“Good. We’re beyond prying eyes,” Rakoczy approved, stretching carefully, favoring his left shoulder where the wounds of the misericordia were concealed by a thick bandage; then he brushed the grime from his face.
“I hope you haven’t had too difficult a time in the chest,” said Hruther, still steadying Rakoczy so that he could move without falling.
“I’ve spent years in an oubliette; two days in a box was nothing.” He hitched his right shoulder. “Well, not nothing, but far from trying.”
“You must have been bored,” said Hruther, suiting his tone to Rakoczy’s. “There was so little to do.”
“No, I was not; I used the time to think—I needed to think.” He inhaled gradually and let the breath out slowly. “And Illes? where is he?”
“As far as I know, he left some time after we did. He is bound for Santu-Germaniu with six wagons, a pony cart of food, and an escort of ten men-at-arms. He carries a safe-conduct from the Konige.”
“Will he stop at Pressburg to report to Istvan, do you think?” Rakoczy was becoming more alert as he spoke.
“He plans to.” He took another case—a small one of leather and iron—from the third mule’s pack-saddle. “Jewels and gold.”
“All of it?” Rakoczy asked.
“All that wasn’t paid to the Counselors and the household,” said Hruther. “We may yet have to bribe our way out of Bohemia.”
“It is not impossible,” said Rakoczy, and looked at the largest chest. “What have you there?”
Hruther opened the chest. “Your bed, and your native earth.”
“Thank you,” said Rakoczy. “You anticipate everything.”
“After so long, I would think so,” Hruther said with a touch of amusement in his faded-blue eyes.
“It is good to be away from Praha,” Rakoczy said as he took a turn around the almshouse.
“You couldn’t remain there, could you?—not after what happened,” Hruther remarked, taking the lanthorn from the pack-saddle of the second mule. He used flint-and-steel to strike a spark, and put the lanthorn down on the large chest.
“No,” Rakoczy said, accompanied by another mutter of thunder.
“No doubt you are pleased to be free.”
Rakoczy considered his response. “I could not remain there as I was.”
“And that is no answer,” Hruther said.
“No, it is not,” Rakoczy conceded. “We are still in Bohemia, so I am not yet free.”
Hruther nodded. “But your bones are being carried back to Santu-Germaniu. That should keep anyone from pursuing you.”
“They have no reason to assume I have got away, unless Rozsa convinces them that has happened.” There was a note of dismay in his voice.
“Who will believe her, even if she should decide that you aren’t dead.”
“But I am dead,” Rakoczy said gently.
“You are undead,” Hruther corrected him. “As you have often reminded me, you haven’t died the True Death yet.”
Lightning filled the almshouse with cold, jagged light and vanished; the horses sidled and pulled, and the mules laid back their ears.
“I believe this is the first time that anyone has tried to drown me deliberately,” said Rakoczy; there had been another time, but it was centuries before that day in the Year of the Four Caesars when he had come upon the exhausted and beaten Rogerian in the shadows of the half-built Flavian Circus and restored him to life.
“Not easily done, in your case,” said Hruther with the hint of a smile. “Do you want me to build a fire?”
“Unless you would like one, there’s no need. I am not cold.”
“No,” Hruther agreed, thunder silencing him for a long moment. “Smoke would make our presence known, if anyone should be searching for isolated travelers. I won’t bother with a fire.” He unloaded the largest sack of grain and put down generous measures for the three mules and three horses. “I have your tack, for the morning.”
“I never doubted it,” said Rakoczy, swinging his arms to loosen them.
Hruther resumed untacking the mules; after a few more stretches, Rakoczy took over stacking the remaining crates and chests with the others, then, while Hruther wiped down the pack-saddles and shook out the saddle-pads, he brushed down the mules and horses, taking his time while the animals ate.
More lightning flashed overhead, cracking and spitting.
“I’ll lead them out for water. There must be a stream nearby,” said Hruther as Rakoczy finished with the hoof-pick.
“Or a well inside the old walls,” said Rakoczy.
The thunder was louder now, more ominous; one of the mules brayed his disapproval.
