The Silver Sword

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  She glanced away, feeling herself flush, rattled by the pressure of his gentle eyes. She cut upward with his knife until the rope broke and his arms fell stiffly to his side. Anika knew each movement brought her master great pain, but he said nothing as she slipped his dagger into her own belt.

  “Anika—what do you want to do?” He made a credible attempt at coolness, marred only by the thickness in his voice.

  Placing her hands on his foot in the stirrup, she lifted her gaze and searched his face, reaching into his thoughts. She thought she saw a faint flicker of doubt in the depths of his soft dark eyes. “Employ me as a maid or a servant, my lord, but do not cast me off.” Tears blinded her eyes and choked her voice, but she pressed on, unwilling to consider the future apart from him. “You are all I have. You are my life … my home. Whatever I do, I would like to do it for you.”

  With a grimace of pain he slid from the saddle and stood beside her. His dark eyes flashed a gentle but firm warning. “I have no need of maids or servants,” he said, lifting his good hand to her shoulder. Slowly his palm opened, and he cupped her cheek. “What my castle needs is a wife, a position I should have offered you long ago.”

  Anika felt the touch of his gaze, as gentle as the surf on a sandy shore. “I was wrong, Anika, not to let you know the depths of my feelings for you. You are a friend, you are a delight, you are the love I never dreamed could exist.”

  She felt a trembling thrill as his voice echoed her own longings, but her senses reeled in confusion. “Yet you are a nobleman, and I am only a merchant’s daughter.”

  “You are more noble than any woman I have ever met.” The warm wave of his breath reached her ear as his voice softened. “Anika, I need you at my side. My sons need you. I need you to teach me how to be a father.”

  She pressed her hand over his as a tremor caught in her throat. What would The Art of Courtly Love advise her to do now? Surely there was some formula, some set of words she was supposed to use in response …

  But she had never done anything by the book. “I love you, my lord John,” she whispered, reveling in the heartrending tenderness of his gaze. “I can think of nothing I would rather do than spend my life by your side.”

  He extended his arm and bent toward her, and she was powerless to resist the silent invitation. She moved into his embrace, fully aware of his strength and his need for her.

  “We must get you to a physician,” she said, afraid to hold him too tightly. “That arrow must come out, and the wound be cleansed.”

  “There will be time enough for that,” he answered, and before she could protest further, his lips brushed against hers. Anika gently wrapped her arms about his neck as her pulse pounded in her ears and the song of the wind whispered among the trees.

  “Time enough,” she promised. Then her lips caressed his with exquisite tenderness.

  Epilogue

  Dr. Henry Howard

  Professor of Medieval European History

  New York City College

  Dear Dr. Howard:

  I don’t know if you’ll remember me—we met in the college library about six months ago. You told me about Cahira O’Connor and suggested—none too subtly, as I recall—that because I had red hair marked with a white streak I might be connected to the legendary O’Connors of Ireland.

  It’s probably impolite for me to say what I thought of you and your story that afternoon. Let’s just say I was a little skeptical, shall we? But after I began to investigate a bit, I found I couldn’t let the story go. The manuscript you’ve just read is the first fruit of my efforts. I worked on Anika’s story for my semester English project and plan to research Aidan and Flanna next year. (If you have any professor friends in the English Department, you might want to take them to tea this summer and tell them to fortify themselves for next term. I expect they might find me a wee bit long-winded.)

  Why am I so interested in these women? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid World War III will break out after the millennium, and the president will issue a call for red-haired piebalds to fly B-52s or something. Seriously, I’ve been having nightmares about what might happen … if I’m really one of Cahira’s chosen few. But at least Anika’s story had a happy ending.

  As you probably know, the war Anika anticipated did break out in 1419. In that year the new pope, Martin V, with the support and urging of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, declared a crusade against the Hussites. To the emperor’s surprise, the Hussite army handed the invading Crusaders several stunning defeats, then took the offensive, attacking Catholic strongholds in Slovakia, Silesia, and Lusatia. Anika herself did not fight in the war but worked as a copyist, sending copies of Hus’s letters to those who fought for the Hussite cause. She and her husband, Lord John, did much to keep the flames of reformation alive. Together they had four children, none of whom was known for having red hair or any sort of piebaldism.

  Baldasarre Cossa, formerly Pope John XXIII, was eventually reinstated as a cardinal. Unlucky pennies do always turn up, hmm?

  The Hussites celebrated a partial victory in 1431 when another church council convened to settle the dispute. As a concession to the Hussites, the Catholics agreed to allow the celebration of Communion of bread and wine in Bohemia. This satisfied the Ultraquists, a moderate group who limited their demands to the four articles cited by the Hussite League, but a more radical faction, the Taborites, refused to compromise. This group, drawn mostly from the rural peasantry, called for the complete abolition of clerical vestments and the Latin liturgy. They also attacked the monarchy and the feudal system. (The Powers That Be weren’t too thrilled with the Taborites’ demands. I’m afraid they were doomed to fail.)

  Finally, at the Battle of Lipany in 1434, a combined force of Ultraquists and Catholics defeated the Taborites, effectively ending the Hussite wars. Sadly, over the next two hundred years, the concessions won by the Ultraquists were eliminated.

