‘They will not cease, they will not hush, those voices of the wave,
For ever, ever murmuring above the martyrs' grave.
'Tis heard at morn, 'tis heard at eve, the same low, wailing song,
In murmur low, in cadence loud—"How long, O Lord, how long?" '
IT was on the morning of March 1, 1420, that Hubert sat in the little wayside inn a rescued man, and with all his heart gave God thanks for his deliverance from the miners of Kuttenberg. That very day was published the Bull of Martin V which proclaimed the crusade against Bohemia. The Pope called upon all Christendom to fly to arms, and crush the impious nation, 'as rebels against the Roman Church and as heretics.' Every boon claimed by Papal prerogative in this world or the next was offered in guerdon to all who should obey the summons. The Pope, as he said, ‘by the mercy of Almighty God and the authority of the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as by the power of binding and loosing bestowed by God upon himself, grants to those who shall enter upon the crusade, or to such even as should die upon the road, plenary pardon of their sins, if repented of and confessed; and in the retribution of the just, eternal salvation. Such as could not go in person, but contributed to the cause by sending others, and equipping them according to their ability, should have full remission of their sins. Even such as had laid violent hands upon the clergy, or had been guilty of arson or sacrilege, might hope to fight their way into heaven by warring against the followers of Wickliffe and Huss.'
This invitation to all the valor and chivalry, and also to all the ruffianism and crime, of the civilized world, to Pour itself in a devastating torrent upon heretical Bohemia had long been expected, and was therefore promptly obeyed. The invading hosts streamed into the country from the north, and Leitmeritz and the surrounding districts were amongst the first to suffer. The Kaiser Sigismund, who, at the head of the crusading host, was asserting his claim to the crown of Bohemia, took up his headquarters in the neighborhood, and numerous acts of oppression and violence signalized his presence. Everywhere the Papists were exultant, the Hussites cowed and panic-stricken.
Meanwhile Hubert Bohun, still in his lowly disguise, traveled slowly westwards. He had been detained in Eastern Bohemia some time after his adventure with the miners, so many sorrowful hearts did he find to comfort, so many perplexed minds to enlighten, so many faltering wills to strengthen, as he passed along. Now his way led him through Prague, where the aged friend of Chlum and of his house, Parma Oneshka, lay on her deathbed. He waited to see the end, and to receive her last messages for her favorite pupil and adopted child, Zedenka. ‘I have bequeathed to her this house, with all its furniture,' she said. ‘Though I doubt if my testament will be worth any more than the parchment it is written on. We have fallen upon evil days, Master Hubert, and there is now among us no prophet Jeremias to tell us that men shall yet subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in this God-forsaken country. But as for me, I go in peace, being gathered unto my fathers, according to my desire. I love them, and belong to them, and have been but a stranger in the earth since they left me. I pray God to preserve His own believing remnant in this present evil world: and I place all my hope in the merits of His cross and passion; even as my father taught me, whom I shall soon see again in His presence.'
As soon as the funeral was over Hubert set out for Melnik. But he found, on reaching it, that Chlum had resigned his charge, and returned with his family to Pihel.
He had, therefore, no option but to continue his journey, and set his face towards Leitmeritz. It was now the joyous month of May, but the joy of the springtime was not in his heart. Rather, it seemed to him as though the earth and sky foreboded the evils that were coming on the land. Even the field-flowers looked as if they knew their destiny—to be trodden down by hostile feet, drenched with blood, or scorched with martyr-fires.
Still, no one thought of molesting the German packman on his journey. Late one evening he drew near the gate of Leitmeritz. He thought it too late to go on that night to Pihel; and, moreover, he wished to assume his proper dress before appearing there. He knew Frantisek would rejoice to welcome him, and he hoped to hear news of all his friends from him.
He found the gate still open, and a troop of pikemen marching in; crusaders, he thought, as he looked at them with a mixture of curiosity, repulsion and fear. There was no attempt at uniform; their clothing was of the most motley description-some were even ragged, but they were all armed to the teeth, and their looks were fierce and truculent. A disorderly crowd followed them, amongst whom Hubert entered unnoticed. None of the townsfolk were in the street; the houses were for the most part shut and barred, though here and there lights showed faintly behind the lattices. Hubert went at once to the house where Frantisek lodged, and knocked.