“Perhaps I’d better bring a pail for them to drink from,” Hruther said as the mule continued to protest the storm.
“A good notion,” said Rakoczy. “The rain will come very soon now.”
“And you won’t want to be out in the water, not after—”
“Being drowned,” Rakoczy finished for him. “Thank you for that consideration, old friend.”
Hruther picked up a large bucket from the assortment of uncrated supplies and let himself out through the leaning door. He found an old well inside the broken stone walls, where Rakoczy had surmised one would be, filled it with water, and hauled it back to the almshouse, shoving his way through the door, then setting the bucket down where the mules and horses could get at it. “I’ll take them outside in a bit.”
“No need,” Rakoczy said from the earth-filled mattress that lay atop the long, narrow chest of his native earth. “We will not be here longer than the night, and both of us have slept in worse places than stalls.”
“True enough,” said Hruther, his expression sedate; he could see that Rakoczy was finally out of the stupefaction his drowning had imposed upon him. “What is it about drowning that is so terrible? You can’t die from it.”
“That is what is terrible; water enervates me, leaves me in a state of stupefaction so that all I can do in water is drift and wait to be pulled out or be devoured by one of the many hunters that live in water.”
“But the vat stood on your native earth—that should have preserved you: it has in the past,” said Hruther, finally giving voice to what had been troubling him.
“Ah, but I had been stabbed and Tahir aimed to reach my heart.” He touched his left shoulder. “It left me as incapacitated as the open sea would do.”
Hruther considered this, then said, “It must have been unspeakable.” He saw Rakoczy nod once; he deliberately changed the subject. “I have a haunch of lamb that I can eat from. The lamb was killed late last night and the meat is fresh enough. It should serve for another day as well.” He opened one of the supply boxes and pulled out a joint of meat wrapped in a sheet of vellum. “Will you take sustenance from one of the horses?”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow I may,” said Rakoczy, and leaned back on his sustaining bed, only a slight furrow between his brows revealing the discomfort he still felt from his stabbing and drowning.
“It has been many days,” Hurther remarked as he took out a skinning knife and sliced a section of lamb, then cut it up into edible strips.
“It has,” said Rakoczy. “But one more night will not harm me.”
The first rattle of rain sounded on the roof, accompanied by another shudder of thunder.
“Did you manage to visit one of the women you sought out while they slept in the days after your attack?”
“Not after the drowning, but the night before I did.” He paused for a long time. “I am grateful for them, for the women at Court…”
“But there were only two ladies, weren’t there?” Hruther asked, startled by the enigmatic tone of Rakoczy’s voice.
Lightning blanched, cracked, and vanished.
“Rozsa, because she insisted, Imbolya, because she is too young to marry,” Rakoczy paused. “Rozsa sought no intimacy from me, nor, I suspect, from anyone. She wanted no touching beyond skins. Imbolya is an intelligent girl, and
that is enough for her to want her aspirations fulfilled, though most of them are based upon the songs of troubadours. Both of them believe what the Church tells them: that the gratification from union is possible only with God, that all other satisfaction is carnalistic and therefore debauched.” He stared up into the rafters. “They have forgotten that profane is not depravity, it is only outside of the Church. So Rozsa demanded the full pleasure of her senses but would not extend any of herself to me. Imbolya was more willing to risk a kind of touching, but she would not abandon herself to what she so deeply desired.”
“And the third? The one whose brother sent your killers?”
“Iliska? She is a child: Imbolya is painfully young, but she is no longer a child. Iliska is like the Konige’s daughters, who see a bauble and demand to have it. Iliska is of the same nature. She has no sense of what she is playing at.” He went silent again, thinking back on his time in the Konige’s Court. “It is … so sad.”
“For them, or for you?” Hruther asked, taking another strip of lamb and chewing it vigorously.
“For all of us,” said Rakoczy slowly, the rest of his observation overwhelmed by the peal of thunder that brought a deluge from the clouds, one that thrashed the almshouse unrelentingly for half the night, stilling their conversation and lulling them into rest with the steadiness of the downpour. As the thunder rumbled into the distance, the horses and mules drowsed and the lanthorn burned down, leaving the almshouse in darkness.
