Lucie shrieked and ran inside, bolting the door behind her. The naked bathers scattered in all directions, clothing abandoned, hands pressed to their breasts and genitals.
Don Julius pounded on the massive door.
“Whore of a whore, where is she? I will kill you and every member of your family if she is not returned to me!”
By now, citizens were gathering by the bridge to watch the wretched Hapsburg pounding against the door. When Lucie refused to open it, he unsheathed his dagger and stabbed the wood savagely, over and over again, gouging and splintering the heavy oak planks as if it were living flesh and a mortal enemy.
With a clamor of thundering hooves, the two Austrian companions finally caught up with their lunatic friend. They surveyed the scene, still gasping for breath from the rough ride, and exchanged a few words in German. The blond rider took off at a gallop for reinforcements from the castle while the dark-haired one dismounted, throwing his reins to the nearest bystander.
“Don Julius, come! We will find your bathmaid, I swear it! Come away from the door and let us return to the castle to make our plan.”
Don Julius threw him a murderous look and continued his violent attack on the door, his hands bleeding now from sharp splinters that scored his skin.
As he slashed feverishly at the door, Jakub and Annabella came running, for the news of Don Julius’s attack on the bathhouse had flown from mouth to shouting mouth the length of crowded Wide Street. All Krumlov pressed near to see, making the old Barber’s Bridge creak under their weight. Jakub and Annabella pushed through the crowd.
“Don Julius! Cease!” shouted Jakub in German. “Let me through, I am a court physician to Rudolf II!”
The people of Krumlov pressed back against one another, clearing a narrow passage for him, staring at the well-dressed stranger.
At the sound of Jakub’s voice, Don Julius stopped mid-gouge, his dagger plunged deep into the wood. He did not turn around, but pressed his forehead to the door.
“Jakub!” he shouted, the name resounding. “You too seek the maiden of the Coded Book. Well, you shan’t have her. She is mine until death and beyond!”
“Come away from the door, Don Julius. She is not within those walls.”
Don Julius grasped the hilt of his dagger with all his might and pulled the blade from the splintered wood. He grunted mightily with the effort and swung around, facing the physician with his weapon in his hand. He crouched, ready to attack.
“Go away, Physician. You shall not have her and her secrets!”
Jakub skirted the edges of the crowd, approaching the lunatic from an angle.
“Drop the weapon, Don Julius. Listen to reason, sir.”
“Reason? I know why you are here!”
“The Coded Book is back at court in the hands of your father. Doctor Mingonius has delivered it there safely.”
“God curse the swinish king! His greedy hand caressing something he cannot comprehend!” shouted Don Julius, his hands trembling. “The book is mine! It is I who will read its secrets, not a thickheaded sot!”
A collective gasp issued from the gaping mouths of Krumlov. Never had they heard such treasonous blasphemy shouted in their streets. Treason shouted at full lung by the king’s own son.
“Come, Don Julius. Doctor Mingonius will return. Once we calm the bad humors that possess your body and mind, he shall return with the book. I will write to him tonight, you will see. Come now. We have gone through too much to let it end like this, Giuglio.”
At the mention of his childhood name, Don Julius began to tremble, the dagger shaking like a child’s rattle in his hand.
“All I want is the maiden, my angel!” he cried. “She lives, they say, and she must join me to be my mistress, my wife! My soul bleeds for her—the voices will not be stilled!”
His legs buckled and he collapsed, the exhausting ride and emotion finally taking their toll. He began to sob, phlegm running from his nose and mouth.
“With her, I can fight the demons. She silences the voices in my head with her touch. Nothing else can save me. No one!”
He scrabbled at the filthy ground with his bloody fingers.
The clatter of horseshoes ricocheted off the cobblestones, heralding the approach of the guards and coach. Jakub kicked away Don Julius’s dagger and knelt by his side.
“Come, Giuglio. I will attend you at the castle and prepare hot baths to soothe you. The demons that haunt you murder your soul.”