After an interval Frantisek appeared, torch in hand, and, opening the door a little way, asked his business. Hubert would have stepped inside to let him see his face in the torchlight, but Frantisek forbade him with a peremptory gesture. ‘Thy name and thy business first,' he said.
‘My name is Hubert Bohun, my business to ask a night's lodging of a good friend.'
‘Master Hubert! Dear Master Hubert! God save you, sir! Welcome, welcome, a thousand times, in His name! Come in, Master Hubert! '
He drew him in, shut and barred the door behind him, then called aloud, ‘Aninka, dear heart, come hither!'
The call was promptly answered by the former bower maiden, now wearing the honors of the matron gown and coif, and with the housewife's keys hanging from her girdle. Glad and proud was the welcome she bestowed upon Good Master Hubert. ‘Now will there be great joy at Pihel,' she said, ‘and the roses will come again to the cheek of my dear lady.' Hubert thought they had come in a marvelous way to her own. Very rapidly had the pale, meek, almost too spiritless bower maiden blossomed out into the happy, busy, important wife.
Wife and husband vied with each other in the pleasant cares and duties of hospitality. They led Hubert into a comfortable, well-furnished room, relieved him of his pack and his outer garments, and gave him ‘fair water' for his face and hands in a pewter basin which might have been burnished by Meličia. The best they had in the shape of meat and drink was promptly set before him, and they both waited upon him assiduously, as did also an aged woman, who seemed to be at once their servant and their friend. Aninka named her to him as Alsbeta, her nurse, who had come to live with them.
Hubert heartily congratulated his friends. ‘I had not heard of your marriage,' he said.
‘It is one of the good deeds of noble Kepka, whom God reward,' said Frantisek. When he was returning from Melnik to Pihel, he lodged three nights here in the town.
So well did he manage matters with Master Peichler, that he gave his consent that what was promised so long should come to pass. For fear he should change his mind, Kepka had it carried through there and then, giving as his reason that Aninka's mistress, the Pánna, wished to be present at her wedding. Frantisek paused, looked round, saw that Aninka was not at the moment in the room, and continued hurriedly in a lower voice: ‘Master Peichler never would have yielded, only that he was loath to lose the handsome dower Kepka has given to my Aninka. For he hates me in his heart. Master Hubert, I wonder sometimes if that which was done was well done.'
‘Well done?' echoed Hubert, amazed. ‘In this sorrowful world is there anything so well done as the joining of hands when hearts are joined already? '
St. Paul thought not that, and the times he lived in were no worse than ours. Master Peichler is burgomaster again this year; he was ever bitter against the Truth, and now he would sell his very soul to please the Kaiser and the crusaders.'
‘Yet,' said Hubert, ‘if anything could restrain him, it would be the knowledge that his only daughter is the wife of a Hussite.'
Frantisek shook his head; and at that moment Aninka reentered, busy and smiling. She carried in, and set proudly before Hubert, a savory dish of her own preparation, eggs ‘in the poach,' not as we know them, in unadorned simplicity, but smothered in an elaborate sauce, made of milk, honey, saffron and ginger.
Hubert, while beginning to do justice to this remarkable compound, asked Frantisek if he knew why Kepka had resigned his charge at Melnik, and returned to Pihel.
‘I think, Master Hubert, you can guess that yourself.'
‘Perhaps I can, but I want to hear what you, who have spoken with him, have to tell,'
‘He had the keys from the queen, as you know, Master Hubert; but to whom should he give them up? To the Kaiser and the crusaders, or to Zisca and the League?'
‘Not, surely, to the first. That were to give the key of the victim's chamber into the hands of the assassins. Nor yet to the second, without leave of the queen, which leave she dare not give. It were a breach of faith and fealty so to do. I fear, verily, my dear lord hath been in a sore strait,' said Hubert.
