“Of course, it was all a lark. I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of these giants, only a secondhand reference I barely recollected. Nevertheless, he gave me the word that unlocked the power of this necklace.
“I couldn’t have known his intent then, but now, in you, I see it, and it is good. You are good. I can say, now, that my overwriting of tattoos was justified. You are no avenger, no destroyer. I know this because you have come here and have let me heal you.”
Heraclix shifted uncomfortably. Should he let the Serb know what he had done with that hand, or what the hand itself had done to the young soldier? He thought it best to simply accept the compliment and change the subject.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now please tell me: how does my allowing you to heal me prove to you that I am good. I feel, a bit contrarily, that you are good for having healed me.”
The Serb smiled. “I have uncovered all the variables. But there is still much reconciling to be done with the equation. I have, through various means, sealed off the top of this tower from the spirits of the dead. But they are still outside, waiting, and it causes me great anguish to hear their cries and to know that I caused their suffering. But I have found that whenever I heal a living person, somehow, in a way I cannot understand, the wounds of a ghost are likewise healed, and the healed spirit leaves my tower. I suppose they have what they want, and they leave. But there are still many to heal, and I am old. Very old. It’s difficult for me to get around, to provide healing as I wish, and no one comes here to visit except angry villagers who are eventually scared off by my ghosts. I suppose that when all the ghosts are gone, the villagers will be emboldened and burn me alive in my tower. But I am not so concerned with this, so long as I can hold out long enough to heal enough so that I can enter the eternal realms alone, without the dead clawing me down into a gulf of misery.”
“I sincerely hope that you meet your goal,” Heraclix said.
“You have allowed me to heal you, which, in turn, heals two more souls: my own, and that of one of my ghosts. I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you.”
Heraclix felt like he would blush, if such a thing was possible. Then an idea struck him.
“You can fully express your thanks, perhaps, by answering a few questions?” He asked.
“About the hand, yes. What do you wish to know?”
“I have an illustration of the hand in my possession. The tattoo, as illustrated, only shows ‘osvetnik’—‘avenger,’ yet that tattoo is now overlaid with ‘oirotvorac’—‘peacemaker.’ When did you make the change and why?”
“I did a drawing before removing the arm. You are correct in that when I drew the likeness, I only had the first tattoo. Before the amputation I inked the peacemaker over the avenger. It was a new day dawning, a new birth forthcoming. I wanted to celebrate and document the celebration.”
“The other party wasn’t upset with your interpolation?” Heraclix asked.
“Surprisingly not. I thought, after sending the hand, that perhaps the other party might renege on the agreement. For while I hadn’t violated the letter of the terms, I might have violated their spirit. Nevertheless, my offering was considered acceptable.”
Heraclix brought forth the drawing and showed it to the Serb. The old man took it, studied it intently.
“Yes,” he said, “this is the picture I drew, though these characters that cloud the drawing,” he indicated the sigils that pointed to the hand, “these I don’t understand. They had to have been added after I sent the initial illustration to the magician.”
“Magician? You’ve said nothing about a sorcerer to this point. How do you know he was a magician?”
“Again, I don’t even know if the person was a ‘he’ at all. But what else than a magician could give me such power as to heal the dying and the dead? A god?”
Heraclix thought for a moment, looking, unsuccessfully, for another line of reasoning.
“This . . . magician, did you ever hear from him again?”
“Never. All I know is that he was resident, once, in Prague. I would presume that if you could find the family of giants I mentioned earlier, you might be a step closer to your . . . man.”
CHAPTER 8
From a distance, Prague’s cream walls and red roofs looked like an ember cut through by the blue-green waters of the Vltava River. As Heraclix and Pomp drew closer, they realized that the city could not be so easily categorized by color. The palettes beneath the tall, red-roofed buildings that first dominated the eye were far too rich and varied for such simplistic observations. It was a prismatic, Baroque metropolis composed of brightly painted islands of homes and shops threaded with rivers of pedestrians flowing around Prague Castle like a moat of mercantile endeavor and intrigue. The streets pulsed with pedestrians like a heartbeat, a thing alive. Heraclix felt an unexpected sense of excitement and anticipation as he approached the stone bridge.
But gray skies and the drudgery of traveling through cold mud had taken their toll on Pomp, who was particularly dour, despite the fact that the clouds were now breaking. She had been arguing with Heraclix most of the way, and wasn’t about to let it rest, just because Heraclix was smiling now.
“He is bad,” Pomp said.
“He is not bad now,” Heraclix tried to explain, “he is making reparations”.
“He kills many. Even children!” Pomp could barely hold back tears.
“And now he heals everyone he can. He has healed thousands. Is that not good?”
“It is not just!” Pomp said.
“But he is making it just,” Heraclix said.
“Making is not made!”
“True, but he is close to having healed all those he harmed and just as many whom he hadn’t harmed. At some future point, he will heal, not to pay for past mistakes, but for the sake of healing.”
“But . . . they . . . are . . . dead!” Pomp shouted, trying to make him understand. “They have no ‘yet!’”
