“But is every flood a punishment for wickedness, like Noah’s flood?” asked the younger girl. “What about the flood they say is headed toward Prague?”
Theo had collapsed in the hotel lobby but the staff, rushing to his assistance, had lifted him onto a sofa near the elevator and called for a doctor. The pain shimmered and crawled up and down Theo’s bones and joints.
“Move, damn it!” he ordered his feet, trying to make them respond to his will. Nothing. Only pain. Followed by more pain.
“Run! Pádit! Get out! Pospíchat! Hurry!” voices cried out. Panic seized the crowd waiting on the subway platform with the American Bible students. Fingers pointed at the tracks while others gestured wildly toward the stairways leading to the open air. Older people hobbled as quickly as they could toward the escalators. Younger people took two steps at a time as they raced for the surface above.
Rats, a multitude of rats, swarmed up of the sewer grating below the tracks. Scurrying over and under and around the tracks, an intrepid few attempted to clamber onto the platform and away from whatever had chased them from the sewers and tunnels under the subway. Within seconds, water gurgled through the sewer grates, river water that had seeped in through the openings in the stone walls lining the riverbank along the Old Town.
Abruptly, fountains of water, not unlike the springs of the deep the students had just been discussing, burst from crevices in the track beds of the tunnels. Some large, some small, the fountains splashed gaily and the pools of water that already hid the sewer grates congealed between the tracks and trickled into each other. The rats still down along the tracks began to swim, paddling madly to find someplace dry, someplace slightly higher underground.
The three subway stations closest to the river were shut down moments later.
Theo jerked awake as the doctor finally began to examine his legs. He realized that he had drifted into a shallow, dreamless sleep.
“What happened, doctor?” Theo asked, wincing at the doctor’s touch as he tried to roll up the academic’s trousers. The doctor turned and twisted Theo’s ankles and knees as gently as he could, but spasms of pain ricocheted through Theo’s body.
“It is hard to tell without an x-ray,” the doctor finally told him, “but there seem to be several fractures along the length of the leg bones. In both legs. Very unusual.” He paused and turned his attention to Theo’s face. “Were you in some kind of accident, sir?”
“No, nothing like that,” Theo managed to answer. “I was walking and suddenly collapsed. There was no warning.”
“No warning at all?” the doctor repeated. “Highly unusual.” He rummaged in his medical bag and retrieved a small bottle of pills.
“Are you going to call an ambulance?” Theo wanted to know. “I imagine that I must go to the hospital.”
The doctor gestured to a hotel clerk for a drink and a glass of water was quickly brought.
“I am afraid, sir, that going to a hospital is quite impossible at the moment,” the doctor explained. “We are expecting a flood, a major flood. Most of the nearby hospitals and nursing facilities have begun to evacuate patients, straining the resources of those that remain open. I am afraid there is no space for you in any facility more conducive to your situation than the lobby where we find ourselves.”
Theo winced again. The doctor shook two pills from the bottle and gave them to Theo, putting the glass of water into Theo’s other hand.
“These pills are for the pain. The damage seems limited to your legs. It has not spread since the initial onset of symptoms, has it?” the doctor asked him.
Theo swallowed the pills. “No,” he agreed.
“Then I am afraid we must simply let you rest here. I will leave enough medication to ease your pain until sometime late tomorrow afternoon. I hope by that time we will be able to return and fetch you,” the doctor said as he stood to go. He set the bottle of pills on a small table beside the sofa where Theo sat, legs outstretched.
“Tomorrow? Stay here in the lobby until then?” Theo couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Yes,” the doctor emphasized. “Are you a guest of this hotel, sir? Perhaps the staff could manage to take you to your room if you wish. Rest, and tomorrow afternoon will come more quickly than you might expect.” He shook Theo’s hand and was gone.
“Now that our adversaries have been detained,” George announced as he and Magdalena entered his hotel room, “we have to do what we can to repel the flood from the city.”