  Despite the setbacks, however, Jan Hus did not die in vain. Over one hundred years later, the great reformer Martin Luther found a volume of Hus’s sermons preserved in a library at Erfurt. “I was seized with a curiosity to know what doctrines this great heretic had taught,” Luther wrote. “The reading filled me with incredible surprise. I could not comprehend why they should have burned a man who explained Scripture with so much discernment and wisdom. But the very name of Hus was such an abomination that I imagined that the heavens would be darkened and the sun would fall at the mere mention of it. So I shut the book with a sad heart, consoling myself with the possibility that it was written before he fell into heresy.”

  Later, in 1529, Luther wrote to a friend, “I have hitherto taught and held all the opinions of Hus without knowing it. With a like unconsciousness has Staupitz taught them. We are all of us Hussites without knowing it.”

  So, Professor Howard, I must thank you for spurring me forward. I have just discovered that not only may I be a direct descendant from Cahira O’Connor, but I have been a Hussite for many years … and had no idea.

  I stopped by your office one afternoon, hoping to find some information on the Ultraquists, but your assistant, Mr. Taylor Morgan, said you were out. He was very helpful, though … and I’d like to call upon him again sometime, if you don’t mind. (Did you discover him in the library, too? Maybe I should spend more time there!)

  If you have some free time during the summer, please give me a call. I’ll begin my work on Aidan O’Connor soon and could use some information about the seventeenth century.

  Sincerely,

  Kathleen O’Connor

  P.S. If Mr. Morgan is available, perhaps I could take you both to lunch! It would be my pleasure.

  Sources

  The information regarding Pope John XXIII, also known as Baldasarre Cossa, is historical and was found in Dr. W. N. Schwarze’s book John Hus, the Martyr of Bohemia. Cossa, now regarded as an antipope, was “given to every form of vice,” and the historian Gibbon called him “the most profligate of mankind.” Acc
ording to Dr. Schwarze, Cossa is charged “with good reason, of having poisoned his predecessor to make room for himself. In his own person he typified the evils and disease of the times.”

  The historical portrayal of Baldasarre Cossa is in no way intended to reflect upon contemporary Catholics. Baldasarre Cossa’s papacy was later invalidated by the Catholic Church, and on October 28, 1958, Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli took the name the antipope Baldasarre had used: John XXIII.

  No work stands alone, and I must thank the following authors for their fine books. The wealth of information in each volume made it possible for me to delve deeply and authentically into the worlds of chivalry and fifteenth-century Bohemia.

  Bartak, Joseph Paul. John Hus at Constance. Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1935.

  Andreas Capellanus. The Art of Courtly Love. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. (John Jay Parry’s translation of the work originally written between 1182 and 1186).

  Edge, David and John Miles Paddock. Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight. New York: Crescent Books, 1988.

  Gies, Joseph and Frances. Life in a Medieval Castle. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

  Gies, Joseph and Frances. Life in a Medieval City. New York: Harper Perennial, 1969.

  Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

  Schwarze, W. N. John Hus, the Martyr of Bohemia. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1915.

  Spinka, Matthew. John Hus at the Council of Constance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

  Spinka, Matthew. John Hus, A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968.

  THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM:

  The Heirs of Cahira O’Connor

  Book 2

  The Golden Cross

  AVAILABLE IN STORES NOW

  Prologue

  The phone rang again, the fourth time, and I skidded on the slippery tile as I rounded the corner, then nearly tripped over my mastiff, Barkly, who had decided to carpet the cool kitchen floor with his two-hundred-pound carcass. Reaching over Barkly for the phone, I accidentally knocked over the chipped mug that held my collection of kitchen implements.

  Amid a clattering of spatulas and wooden spoons, I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Miss O’Connor?”

  Grimacing, I hopped over Barkly and bent to pick up a wooden spoon before he decided to chew it. Only telephone solicitors call me “Miss O’Connor,” so I’d just destroyed my kitchen and nearly broken my neck for the chance to subscribe to Southern Fly-Fishing or some such thing.

  “Yes?” I frowned into the phone. “Listen, I’m really very busy—”

  “I won’t take much of your time, Miss O’Connor.” The man sounded slightly apologetic. “But I’ve just finished reading your work, and I must say it surpasses anything I ever expected.”

  My breath caught in my lungs as I recognized the voice. “Professor Howard? You read The Silver Sword?”

  “But of course, my dear.” I could hear a smile in his voice. “And I was most impressed by your scholarship and attention to detail. Your work seemed very precise, quite well-documented.”

  I clutched the telephone cord and leaned back against the counter, momentarily forgetting about Barkly, about the book I’d been reading, about everything. Professor Henry Howard liked my work!

  “Thank you, sir,” I stammered.

  “I had no idea similar women had descended from Cahira O’Connor,” he went on. “How on earth did you find them?”

  “I just typed the words ‘O’Connor’ and ‘piebaldism’ into an Internet search engine,” I muttered, stating the obvious. “And there they were, all four—Cahira, Anika, Aidan, and Flanna. Suddenly Cahira’s deathbed prayer made sense. She had begged heaven that her descendants might break out of the courses to which they were bound and restore right in a murderous world of men.”