Heraclix stopped and turned to face her. “Look, you’re right. But there’s nothing to be done about it. Your sense of injustice is making you a very grumpy fairy. Look around you! This city is beauty itself! Its spirit is alive! Let’s not ruin it by brooding over those things we can’t control.”
Soon, Pomp felt it, too. As she let the vigor of the crowd’s movement and the warmth of the rising sun course through her, she felt a little better, until it took every bit of self-control she had not to fly off and spread mischief. She felt a little, but not completely, like her old self again. She realized that she had changed, that she was still herself, but was now different.
They crossed the bridge, shuffling with the flow of people. A voice cried out “come back here with my geld, ruffian!” The river of people shifted slightly to allow a pair of city guards to give chase to some thieves, a pair of young peasant girls, twins, who used their diminutive stature and identical appearance to their advantage, confusing the guards, submerging themselves under the crowd and occasionally breaking the surface only long enough to check their progress and reassure themselves that a steadily increasing gap was spreading between them and their pursuers. One of the guards, spotting Heraclix’s hood a full two heads above the crowd, stopped long enough to look at the giant before being urged on by his companion. Heraclix wrapped his hand around the neck of his pouch to prevent any would-be pickpockets from stealing his gold. Not that he needed the money to buy food, he didn’t. But a thaler seemed to keep information flowing, and he had much more information he wanted to gain.
Lining the stone bridge were dozens of statues, positioned like sentries atop the guard rails, looking down on the crowd, who passed beneath their munificent gaze. The crowd didn’t return the glances, save for Heraclix. He wondered at the people’s ignorance, but soon attributed it to busy-ness and the desire for fulfillment of more base needs. Heraclix had the luxury of detachment from such physical needs as food, rest, and human intimacy, whereas the common peasant was utterly consumed with them to the exclusion of all e
lse, including matters of faith, save in those momentous occasions of birth, marriage, death, love, and fear.
Above him loomed the serene figure of Saint Vitus standing atop a cave from which a pride of lions emerged and climbed to meet him. Their expressions were indeterminate. Heraclix could not tell if the beasts were hunting Saint Vitus or if, like the prophet Daniel, they were merely trying to get close enough to enjoy a blessed scratch behind the ears. Either way, the martyr looked unconcerned.
Heraclix looked up at the saint and wondered if he, who had miraculously survived being dropped into a cauldron of boiling tar and molten lead, could understand the frailties of humanity. Or had his deliverance transmuted him, through alchemical reaction, into some finer substance than mere flesh? Heraclix questioned whether such a person could truly understand what it meant to live, die, be reborn, and live again. Then he thought of how doubly prideful his questioning was. First, the saint shared with Heraclix the peculiarity of being removed from the needs of men, which made them both strangers to humanity. Second, the martyr, indeed, knew what it meant to live and die, while Heraclix knew only what it meant to be reborn and live again. He couldn’t remember having died. It was, after all, his desire to know the other side of his existence’s equation that drove him to Prague in the first place.
A slithering whisper, which worked its way through the lines of people on the stone bridge became a burbling of gossip and bargaining as the crowds backed up to then poured out upon the stall-lined mouth of the Lesser Quarter.
A trio of drum, krumhorn, and hurdy-gurdy buzzed out a joyful song, not the muted bourrée of the west but something lilting and playful—a tune whose seeds were imported and planted during the crusades, no doubt, in this place where the influence of the East was more strongly felt than in most of Europe. The instruments and their players accompanied the frenetic haggling, gesturing, conversing shoppers, stall owners, street urchins, soldiers, aristocrats, merchants, travelers, and beggars that coursed throughout the city. Pomp looked out on the masses, fascinated and delighted by the variety and energy of the people.
Heraclix stopped and started, spun this way and that, completely confused and unable to decide on a direction.
“Now what?” he asked.
Pomp responded, confident that the noise of the crowds would mask her voice: “We need to find soldiers, right?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Heraclix said.
“There are some soldiers,” she said.
Heraclix, without the benefit of seeing where exactly she meant, spun again, then, looking through an alleyway, he spotted a large group of armed and armored men gathering into some sort of parade formation in one of the main market squares. They were beginning to face the castle and cathedral, which overshadowed all else on the horizon in the distance. The rattle of drums and the brassy call of trumpets drowned out the buzzing street musicians, who became silent in deference to the display of empire.
The troops lined up, four lines, forty strong a line, with two officers mounted on destriers to either side and a marshal of noble rank at their head. Their uniforms were parchment-colored with sky-blue trim outlined in a green so dark that it appeared black in all but the most direct light. The officers barked out commands, and the four lines collapsed into one, about faced, and marched out of the Lesser Quarter and over the stone bridge toward Old Town. The citizenry moved aside or rushed ahead so that the soldiers could maintain their steady pace across the bridge. As the last of the troops marched off, the void in the marketplace was quickly filled with throngs of people smiling at the spectacle, most of who, Heraclix thought, knew nothing of the horrors of war.
A small cadre of soldiers remained, however—a half dozen army regulars who sat near or on the edges of a fountain. They smoked pipes and laughed, two of the six dancing to what sounded like a Russian song that the drum, krumhorn, hurdy-gurdy trio had struck up. The two tried and failed to perform a Cossack dance, one of the ostensible dancers falling hard on his rear, to the delight and laughter of his fellows.
