The
MERCY SELLER
Also by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
The Illuminator
The
MERCY SELLER
BRENDA RICKMAN VANTREASE
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE MERCY SELLER. Copyright © 2007 by Brenda Rickman Vantrease. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Vantrease, Brenda Rickman.
The mercy seller / Brenda Rickman Vantrease.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-33193-1
ISBN-10: 0-312-33193-2
1. Illuminators—Czech Republic—Prague—Fiction. 2. Illumination of books and manuscripts—Fiction. 3. Prague (Czech Republic)—History—15th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3622.A675M47 2007
813'.6—dc22
2006050970
First Edition: March 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Don
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An expression of appreciation is due my agent, Harvey Klinger, to whom I shall always be indebted—never was a writer more fortunate in representation. I also wish to express appreciation to my editor, Hope Dellon, for her candor and compassion, for her patience and her relentless pursuit of realized potential. I am grateful to all the wonderful folks at St. Martin’s Press for their good work on my behalf.
The support of my friends and family far exceeded my expectations during the first critical weeks of the launch of a new author. Without their enthusiasm this second book would not have been possible. These much loved people are too numerous to name, but I hope they know how much I value them and their contributions.
I am also deeply grateful for the support of my community. Here, I wish to single out for special thanks: Carolyn Wilson and Saralee and Larry Woods for their early professional recognition and belief in my work.
Thanks are also due to Bernice Rothstein for putting me in touch with Miriam Halachmi of the West End Synagogue, and to Miriam for her gracious assistance with the bit of Hebrew translation I needed. As always, thanks to my fellow writers who read portions of this manuscript and through their encouragement helped me to find my story: Meg Clayton, Mac Clayton, and Leslie Lytle.
Most of all, I thank God for blessing my life through these individuals. I thank Him also for giving me words.
The MERCY SELLER
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
PRAGUE, BOHEMIA
1410
I an Hus chose an open window high in the left tower of Týn Church from which to watch the burning. This church gave him courage. It was a Hussite church, a Czech church, not built with Roman funds but built by and for the people of Bohemia. Yet even here in this sacred place, he could not stop the grinding in his gut as he watched the scene unfold below. This burning in the town square was Archbishop Zybnek’s declaration of war.
Today, it was only books—only holy words consigned to the flames, not the people who copied them—not flesh and blood and bone. But this was prelude to the greater drama.
Hus knew it as surely as he knew that the Church from which he’d been excommunicated oozed corruption. Like a fish, it had rotted from the head down. The papacy preached lies and peddled false redemption to finance its lust for power. John Wycliffe had been the first to point out the abuses of the clergy, the first to translate the Bible into the language of the people, so the people would know that the “truths” the friars preached were lies that served themselves and not the Christ they said they served. Jan Hus was determined to carry on the movement in Bohemia that Wycliffe had begun in England.
So then why wasn’t he down there to stop the burning? He who dared to defy Holy Church doctrine by offering the people the wine as well as the bread in celebration of the mass? He who every Sunday from his university pulpit at Bethlehem Chapel harangued against the false teachings of learned friars and Roman prelates? Was he too craven to gather a brigade of Lollard “heretics” to pour a little water on the archbishop’s flames?
They’ll cook your goose soon enough, Hus, his good sense argued. Don’t be too eager. It is only paper and ink and parchment. The books can be replaced. The hands that copy them cannot. The more the archbishop burns, the more we will copy until the meanest hovel in the Holy Roman Empire has its own gospel in its own language.
But in spite of his brave thoughts, as Hus peered into the Prague twilight, it was himself he saw tied to a stake in the center of the bonfire. Sweat poured from his armpits as though he stood in the middle of the flames himself, as though the faggots catching fire licked their eager tongues against the hem of his rector’s gown. He could smell the stench of his hair singeing, blistering his skin. His gorge rose in his throat. Shutting the window, Hus turned his face away to avoid the imagined heat that scorched the air, burning face, eyes, throat, and deep into his chest.
Give me courage for that day, Lord.
He prayed his Gethsemane prayer in Czech, not in Latin, and he prayed with some hope that for today at least he would not drink from that cup of sorrows. He had more work yet to do.
How cunningly the archbishop had chosen this spot in Staré Město, Old Town. The smoke from his bonfire would taint the air all the way to Betlémská kaple, where each Sunday Hus preached what he had learned from the Englishman John Wycliffe.
