“They left everything!” bellowed an impassioned apprentice. “Weapons, cannons, goods, provisions! And fled! From the Battle of Tachov! Brother Prokop victorious! The Chalice victorious!”

“What are you saying? Fled? Without joining battle?”

“Aye, aye! And cut to ribbons by our boys as they ran! Tachov is encircled, the lords of the Landfried surrounded in their castle! Brother Prokop is belabouring the walls with bombards—it’ll soon fall! Brother Jakubek of Vřesovic is harrying and routing Sir Heinrich of Plauen!”

“Quiet! Quiet, all of you! Brother Jan is coming!”

“Brother Jan! Brother Jan! And the councillors!”

The town hall doors opened and a group of men came out onto the steps.

They were led by Jan Rokycana, parish priest of Our Lady before Týn, short, with a noble, if not to say otherworldly, look. And quite young. The principal ideologist of the Utraquist revolution at that time was thirty-five, ten years older than Reynevan. Walking beside his now-celebrated pupil and gasping for breath was Jacob of Stříbro, university master. Half a step behind walked Peter Payne, an Englishman with the face of an ascetic. Then came the Old Town councillors: the powerfully built Jan Velvar, Matěj Smolař, Václav Hedvika and others.

Rokycana stopped. “Brother Czechs!” he cried, raising both hands. “People of Prague! God is with us! And God is above us!”

The roar of the crowd first intensified, then subsided and quietened down. The church bells stopped ringing in turn.

Rokycana didn’t lower his hands. “The heretics are vanquished!” he cried even louder. “They who desecrated the Holy Cross by placing it—at Rome’s instigation—on their contemptible armour! They have been punished by God! Brother Prokop is victorious!”

The crowd roared in unison and cheered. The preacher hushed them.

“Though the hellish hordes gathered here,” he continued, “though the bloody talons of Babylon were stretching out towards us, though once again the wrath of the Roman Antichrist threatened the true religion, God is above us! The Lord of the Heavens raised His hand to annihilate the enemy host! The same Lord who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, who forced the innumerable army of the Midianites to flee from Gideon. The Lord, who during the course of a single night employed His angel to defeat a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians—that same Lord of the Heavens struck fear into the hearts of our foes! As the army of the blasphemer Sennacherib fled from Jerusalem, so the terrified papist rabble fled in panic from the Battles of Stříbro and Tachov!”

“As soon as the devilish servants saw the Chalice on Brother Prokop’s pennants,” chimed in Jacob in a high voice, “when they heard the singing of the Warriors of God, they bolted in panic to the four points of the compass! They were as chaff scattered on the wind!”

“Deus vicit! ” yelled Peter Payne. “Veritas vincit! ”

“Te Deum laudamus! ”