‘There is always a right course, and he hath found it,' Frantisek answered. ‘He hath given back the keys to the royal hand he had them from—a kind hand, Master Hubert, which would protect us if it could, but is forced instead to clasp the bloodstained hands of bur foes. And now he has gone home to Pihel, to do what he can for the safety of the people on his lands, and of the whole district. I own it seems strange to me how even yet he cannot see that Sigismund the Word-breaker has lost all right to the crown of Bohemia. He will not forswear his allegiance to him, though he cannot help him to plunge a dagger into the breast of his country. I sometimes think, between all these things, the heart of Kepka will be broken.'
‘God forbid!’ said Hubert.
'I thought,' pursued Frantisek, ‘that the cruel martyrdom of the heroic Paul Krasa, and of Nicholas of Bethlehem, would have opened his eyes.'
‘Opened his eyes, dear heart!’ exclaimed Aninka, in mild expostulation. ‘As though they were shut! Depend upon it, my lord knows more than thou or I. Belike he hopes God will change the Kaiser's heart. Perhaps He may, and use the faith and patience of His martyred servants to do it.'
‘Nay, but it is worse he grows every day, and more cruel,' returned Frantisek. ‘That first sin of his, when he gave up Master John, seemed like the turning of his back upon the light. Indeed, in all ways it was his ruin, What Kepka says of him is this:—"By that deed he at once armed Bohemia against him, and took from Bohemia the one man who could have controlled, and guided, and kept her in the paths of peace." But there be others that say far worse things of Sigismund the Word-breaker. They say he is the rider upon the Red Horse spoken of in the Apocalypse, unto whom it is given to take peace from the earth, and that men should kill one another. There are even some who think he is the great Red Dragon.'
Meanwhile a whispered colloquy between Aninka and Alsbeta was going on at the door, and Hubert caught the mention of ‘fair linen sheets laid in lavender.'
Persons in the position of Frantisek and Aninka would not have a guest-chamber; and Hubert could not permit them to resign to him their own, as he was pretty certain they meant to do. He therefore announced his determination to sleep nowhere but on the settle in the living-room, wrapped in his cloak.
But this his kind hosts would by no means allow. Aninka's remonstrances were particularly eloquent. Hubert thought he had scarcely heard her utter so many words at one time during the years they dwelt together at Pihel. At last he said: 'Then this is what I will do, Mistress Aninka. The Golden Goose, where Kepka lodges when he is here, is but a few paces off, and the widow who keeps it is a worthy woman. I shall find a bed there, and come back to you in the morning, to break my fast upon some of your good cheer ere I set out for Pihel. I suppose, Frantisek, thou canst help me to some raiment from the shop? I care not to show myself at Pihel in this gear.'
‘Yet would I counsel you, Master Hubert, not to change your dress till you are safe within the castle-gate. Better so, these ill times, with the crusaders ranging the country. Well, master, if you will go to the Golden Goose, I shall have the honor of attending you.'
Aninka, who evidently thought her husband was yielding the point far too soon and easily, raised an eager protest; but Frantisek failed to sustain her adequately; he said little, and that little with a touch of constraint. His lack of insistence was one of those things scarcely noticed at the time which recur to memory afterward.
Hubert bade him a cordial good-night at the door of the hostelry, promising to come to him early in the morning. At first he saw little prospect of a comfortable night, for the inn seemed to be overflowing with armed men bearing white crosses on their shoulders—the crusader's badge—and eating, drinking, quarreling, or sleeping all over the place. But the hostess, on learning who he was, beckoned him aside and whispered: ‘Master, the little room in the roof hath been engaged by a physician, a very civil gentleman, and well spoken, although, poor soul, he will eat nothing but bread and wine, and refuseth to touch my pork sausages, which are fit for the king's table. I make no doubt he will let you sleep with him.'
‘I shall be much obliged to him,' said Hubert, such an arrangement being quite in accordance with the feelings of his age, however repugnant to ours.
He ascended to the lofty altitude proposed to him, and knocked at the door. The physician, who had not yet retired to rest, bade him come in. What was his surprise to see before him his old acquaintance Solito!