He looked again into the square where Archbishop Zybnek postured and strutted. His brocade garments, his gold pectoral cross, his white bishop’s miter, forked as a serpent’s tongue, glittered in the firelight. With each new parchment hurled upon the flames, the fire hissed and spewed orange sparks against a twilight sky. The crowd howled in protest. So much labor, so much richness, so many holy thoughts heaped upon the fire.
“Hus, take care or you will be next upon my heretic’s fire. The burning calfskin will smell sweet compared to your thin, pale skin.” That was the warning written in the smoke and fire.
Hus retreated from the window, but the fire of his own resolve burned as hot as the yellow flames chewing the books. With the backing of King Wenceslas, despite the rancor of the archbishop, the movement would continue. While these books burned, a legion of copyists was already producing their replacements. And come this Sabbath, Hus would preach again in Bethlehem Chapel, where the people would hear the truth proclaimed, not in some dry Latin homily that they could not understand, but in their own Czech tongue, and each one would celebrate the mass at Týn Church by drinking the symbolic blood of Christ from the chalice.
But the image he’d seen of himself tied to the stake in the square below followed Hus home and into his dreams. Jan Hus would be wakened many nights by the illusory smell of singed hair, until the day came when the smell was no longer an illusion.
ONE
PRAGUE, BOHEMIA
JULY 1412
The Avon to the Severn runs,
The Severn to the sea,
And Wy cliffe’s dust shall spread abroad,
Wide as the waters he.
—FROM AN ADDRESS BY
DANIEL WEBSTER (1849)
Anna never went to the hrad, the great walled castle on the western hill overlooking Prague. It hunched just across the Vltava River, a world away. Nor did she go to the great cathedral standing guard over the castle lest she encounter the dread archbishop. Zybnek. The burner of books.
Anna attended mass at Týn Church or met with the rest of Prague’s dissidents at Bethlehem Chapel. After Zybnek’s great bonfire of the Wycliffe tracts and the translated gospels, Lollard texts the Church called them, heretical texts because they charged papal corruption and challenged priestly authority, Hus had warned his growing congregation, “The day will surely come when Rome’s prelates are not content to burn the Word but seek out for their fires those who would bring the Word to the people. We must pray for the strength to stand for our beliefs. We must fasten our courage against such a day.”
Her grandfather had warned his little clutch of scholars and translators too, chastising them for their careless zeal.
And wasn’t he the one to talk!
After all, it was he, her own grandfather, Finn the Illuminator, Finn the Lollard scribe, who, along with Master Jerome, had started Prague’s secret enterprise to disseminate the banned translations. As a young exchange student, Jerome had returned to his Czech homeland from Oxford, bringing with him the Lollard texts. The Trialogus and De Ecclesia of John Wycliffe. Banned in England, they’d found new life at the new university at Prague. Its rector, Jan Hus, had translated the condemned texts, along with a good portion of the gospels, into Czech. And for years, right under the archbishop’s nose, her own grandfather, a refugee from a long-ago brush with English Lollardy, had gathered a wellspring of university dissidents into his little town house, where they copied the banned pages.
Anna glanced at the castle and the cathedral spires of Saint Vitus standing sentinel behind it. She shivered even in the summer heat. But she would not think about the monster on the hill today. Not on a day when the sunlight flung dancing diamonds on the water and no smell of burning tainted the air. Not on a day when the birds wheeled in joyful circles above the river, their wing tips flirting with cloud pillows.
Not on a day when she was meeting Martin.
She turned her back to the castle and looked downriver. In the distance she could make out a camp of some sort, likely pilgrims traversing Christendom to any number of shrines—Jerusalem the holiest—in penance. That was what sinners did, sinners who could not afford to purchase expiation from the Church.
From the town sprawled on her left a familiar figure approached, but not the figure for whom she was looking. “Master Jerome! I thought Martin was coming,” she said, feeling her face redden, her disappointment all too obvious.
“Martin is otherwise occupied, it seems,” the gray-haired master said wearily. He handed her the bag that held the translated texts to be copied at the next meeting. “Thank you for doing my laundry, mistress,” he said loudly.
Who knew the carp in the river had eyes and ears? Or that the woodcutter hauling his cart across the stone bridge might be a spy for the archbishop? But she bit back her sarcasm. She would not belittle him for his excess of caution. She had too much respect for all he had accomplished.
Anna took the university master’s “laundry” and was about to bid him good afternoon when she heard rapid footsteps approaching from the other end of the bridge. She turned to see a lone figure running toward them as though the devil gave chase. Seconds later Martin joined them beneath the sheltering shade of the gate tower. He was gasping for breath and his face was flushed and his black hair fell in an unruly wave across his forehead.