The guards dismounted and helped the sobbing Don Julius into the coach. The grief-stricken Hapsburg offered no resistance.
Jakub crouched in the slick muck of the cobblestones. He picked up the dagger and returned to Annabella as the crowd watched his every move, trying to identify this new stranger to Krumlov.
“Bring some red oil to the castle and your most potent sleeping teas,” he whispered to her. “Make sure Marketa stays hidden. This is a very dangerous time.”
He jumped into the coach and shouted to the driver. He comforted his blubbering patient as they rode back up the hill to Rozmberk Castle.
CHAPTER 40
JAKUB HORCICKY DE TENEPEC AT ROZMBERK CASTLE
The carriage clattered up the cobblestones. The short ride up the hill to the castle was punctuated with wailing sobs from Don Julius. Jakub Horcicky, who had known the king’s son almost all his life, was shocked to witness such despair from a young man who had always prided himself on his strength and the cruel power he could wield over any who crossed his path or thwarted his desires.
What humor had seized him with such force as to render him a weeping mockery of a man? Had Marketa opened the veins of the emperor’s son and stolen his soul along with his blood?
In the castle courtyard, Jakub flung open the carriage door and told Don Julius, “Do not worry, my lord. All will be well.” Then he stepped down onto the cobblestones and told the guards, in Czech, “Take Don Julius to his chambers and draw a bath.” They looked at each other in surprise when they heard his distinct Krumlov accent. He had spoken perfect German when addressing Don Julius. Now to hear the royal physician speak to them in their own tongue and dialect left them dumbfounded.
“Yes, I was born on a farm near Krumlov,” he said with a nod. “I am one of you.”
The guards had no time to converse further. They seized the quivering Don Julius and half carried him through the castle doors and up the stairs to the Rozmberk apartments where he now insisted on living in luxury rivaling the king’s. One guard barked an order to a servant for water to be drawn for the bath.
Jakub left orders for Wilhelm the page to await Annabella’s teas and potions, with strict instructions to bring them immediately. He followed the guards up the stairs and watched them deposit their charge on his bed and prop him up against the pillows so he wouldn’t choke on his own saliva.
Don Julius’s eyes rolled in his head. He gulped at the air as if it were something foreign, a maritime creature dredged out of the water, gasping.
Jakub had no pity.
“You attacked her and she fell to her death,” said Jakub in a low voice, his teeth grinding in anger. “You murdered that innocent girl.”
“NO!” shouted Don Julius, his eyes focusing past Jakub. “She lives! They deceive me, these wretched pigs of Krumlov. They hide her. They have hidden her from me all along!”
Jakub looked at the guards and then back at Don Julius. The thought that Don Julius knew she was alive made his blood chill.
“No, Don Julius, she died in the fall,” said Jakub. “No one could survive from such a height!”
“She could if she landed on the rubbish pile,” said a Castilian-accented voice. The Spanish priest stood at the threshold of the door. “A miracle, perhaps, but a miracle that was concealed from us by these deceitful Krumlovians!”
Jakub watched the desiccated priest approach the bed. His cassock was rumpled and mud-splattered. He looked weary, but angry.
“And who are you?” Carlos Felipe asked rude
ly. “What business do you have conversing with my charge, the king’s son?”
“I am Jakub Horcicky de Tenepec, a physician to the king,” replied Jakub. “I might ask the same of you—you seem to have wandered away from your monastery. The Jesuits are down the road in Old Town.”
“How did you know I was a Jesuit?” snapped Carlos Felipe.
“I spent my childhood scrubbing plates and fetching water for the brotherhood,” replied Jakub. “There is a certain aura about Jesuits one does not soon forget.”
The two men eyed each other warily.
Don Julius struggled to his feet. “I shall imprison her father the barber until she surrenders herself to me!”
Jakub’s eyes narrowed. “Imprison the barber? On what cause?”
Don Julius’s face wrinkled in furrows as he cast about for reasons.
