“How do we do that?” Victoria wanted to know.
“The easiest way would be for a new king to march along the Royal Road to his coronation,” Dmitri said.
“But not bloody likely,” Theo chuckled. “No kings these days.”
“No.” Dmitri sighed. “There has to be another way, though. A way that would involve tarot cards, most likely, given the possible derivation of the name of the cards.”
A thoughtful pause ensued. Some in the group turned their attention to their sandwiches, which had been largely ignored during the discussion.
Victoria was the first to speak. “Would it help if we set the cards out along the Royal Road in some order? Either lay them in the street or post them to the walls of the buildings?”
“I think we need to release the energy of the cards somehow,” Alessandro said. “Maybe by burning certain of the cards at certain intervals along the Road?”
“I have seen a festival in some cities and even rural villages of Germany that involves a procession with salt through the streets of the town to invoke and renew the blessing of Heaven during the coming year,” Wilcox recalled, offering what help he could in spite of his obvious reservations.
“That’s it!” Dmitri exclaimed. “Salt is the perfect substance. It is associated with both purification and renewal and has been used to keep evil at bay. A procession along the Royal Road with salt would be sure to recharge its latent power to protect the city. But I think you also have a good idea, Alessandro. Burning tarot cards along the Royal Road would release the energy of the cards and also stir the power of the Road.”
“Would we just walk along the road and carry a box of salt?” Victoria asked.
“There must be more to it than that,” Theo spoke up. “There must be plenty of people who walk along the Road every day with grocery bags containing salt. That doesn’t seem to have kept the power of the Road awake. There must be a more ritual requirement.” He looked at Dmitri.
“You must be right,” the priest agreed. “A more ceremonial act, like a procession, must be required. How is it done in Germany, Wilcox?”
“The times I’ve seen it, the salt was carried in a large silver bowl. One town used an elaborate boat-shaped urn,” Wilcox reported. “Sometimes it was scattered by handfuls from the bowl, but not always.”
“Then that is how we should go about it,” Sophia announced. “Put the salt in some ceremonial bowl and scatter it along the route of the Royal Road.”
“I’m not about to spend a large sum on some extravagant bowl!” Wilcox declared.
“Magdalena’s chalice!” Theo snapped his fingers. “We can use the salt to purify her chalice and then use it to pour the salt onto the streets along the Royal Road! It might even undo some of the things she did with it.”
There was a general murmur of approval around the table.
“So, then,” Dmitri summarized their plan, “we will pour salt from the chalice into the streets and burn a few of the more positive tarot cards along the way. When? This afternoon? Sooner is better than later.”
“Absolutely not.” Wilcox folded his arms across his chest. “Too many people out. They’ll think we’re crazy. Likely to call the police or something.”
“You are correct.” Sophia spoke up again. “We need to do this but in as private a manner as we can. Sometime when the streets will be empty.” She looked at Victoria. “Is there ever such a time?”
“Everything closes by eleven or twelve at night,” Victoria told them. “The streets will be fairly empty by then, I suspect. Especially on a Sunday night. We could do it tonight.”
“Still too public for my taste,” Wilcox muttered, his arms still firmly in place across his chest. “Is there no other, more private way in which this can be done?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Dmitri said. “I can’t imagine how to awaken the Road without doing something on the Road itself. We can do it at night, which I think is a good idea, so as to attract as little attention as possible. But it must be done on the Road.”
“Then I cannot participate.” Wilcox’s words were spoken as firmly as his arms were crossed. “Performing some ritual in private is one thing. Even that seems ridiculous in the modern world. But I will certainly not perform some magic rite in public, where—even if there are few people at that hour—I might be seen.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Imagine the consequences for our careers if word of this ever got around.”
“Careers?!” exclaimed Sophia. “How can you worry about a career?! There might not even be a world if we cannot stop George and Magdalena and Elizabeth!”
There was another pause in the conversation as the others considered that possibility.
Sean was the first to break the silence this time. “While I agree with you to a large extent, Wilcox, I am afraid I must stand by what I said earlier. Having asked my nephews to erect the cairn of stones on the grave of the Dearg-due, I cannot refuse to perform some act of magical significance myself.”
“I’ll do it.” Victoria words were as firm as Wilcox’s.
“As will I,” Alessandro announced.
“And I.” Dmitri and Sophia spoke up together.
Everyone turned to look at Theo, who squirmed uncomfortably.
“My first instinct is to agree with Wilcox here,” Theo finally admitted. “But, bloody hell, I’m not in any danger of losing my professorship or tenure or anything so dire as all that. So, why not? Count me in.”
“I’ll get as much salt as I can this afternoon,” Victoria volunteered.
“You should also bring a deck of tarot cards, or at least some of the more positive cards from the Major Trumps,” Dmitri suggested. “Cards like the Emperor, the Empress, the Hierophant and the High Priestess, and Justice. Maybe the Magician.” She nodded.
“We have our votive light and matches,” Sophia offered. “To burn each card and release its energy.”
“We could do this in two teams, if we had two chalices,” Sean suggested.
