ELEVEN
During those early days of waiting, Mouse practiced patience and penance and tried not to imagine what it would be like to finally have answers about who she was, to have a family, to know her mother; she especially tried not to hope for finding her father.
Most mornings she spent transcribing the record of land disputes and Ottakar’s rulings. Wanting to avoid sleep and the dreams that came, she worked late into the night stitching the pages together to make a book; she painted the wood cover blue with wild hyacinths on the spine. The artist in her sighed a little when Ottakar gave the book its mundane title—The Land Tables—but she filled with pride at his reverence as he laid his hand on the book, naming it before the court.
Every day, Mouse walked the two miles there and back to Strahov. She wanted to see Luka, but the Brothers would not permit her. She refused to give up until the guard assigned to escort her muttered to himself once too often that she ought to learn her place. She didn’t know what she would say to Luka anyway, though the guilt lay heavy on her. She had nightmares when she did sleep, waking just as the scream started to build in her throat.
But just before Hallowmas, she woke to someone else’s screams.
Mouse had heard it before. Lady Harrach. She ran through the hall to the Lady’s chambers, sure she would find the Lady consumed with fever. Mouse had checked on her often; she seemed to be healing well, but such wounds could turn bad quickly.
Lady Harrach sat on the bed rocking her son. “He is not dead,” she whispered over and over. Damek sat at her side.
Mouse swallowed hard, but then she heard the rapid whirr, whirr, whirr of the baby’s heart.
“No, my love, he is not dead. It was just a dream,” Damek said. “See, here is Lady Emma. She will make sure the little man is well.”
Mouse took the baby, who seemed perfectly fine and ready to go back to sleep.
“But it was so real, Damek. I was awake. I am sure I was. I had gone to feed him, and he was lying there, not breathing, and then he opened his eyes and . . . oh, Damek! They were sunken and dark and dead. He was dead. I know he was,” she sobbed. Mouse handed her the baby as comfort. She had just sent Gitta to make some lavender tea when she heard a second scream from farther off in the castle grounds. A shudder of dread went through Mouse. Had the child-things followed her here, drawn by her use of power?
No one said anything about nightmares the next day, but Mouse nevertheless filled a bag with salt, and, when she went to visit Lady Harrach, she sprinkled a cross with the bed and cradle at its head and foot as she pretended to pace the room. The salt rattled as it settled into the rush mats; it would stay put there. Mouse paused at each spoke of the cross to let blood drip from a cut she’d made in her palm, waiting as it slid through the woven rushes to meet the salt below. She mumbled the spell quietly as Lady Harrach talked about her rosy-cheeked baby, the brightness of his eyes, his hearty appetite—anything to wipe away visions of the dead thing from last night.
Mouse crafted a protection spell in her own room also, but she could not go to Ottakar’s chamber to do the same without raising questions. So she prayed for him instead and hoped that her fears were unfounded, that the dark creatures had not found her again. But the hollow-eyed things had so salivated over the squirrel; they would surely be delirious over a resurrected infant.
More than ever, Mouse wished that she knew where Father Lucas was. He was long overdue. When he returned—if he returned—Father Lucas would be expected to stop at Strahov to make a report of his mission, but Bishop Miklaus still had heard no word from him. Mouse would not let herself think about what might have happened to Father Lucas, an emissary of the Church among pagans, but she resolved herself to having to deal with her problems alone.
If the dark things from the baby cemetery had followed Mouse to Prague, she needed to be prepared.
She grabbed the leather bag that had carried all her belongings from Teplá and went to the private garden that once belonged to Ottakar’s mother. No one else would go there, tainted as it was by the woman’s sin. It was the perfect place for what Mouse needed to do.
Closed in by the chapel and the outer castle wall, the garden offered Mouse solitude; it was her own cloistered space. Even overgrown and untended, the place was beautiful. The roses that climbed the trellises along the walls readied themselves for winter, last shriveled blooms clinging to thorny branches as the leaves curled back from them and dropped to the ground. Mouse followed the maze of head-high hedges until they opened on a small fountain surrounded by tall grasses and shrubs that had once bloomed. Moss crept up a stone bench on the far side of the water.
Mouse sighed as she sat down. Guilt hung heavily on her as she pulled a book from the bag. It was the small codex she had taken from Father Lucas’s cupboard. She’d meant to return it, but when Ottakar insisted she come with him to Prague, she couldn’t help but bring it with her—the mysteries of the unreadable book overcoming her shame at being a thief. What language was it written in, and who wrote it? What secrets did it hold, and why did it make the back of her neck prickle with unease?
But as she opened the book now, the sun glaring against the parchment and the old pages crackling in the breeze like the dead roses, desperation quieted her guilt and curiosity. She only hoped that the book had the answers she needed: how to shield the castle from the dark creatures.
Because, if they weren’t already here, Mouse knew they would be coming for her.
She spent the afternoon trying to decipher the text, at first working to see if the lightly inked BRETHREN OF PURITY correlated to letters in what seemed to be the title. She tried to identify the images of plants so she could translate the words beneath the drawings into Latin or German or French or any of the other languages she knew, but, despite the herbal knowledge Mother Kazi had taught her, Mouse could not label a single plant in the whole manuscript. Frustrated and bleary-eyed, she gave up.