Then the priest committed the greatest of sins. “That he conceals the truth from the Hapsburgs!” he said in a cold harsh voice. “That is clearly treason. This entire wretched town is an accomplice to treason!”
Jakub stared at the priest. How could this old man of the cloth condemn Marketa to certain death?
The priest stared back in defiance, his nostrils pinched and his mouth hard and small. Jakub thought, This man is no friend of Krumlov or Bohemia.
Don Julius shouted, “Treason! Yes, I am the Lord of Krumlov, by order of the king. I shall do whatever I choose with the miserable village and its people. They are my subjects.” He set his lower jaw forward, grinding his teeth in a maniacal grimace.
“She loves her father. She will come back to me!” he said, twisting his dirty hands together. “I—I shall have a nightgown made for her. Trimmed in bearskin so I can tear it from her body and ravage her power. I shall ravish her until—”
“I think that is quite enough, Don Julius,” said the priest, a sudden pallor overtaking him. “Have you forgotten your grief, your repentance? God has performed a miracle in—”
“Shut up, you miserable old man!”
To the priest’s horror, the young man who had crawled on the floor of the chapel, proclaiming his sin and profound regret, declaring his love for the girl, now had the hard sheen of mad cruelty in his eyes.
The proud, vicious madman had returned, after months of remorse.
Carlos Felipe had only thought of revenge for the collective deceit of the Krumlovians, who had lied not only to Don Julius, but to him. In his burning spite, he had been blind to the girl’s peril. Gone was the remorse, the tears, the confession and pleading for absolution for killing the girl, the pitiful bleating of a man in grief. Instead the hard glint of bestiality had returned.
The priest’s old eyes grew large. He left the room genuflecting, his dry lips whispering a fervent prayer as Don Julius declared, atrocity by atrocity, exactly what acts he would commit on Marketa. Jakub’s mind rocked with the diatribe, and he rushed for the door when the scullery boy arrived with the bag of teas and potions that Annabella had brought to the castle.
Jakub was able to keep Don Julius sedated for eight days, but he knew that he could not prolong the treatment any longer without running the risk of killing his patient. He did not wish King Rudolf’s hooded executioner to dull the royal ax on his neck bones.
Jakub pleaded with Annabella to send Marketa away, and he warned of the certain arrest of her father, Zigmund Pichler. When Marketa refused to leave, he hurried to Annabella’s house.
“He told me exactly what he would do to you, Marketa,” said Jakub. His body was tense with emotion and his stomach churned with concern for the bloodletter’s daughter. “He has ordered a night robe to be made for you out of the finest silk, trimmed in bear fur from the hunt. Then he will approach the bed and...”
“And what?”
“He shall cut you for your deceit to punish you. He shall rape you as you scream for mercy, bleeding from your wounds. I think he intends to kill you for not coming back to him at once,” said Jakub, staring down at the worn planks of the table. He looked up again at Marketa. “He has always been brutal, and when the humors seize him, his bestiality knows no boundaries.”
Jakub pulled Marketa toward him, his hands grasping her shoulders. “I beg of you, do not return to him. Let me hide you—I will take you to Prague under my protection.”
Annabella watched the two from her stool. She said nothing.
Marketa looked back at Jakub, holding his gaze. There was tenderness mixed with terror in his eyes.
“I thank you for your offer of protection, Jakub. It is charitable, given your station at court, to risk intervention,” said Marketa.
“Marketa! It is not charity. I could not bear to see harm come to you.”
Marketa held his gaze as long as she could bear. But then she broke away from him.
“He will imprison my father? Does he mean to execute him?”
Jakub’s silence was all the answer she got. Or needed. Marketa frowned, savagely twisting her hair around her finger.
“How can I let my father rot in the dungeon? How can I abandon him to face death for my foolish deed?” she said finally.
“I have already sent word for him to flee. Your mother must accompany him. There is no telling what Don Julius might do to her.”
Marketa said nothing. Annabella reached for her hand and gently pressed it. She had been silent all evening.
“Annabella, help me. What should I do?”
The witch looked at the fire in the hearth.
