The Silver Sword (14 page)

She couldn't imagine life without a pen in her hand. She loved the feel of a slender quill and the process of making words flow and blossom to life on parchment. As she moved her hand over the blank pages, watching words and pictures and borders combine in a work of art, she rejoiced, knowing that the words represented concepts and emotions that would touch hearts and stir souls. She would have been content to live each day of her life at her writing desk, copying the words of Master Hus and other great professors.

A month ago she would have been happy to live her life in the company of her books, her father, and her father's friends. Strange how she had always spent her time in the company of men. She actually knew very few women; she had only passing acquaintances with women at the market and the landlady who came to collect the rent once a month. She did not dislike others of her own sex, but she had not been taught the code that unlocked female simpers and sighs, and she could not fathom the rationale behind the affected
speech and behaviors of noblewomen who wandered into the bookshop.
The Art of Courtly Love
and other books like it had raised far more questions than they had answered.

Her father and Petrov had always treated her with kindness, consideration, and honesty. She had never been given reason to believe she was less than a man because she had been created female, and the men in her life made her feel cherished, revered. Her father had always called her his “secret weapon,” for her skill with languages and her deft hand had enabled him to produce beautifully copied books in half the time of his competitors. When most other fathers set their daughters to work in the kitchen, Ernan O'Connor had propped Anika up beside a writing table and placed a quill in her hand. While other girls pounded bread, Anika smoothed parchment with a pumice stone; while other young ladies sewed and embroidered, Anika mixed inks and drew word pictures. By the age of twelve she became an equal partner in her father's business, and she had never believed that she might not be able to accomplish anything she set her mind to do.

Outside Petrov's house, the moon sailed across a sky of deepest sapphire, casting bars of silver across the floor of the chamber. From the other side of the room, the old knight snored loudly, his back to her.

Dear Petrov. What would she do without him? Her hand crept to her forehead, where a neat row of bangs lay just above her eyebrows. Just before sunset, while there remained enough daylight to see, Petrov had taken the small dagger he bought for Anika and shorn her waist-length hair. He cut her hair in the short-cropped style preferred by all noblemen, but when he came to the small plait of white hair, he paused and lifted his brows in a quizzical expression.

“What about this?” he asked, frowning as though he had never noticed the white braid before.

“Cut the white streak out,” she said firmly, gripping her chair with both hands. “Down to the scalp, Sir Petrov. No one must see it.”

Her head felt curiously light without the weight of her coppery locks, but one glance in her small mirror convinced her that she made a strikingly plain boy.

By the time blue-veiled twilight crept into the house, Petrov had burned the remnants of her hair in the fireplace. As the stench of burning hair filled her nostrils, Anika gathered up her chemises, gowns, sleeves, and collars, then locked them into a chest. Petrov pointed toward a pile of garments on the table. From a widow whose son had just died from fever, he had purchased a pair of soft leather boots with deep cuffs, a pair of thick hose, a short tunic, and an open-sided tabard of rich brocade.

“They will think I am a nobleman's son for certain when they see me in this,” Anika exclaimed as Petrov modestly turned his back so she could slip into the outfit. “What if Lord John asks who my father is?”

“If he does, tell him the truth about your father's Irish roots,” Petrov answered, chuckling. “Tell him you are descended from the great kings. The O'Connors were a powerful clan in Ireland, and I'm not certain they still aren't.”

And so, lying in the dark, Anika had composed her story. She was the child (she couldn't in good faith declare herself a
son)
of an Irishman, O'Connor by clan, and honorable by birth. Her father had been killed in battle (hadn't he?), and Sir Petrov was her father's dearest friend and her guardian. She wished for asylum and instruction in the chivalric arts of knighthood; she wanted to serve an honorable lord and defend God's enemies from injustice and falseness. The charade would work. She would pass as a boy and be safe until the danger was over.

“If I learn my lessons well,” she whispered, watching the play of moonlit shadows outside, “I will be prepared if Lord Laco or his son should ever come after me again. And when the time is right, I shall have my vengeance against Cardinal D'Ailly.”

Novak

T
he sun had not yet risen when Petrov shook Anika awake. “Wake up, Kafka,” he murmured, a note of pride in his voice. “Today we journey to Chlum.”

Anika sat up, ran her fingers through the fuzzy ends of her shorn hair, then stepped into her boots, remembering to hide the dagger beneath the cuff as Petrov had taught her. Within five minutes she was dressed and ready to go, her gunnysack packed with a comb, her pen, and two small books: a copy of Paul's letter to the Ephesians (her favorite epistle of late because Paul wrote of putting on the whole armor of God) and
The Art of Courtly Love.

She stood in the doorway and held out her hands, inviting Petrov's inspection, but frowned when his brow furrowed. “What is wrong?” she asked, glancing down to make certain she had not forgotten some necessary article of clothing.

“You are missing one thing every squire needs,” the old man answered, his hands moving toward his own belt. Slowly, lovingly, he unbuckled the silver sword that hung at his waist, then proffered it to Anika like a king granting gifts.

“Your sword,” she breathed, awed by the significance of his gesture. “It is yours, Sir Petrov. I cannot take something your master gave you.”