Mutual explanations followed; Hubert told his reasons for assuming his present lowly disguise; and learned in return that the Jew had just obtained the post of physician to His Highness the Kaiser, through the recommendation of his former patroness, Queen Barbe. It was evident that the appointment gratified at once his ambition and his love of gain. Yet his pleasure seemed greatly chastened by what he saw of the state of the country, and what he feared he should be obliged to see in his attendance ()a the Kaiser during his campaign. Hubert responded further to his confidences by telling him how well the moon had kept her appointment on Leap Year night, and what good service she had rendered thereby to him and to his companions.
There was all the time an undercurrent of perplexity in his mind. No Christian in his age, and of his rank, or even a much lower one, would have liked to share the couch of a Jew, were he ever so respectable a personage. Yet by refusing Hubert would probably give mortal offense. He decided at last to sacrifice his feelings, rather than wound those of one whom he desired earnestly to win for the faith of Christ.
A sound sleep in an excellent bed rewarded his sacrifice. He woke refreshed, to see the sunshine streaming in through the little eye-shaped window in the attic. When he came down he found a party of soldiers, not only up already, but apparently returned from some expedition, for they were divesting themselves of their weapons and clamoring for food. The hostess, with a flushed and troubled face, was cooking something over the fire, while her handmaids were setting tables.
‘Will't please you break your fast, master?’ she asked of Hubert; and as she looked at him he saw that her eyes were red with weeping.
‘No, good wife. I have promised to break bread with Frantisek.'
An expressive look and gesture brought him to her side, and she whispered: ‘You will not break bread with Frantisek this morning, God help him! Last night, when we were all asleep, the burgomaster had out the town-guard and the soldiers, and twenty-four good Hussites were arrested in their beds, Frantisek being one of them. He has thrown them into the dungeon by St. Michael's Gate. The whole town is in consternation.'
An hour later the physician leisurely descended the narrow stairs, musing the while upon many things. He thought of the difficulty of making his way to the Kaiser's headquarters, of the probable amount of his reckoning, of the strange apparition of Master Hubert Bohun dressed as a packman. Between and beneath these commonplace thoughts the philosophical speculations of his master, Averrhöes, were floating vaguely through his mind: how at death the universal will be joined to the universe, and the particular will return to the part.' His thoughts were not as the thoughts of the men of his age, of Chlum, of Hubert, and the rest; in some ways they were more like the thoughts of our generation, though again in others curiously unlike. Happily, there are things in which all generations meet.
At the foot of the stairs Dr. Nathan encountered his room-mate, who had just hurried in with a pale, agitated face. ‘Good master physician,' he said, ‘wilt come with me, for God's sake, and bestow thy skill upon a poor distracted girl, who is falling from one swoon into another? The women about her think she will die. I say "for God's sake," and I mean it; nevertheless, we will duly recompense thy pains.' I go. Let me first to my room, however, to fetch my lancets. That imp of a boy of mine, whom I brought with me from Prague, went forth yesterday to see the soldiers, and hath not returned.'
‘Never mind thy lancets. If needed, thou canst send for them.'
‘Be it so; but a physician cannot get himself believed in unless he terrifies the vulgar.'
‘Here is too much terror already. The poor young creature, a bride of a month's standing, had her husband torn last night from her side by armed men, and flung into a dungeon, which it is like he will only leave to die.'
‘Heaven help her! What had he done? '
‘Only received the Communion of the Cup, and learned and loved the Word of God.'
‘Ah, the madness of you Christians! When will you cease to slay one another in the name of your Christ? I am with you, Master Hubert.'
The room which had so nearly been Hubert's own was crowded now with agitated women; and the hot, stifling air was poisoned with the odor of burnt feathers, and of other still more nauseous and equally ineffectual remedies. However, when Hubert and the physician entered the patient had recovered consciousness, and was sitting up in bed, wringing her hands, and wailing and moaning pitifully, the women joining in her lamentations.
Solito put them all aside, and made his way to the bed. He laid his hand upon poor Aninka's burning forehead, looked into her dry, tearless eyes, felt her pulse. ‘Hath she a mother among you?’ he asked.