“I’m sorry, Master Jerome. I was detained—”
“You didn’t have time to put on your cap?” Anna pushed Martin’s hair away from his forehead with her hand, a ruse to caress his face.
“I lost it. But in good cause,” he said, breathing heavily. Winking at Anna, he sucked in air and lowered his voice to an almost whisper. “I’ll show you at the meeting— No. I can’t wait. I have to show it to you now.” He drew them deeper into the shadowy hollow of the tower gate and pulled from his plain brown student’s doublet a black velvet packet. It was marked with a Jerusalem cross.
“Put that away,” Jerome hissed. “How did you come by it?”
“Is that what I think it is?” Anna asked, not remembering to lower her voice. “I’ve never even seen one. May I see it?”
Alarm showed in Jerome’s face. “Not here, Martin! You didn’t—”
“No, we didn’t hurt the pardoner, didn’t even scruff him up—well maybe a couple of … you know, smallish bruises. He was just setting up shop outside Saint Vitus Cathedral. Stasik kicked him in his shins, and the pardoner dropped his ‘grace notes.’ While he was nursing his shins—he even curses in Latin—we took off down Crooked Alley. Stasik made for New Town. I headed for Old Town. As easy as taking pennies from a blind beggar.”
You’d be more likely to give pennies to a blind beggar, Anna thought, but kept silent, letting him enjoy his moment.
Martin was grinning broadly as he darted glances across the bridge to assure himself he had not been followed. As was usual in the heat of the mid-afternoon, the bridge was deserted except for the woodsman who was exiting on the other end and a beggar who sat at the gate on the other side of the river.
Anna could see from Jerome’s scowl that he was not impressed. “Fool, do you want to bring the archbishop down on our heads? Wait till Finn hears what you’ve done. This is not our way.” He snatched the little packet of papal indulgences and hid them quickly in his shirt.
At the mention of her grandfather’s name, some of Martin’s bravado vanished.
Jerome’s gray eyebrows bunched together in a scowl. “I don’t think such exploits will weigh in your favor when the illuminator seeks a husband for his granddaughter.”
He was nothing if not direct. Not now. Not ever.
Martin’s smile vanished quickly.
“I want to see one, Master Jerome,” Anna said. “All my life I’ve heard my grandfather and you ranting about the pope’s sale of indulgences to finance his wars, as though they were written by the devil’s own hand, and I’ve never even seen one.”
The old man looked at her and shook his head. “You’re as stupid as your suitor. You deserve each other,” he said. “Just pray I’m not arrested before I can dispose of them.”
“Please, Master Jerome. Bring them to the next meeting. Let us all see what it is we are risking so much to rid the world of. Then you can burn them. We’ll have a little bonfi
re of our own.”
She smiled at him, her wheedling smile, the same smile she had used from childhood on her grandfather to push him through the occasional cloud of melancholy that sometimes descended upon their little house in the town square. “Please. A wee little bonfire of our own. Sweet revenge. To rally our troops.”
“Methinks our troops have a surfeit of rallying.” That was his parting jibe, but his scowl had lightened somewhat.
“He’ll bring them,” Anna said as the old master walked away.
“Of course he will. How could he resist such pretty pouting? I know I couldn’t.” Martin reached up and touched her lips with the tip of his finger, bent forward as if to kiss her.
She pushed him away. “Not here, Martin. Somebody will see. Besides, we are not betrothed. Not yet. Not until Ddeek gives his consent.”
“Aye,” he said, letting his arms drop to his side. “Your grandfather. And therein lies the curdle in the coddle.”
Now it was his turn to pout. She resisted the urge to kiss the pout away.
“I don’t think he likes me overmuch,” Martin said.
His lips were full, and round, and cherry ripe.
“Don’t be silly. He likes you, Martin. He just thinks you’re a little headstrong. He thinks nobody can take care of me the way he does.”
“Well, for my coin, putting you in the middle of a twice-weekly meeting of heretics is not taking very good care. Why do you call him Ddeek, anyway? I thought both of you were English?”
She reached for his hand. “Come on. You can walk me back to my door,” she said, leading him. “I have called him that since we first came here, when I was a child. Besides, I don’t feel English, even though my grandmother was from England too. She was a grand lady and lived in a manor house. But I wouldn’t want to live there. I can’t imagine living anywhere but here with you and Ddeek.”
The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5) Page 1