They all looked at each other but no one could suggest a suitable alternative.
“All right, then. We’ll meet at the Charles Bridge, Old Town side, at eleven tonight. I’ll bring the chalice,” Theo summarized their plans. “Then we’ll go to the Powder Tower and begin there, right? That was the beginning of the Royal Road, wasn’t it? So that’s where we start?”
“Let’s agree to meet at the Powder Tower at eleven,” Sean suggested. “It will be less suspicious if anyone is watching us.”
“True. Good point. But I think our safety will be in our numbers. It would be too easy to waylay or harm an individual, but we can help defend each other if George does move against us. So, we meet at the Charles Bridge in the Old Town at eleven with chalice, salt, cards, candle and matches. Do we need anything else?” Theo asked, half-rising from his seat and getting the attention of the waiter to bring the bill.
“If you decide to come, that will be fine,” Sophia said to Wilcox, touching his shoulder. “But if not, could you think supportive thoughts while we do this?”
“That much I might be able to manage,” muttered Wilcox.
They all walked back to the Angel House for the afternoon sessions and found their way to the meeting rooms with the panels they wanted to hear. Victoria, though, asked Fr. Dmitri if she could speak to him a moment, and they stopped near one of the high windows lining the second floor hallway.
“That darkness, where I found myself,” Victoria began, finding it difficult to put her thoughts into words. “As I lay there on my bed for hours and hours. Where I met that figure, the ‘one who watches.’ Was that truly an out-of-body experience like Alessandro said it was? Do you think I was dead and then sent back here to earth?”
The priest considered her question. “Do I think you were dead, Victoria? That is impossible to say, without some physical witness or other corroboration. But momentary death is not the only out-of-body experience.” Looking at her, he asked, “Do you realize who you met in that d
arkness, Victoria? That figure of light which sent you back? Was there anything familiar about it? Did you recognize anything in the voice?”
Victoria answered, “No. Should I have?”
“It was one-who-watches. That is an ancient name for an angel,” the priest told her. “I think you met your guardian angel.”
Victoria was stunned. She stood there in the street a moment as the others kept walking on. Guardian angel?! She had never considered that she had a guardian angel. She had certainly never thought she might meet her guardian angel. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she stared at Fr. Dmitri, her mouth hanging open.
“The world is growing larger than you ever dreamt it would be, yes?” he asked her gently.
She nodded, unable to speak.
Sophia fell in next to Alessandro as they walked back from lunch and entered the Angel House together. “I meant to ask you,” she said, “how your paper went this morning. You did give your paper at the Monsters conference this morning, yes?”
“Why, yes,” he smiled with gratitude. “Yes, I did. Thank you for asking. Yes, it went very well. I was presenting the results of some research into how the Italian immigrants to Australia picked up and added aspects of indigenous Australian folktales and monsters to their Italian folktales and monsters. It sparked quite an interesting discussion about the experiences of other immigrant groups and how they did or did not add elements of the folktales of their adopted homelands to the folktales they brought with them.”
“I should think that would be very interesting,” Sophia agreed. “I’ve noticed the same thing happen among Slavic immigrants to North America. The old folktales change until the second generation is afraid of losing their cultural heritage, and then suddenly revert to older versions of the stories they tell, and they become much less willing to incorporate elements of other peoples’ folktales into their own.”
“Really? I would love to talk with you more about that and maybe use it to expand the scope of my paper before publishing,” he responded. “In fact, if you…”
An office door they were passing opened and Magdalena stepped out, her arms full of certificates of attendance and other conference paperwork. She nearly collided with Alessandro and Sophia, giving a startled cry and dropping all the papers onto the floor. Alessandro dropped down onto one knee to help her gather them back together.
“So sorry, so sorry,” Magdalena kept repeating, also kneeling to scoop them up before anyone else in the increasingly crowded hallway could trample them.
“Not at all,” Alessandro reassured her. “No harm done. None at all. Not even a fold or a crease.” He handed everything back to her. They both stood and then, with an awkward “thank you” that left Sophia feeling uncomfortable, Magdalena made her way down the hall.
When Magdalena reached the copy machine, she peered behind her to watch Alessandro and Sophia chat a moment longer and then step into different meeting rooms for the session about to begin.
“A pretty woman, who spoke Russian.” Aviva’s words from the synagogue that morning came back to Magdalena. She considered the snatch of conversation she had heard between them as she stepped out of the door, knocking into them. She replayed Alessandro’s reassurances to her.
“A handsome man with a British accent,” Milka had described him.
“Is it possible?” Magdalena wondered. Alessandro’s Australian accent would certainly sound British to untrained ears. “In fact, I would have thought he was British if I hadn’t seen his conference registration papers,” she reminded herself. “Handsome? He is that!”
She considered her suspicions a while longer and then turned to place another few certificates in the loading bin of the copy machine. “Sophia and Alessandro were the ones who went to the synagogue, asking to get into the attic,” she decided. “Why would that be?”
She would be sure to inform George of this during the afternoon tea break.