“Detained?” Magdalena interrupted. “How were they detained?”
“Let’s just say that since we licked and buried the dough figures, they have not been feeling well.” George smirked. “Now, as I said, we must do what we can to repel the flood.”
“Yes!” Magdalena agreed vigorously. “How do we do that? What can I do to help?”
George thought briefly before speaking. “There is a fairly simple way to manage it, I think,” he finally told her, “but its results will not be instantaneous. I can give you the supplies and directions, but then I must leave it in your hands to accomplish. Can you manage that? I need to call New York and explain that I will be detained here for a few more days.”
Magdalena was thrilled to be trusted by George to do whatever needed to be done. “Just tell me what to do and I will do it!”
He stepped to the room’s small desk and cleared it, setting everything gently to one side and then lifting his valise onto it. He brought out a plastic sandwich bag, into which he placed the yew cuttings they had brought from the plaza. After putting the bag of yew back into the valise, he brought out a small ornate silver disk like the pocketwatch Magdalena’s grandfather had always kept in his pocket. He set the pocketwatch thing on the desk and then produced another sandwich bag, this one full of small vials of dark liquid, from the valise. Finally, he brought out a small ceramic mortar and pestle and set them on the desk.
“I will make a paste,” George announced, “that you must smear along the curbs and gutters of the Little Town. This paste should repel the water of the flood from the city, though as I said, the results will not be quick. It will take time to turn aside this flood which our enemies have conjured, but we can reinforce the charm tomorrow, if need be.” He put on two latex gloves from the valise and carefully took three of the vials from the sandwich bag, uncorked them, and poured the liquid into the mortar bowl. A powerful stench, like a concentrate of mothballs, assailed Magdalena’s nostrils.
“What goes into the paste?” she asked quietly.
“A friend of mine from seminary days was assigned to northern France.” George spoke but kept his face toward the items on the desk, his back to Magdalena as he next took a narrow strip of brocade from the valise, kissed it, and placed it across the back of his neck, letting the ends of the vestment reach down his chest toward his belt. “In that region of France is found a certain kind of toad, the warts on the back of which produce a venom traditionally used by the clergy of that area in combination with the Eucharist to accomplish certain purposes. My friend has a parishioner who is a chemist and who keeps my friend supplied with this venom which he extracts from the local toads and, in turn, my friend generously shares some with me.”
Magdalena wrinkled her nose and peered around George’s shoulders at the liquid in the small ceramic bowl but had to hastily step to one side as, without warning, he genuflected before the desk. He opened the silver pocketwatch, and Magdalena caught her breath as she recognized it from church as a pyx that contained several communion wafers.
“Is it…?” she whispered. George nodded.
He took a wafer and held it in his forefingers for a moment before placing it in the ceramic bowl with the liquid. He repeated this procedure twice more, placing a total of three of the wafers in the bowl. He genuflected again, closed the pyx, and set it aside before taking up the pestle and grinding the wafers into the extract from the French toads’ warts.
Magdalena was mesmerized watching the procedure. Having
made the paste of the consecrated wafers and the noxious extract, George put away the stole from his neck and dropped the gloves into the trash can below the desk. He pulled another pair from the valise and turned to Magdalena.
“Wear these and take the bowl of paste with you,” he instructed. “Take cotton swabs from the bathroom and use them to smear the paste on the curbs and sidewalks of the Little Town until you’ve used it all. But not too close to the water level as it is currently. The water may rise too quickly, before the charm has time to act, and the flood may wash away our work before it takes effect. Mark the streets a few blocks higher than the flood and the paste will have a chance to work before the water reaches it.”
“How does it work?” Magdalena wanted to know.
“The toad venom, itself a defensive tactic of the animal, will work with the healing power of the Eucharist to rebuff the flood. When you’ve finished, go home and rest. I will contact you in the morning to determine our next move. Do you have any other questions, Magdalena?”