That night, the screams came from outside the palace.
“It happens every year at Hallowmas,” Lady Lemberk said dismissively the next day as the women settled into their places in the solar. “Simple people have little control over their own minds. Scared of the dark, they are, and every little creak or groan.”
“And for all their churchgoing, too many of them still believe in the old ways,” another woman added, laughing. “They probably thought some tree spirits had come out of the woods to get them.”
But Mouse knew too much to be comforted, and she skipped the midday meal to go to the garden again. The shadows stretched from wall to wall by the time she slammed the book closed and buried her head in her hands. She felt more convinced than ever that it held the answers she needed, but it would not give up its secrets. She would have to face those dark creatures alone and with nothing more than the handful of protective spells Father Lucas had taught her. It would not be enough. She could not protect the whole castle.
Leaving seemed to be her only choice, for if she did, the dark things might leave with her. She did not mean to cry, but the thought of never seeing Ottakar again pricked at her eyes and squeezed her throat.
And then she heard the footfall. Someone was coming through the maze.
There was no other way out. Mouse moved toward the opening on the far side of the fountain, slipping behind the hedge, so she could see the intruder without being seen herself. But the man found her eyes through the thick hedge without pause. She almost didn’t recognize him. It had been over a year.
“Come, my little andílek. I have missed you so.”
Mouse was in his arms before he finished speaking, her face scratching against his white habit; she breathed in the smell of him—exotic scents she could not place, sweet, rich, the tang of saltwater mixed with the familiar. A different Father Lucas, but Father Lucas all the same.
“One of the lady’s maids told me I would find my little Mouse here in the garden. And so I have.” He stroked her hair as he held her to him.
“Y
ou are thinner,” she said, finally pulling back enough to see his face.
“I find I do not like travel by water.”
“Where have you been? We thought you—”
“I went across two seas, fell ill and had to recover so I could come home to you. Imagine my surprise at finding you here instead.” He ran his thumb across her cheek. “But why are you crying?”
“Because I am happy you are here.”
“Hmmm.” He knew her well enough to catch the half-lie, but he let it go. He took her hand in both of his as they sat on the bench. “So, where did we leave off, little Mouse? It was my turn, I believe. Ah, I know . . . ‘And the human stands erect and looks toward heaven so as to see God, rather than look at the earth, as do the beasts that nature has made bent over and attentive to their bellies.’”
Mouse smiled. It was their own kind of chess, a game Father Lucas had crafted to challenge himself and her—name the author, book, and quote the next line.
“Isidore,” she said. “Book Eleven of the Etymologie. And the next line is: ‘Human beings have two aspects: the interior and the exterior. The interior human is the . . . is the soul and the exterior is the body.’” She stumbled on the line not because she had forgotten it, but because it hurt more now to say it than when she read it for the first time years ago, just after she had stopped looking for her own soul.
Father Lucas sighed. “Ah, you still do not read it as I would have you read it. Isidore tells us next the soul is like the wind. Can you see the wind?”
“No, Father, but I can see your soul. It glows so bright it hurts my eyes. I am dark inside, and now . . .” She swallowed hard against her guilt and fears about the dark creatures. Father Lucas looked so tired, and Mouse just wanted to revel in the joy of him being here.
“Have you found trouble, andílek?” His question was so like the one Mother Kazi asked, but Mouse knew he would never send her away, no matter what trouble she’d found. “Is that why you are not at home where you should be? Have you become a king’s Mouse now?”
“No, Father!” Embarrassment flamed in her face, but she looked away quickly so he could not see the rest of the truth in her eyes, the truth that she would very much like to belong to Ottakar. She bristled defensively. “I could not stay at Teplá. And besides, it was Mother Kazi who bid me come with the King. He needed a healer.”
“Mother Kazi sent you? But why could you not go back once the King—” As he moved his hand down to the bench, he brushed against the book that Mouse had left laying there. “What is this?”
She wanted to slide it under her skirts and give him a lie, but she wouldn’t. “I . . . I took it from the cabinet in your alcove. I needed—” She shook her head. “That does not matter. I took the book even though I knew you did not want me to read it. I am sorry, Father.”
“And did you read it?”
“Are you angry I took it?”
“Ah, little Mouse.” He bent and kissed her on top of the head. “When have I ever been angry at you? I meant for us to study those books together, true enough; they tell dark and confusing stories. But I have been more absent than not these past years, looking for more books like those, and I have had little time for study with you. It is right that you should read them on your own and make of them what you can. Perhaps you can offer new insights seeing them fresh and without someone else’s prejudice.” He picked up the book. “But you did not answer. Have you read it?”
“I cannot. I do not know the language. Can you teach me, Father?” She turned toward him smiling and feeling like herself again, eager to learn from him, to discover something new with him.
“I do not know the language, either.”
She felt herself sag as the weight of her worry settled on her again.
“And over the past several years, in all my travels, I have found no one else who can read the language,” he added.