“You cannot train at Chlum Castle with a stick, Squire Kafka.” He gave her a rare, intimate smile, beautifully bright, and his voice was uncompromising, yet oddly gentle. “Take it. My master gave it
to me, and so I give it to you. Use it well, but only in the defense of truth.”

Anika extended her hand and took the hilt, her body vibrating with new energy and purpose. “Thank you, Sir Petrov.” She inclined her head in a deep gesture of thanks. “I pray I will honor you with it.”

As devoutly religious as he was proud, Petrov refused to escort Anika to Chlum until they had stopped by the church to pray. “But what if Master Hus sees us?” Anika protested, horrified. “He may recognize me and will not approve, Sir Petrov. He thinks I am fit only to become a governess or kitchen maid.”

“I've heard that the preacher has been detained at the archbishop's house for at least two days.” Uncertainty crept into his expression as he paused by the door. For the first time that morning she heard doubt in his voice. “I will not do this unless we have the Lord's blessing, little bird. I must know that God approves. 'Tis a strange and dangerous thing we are doing.”

“Let us go to the church, then,” she answered, gathering her cloak from the peg on the wall. “I would not have you going soft on me now, Sir Petrov. 'Tis too late to turn back; my hair is all shorn off, and my dresses are locked away.”

Outside, the eastern sky blazed in shades of copper and sapphire as the glowing rim of the sun pushed its way over the rooftops of Prague. A lighted window of the church spilled a golden glimmer onto the stone pathway as Anika and Petrov walked up to Bethlehem Chapel, but Anika was relieved to see that Master Hus's small house was dark. Petrov walked with long, purposeful strides—probably eager to be rid of his obligation, Anika thought—and they found the large chapel empty. A half-dozen torches and lamps illuminated the altar, but shadows canopied the far-off ceiling while darkness shrouded the side walls. Anika had never been inside a deserted church. She felt almost as though she had stumbled upon God himself and disturbed his privacy.

A wave of apprehension and last-minute doubt swept through her as she and Petrov approached the altar. Was her plan a sin? Was
she being presumptuous to ask God's blessing on this expressly duplicitous venture?

Petrov's knees cracked through the silence as he knelt on the stone floor. “In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti,” he said, lifting his eyes to the huge wooden crucifix behind the altar. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

As Anika slipped down beside him, she saw a priest enter from a side doorway. Seeing them, he stopped and folded his hands, allowing a pair of spiritual seekers a moment of private colloquy. Anika thanked God that she had thought to lift the hood of her cloak over her head.

She raised her hand to make the sign of the cross. With three fingers to symbolize the Trinity, she began her prayer. “I touch my forehead in recognition of the Deity in Heaven,” she said, turning her eyes toward the floor, “I touch my belly to show that Jesus descended into Hades, I touch my right shoulder because the Son is seated on the right hand of the Father, I touch my left shoulder to expel Satan from my heart.”

“Forget the formalities, say what is on your heart,” Petrov whispered, nudging her with his elbow. “We have a visitor. Master Jerome.”

Anika pressed her lips together, thinking. The idea of hiding herself among knights had sprung from her imagination, but had the seed been planted by God himself? She knew that many in Prague would think her the worst sort of sinner for denying her gender and playing a squire's part. Undoubtedly they would quote the Old Testament scripture that spoke of the sin of a woman putting on that which pertains to a man.

But those same people would enjoy a nice pork roast on Sunday. They would wear garments of mixed fabrics, and none of them would send their women to dwell outside the city walls when they began their monthly issue. They kept only the Old Testament rules they found convenient, and Anika had a particularly convenient reason for hiding herself away.

“Father God, holy and true, I don't know if what I intend to do
is right,” she muttered hastily. “But I promise to do my best to honor you. The chivalric ideals of knighthood are holy and true to your Word, and I will do my best to keep them. Guide me, Holy God, and lead me in the way I should go—”

“Hurry.” Petrov spoke in a broken whisper. “Jerome comes.”

“Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit coelum et terram,” she finished quickly. “Our help is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Amen.”

She bowed her head in time to see the shadow of a robed priest fall upon the stone floor beside her.

“May Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins, and bring you to everlasting life,” Jerome said, his voice low and smooth in the nearly empty church. “Is there something I can do for you, my children?”

“No, Master Jerome.” Placing his hand on Anika's shoulder for support, Petrov looked up at the priest and slowly rose to his feet. “My ward will today join the knights at Chlum Castle. We came to ask God's blessing before we depart for Lord John's estate.”

“Then let me add my blessing as well.”

Anika froze, keeping her eyes lowered, as the priest stepped closer. Jerome stared at her in silence while her heart raced and her fingers fluttered with fear. Then his patrician thumb firmly traced the sign of the cross upon her forehead.

“Go with God,” he said in a formal voice, then added, “and may our blessed Jesus Christ calm your nerves, my son. Your hands are trembling like a frightened girl's.”

Panic rose in Anika's throat and threatened to choke her, but Petrov merely laughed and patted her shoulder. “After a month at the castle, nothing will frighten this one,” he said, practically pulling Anika up from the floor. “Keep us in your prayers, Master Jerome. This young squire will need courage, and I will need comfort, for I shall be terribly lonesome when my house is again empty.”