“We’re going through Zderaz to the jetty below the Timber Market. We’re taking a boat.”
“Across the Vltava?”
“Absolutely. I’ve been doing it the whole time lately. I told you, I’m working at Bohuslav’s Hospital—it’s not far from Saint Francis’s, so you have to hoof it through the entire town to get there. It’s more than half an hour’s walk, and on market days you have to add another half-hour’s waiting in a crowd outside the Svatohavelská Gate. It’s quicker by boat. And more comfortable.”
“So you bought a boat.” Scharley nodded with poorly feigned seriousness. “I see physicians are prospering here. They dress elegantly, live in luxury and breakfast in style, served by attractive little widows. Each of them, like Venetian patricians, has his own gondola. Let’s go, let’s go, I’m dying to see it.”
The broad-bottomed boat moored to the bank in no way resembled a Venetian gondola, perhaps because it served to ship vegetables. Scharley didn’t show his disappointment, but hopped nimbly aboard and sat back comfortably among the baskets. Reynevan greeted the boatman. Six months before, he had treated his leg, which had been horrifically crushed between two barges. In return, the boatman, who rowed every day between Psáry and Bubny, repaid him with free transport. Well, let’s say almost free transport—during the last half-year, Reynevan had also managed to treat the boatman’s wife and two of his six children.
A moment later, the old tub, weighed down by carrots, turnips and cabbages and sitting low in the water, cast off from the bank and sailed down the Vltava.
The water, apart from wood shavings and dead trees, was bearing masses of colourful leaves. It was already September, Reynevan thought, although it was unusually warm.
They moved away from the bank, then sailed across a weir and some faster-flowing water, around which perch were chasing shoals of bleaks.
“Among the numerous virtues of this kind of river navigation,” Scharley observed keenly, “not least important is the chance to talk with no fear of being eavesdropped. So we can resume our chat from yesterday evening.”
The chat from the day before—beginning in the evening and continuing deep into the night—naturally mainly concerned the events of the previous months, from the Battle of Tachov to the recent coup attempt by Hynek of Kolštejn and its consequences. Reynevan repeated to Scharley everything he had learned from Jan of Smiřice a week earlier and told him of the plans that had been adopted. Predictably, Scharley didn’t approve of them at all.
“It’s a completely idiotic idea,” he stated. “It’s utter madness to return to Silesia in search of revenge. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you haven’t grown any wiser during the last two years—why, I’d say you’ve become even stupider. But that’s not true, after all. You have grown wise, Reinmar, proof of which is your deed with Smiřický. You had him in your clutches, at your mercy. And then what? You released him. You’re embittered by your brother’s death and vengeful, but you released him. Because—even with him in your grasp—you understood the pointlessness of that kind of revenge. For Smiřický isn’t to blame for your brother’s death; nor that Birkart of Grellenort, although perhaps he killed Peterlin with his own hands; nor, paradoxically, Konrad, Bishop of Wrocław, although he gave the order. For what killed Peterlin is the historical moment. It was the historical moment in the winter of 1425 that took Ambrož to Radkov and Bardo. It was history—not the citizens of Kutná Hora—who threw those captured Hussites down the mineshafts. It wasn’t Sigismund’s Hungarians but history that raped and butchered the women in captured Louny. It wasn’t Žižka but history that murdered and burned alive the people in Chomutov, Beroun and Český Brod. It was also history that killed Hynek of Kolštejn. Are you seeking revenge on history? To be like King Xerxes, lashing the sea?”
Reynevan shook his head but didn’t say anything.
They sailed to the island of Trávník. A smell of burning was still drifting from the left bank. In May 1420, during fierce battles with the army loyal to the king, the Lesser Quarter was almost entirely reduced to ashes, and so it remained. There had, admittedly, been attempts to rebuild it, but they somehow lacked passion and enthusiasm. For there were countless other worries; history was doing its best to make sure there were plenty.
“In the light of historical processes,” Scharley continued, looking at the blackened remains of the riverside mills, “one can thus assume you’ve already avenged your brother, since you are following in his footsteps and continuing the work he left incomplete. As part of your brother’s inheritance, you’ve received Communion sub utraque specie and you’re a Hussite. Peterlin, I happen to know, because information has reached me, was indeed a loyal Utraquist and served the cause of the Chalice with real conviction. I say it because there’s no shortage of people who’ve done it for other reasons, sometimes very base—and always very prosaic—ones. But, I repeat, that doesn’t apply to your brother, nor, I believe, to you. After all, you—sincerely, devotedly, without a trace of cynicism—are fighting for the cause and the religion for which your brother ended up dead.”
“I don’t know how it happens, Scharley, but in your mouth the loftiest ideas end up sounding like vulgar jokes. I know you don’t usually hold anything sacred, but—”
“Hold anything sacred?” the penitent interrupted. “Reinmar? Do my ears deceive me?”
“Don’t impute to me perfidy or the lack of my own opinion, please,” Reynevan said through pursed lips. “Of course I was brought closer to the Hussites by the fact that Peterlin died for them. I know what kind of person my brother was, and I stand without hesitation on the side he supported. But I still have my own mind. I thought the matter through and weighed it up in my heart. I received Holy Communion from the Chalice with complete conviction, for I support the Four Articles, I support the teachings of Wycliffe, I support the Hussites in the matter of liturgy and interpretation of the Bible. I support their world view and their plans to establish social justice.”
“Excuse me, what kind of justice?”
“Omnia sunt communia, Scharley! ‘Everything shared’—the whole of divine justice is contained in those words. There are no superiors, no inferiors, no wealthy people, no poor people. Everything is shared! Communism! Doesn’t it sound splendid?”
“I haven’t heard anything so splendid-sounding for a long time.”
“Why the sarcasm?”
“Don’t worry about it. Go on. How else did the Wycliffites endear themselves to you?”
“I support the principle of sola Scriptura heart and soul.”
“Aha.”
“One needn’t add anything to the Bible and neither can one, for the Bible is sufficiently lucid for every believer to be able to understand it without commentary from the pulpit. There’s no need for mediators between the faithful and God. Everybody is equal before the Creator. The authority of the Pope and the church dignitaries can only be accepted when it accords with the will of God Most High and the Holy Bible. In particular, wealth was entrusted to the clergy with the aim of carrying out the obligations imposed by Christ and the Bible. If priests don’t carry out those responsibilities, if they sin, their wealth ought to be confiscated.”