb and opened his mouth to begin a confession.
The door flew open, and Annabella stood before them.
“Enough!” she said, drawing them apart. “We have not the time for affairs of the heart. Stay hidden, Marketa. Jakub, come with me. I fear the time approaches more quickly than we expected.”
Don Julius galloped his horse so hard he almost killed the stallion. Over the rutted roads and snowy trails through the forests of Sumava, he urged his mount forward at a cruel pace, lashing at its flanks until the whip came away bloody.
Carlos Felipe made no attempt to chase the three riders down. He could not hope to compete with the equestrian skills and athleticism of a young man born in the saddle and trained by the finest horsemasters. He sent the two companions to pursue the king’s son and followed in the small surrey, which clattered over the rough roads of the Salt Trail.
The sharp rocks of the hills slashed at the fetlocks of the stallion, but the horse had a bold heart and clearly sensed the way to the Rozmberk stables. The mad rider who sat atop him demanded ever more speed, and the galloping madness became one between rider and steed. The iron clang of horseshoes and the shouts and mad ravings ricocheted over the dales.
As they approached Krumlov, Don Julius did not ride to the stables, but galloped over Barber’s Bridge, straight to the bathhouse. He leapt off the horse, his legs buckling after so many hours in the saddle.
“Where is she?” he bellowed, struggling to his feet.
Lucie Pichlerova and a few half-dressed bathers rushed to see what the commotion was about.
“Where do you hide her, you miserable old whore!” shouted Don Julius, staggering toward her with his hand on his dagger.
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