Alsbeta came forward. ‘Master physician,' she said, ‘I am her nurse and servitor. Her mother is dead long ago, poor lamb! and her father, the burgomaster, is he who hath wrought all this ill.'
‘What? Her father the burgomaster? Then, instead of lying there, weeping and wailing, she should rise up, don her fairest smock and kirtle, and braid her hair, and go and beg for her husband's life on her bended knees.'
They did not think she heard or heeded, but they were mistaken. The paroxysm of what we should now call hysterical crying ceased suddenly, and the large wild eyes, full of anguish, were fixed on the physician's face. He was a man of tact, and saw his advantage at once. ‘Come hither, Master Hubert,' he said. ‘Tell her, instead of making idle moan, to go and do something for her husband's deliverance.' Then he turned to the patient: Come, my mistress,' he said, ‘be a brave woman, and it is like thou wilt save thy husband. Go to thy father, and soften his heart with thy prayers and thy tears. I trow he loves thee in spite of all. Many a father have I seen who cared little for his sons, never one yet who did not love his daughter.'
Aninka with a great effort stifled the cry that was just beginning again, and murmured: ‘He used—long ago.'
‘At least he will listen to thee. Thou wilt get his leave to go and see thy husband in his prison, and then thou wilt beg of him, by the love he bears thee, to do whatsoever is required of him, and to make his peace with the Church.'
Aninka fixed her large eyes on his face again, and with laboring breath faltered just two words: ‘I—cannot.'
‘Nay, but thou canst. Strength will be given thee for the task. Rise—make the effort! '
Aninka struggled evidently to frame a connected sentence ‘—lost it—found it again—managed at last to say, with great effort: ‘Strength will be given me—not to bid him deny—’ There her voice failed.
At such words as these from the lips of this poor, weak, agonized creature, Dr. Nathan Solito stood amazed. ‘In the name of God,' he said to Hubert, rather than to her, ‘what does this fanaticism mean? Will the bride send the bridegroom to his death—though her own heart break the while—for the sake of this John Huss, whom, belike, neither he nor she hath ever seen? '
Ere Hubert found an answer there came from the pale lips of Aninka a passionate, ‘No! not for Master John—for the Lord Christ—"whom, having not seen, we love."'
The physician turned his face away, and was silent. After a pause he said to Hubert, I have marveled often at the strength of the strong; I see now a greater marvel—the strength of the weak. But no skill of mine can avail here. Do you try and rouse her to action. Persuade her to get up, and to take food. Let her go to her father, and try to melt his heart with all the eloquence she can use. Probably she will not save her husband—you Christians are so hard and pitiless—but she may save her own life, or reason.'
So saying, he withdrew, leaving Hubert, Alsbeta, and the others to follow his directions if they could.
Some hours afterward a veiled and muffled figure, leaning upon Hubert and followed by Alsbeta, trod with weak and trembling footsteps the short distance between the lodging of Frantisek and the house of the burgomaster. But it was in vain that Aninka braced herself to make the effort. Her father refused to see her.
Hubert wrote a brief note to Chlum, and despatched it by a trusty messenger, whom Alsbeta found for him. He knew his lord—and others also—would be glad to hear of his safety, and he wished to inform them of the reason of his detention in Leitmeritz. He felt he could not now abandon Aninka, who, in her distress, clung to him as a tower of strength.
Two days passed away. On the third the town was in. commotion. A rumor that the prisoners were to be taken out of their dungeons, judged and sentenced, was passing from lip to lip. Hubert came to Aninka, whom Alsbeta had been tending and feeding almost like an infant. ‘Be strong today,' he said to her, and you will see his face again. Perhaps also you may be able to speak to—to the burgomaster.' He could not bring himself to say—' to your father.' I am strong,' said Aninka. She looked as though a breath might kill her, but her cheeks were burning and her eyes full of light.
Alsbeta waited on her tenderly, and dressed her with especial care. When at last she was ready to go out she paused a moment, as if in thought, then took up a large pair of shears that lay upon the table, and fastened them to her girdle.