Morning brought watery sunlight and soggy ground. Rakoczy and Hruther fed the mules and horses, groomed them, saddled and bridled them, then loaded up the pack-saddles. They went back to the main road and turned south. When they had gone another league, Hruther asked, “Have you decided where we are going yet?”
“Out of Bohemia and Hungary,” said Rakoczy.
“Have you decided anything more than that?”
“West,” said Rakoczy tersely.
Hruther nodded. “West it is.”
* * *
Text of a report from the Counselors of Praha to the Episcopus Fauvinel and Konige Kunigunde, dictated by Counselor Smiricti to his scribe, Frater Ulric, and delivered by Council messenger.
To the most puissant Episcopus Fauvinel and the most honored Konige, Kunigunde of Halicz, the report from Smiricti Dedrich, Counselor of Praha, concerning the death of Rakoczy Ferancsi, Comes Santu-Germaniu, submitted on this, Mid-Summer Day in the 1270th Year of Salvation:
Most exalted Episcopus and most Royal Konige:
Having been charged with the determination of responsibility in the murder of the Comes, we of the Council have made a thorough inquiry into the events, and we have found that the juggler Tahir was paid by some unknown enemy of the Comes to kill him. He was accompanied by three Bulgarians, whose bodies are now little more than bones, for the purpose of ensuring that the Comes would not escape them. Since the Bulgarians were taken before they could be questioned, and their execution carried out promptly, who may have paid them could not be learned from them.
Therefore, the Council instigated a Process to try to discover who had spoken out against the Comes, and who among those people could be said to be willing to order his death.
We have dismissed the various accusations of Rozsa of Borsod, for a pregnant woman is prey to all manner of visions and delusions that are part of her condition. Between the news of the death of her husband, Notay Tibor of Kaposvar, the day after the murder of Santu-Germaniu, and her impending departure, hers are unreliable opinions. She will be returning to Kaposvar in three days, in any case, and will not have her remarks included in the records of the case.
Three household servants have told the Council that they knew of no revealed enemies of the Comes here in Praha, and offer no explanations for the murder. They did remind us that the warder at Mansion Belcrady was killed after admitting the murderers, so it may be that he was part of the scheme and was betrayed by his fellows.
Among the Hungarians of the Konige’s Court, no one has any revealed enmity toward Santu-Germaniu, and therefore it is our conclusion that the murderers were in the employ of an unknown person who has probably fled Praha and was probably neither Hungarian nor Bohemian, but perhaps in the pay of Rudolph von Hapsburg, who is known to be envious of Bohemia and a foe of Hungary. Arranging for such a killing as this one is a way to strike at both kingdoms and to sow dissension in the city and the Konige’s Court.
May God bear witness to the truth of this, and protect the Episcopus and the Konige’s Court from all malice and treason.
Given by duty in all fealty,
Smiricti Dedrich (his mark)
Counselor of Praha
by the hand of the Hieronymite monk and scribe to the Council, Frater Ulric
EPILOGUE
Text of a letter from Atta Olivia Clemens at Lecco to Rakoczy Sanct’ Germain Franciscus in Alexandria, written in Imperial Latin, carried by Eclipse Trading Company courier and the ship Golden Moon, delivered two months after it was written.
To my most dear, most vexing, most enduring friend, the nettled greetings of Atta Olivia Clemens on this, the 29th day of March in the 1272nd Christian Year,
I am too perplexed to rebuke you, although I am sorely tempted. I have your letter of last November in hand at last. So you tell me in this most recent letter that you plan to leave Alexandria in a year or so and go to Constantinople. Why not come here instead, to Lecco, and spend a few months with me? It has been a long time since we have seen one another, and it would do us both good, I think, to have time to talk face to face, and not have to rely on the delays and vagaries of sending letters that may take months to arrive, if they arrive at all. I had hoped that when you left Praha you might have stopped here at Lago Comu for a few days at least, but instead, you went off to Narabonnis and sailed from there to Egypt. Why did you go so far out of the way to take ship? Neither Otakar nor Istvan had reason to pursue you, even if they had been aware that you had survived.
