She dodged a flying fist and handed him a small doll. “Here, sing to the doll while Jetta is gone.” She began the singsong tune she had taught him earlier. To her amazement, he ceased his screaming and pounding and began to singsong, clutching his doll to his chest.
Go now, while the boy is quiet, the voices said. Go now, gonow gonow gonow gonow gown O W N O W N O W.
Covering her ears, Jetta rushed from the camp in the direction of the great stone bridge.
Anna always waited until the double-faced clock across Staroměstké radnice said midday, when the heat from the cobblestone, baking in the sun, drove the inhabitants into the shadows of their houses and alleyways. Every day for a week she’d forced herself from bed, too often forgetting to comb her unkempt curls. Sometimes she would dress, but more often she’d fallen asleep in her clothes and would change only when she noticed how smelly and rumpled she’d become.
At such times, she would rouse herself as from a dream, remembering how fastidious her grandfather had been in his personal habits, remembering too her childhood, when he’d struggled to braid her hair into a coronet of neat coils. They had lived in Ghent, then, in Flanders. But that was before that city fell on hard times, before the English started weaving the cloth that Flanders had been famous for, before the great cloth merchants became too poor to buy books.
She’d been only six years old when they left, but she remembered the name of the street they lived on. Sint Veerleplein. Sometimes she dreamed about it, mostly in the mornings, when her mind had had its fill of sleep, but her will would not let go. When, at midday, the sun heated up the east face of her bedroom, forcing her from sleep’s oblivion, pushing her from her bed, she would expect to wake in that childhood place.
Then she would remember.
Her marrow would congeal to lead, leaving her limbs too heavy to move.
Ddeek was not here. He was sleeping in the churchyard behind Týn Church. She was completely alone. And Martin. When she thought of Martin, with his teasing grin, his flashing eyes, she would be so overcome with grief that she would cry out and beat her fists upon the walls of her bedroom. But all she ever got were hands as bruised as her heart.
Even Master Jerome was gone. They’d arrested him three days after they’d buried her grandfather. Jan Hus had come to tell her. He had warned her to sell her belongings, to go away and live with relatives, even offered to send a deacon from Bethlehem Chapel to assist her. She thanked him politely and sent him away.
Then, she’d trimmed her lamp and gone to bed.
How could she leave? Not with Ddeek sleeping all alone in Týn Churchyard. She had promised him she would go to Sir John Oldcastle. The name was written on her brain, but surely he would not have wanted her to make her way alone. It would not be safe. And now there was no one to take her.
Infrequently, shamed by the memory of her grandfather’s fastidiousness, Anna combed her hair, changed her smock and blouse, and swept the ashes from the cold hearth where no cook fire bloomed. Sometimes, she even choked down a cold biscuit. Then, she would venture into her grandfather’s room to seek his presence, walking as quietly as any ghost, not wanting to disturb the air. Perhaps, if she sat perfectly still in his chair, he would feel her grief and come to her. But he never did.
She always left the room as silently as she had come into it, tiptoeing so as not to leave even the sound of footprints on the floor. Then she would go to the flower sellers in the square and buy two nosegays.
One for the churchyard.
One for the bridge.
Every day it was the same.
The old flower seller pitied her. She could see it in his eyes, though she never told him what the flowers were for.
“Two for the cost of one,” he would say. “They will wilt soon enough anyway.”
Anna always tried to thank him, but the words clotted in her throat.
Today, like each day, the sun was low when Anna left the churchyard to go to the bridge. The shadows were already creeping onto the hard-baked earth of the new grave. By the time she reached the bridge, the shadows of the hrad on the hill leaned into the river.