Magdalena shook her head. “No, no questions, George.” She leaned toward him to give him a peck on the cheek. “I will see you in the morning.” She put on the latex gloves, picked up the bowl, and stopped in the bathroom to collect the cotton swabs. George opened the door for her, gave her a kiss, and shut the door behind her as she set out on her mission to drive the flood from the streets of Prague.
By midafternoon, the mayor of the city was still insisting that the river situation was under control, but no one standing along the riverbanks believed the official announcements. Local magistrates, like the hospital directors, did not agree with the mayor’s estimation and blockaded the riverside of the Old Town, forcing thousands away from the view of the water.
The seventy-plus academics who had come to Prague for the conferences—and other tourists—were having an especially difficult time getting information or news and could not understand most of the answers they were given by police officers on the streets. None of the academics knew how to contact Hron, and Theo was not answering the phone in his hotel room.
“I paid my registration!” several insisted to each other. “I expect a full series of conference sessions, with all the accepted papers read! Flood or no flood, there are standards that must be maintained. Otherwise I will demand a full refund!”
In the Old Town, the rector and governing board of the Klementinum cultural center near the river decided to take matters into their own hands and directed the tourists visiting their hallways towards the exits. Once the last visitor had stepped out through the elaborate gateways, the guards closed and bolted them.
A similar scene unfolded a few blocks away at the Cloister of St. Agnes, which housed the National Gallery’s collection of medieval art. Visitors and scholars were escorted at first and then hustled to the gates by museum security and the older women who served as volunteers at the entrances to the cloister. When the last visitor exited, the magnificent wrought iron gates swung shut and the staff scurried out the small back entrances before the river could trap them inside.
Trucks of sand pulled up in front of the Astronomical Clock, not far from where the mangled body of Wilcox had been found near dawn by a few late-night party-goers stumbling back to their hostel. The last of the yellow police tape was being pulled down as the trucks rumbled into position. Hundreds of large, rough cloth sacks were tucked into the sides of the truck beds along with a number of shovels and scoops. Knots of people who had been aimlessly wandering about the square, at a loss for how to react to the closing of the bridge and the apparently inexorable coming of a flood that many officials still insisted on denying, converged on the trucks and the handful of workers who jumped from the cabs of the trucks.
Shovelfuls of sand flew. Hands grabbed the cloth sacks and held them open as scoop after scoop, load after load of sand was poured down the throats of the sacks. Other hands pulled each bag tightly shut and tied it with cord or twine. A rag-tag assembly line materialized and the filled sandbags were moved to one side of the Astronomical Clock, near where the cobblestone crosses marked the execution of the twenty-seven Protestant nobility in 1621, the nobility whose ghosts according to legend returned each June to see if the clock had stopped to indicate the arrival of Judgment Day. Moving the sandbags was slow, backbreaking work, but a small mountain of sandbags continued to grow as dusk descended on the square.
“Let the shadow of death stalk them in the night!”
(January–February 1357)
N
adezda was unable to sleep well that night. When her eyes did close, she had dreamed only of Fen’ka in that fire and imagined hearing her voice calling down Svetovit’s power to destroy her neighbors who had condemned her to such a death. The next morning, tired and bleary-eyed, Nadezda was still sorting phrases and clauses from the curse that Petr and Vavrinec had first told her about, and lines that others had heard and repeated in the squares and marketplaces of Prague. She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the hearth and stirred the coals to life, uncovering the flame deep in the heart of the small mound of coals she had built in the midst of the fireplace. She threw a handful of straw onto the coals as kindling and waited for them to catch fire.
She poked at the coals again and the fragile construction of kindling and coals collapsed with a shower of sparks. “How many lines of the curse have yet to be fulfilled?” she asked herself, mindlessly drawing designs in the ashes with the poker in her hand. “Why is the curse so slow in unwinding? I would think that Fen’ka would have wanted her vengeance carried out at once, would have wanted Svetovit to immediately destroy her enemies.” Patience was never a virtue that Fen’ka embraced. “It makes no sense for the curse to be taking so long to demonstrate either Svetovit’s power or Fen’ka’s retribution.”