  “Incredible,” he murmured, surprise and respect apparent in his voice. “I was very impressed. If you had been my student, I would have given you the highest possible mark.”

  “Well,” I shifted my weight, “my English professor was a little daunted by the length of my paper. She was expecting one hundred pages; I gave her four hundred. But I did pass her class.”

  “You mentioned in your letter that you plan to continue your research. Might we meet for lunch one day this month to discuss what else you’ve discovered? You also mentioned my assistant, Mr. Taylor Morgan,” the professor went on, a teasing note in his voice now. “He has read your work as well and would be happy to join us.”

  A blush burned my cheek at the mention of Taylor Morgan, and I was glad the professor couldn’t see me at that moment. Flush with the joy of completing a gigantic task, I’d felt a little bold when I wrote the note I left with the manuscript of The Silver Sword—and I had strongly hinted that Mr. Taylor Morgan was exactly my type … of research assistant.

  “Um, sure,” I answered, wrapping the phone cord around my wrist. “I’m working part-time at the Tattered Leaves bookstore down on Sixth Street this summer. There’s a little coffee shop nearby.”

  “I know the place. Shall we say Friday, at 1:00? I’d like to avoid the crowds if at all possible. And Mr. Morgan teaches until 12:30.”

  “Friday.” I felt a foolish smile spread over my face. “Fine. And in case you’ve forgotten what I look like, I’ll be the redhead—”

  “Miss O’Connor,”—I could hear the professor’s grin in his voice—“I could never forget what you look like. Your red hair led me to you in the first place.”

  They were waiting for me when I panted my way through the coffee shop doorway at five minutes after one. The professor rose and pulled out a chair for me, and Taylor Morgan stood, too, his blue eyes smiling at me from behind a pair of chic wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a cotton shirt and khakis, looking completely cool and elegant even in the city heat, and as I slid into my chair, my mind stuttered and almost went completely blank. The sight of Taylor Morgan at close range could do that to any girl, I suspected, but he wasn’t about to be impressed by my scholarship if I sat there and stammered like a star-struck schoolgirl.

  So I looked at the professor instead. Middle-aged, soft, and infinitely respectable. He certainly didn’t give me the tingles—except for the fact that he liked my work.

  We exchanged polite hellos; then the professor asked again how I’d found the other descendants of Cahira O’Connor. “The Internet search engine I used picked up four references to ‘O’Connor’ and ‘piebaldism,’” I said, scanning the menu. I decided on my usual tuna sandwich, then dropped it back on the table. “And each woman followed her predecessor by two hundred years, give or take. Cahira lived in the thirteenth century, Anika in the fifteenth, Aidan in the seventeenth, and Flanna in the nineteenth. All of them were O’Connors, and all had red hair and a white streak above the left temple.”

  The professor’s gaze darted toward the streak of white hair that marked my own temple. I sipped from my water glass, waiting for some kind of response.

  “Do you plan to investigate these other two women?” Taylor asked, his voice husky and golden and as warm as the sun outside. “Will that work fit into your current studies?”

  “I’ve already done most of my research on Aidan O’Connor,” I answered, shrugging, “and I’m an English major, so I’ll find a way to use everything I’ve learned. Or maybe I can talk to my adviser about setting up some sort of independent study.”

  “It would be a shame,” Taylor answered, capturing my gaze with his, “to let such scholarship and hard work go unrewarded. And I’m eager to hear about the other women.”

  “What I want to know, Miss O’Connor,” the professor said, lowering his menu and folding his arms on the table, “is what you intend to do about your own involvement in the lineage. You are an O’Connor: You have the same physical characteristic that marked the others—”

  “I have to admit that I’ve wondered a
bout that,” I answered, a sense of unease creeping into my mood like a wisp of smoke. “I think I am supposed to be the chronicler, nothing more. If God did answer Cahira’s prayer and her descendants are linked to me, then I am the only one with the resources to tell their story. I have access to the Internet, I have a computer, and such technology was completely unimaginable until this century …”

  “For your sake, I hope you’re right,” Professor Howard answered, his hazel eyes registering concern. “Because if you’re not—well, didn’t they all fight in a war? I’d hate to think that armed conflict lies around the corner of the millennium—”

  I held up my hand, cutting him off. “That’s not quite right, Professor. Cahira didn’t say that her descendants would fight in wars, only that they would fight for right in a man’s world. Aidan O’Connor, for instance, didn’t go to war. In 1642 she was living in Batavia, a Dutch colony on the island of Java in Indonesia, and the islands were at peace.”

  “How in the world did the descendant of an Irish princess end up in Indonesia?” Taylor’s blue eyes flashed with curiosity.

  I took a deep breath as my gaze moved into his. At that moment Mel Gibson could have walked into the coffee shop and I wouldn’t have even glanced his way. “It’s a long story. If you have to rush off to another appointment, I probably shouldn’t even begin it.”

  Taylor leaned forward on the table and clasped his hands. “I cleared my calendar for you,” he said, looking at me with a smile in his eyes.