In her left hand she carried her little nosegay of remembrance. And in her right a handful of stones plucked from the riverbank. That first day she’d come, she’d tried to frighten away the feasting birds with shrieks and hurled stones, and it had worked. They had scattered in a great fluttering of wings and raucous cries, circling high in the bright blue sky until they settled like gargoyles upon the balustrade of the bridge’s entrance. But she knew they only awaited her departure so they could return. That first time she thought only of protecting the skulls, like Rizpah in the Hebrew Bible Ddeek illuminated, the woman who had camped for months beneath the hanging bodies of her dead sons to guard them from desecration. Anna had lingered for hours, huddled beneath the poles, shrieking and throwing stones at the birds.
But she’d not looked at Martin’s head.
She could not bear to think that the grotesque thing affixed to the pole had once been Martin’s beautiful head. She’d watched instead the other two, for a sign of the birds returning. They always did. Then she would shake the poles, and scream, hurling her stones at the ravens until the soldiers had come and made her leave. Every day she left, trembling with relief when they chased her away, but she cried hot tears and cursed herself for lacking Rizpah’s courage.
Today, as she approached the bridge, she forced her gaze upward, dreading what she would see. But today there were no birds—not even one— perched upon the smooth skull.
The bridge was empty.
The riverbanks were empty too except for one old woman who huddled beneath a weeping willow at the water’s edge. She was shaking her head and muttering to herself. The heat shivered up in waves of light from the stone pavement of the bridge. At the midpoint of the bridge the poles stood sentinel—was that a trick of light? Were the poles empty? Had some scavenger eaten away even the hard bone, some devil bird sent from hell to devour this last remnant with its iron beak?
She looked from the pole hard into the low-angled sun as if to find an answer written on its bloody face. A large black-winged bird floated across the swollen orb, circling lazily. She looked back at the poles. Three black spikes in silhouette, each unadorned at its apex.
Anna dropped her stones. Clutching her skirt in one hand, the bouquet in the other, she ran toward the center of the bridge. The sound of the old woman’s muttering had stopped. Anna was alone on the bridge, running in a world suspended in heat and silence. The heads of the flowers in her hand bobbed with each footfall, spilling feathers of color onto the gray paving stones.
In the center of the bridge she jerked to a stop. Looked up. It had not been a trick of light. The poles were empty, the skulls gone.
She stood transfixed, gazing upward. The muscles in her neck cramped, and in that instant her wounded mind conjured not Martin’s head on the center pole, but another. Her own bright curls, her own gaping mouth, a home to wasps and flies. She gave a little cry and blinked hard against the light, closed her eyes, but the image painted itself on her eyelids as well.
She shook her head hard to dispel the horrible sight and opened her eyes. The poles were once again empty, but they seemed to sway slightly. Or was it she who swayed? She lowered her head.
The bridge was strangely silent for the end of the day. As though Christ had returned to claim his saints and taken them all away and she alone had been abandoned to this loneliness upon the bridge. She, alone in a world where even the sun had turned to blood—she and one other, the old woman huddling beneath the bridge on the verge of the river, watching Anna as though she were a mummer in a play.
I should cry for Martin, she thought. One last flood of tears. For the man who would have been her husband. A good man. A man of fair countenance and fairer disposition. A man who had loved her. A man who would have been the father of her children.
But the sockets of her eyes felt as dry as the hot stones burning
through the leather of her shoe soles. How then to mourn this final parting when she had no more tears? She gathered up the stones, smooth and warm, that she had dropped crossing the bridge and formed them into a cross beneath the pole. Stepped back to view her memorial. Only slightly more substantial in form than the fair flesh now gone to make food for birds. But the cruciform would mark this spot a while. Travelers crossing the bridge would be wary of dismantling a cross.
She looked down at the wilted bouquet in her hands, the fragile stems broken by the clutching of her fist. At last her vigil was over. There would be no more birds to chase away. No more birds—except in her dreams. And now what was she to do? She leaned against the bridge balustrade for support and looked down at the water beneath. It looked so cool.
Where had they taken them—the heads of the three young men? She looked hard into the water, dark ripples in the shadow of the bridge. Would it be so bad to be there? she thought. It was cool. Dark. Deep. She could envy Martin such a peaceful place. No need to flee. No need to hide. These waters would quench an angry bishop’s fire. A final baptism.