“How is that possible?”
“Either it is a lost language, one so old we have not even a trace of it, or the book is not written in a language at all but rather in a code.”
“Why would someone write something no one could read?”
“People will do anything to keep their secrets. And to uncover the secrets of others.”
“But there must be a key. Some way to understand the code.”
“I agree,” he said.
Mouse sat straighter, studying his face. She had heard something in his voice, in his heartbeat. “You have the key.”
Father Lucas laughed. He lifted his hand, gently sliding it down her face, closing her eyes. “Andílek, if you look at me any more closely, I am like to shatter and be spread on the wind.”
Mouse pulled away sharply, too unsure of what she was capable of—if she could blind the sighted and raise the dead, might she not also shatter a man?
Father Lucas put his hand under her chin, lifting her face. “I will show you, and maybe we can unlock the secrets together.”
“I would like that very much,” she said. “But first I have someone I want you to meet.”
TWELVE
Mouse made the introductions much more gracefully than she had with Mother Kazi, bowing low and “my Lord-ing” in all the right places; she was disappointed that Ottakar seemed stiff and regal and Father Lucas distracted.
Ottakar quickly excused himself for a meeting with Lord Rozemberk and Father Lucas went off to report to Bishop Miklaus. Mouse walked with him as far as the South Gate, but she would not go beyond the castle walls.
A cold rain misted down as she turned back toward the keep, and as she crossed the bailey toward St. Vitus’s, Mouse caught the taste of metal in the air. It was slaughter time. She heard the bellows of the sheep and cows that were waiting for their turn at the knife, but she would not turn the corner to serve witness. Her stomach heaved, and she walked blindly into the dark of the basilica’s portico just as the rain fell harder, running down the church façade.
Mouse leaned against the wall, letting the steady beat of the rain drive out the sounds of the panicked animals. She lifted her skirts and held her foot under the falling water, digging her fingers between her toes to loosen the caked mud; she had adopted St. Norbert’s bare feet again as penance after what had happened with Luka. Her feet were raw and tender, and the water felt good.
“I love the harvesting days. The smells of summer gone fill the air as the women thrash the grain. But I hate slaughter time.”
Mouse spun toward the dark corner. How could she not have heard him there? It was the blind minnesinger from that first night in the Great Hall.
“Smell of death, it be. And not a right one, no. Not like the old star what slips away in the deep dark, peaceful and quiet. Or a martyr’s death who dies for the good, fierce and noble.” He spoke like a poet, Mouse thought, like the songs he sang. “This time of year, death steals what it wants, too impatient to wait. Those poor beasts out there are but some of its bounty.”
“Their flesh will give life to many this winter,” Mouse offered quietly. “Like Christ’s body slain.”
“True enough, I suppose, but not your truth, I think,” the blind minnesinger said.
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply.
“You would not have them slaughtered. You will not take the life stolen from them.”
Mouse’s head was spinning. “No. I mean, I do not know. I would not have the living ones watch the slaughter.”
“It is better if they do not know what is coming?” he asked.
“I think I would not want to know until I felt the knife at my throat.”
“Death would be easier?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I am sure at least that living would be easier if I could not see too far down the path.”
“I wonder if knowing what waited for you would make life sweeter. If I had known that I would lose my sight, I think I would have seen more—more colors, more faces.” He sighed. “I miss faces and watching how they change while people listen to my music.”<
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Mouse ran her sleeve across her cheek, crying for what the old man had lost and for what she had taken from Luka. She put her muddy hands on either side of the minnesinger’s face, her thumbs sliding down his forehead over his eyes, which closed as she touched them. “I wish you could see again,” she whispered as she bent to kiss his forehead.
She turned and stepped out into the rain, headed back to the castle.
“What have you done?” he said hoarsely.
Mouse stood for a moment, frozen, before turning to look back at the old man. He was standing just on the other side of the curtain of rain, looking at her.
Looking at her with clear, blue eyes.
“No,” Mouse muttered, the rain running in her mouth as she leaned toward the old minnesinger and watched his pupils dilate with the shift of light. Something quivered in her stomach.
“What are you?” He was reaching for her, grabbing her wrist, his face and voice full of awe. “You are beautiful! Dark hair, skin so smooth.” His other hand slid through the rain toward her face. “Your eyes, green as a yew tree. Are you a saint? An angel?”
“No. I am nothing. A girl.” She tried to pull her arm free. “Only a girl. Please, I did not do this.” But the thrill of what she had done started to overcome her fear. She had given the man his sight. She might do the same for Luka.
The minnesinger kissed her hand. “Come. We must tell my boy, Matthias. Oh, my son, I have not seen his face since he was a babe.” He stepped out into the rain with her.
Like lightning, Mouse saw what would happen if the minnesinger told his strange tale and laid the miracle at her feet. At the very least, it would be Teplá all over again—people crossing themselves against her, staring at her with awe or fear, but she wouldn’t be shielded by the abbey, by people who had known her since she was a little girl. These strangers were as like to call her witch and strap her to a stake and burn her this Hallows’ Eve.
Bohemian Gospel Page 11