“It is nearing Masopust, when we prepare to fast and the bad spirits run riot. They will be purged as spring finally comes, but now is a dangerous time as they rebel and walk among us. No good comes of this time. It is the bad month of February.”
Marketa looked at her friend, her eyes welling with fear and disappointment. She had come to trust Annabella’s prognostications, and now there was nothing but a bleak omen.
“But what of the plan? What did your coven of spirits tell you?”
“They told me to await your decision. First you must determine the course of destiny, and I must not intervene until you have chosen the path.”
“But—I—what can I do? I am powerless!”
Annabella lifted her hand to Marketa’s fear-stricken face. “You will lead us, Marketa. Somehow—the spirits have disclosed as much.”
Marketa closed her eyes in despair. She had no idea what her friend was saying.
“In the meantime, bring me a lock of his hair,” said Annabella to Jakub, her eyes turning back to stare at the fire. “I shall do what I can.”
Jakub knew better than to argue with Annabella, for he had witnessed her cures and strange spells. Yet he still felt exasperation with her turn to witchcraft at such a dangerous crossing point, when reason and logic were clearly in demand.
“I doubt I can collect his hair, Annabella. The man will not let anyone touch him, save Marketa.”
“Find a way. I must have his hair,” she said, staring hard into his eyes. “The hair that grows from his crown and obscures his vision.”
Jakub was certain he saw the leaping flames of the hearth still reflected in her gaze, even though she had turned away from the fire.
The warning came too late to save Barber Pichler. It was not a Krumlov guard who arrested Marketa’s father, but the two Austrian companions of Don Julius, Heinrich and Franz, eager to put an end to the spell the Bohemian bathmaid had cast on their lord. They longed for their old friend, the king’s son, to accompany them as he once did, sparking fights, drinking to excess, and whoring in the streets.
The Austrians seized Barber Pichler roughly and dragged him to the carriage. The coach driver cried out his remorse in Czech in the darkness as he watched his old friend pulled from his home. The Austrians shouted at him to stop his incomprehensible prattle or they would whip him and throw his old bones in the dungeon to keep his friend company among the rats.
Lucie Pichlerova’s screams brought the neighbors running from both banks to the bridge. Heinrich shoved the barb
er’s wife to the ground and spat on her.
“Mother of a whorish witch!” he shouted, running a hand through his greasy blond hair. “Surrender your daughter to Don Julius or you will never see your husband again!”
The carriage pulled away, leaving Lucie sobbing on the ground.
No one in Krumlov came to comfort her. They turned silently back to their affairs.
CHAPTER 41
LUDMILLA
When word reached the convent of the Poor Clares that Barber Pichler had been arrested, the news was quickly brought to the dying mother superior. The aged Sister Agnes knelt by her bedside and whispered the news.
“My brother,” Ludmilla cried softly, her eyelids pressing closed. “I may be too late to help either of them.”
The old nun who had brought the news nodded her head, resigned to the will of God.
“It is in the hands of our Lord,” she said, fingering her rosary. Her face was set in hard lines, and she thrust her lower jaw forward. She was accustomed to the cruelty of the mortal world and comforted by others’ misfortunes. The fact that Ludmilla had sullied the convent’s sanctity with a male presence other than a priest made her despise the mother superior.
Ludmilla opened her eyes slowly and focused on the nun’s tight mouth, etched in lines of bitterness. There was no trace of kindness in that face. It was as harsh and barren as winter’s frozen ground.
The mother superior brought her hand to her own face and traced the contours with trembling fingers. Did she wear the same hard countenance as this pious but embittered sister?
“Send me the novice, the one who sings in the halls when she scrubs the floor.”
“I have punished her for this, Mother Ludmilla,” said the nun. “She will not do this again, I assure you.”
“Pity. Send her in at once.” She paused to regain her strength. “And thank you for bringing me news of my brother, Sister Agnes. Now I need you to promise me that you will follow my wishes for my death arrangement. Follow them exactly.”
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