Was that a gleam of bleached bone in the water?
No, only a sunlit fish, flashing in a deep pool. She felt light-headed as she leaned forward and dropped her flowers one by one into the water. The heat from the bridge rose in ghost waves. She could smell the baking stones of the pavement. What was she to do now? Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The name repeated itself in her head. But how could she get across the sea to England? She could not fly like the great gull soaring in silhouette against the sun.
She watched the flowers drift on the wind then float down to the surface of the rippling water, mesmerized, feeling as though she were floating with them.
And then she was.
Anna would never know if she jumped, or if she fell. If the heat and her grief and the effort expended on the bridge pushed her past fatigue. Or if her soul’s wish worked its will upon her body like some unseen puppet master.
All she knew was that the moment she sank into the cool water she felt a sudden great lightness as if some terrible burden had been lifted from her. The water lifted up her skirts, bearing her up, buoyant, a petal, a leaf, a dragonfly floating on the face of the water.
Free. Free from her grief. Free from her promise.
A spirit no longer bound in flesh. Then as her clothing became more sodden, she began to sink. She did not flail about. She simply sank into the cool darkness, embracing death as though it were the lover of her imagination.
Is this the way it would have been with Martin? Or was this Martin who embraced her, not the river, and she was only dreaming of the river, and the head on the pole had all been some terrible nightmare? She relaxed, sinking slowly below the rippling surface. The water closed over her eyes and seeped into her mouth, sealing her in, accepting her as it had earlier accepted the other offerings falling from the bridge.
On the surface of the water a coneflower petal snagged upon a drifting bird feather and floated gently to shore, where the old woman waited.
TEN
Which is the villain now and which the knight,
That worms have gnawed their carcasses so bare?
Christians, Jews, and heathens serve Him all,
And God has all creation in his care.
—WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE IN
MY BROTHER MAN (13TH CENTURY)
Anna woke. Panic stirring.
Were those shrieks, that bek, bek, bek, the cries of damned souls in torment?
She opened her eyes slowly. That light, glowing crimson overhead in this cavelike space, was that a reflection from the devil’s furnace? Had they been right all along, those black-robed priests who preached perdition for unshriven souls? Were they even now hanging her body and dragging it through the streets as punishment for self-murder as her soul awoke in hell?
No. More than her soul. She could feel her corporeal body. It ached. But then it would, wouldn’t it, in eternal torment? At least that’s what the learned friars would say.
But if this was hell, there was an absence of the smell of sulphur, not a hint of brimstone—they’d got that part wrong. Instead, the scent of something frying and the hiss of sizzling fat. Not an unpleasant odor. It smelled like … like bacon? The incongruous picture of a horned devil dangling his pitchfork over the flames like a toasting fork might have made her laugh, if she had had air for laughing. Or she might have cried out in fright, if she had had air for crying out.
She opened her mouth, tried to inhale deeply, and strangled, coughing, sputtering, choking on the overheated air. She sat upright. Panic rising. The crimson light danced and shimmered at one end of the tight little space, glowing like a fiery curtain of coals. A tiny gasp of air, and her quivering lungs strangled her again. The curtain parted. Embers, sparking fire, shivered with the movement.
An old woman with a lined brown face and stringy gray hair emerged. The devil’s minion come to torment her? To gnaw at her liver? Or squeeze her flesh with hot pincers, like the images carved on cathedral doors?
“Drink, missy.”
Strange eyes darted quick as fireflies above a clawlike hand offering her a metal cup. A cup of water in hell? Not unless the creature had come, like Tantalus, to tease.
Anna took the metal beaker and held it with both hands, but she did not drink. She coughed again but with less vigor, the spasms in her chest gentler now. She was beginning to remember.
Panic falling.
