“Well?” he asked. “Still think there’s no reason to keep tailing you?”
Reynevan was breathing heavily, gasping for breath through his open mouth. The terror had only just kicked in and his vision went so dark he had to lean against a wall.
Flutek came closer and bent over to examine the thug with the lacerated hand. He mimicked with swift movements the German block and Italian counter-blow used by Reynevan.
“Well, well.” He shook his head in approval and disbelief at the same time. “Skilfully done. Who would have thought you’d attain such dexterity? I knew you were taking lessons from a swordsman, but as he has two daughters, I thought you were training with one of them. Or both.”
Flutek gestured for the sobbing and bleeding thug to be bound. He looked around for the one who’d been stabbed in the thigh, but he had furtively slipped away. He ordered the one struck by the truncheon to be stood up. He was still dazed and dribbling. He couldn’t look straight ahead—his eyes were still crossing and uncrossing and kept rolling back into his head.
“Who hired you?”
The thug’s eyes darted around at random and he tried to spit. Unsuccessfully. Flutek gestured and the thug was hit in the kidneys. When he inhaled with a hiss, he was hit again. Flutek waved a careless hand, indicating that the thug should be taken away.
“You’ll speak,” he promised as they marched him down the street. “You’ll tell us everything. No prisoner of mine has ever remained silent.” Flutek turned around to Reynevan, who was still leaning against the wall. “To ask whether you have any suspicions would be to insult your intelligence. So I shall. Any idea who was behind this?”
Reynevan nodded. Flutek also nodded, in approval.
“The thugs will speak. Everyone talks in the end. Even Martin Loquis finally spoke, and he was a tough and determined little bugger, an idealist and true martyr to the cause. Scoundrels hired for a few pre-revolutionary pence will sing at the very sight of the tools. But I’ll still treat them to the red-hot iron. Out of pure affection for you, their would-be victim. Don’t thank me.”
Reynevan didn’t.
“Out of pure affection,” continued Flutek, “I’ll do something else for you. I’ll let you avenge your brother personally, with your own hand. Yes, yes, you heard right. Don’t thank me.” Reynevan didn’t thank him that time, either. As a matter of fact, Flutek’s words hadn’t sunk in yet. “In a short while, my man will report to you. He will instruct you to go to the House of the Golden Horse in the town square, where we spoke today. Go there forthwith. And take a crossbow with you. Have you got that? Good. Farewell.”
“Farewell, Neplach.”
There were no further incidents. It was dark by the time Reynevan reached the corner of Saint Stephen’s and Na Rybníčku Streets and the house with the room on the first floor that he and Samson Honeypot rented from Mistress Blažena Pospíchalová, the thirty-year-old widow of Master Pospíchal, requiescat in pace, may God bless him and keep him, whoever he was, what he did, how he lived and whatever he died of.
He gingerly opened the garden gate and entered the pitch-dark hall. He tried his best to keep the door from squeaking and the old wooden stairs from creaking. He always did when he returned after dark. He didn’t want to meet Mistress Blažena. He somewhat feared what a confrontation with Mistress Blažena after dark might lead to.
In spite of his efforts, a step creaked. The door opened and he smelled Hungary water, rouge, wine, wax, plum jam, old wood and freshly laundered bed linen. Reynevan felt a plump arm around his neck and a pair of plump breasts pressing him against the banisters.
“We’re celebrating tonight,” Mistress Blažena Pospíchalová whispered into his ear. “It’s a holiday today, my boy.”
“Mistress Blažena… But… Should one—”
“Be quiet. Come.”
“But—”
“Quiet.”
“I love another!”
The widow pulled him into her chamber and pushed him onto the bed. He plunged into the abyss of the starch-smelling feather bed and sank into it, overpowered by the downy softness.
“I… love… another…”
“No one’s stopping you, deary.”
Chapter Two
In which Flutek keeps his word, Hynek of Kolštejn brings peace and quiet to Prague, and history cuts and wounds, keeping physicians very busy.
Flutek kept his word. Which completely astonished Reynevan.
For a month had passed since that conversation, since the revelries celebrating the victory at Tachov. Since the attack. And since the incident with Mistress Blažena Pospíchalová which occurred on the night of the fourth of August. The incident with Mistress Blažena repeated itself, truth to tell, a few more times and, on balance, had more pleasant than unpleasant aspects. The former included—among others—the delicious, hearty breakfasts that Mistress Blažena began to serve her lodgers from the fifth of August. From that day onwards, Reynevan and Samson, who had previously enjoyed rather irregular and meagre meals, walked to their daily duties well fed and content with life; and as they walked, they smiled cheerfully at their neighbours and whistled merrily, remembering the taste of bread rolls, white cheese, chives, liver sausage, gherkins and scrambled eggs with grated celery. Mistress Blažena very often served scrambled eggs and celery. Eggs, she would say, shooting Reynevan glances as velvety as Alpine edelweiss, increase potency. And celery, she would add, increases desire.
A month after those events, on the sixth of September, on the Saturday before the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as Reynevan and Samson were finishing their scrambled eggs and celery, a familiar grey character in grey hose appeared in the chamber as quietly as a grey shade.
“The master is waiting,” he said softly and succinctly, “in the Golden Horse. Shall we go, m’lord?”
The streets of Prague were unusually empty, almost deserted. There was tension in the air, the pulse of the city nervy, anxious and irregular. The roofs shimmered with the rain that had fallen before dawn.
They walked in silence.
Samson Honeypot spoke first.
“Almost exactly two years ago,” he said, “we were in Ziębice. You arrived in Ziębice on the eighth of September 1425. On a noble mission to liberate your beloved. Do you remember?”
Instead of answering or commenting, Reynevan speeded up.
“In the course of those two years, you’ve undergone profound metamorphoses,” Samson went on. “You’ve changed both your religion and world view: no small thing. To defend them, you sometimes fought with weapon in hand, and were sometimes used by politicians, spies and scoundrels. But your motive now isn’t virtuous redemption but quite the reverse: blind revenge. Revenge, which, even if by some miracle should fall upon the men who are actually guilty, still won’t bring your dead brother back to life.”
Reynevan stopped.
“We’ve been through this,” he replied firmly. “You know my motives. And you promised to help. So I don’t understand—”
“Why am I bringing this up again? Because it always bears revisiting something like this. It’s always worth trying, because perhaps it will work, and perhaps someone’s eyes will be opened and they will see the light. But you’re right. I promised to help. And I shall. Let’s go.”