Heraclix approached the group. The laughter immediately ceased, though the buzzing of the music continued on in the background, making for an awkwardly carnivalesque scene as the giant stood before the gaping soldiers.
Heraclix inhaled to speak but was immediately interrupted by a flurry of conversation that erupted forth from the troops.
“He looks just like, well not just like . . .”
“I’ll be . . . he does, he looks like Caspar from the neck down.”
“But even uglier in the face.”
“Poor Caspar.”
“The whole family . . .”
“Unfortunate lot.”
“Excuse me,” Heraclix said. “I am told—”
“Doesn’t sound like Caspar.”
“Or any of that family.”
“I am told,” Heraclix continued, “that a family of, erm, larger individuals lives somewhere in the city. I have reason to believe that some may be employed as soldiers.”
“Um, no.”
“Not now, anyway.”
“Though there was . . .”
“There was Caspar and his kin.”
“Where is this Caspar?” Heraclix asked.
“Dead . . .”
“. . . and gone, far gone.”
“Though some of his kin still live.”
“Or at least one.”
“How did he die?” Heraclix asked.
The soldiers laughed, glancing at one another, each in turn, as if sharing some inside joke, slapping their own legs and each other’s backs.
Five of them turned to one—the oldest, by his graying beard and balding head.
“You tell him!” they said, between the five of them, “You know it best.”
The old veteran, far too pudgy and soft to be a fighter now, stood and bowed toward his companions, toward Heraclix, and toward Pomp, though ignorant of the presence of the last, invisible as she was. Heraclix could clearly smell the alcohol mixed with the stench of stale tobacco smoke on the man’s breath as he spoke.
“The tale of Caspar the Idiot,” he said.
The soldiers scooted in close together like children gathering to hear a nursery rhyme.
“To begin,” he began, “Caspar was an idiot. Oh, no one dared tell him he was an idiot . . .”
“No, nooooo!” the soldiers heckled, shaking their heads and laughing.
“No one dared tell him so to his face. For, though he was an oaf of the lowest sort, he could sense a direct insult after the third or fourth instance. And if the giver of the series of insults made the unfortunate mistake of not running away in the time it took for the mockery to travel from Caspar’s ears to his brain, the consequences were grave.”
“That’s a long time!” the chorus said.
“At least the insulter was brought closer to the grave by the insulted.”
“Caspar’s hands, those awful, gigantic hands, were easily large enough to grasp the full girth of an average man’s neck. One fist was enough to lay a strong man down for days.” The speaker looked down at Heraclix’s hands with a puzzled expression.
“Or the end of days!” one soldier said.
“Thankfully, his nature wasn’t as brutish as his body. Truth be told, he rarely fought.”
“Aww!” the soldiers lamented.
“No, Caspar was more of a lover than a fighter. And this was his undoing.”
“Boo hoo!” the chorus sarcastically lamented.
“Yes, love and good natured friendship. You see, while some were indeed jealous and fearful of Caspar’s gargantuan size, most liked having him around for the good cheer he invited. This he did by being the unwitting brunt of sidelong jokes and subtle jabs that he could never quite understand. He was, in a way, a sort of celebrity. He rarely had to buy himself drinks.”
“Must be nice!” a soldier said.
“His friends, or those who called themselves his friends, were free with their geld around him, considering an
y money they spent on his behalf was money well spent on entertainment.
“So the giant, through his ignorance, enjoyed some things not even enjoyed by those who subsidized his excesses.”
“Dumb lucky!” the chorus yelled.
“This included the attentions, paid for by his group of companions, of course, of the whore Vatanya.”
“Vatanya!” the soldierly chorus shouted.
“Aye, Vatanya!” the veteran said with the hint of a sigh. “Two feet shorter than Caspar, yet the tallest, and longest, girl in town. She intimidated most men, which was good for business when you realize how many men think upside-down and want to be intimidated by a woman.”
“Cowards!” one soldier said.
“But Caspar, Caspar wasn’t cowed. No, he was never smitten by her, though he was smitten by love.”
“Ah, Vatanya!” the chorus said in mock girlish voices.
“Vatanya, was used to having her way, so she found something new in Caspar, a man who wanted to please her out of love, rather than out of fear or perversion. This was something so new to her that she didn’t quite know how to act. She liked that he was her match, in many ways, but she knew he wouldn’t be around forever and needed to maintain the appearance of dominance in order to preserve any future business.”
“Business is business,” a soldier said.
“Now one way in which the man was no match for the woman was in their respective wits. Vatanya was no genius, but she had more brains than Caspar, who had very little. So it was easy for her to convince the giant that he should . . . ahem, acquire certain gifts for her in order to keep her favor.”
“That seems fair!” one of the soldiers said. The others vehemently nodded their agreement.
“Of course, Caspar was not a good burglar, but doors and locks did little to stop him. His victims could do little to stop him, either, both because he was a giant and because he wore an imperial soldier’s uniform.”
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