She lifted her head gingerly, feeling its stuffed heaviness, but was able to assess her surroundings with calm. She lay on a pile of blankets on a wooden floor. A barrel ceiling curved overhead. Windows on each side, hung with cheap red cloth curtains, filtered a blaze of sunlight through their coarse weave, and the curtain of coals at the end of the room was made up of strings of brightly colored beads. The old woman holding the cup, the clawlike hands—it was the old woman from beneath the bridge.
A dreamlike memory struggled to free itself, a memory of being pulled from the water’s edge, pummeled and pounded, half carried, half dragged, and finally lifted by many hands under curious, peering, black-eyed faces up into the place where she now lay. She was in some kind of wagon, not unlike the elaborate carriages the nobility traveled in, but smaller, and of meaner substance.
Anna tried to hand back the tin cup. “I think I’ve swallowed enough water for one day.”
But the old woman refused it, shaking her head. “Not water. Medicine. Tate shilalyi. Hot-cold. It will ward off fever and ague from the river. Drink it.”
Anna thought she should pretend to drink it to spare the old woman’s feelings. After all, she had pulled her from the river. Anna lifted the beaker to her lips. The smell made her nose wrinkle. “What’s in it?”
“Powder of frog’s lungs and livers,” the old woman said. But she wasn’t looking at the cup as she spoke. Her darting gaze had come to rest on Anna’s head with an expression that looked almost hungry.
Maybe this was hell after all.
“Then I shouldn’t drink it,” Anna said, grasping for a reason that wouldn’t offend. “I once drank something with … frog parts in it, and it made my … tongue swell. I’m feeling much better. Truly.”
Anna held the cup out again, suppressing the cough that threatened, and this time the woman took it. Without even a glance at the cup, the old woman set it down on the floor, and reached out to touch Anna’s hair, never unlocking her gaze. Anna could feel the gnarly fingers trying to comb through her hair. She tried not to cringe. After all, this strange-looking creature had saved her life. And she supposed that was a blessing. A ragged fingernail caught and pulled against the matted curls. In spite of herself Anna cried out. Her wet hair had dried into a frizzled mass. She probably looked like a wild woman. It was a wonder the woman wasn’t afraid of her.
“Rawnie bal,” the woman whispered, fingering Anna’s hair as though it were gold.
“What did you say?”
Not the language of
Bohemia, not even German, Anna was sure.
“Lady hair. Red hair. Much good fortune.” The woman let go, sighing as though she were letting go of some treasure. Was this the reason her benefactress had pulled her from the river? Because of her red hair?
“Well, it certainly hasn’t brought me much good fortune. Where am I?” Anna asked, trying to distract the woman, who looked as though she might at any moment take scissors to Anna’s locks. Unruly though they were, she was a little reluctant to part with them under the circumstances. “And who are you?”
“I am Jetta,” the crone said, unlocking her gaze, removing her fingers from Anna’s mop of hair. “I am Roma. You are with the Romani. You are safe.”
“Roma?” Anna had never heard that word before either, though Martin had told her about a strange band of pilgrims he’d encountered passing through Hradčany on the high spur above the river Vltava. They had finally camped downriver. She’d seen their camp from the bridge.
“We are Christian pilgrims. ‘Gyptians who did not fight the Saracens when they came into Egypt. Now as our penance we must roam the earth for seven years to please our Lord.” She said it as though it were some memorized litany.
But this Jetta, as she called herself, was the oddest-looking pilgrim Anna had ever seen. No pilgrim’s staff, or cloak, or scrip. Her head was tied with a ragged kerchief and she wore large colored hoops of string and metal around her neck and a long ragged skirt and loose shirt. The barrel-topped caravan looked as though it were some sort of permanent home, with its thin curtains, and beads, and bright colors. Nowhere did she see an altar or a statue of the Virgin. The bottom and sides that were not covered with bright cloth looked to be made of wood, penny farthing boards, exactly the width of a penny and a farthing.
The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5) Page 9