“Curse them in the towns and in the castle!”
(November 1356)
B
artolomeo woke tired but proud. Last night, he and his friend Stefano had avenged the murder of Stefano’s sister, Lucrezia, by killing the priest Conrad as he stood under Lucrezia’s window behind the church of Our Lady of Tyn. He had clubbed the priest down but allowed Stefano, as Lucrezia’s brother, the honor of slipping the knife between the killer-priest’s ribs. Bartolomeo had dealt a final blow to the back of the priest’s head and then the two men had returned to their homes in the Italian-speaking neighborhood behind the Little Town.
The priest’s body had been discovered shortly thereafter, even before Bartolomeo and Stefano were awake. Although everyone in the Italian-speaking quarter guessed that Stefano and his friend had avenged his sister’s death, no one said anything to the constables of either the Old Town where the workmen had slain the priest or the Little Town where they lived. It was the justice of Tuscany, swifter and less reliant on the decisions of archbishops and judges than the Bohemian justice of the workmen’s adopted homeland.
Daniela had been happy to come to Prague from Tuscany with her husband Bartolomeo when he announced that his best friend and fellow bricklayer, Stefano, and several other members of the bricklayers’ guild were coming north to work on the many construction projects of the new emperor, Charles IV. Although he was not a handsome man in the way that others would be considered handsome, he was a good-looking, loyal and good-hearted man, and she had loved him from as long as she could remember, as they had grown up together in their village not far from Firenze. They had been wed just before setting out for Bohemia and had settled in the Italian colony on the edge of the Little Town, near the castle complex on the Hradčany hill, with the bricklayers, masons, carpenters, painters and other workers and artists who had come to recreate the capital city at the emperor’s behest.
Bartolomeo was a short, stocky man with thick, strong arms from his years laboring with the bricks: carrying stacks of them as an apprentice and then lifting them to build walls, homes and other buildings, but there had been frequent periods when there was not enough work in Tuscany for all the bricklayers. So he and Stefano—tall, handsome Stefano—joined the migration, where there would be more than enough work for years and years, and brought their families with them. Stefano, as yet unmarried, brought his widowed mother and his sister, while Bartolomeo brought only his new wife. They shared a house when they first arrived in Prague and now lived only a few doors from each other. Daniela had not become pregnant yet, but she and Bartolomeo hoped fervently for a child, and she lit a candle as often as she could before either the statue of Margaret of Antioch or that of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, in their parish church. Although disappointed each time her monthly blood appeared, she and Bartolomeo continued to hope and place their trust in the providence of God.
Not long after their arrival in Prague, Stefano’s beautiful and popular sister, Lucrezia, always a brave and restless girl whom some had even called defiant, had announced that she would no longer live with her family in the staid, quiet Italian colony on the outskirts of Prague. “There is too much to know of life, too much to know of this city and the world!” she had flung in Stefano’s face during one of their many arguments.
“You need to marry and you need to accept as husband one of the many men I have negotiated with on your behalf!” Stefano had insisted. “Your constant refusals may seem a game to you, but the time will come when you will regret your haughty refusal of all the suitors who have come begging for your hand!”
“I will not sit here waiting to marry a man that you choose and altogether ignore the beautiful city you have brought us to, Stefano! I did not escape from Tuscany to become your captive in Prague!” She had stormed from the house and across the bridge to the Old Town, refusing first Stefano’s demands and then his entreaties to return home. “I have found my own lodging and can care for myself,” she had insisted. “There is no need to return to the boredom of home!” She had spoken the truth, as i
t became quickly known that her grace, her beauty, her lilting laugh and sparkling smile made her the most popular courtesan of the Old Town. Men of all nationalities—local Bohemians, the foreign merchants from the German-speaking territories even further north, the French-speaking foreign diplomats and their households, even the Italian-speaking artists and laborers—were all eager to pay for the privilege of her company. She learned Czech much more quickly than the Italians who worked under Czech supervision during the day but remained secluded in their own neighborhood taverns and homes at night.
Daniela had felt sorrow for Stefano and his mother, who missed Lucrezia terribly, while she and Bartolomeo feared for Lucrezia’s salvation even as Daniela admired Lucrezia’s bravery and curiosity about the world. When news of the popular girl’s death spread through the Italian neighborhood, few eyes had remained dry. Everyone wept for the girl, her skull broken by the killer-priest Conrad, who had also led the crowd in burning the old woman Fen’ka in the Old Town Square little more than a month before. The Italian-speaking priest at the parish in the Italian quarter had been prevailed upon by Stefano and his weeping mother to give Lucrezia a church burial. When the priest Conrad was confined to the parish house in the Old Town by the archbishop, many suspected that the killer-priest would experience Italian justice before Bohemian or German justice was meted out. They had not been disappointed, and Daniela was proud of her husband’s role in avenging poor Lucrezia.
“Do you think my father will choose a husband for me even half as handsome and hardworking as Bartolomeo?” Angelina asked her cousin Guendalina as they kneaded the dough for their families’ weekly baking.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 76