Doubtless you have heard that Otakar has not done well recently in his fight to make an empire out of Bohemia, and he has probably lost all chance to be Holy Roman Emperor when Richard of Cornwall finally dies. Frederich of Hohenzollern has been promoting his brother-in-law for the position; I’m sure that Rudolph von Hapsburg, Comes of Austria, would do the work as well as any of those eastern European barbarians could, and with unsteadiness to the south of Hungary, no one would take a chance on Istvan, who is rumored to be going to war with Bulgaria. I’m told that Urosh of Serbia may not honor his treaties to Constantinople and could enter the side of Bulgaria.
Never mind. I am being inconsequential; the fate of Kings is not yours to bear, nor mine. You had your reasons for going to Alexandria, and they are not for me to oppose. But still, I would like to see you for at least a little while, before you continue on to Constantinople. Like you, I become lonely from time to time, and I miss speaking the language of my youth with someone who comprehends it as you do. Niklos is very reliable and he indulges me from time to time with Imperial Latin, but he did not know me in my breathing days, as you did. As I write this, I am made aware of how much more you are alone than I am, and how the loneliness must ache in you more than the yearning for touching the living. Or perhaps it is that loneliness that fuels the hunger those of your blood have, more than the need for the only sustenance that can support us. I, too, have found that those I have sought out are less willing, or perhaps less capable, of embracing us and our nature as others have been in the past, preferring to indulge the flesh but to withhold the soul, for fear of slighting the Christian God, or his minions on earth.
It is unfortunate that the Church has claimed so much of the understanding of the people, and has become the clerk for the nobility. I think back to the Priest of the City in the Roma of my youth, a position that was a political one achieved by election, a time when the Vestal Virgins could over-rule the Senate and even the Emperor for a century or two. The people worshiped by choosing the god or goddess who best supported t
heir cause, and respected them as they respected the civic virtues they represented—at least enough of them did to provide an even keel for the Empire. You remember this time, and although Niklos has heard about it, he came after the Roman state was (if you will pardon my putting it this way) in eclipse, and riddled with corruption, as so many European Courts are now. You have told me the corruption was always there, and that may be true, but not so blatant as it became, and not so devoid of consequences.
Such morose maunderings! You will think me lost in melancholy, and I am not. I will admit to being disappointed in the world around me, but that is far from despondency and the lethargy that comes with it. I know that I must not give way to despair, nor will I, but I am certain that I should put my efforts toward finding those partners who are willing to find exultation in more than the Mass. Is that why you went to Alexandria? Are the women there more willing to extend themselves to you? I have assumed most of them live cloistered lives, away from men, but there may be some who will be happy to have a lover as devoted to their fulfillment as his own. I admit this causes me misgivings I have not felt before, and that leads to restlessness that erodes my serenity. But it will pass, in time. You have assured me many times that all things do.
You will say I continue to quetch, which I will agree I do. You continue to wander, searching for what? solace? rapture? acceptance? endurance? Whatever it is, I hope you will find it, and that it will be all you have yearned for. Until that time, be certain that my love is yours
Eternally,
Olivia
Author’s Note
The map of Europe is constantly changing; countries arise, expand, contract, relocate; many eventually disappear. Most of these changes have happened to the Kingdom of Bohemia, which, at its height in the thirteenth century, included not only what is now the Czech Republic, and Slovenia, but also most of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, part of modern Poland, and Moravia. A significant factor in this enlargement was due to the energies of the Przemysl dynasty, in particular, Vaclav (Wenceslaus) I and his son Otakar (Ottocar) II, known variously as the Iron, the Golden, and the Great. At a time when Bohemia was a mining center of eastern Europe, the Przemysls made the most of their mineral resources, and turned Bohemia into one of the wealthiest kingdoms of that age, which enabled Vaclav I and Otakar II to finance major military campaigns. For more than a quarter century, Przemysl Otakar II did his utmost to make an empire out of Bohemia, and very nearly succeeded. He also did his best, upon the death of Richard of Cornwall, to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, but lost that contest to Rudolph von Hapsburg, who became his implacable foe.
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