Nadezda stared at the kindling without seeing it. “They say Fen’ka called down her vengeance on everyone in the towns and in the castle. She demanded Svetovit lay waste everyone in the Old Town Square. Did she mean everyone from the towns and the castle that was in the square? But surely not everyone who has suffered from the curse was there that afternoon.” She reviewed in her mind the victims—at least those she was fairly certain of—and thought about the likelihood of their whereabouts on the fateful day. Conrad the priest had certainly been in the square; after all, he had begun the whole terrible incident and was certainly there to see its grisly conclusion. The mason from Tuscany—what was his name? Oh, yes. Bartolomeo. Had he been there? Or František the miser? Or Božena the old beggar woman and Anežka the wealthy matron? What about Aleksandr and Jiri? Certainly not all the guests at the Epiphany feast in the Little Town who had been transformed into animals. For all that, what about the young thief who had his arm cut off in St. Jakub’s Church yesterday?
Since she had not been present in the Old Town Square, it was impossible for her to say. “Given the size of the mob, though, even someone who had been there would not know for certain who else might or might not have been in the crowd. Unlikely as it seems, maybe they were all there as Fen’ka burned.” She considered that possibility. A coal winked out without her noticing. Then another.
She sighed with relief that she had not been there and was therefore perhaps safe from the predations of Svetovit. But if even only one of these others who had suffered at his hands had not been present at Fen’ka’s burning—and, given her suspicions, Nadezda was as certain as she could be that some must not have been—then that meant that Svetovit’s destructive power was not limited to those who had cried out for Fen’ka’s death.
She reviewed what else she remembered about the curse that others had reported. “All their wives and children.” Yes, that was the phrase. “All their wives and children.” So Fen’ka had deliberately extended her curse beyond those present in the Old Town Square. The words caught in her throat. The wives and children of the men in the square that afternoon? Vavrinec had been there. He had told her so. That meant that she and Milos were in danger.
; Fear clutched at her bowels. “It makes no matter whether I pursue Fen’ka and her curse,” she realized. “Milos and I are in as much danger either way. Vavrinec is concerned that I will allow my pursuit of Fen’ka and Svetovit to destroy me, but his own actions have put us all at risk.” It was even more incumbent on her now to solve the riddle of Fen’ka’s curse and discover its key so as to be able to rewrite it.
A sharp pain in her wrist brought her attention back to her kitchen and the fireplace. Her grasp of the poker had grown slack as she attempted to work out the puzzle of the curse, and the poker had finally dropped, twisting her wrist as it fell to the floor. She peered into the hearth. The kindling still sat there, only the ends of it singed. No red coals shone in the ashes from the night before.
“No!” Nadezda was furious with herself. “Instead of watching the fire, I was thinking of Fen’ka and Svetovit and allowed the fire to go out!” she chided herself. “I need to do one thing or another, not both things at once!” She recognized the words, so similar to those she and Vavrinec had both chided Petr with as he had allowed his mind to wander and leave chore after chore undone at either the bakery or at home.
“Has my inattention lost a generation of continuity with my fire?” It would certainly be inconvenient and embarrassing if she had to ask a neighbor for coals to relight the fire at her hearth. Kneeling to bring her face as close to the seemingly dead coals as possible, she blew gently and poked at the mounds of gray ash with the kindling.
Delicate flakes of ash swirled about. She inserted the straw further, more deeply into the ashes. She stirred the ashes slightly and blew again. Nothing.
She sighed with irritation. A few moments of inattention had lost the fire that had burned without interruption for longer than she could remember. She blew again, more strongly this time. Ashes swirled and danced. She was about to admit defeat when she saw the tiniest hope.
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