Hubert felt alarmed. Had she some hidden purpose of injuring herself? He did not suspect her of a design to injure anyone else. ‘What are those for?' he asked, pointing to the shears.
‘Oh, I know not.' But presently she added, ‘You would have been ill off at the mine without your clasp-knife, or something of the kind.'
Hubert remembered that he had tried to while away one of the interminable hours of the last two days by recounting his adventure with the miners. Had she any hope that a rescue might be attempted? He saw none, no possibility even; but he did not care to say so.
The town-hall was very full. A strong body of crusaders with swords and pikes surrounded the dais where the judges sat: the burgomaster in his robes of office, and, for form's sake, a few of the town council, with him. The town-guard led in the prisoners, a forlorn and miserable group, pale, disheveled, and unshorn. Ever since their arrest they had been kept without food, in the death-like chill and damp of a subterranean dungeon. They looked half dead already, and some of them were scarcely able to stand.
Their process was a very short one. They were simply asked if they would renounce the Communion of the Cup, and approve the acts of the Council of Constance.
From those pale and haggard lips one word—and one word only, came in answer. It was a simultaneous ‘No!’ Then, as if he dreaded an instant's delay, the burgomaster pronounced hurriedly upon them all the sentence of death.
But in what form? ‘Not the fire,' prayed Hubert in his heart. ‘O God of mercy, let it not be the fire!’ His prayer was heard. Christ bade these His servants come to Him on the water. Their sentence bore that they were to be bound hand and foot, thrown into the Elbe, and drowned.
A breathless silence followed the words of doom. Amidst that awful pause Aninka slipped from her seat between Hubert and Alsbeta, and swiftly, noiselessly, glided through the throng. By a common impulse everyone gave way to her. Even the crusaders opened their ranks to let her pass, and more than one put out a hand to help her. At last she reached the seat of judgment, and, falling at the feet of her father, called upon him, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, ‘Father have mercy! In God's name have mercy! If you have ever loved me, your only child—if you have ever loved my mother, who is dead— have mercy! Spare my husband's life! '
It may be that Peichler, though brutal and merciless, was not quite a monster. It may be his heart relented at that cry. But the soldiers and half the town were looking on. He dared not yield now. If he spared one Hussite, he must spare them all—make the Kaiser his enemy, and become the laughing-stock of the crusaders. ‘Rise up,' he said to his daughter, ‘you know not what you ask. Dry your tears; I will find you a better husband.'
Aninka obeyed. She rose up and stood before him with tearless eyes, strangely calm, strangely proud, in her uttermost agony. ‘Father,' she said, ‘you shall give me in marriage no more.' Then she turned away and was lost to sight amongst the crowd that followed the victims to their doom.
Hubert and Alsbeta followed also, down the long street, through the gate, to the banks of the river. Standing on the brink of it, surrounded by armed men, a company of brokenhearted wives and children were bidding those they loved a last farewell. The martyrs exhorted their friends to continue steadfast in the faith, prayed for their enemies, and commended their souls to God. But the executioners soon thought the scene had lasted long enough. They tore their victims from the clinging arms that would have held them fast, bound them hand and foot, and hurried them into a large boat. The bank of the river, for a considerable distance, was lined with soldiers, who drove back the crowd with their pikes. Amidst the wailing, sobbing throng Hubert lost sight for a moment of Aninka and her nurse. Presently he saw them again to his surprise, within the line of soldiers. How they contrived to remain there, while all the rest were driven back, he never knew.
Meanwhile the boat glided on into the midst of the broad, bright river, and stood there still, a dark blot upon its sunlit bosom. One by one the victims were dropped over the side—silently, save for the dull plash that scarcely reached the shore. But when it came to the turn of Frantisek, a great cry broke the stillness, and rang through the air. It was from the lips of Alsbeta. Aninka had left her side, and with one quick movement thrown herself into the river. The nurse gazed after her with straining eyes and outstretched arms. She disappeared, she rose again, she floated. The waters, less pitiless than man, bore her kindly towards the bound and helpless form of her husband. They saw—they recognized each other—Aninka's arms were stretched out towards him. Then the soldiers forced Alsbeta from the spot, and she knew no more.