Scharley looked at him keenly. “I observe,” he announced, “the evident and fascinating influence of your new connexions. I have in mind, naturally, the notorious company from the House at the Archangel apothecary shop. I don’t doubt that one can learn an enormous amount from them. The snag is to select something worth learning from that wealth. How does that apply to you?”
“I’m doing my best.”
“You deserve credit. So tell me, how did you fall in with them at all? It can’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t.” Reynevan smiled at the recollection. “To tell the truth, an almost miraculous accident—a coincidence—was required. And just imagine, one occurred. On a certain very hot July day, Anno Domini 1426.”
Svatopluk Fraundinst, chief physician of the hospital of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, was a man in his prime, well built and handsome enough without special effort. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, he seduced and fucked the pre-revolutionary Benedictine nuns who had been driven by the Hussites from their own convent and were working in the hospital. Hardly a week went by without the doctor dragging a sister into a cubbyhole, from which groaning, moaning and appeals to the saints could soon afterwards be heard.
Reynevan had suspected that Svatopluk Fraundinst was a sorcerer from the very beginning, from the first day he took up work at the hospital and began assisting the surgeon with operations. Firstly, Svatopluk Fraundinst was a Vyšehrad canon, a doctor medicinae from Charles University with licentia docendi in Salerno, Padua and Krakow. He had been a student of Matěj of Bechyně and a close associate of the famous Bruno of Osenbrughe. In his day, Master Bruno of Osenbrughe had been a living legend of European medicine, and Matěj of Bechyně was strongly suspected of a fondness for alchemy and magic, both white and black. The very fact that Svatopluk Fraundinst earned his living as a surgeon was also significant—university physicians didn’t engage in surgery, leaving it to executioners and barbers; they did not even stoop to phlebotomy, which was extolled in their own faculties as a remedy for everything. Physicians who were also sorcerers, however, didn’t shun surgery and were good at it—and Fraundinst was quite simply an extremely able surgeon. If you added the typical mannerisms of speech and gesture, the ring with a pentagram he wore quite openly, and the seemingly unimportant and casual allusions, one was left almost without any doubt that Svatopluk Fraundinst had more than a nodding acquaintance with magic, and that he was trying to sound Reynevan out regarding the same matter. Reynevan, of course, was very much on his guard, bluffing and avoiding traps as cleverly as he could. Times were hard and one couldn’t be certain of anyone or anything.
Until one day in July, on the eve of Saint James the Apostle’s Day, it so happened that a sawyer was brought from a nearby lumber mill, seriously wounded by a saw blade. Blood was gushing out and Fraundinst, Reynevan and a pre-revolutionary Benedictine nun were doing what they could to staunch the flow. It was going poorly, perhaps because of the wound’s size, perhaps because they were simply having a bad day. When, yet again, blood from an artery squirted into his eye, Doctor Svatopluk swore so crudely that the Benedictine nun first reeled and then ran away. After her departure, the doctor used a ligating spell, also called “Alcmena’s charm.” He did it with a single gesture and word and Reynevan had never in his life seen a spell cast so efficiently. The artery closed up immediately and the blood began to darken and clot. Fraundinst turned his blood-spattered face towards Reynevan. It was obvious what he wanted. Reynevan sighed.
“Quare insidiaris animae meae? ” he muttered. “Why layest thou a snare for me, Saul?”
“I’ve revealed myself, so you must, too,” the wizard said, grinning. “Come on, O cautious Witch of Endor. Fear not. Non veniet tibi quicquam mali.”
They both cast the spell simultaneously, and the power of the collective magic ligated and sealed up all the blood vessels.
“And that same doctor medicinae,” Scharley said, “introduced you to the congregation of sorcerers who gather at the House at the Archangel apothecary’s shop. The one we are approaching right now.”
Scharley had guessed right. They were in Soukenická Street and the apothecary’s shop was now visible behind a row of spinners’ and weavers’ workshops and mercers’ shops. Over the entrance, high above the door, hung a bay window with narrow panes decorated with the wooden figure of a winged archangel. The figure was quite battered by age and it was impossible to say which archangel it was. Reynevan had never asked. Neither the first time, when he was taken there by Fraundinst in August 1426, on a Thursday falling on the day of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, nor subsequently.
“Before we enter, one more thing.” Reynevan stopped Scharley again. “A request. I’d be grateful if you would restrain yourself.”
Scharley stamped to dislodge from his boot some shit—at first glance probably canine, although there was no certainty, as some children were hanging around the area.
“We owe it to Samson,” Reynevan continued with emphasis.
“Firstly,” Scharley raised his head, “you’ve already said it. Secondly: it is beyond question. He is our comrade, and those four words suffice.”
“I’m glad you see it like that. Believe in it or not, doubt it or not, but resign yourself to the fact that Samson is imprisoned in our world. He is, like an incluse, locked in a foreign mortal shell, and not the most beautiful, you’ll admit. He’s doing what he can to free himself, he’s searching for help… Perhaps he’ll finally find it here, in Prague, at the House at the Archangel, perhaps this very day… Because this very day—”
“This very day,” interrupted the penitent with a faint tinge of impatience in his voice, “a world-famous mage, magnus nigromanticus, has come from Salzburg to stay in the House at the Archangel. Perhaps he will succeed where the Prague sorcerers failed. You’ve already told me. A good few times.”
“And you snorted each time and made mocking faces.”
“It’s instinctive with me. I react like that when I hear about magic and incluses—”
“So please would you control your instincts today.” Reynevan cut him off quite sharply. “Would you, mindful of your friendship with Samson, not snort or make faces. Do you promise?”
“Yes, I do. I won’t make faces. I’ll be serious. I shall not once, may God punish me, roar with laughter when you start discussing witchcraft, demons, parallel worlds and existences, astral bodies—”
“Scharley!”
“I’ll hold my tongue. Are we going in?”
“We are.”
It was dark inside the apothecary, and the impression of darkness was intensified by the colour of the wood panelling and furniture. When you entered from the sunlight—as they had—you couldn’t see a thing for a moment. You could only stop, blink and breathe in the heady scent of dust, camphor, mint, honey, amber, saltpetre and turpentine.
“At your service, m’lords… At your service… M’lords would like…?”
Just as he had over a year before, on the Beheading of John the Baptist, Beneš Kejval appeared behind the counter, bald pate gleaming in the semi-darkness.