So, Reynevan made merry, but sparingly, and didn’t drink too much, although the magical decocts he had taken in Soukenická Street made him resistant to all kinds of toxins, including alcohol. Finally, however, he decided to leave the party. The merrymaking at Mejzlik’s was beginning to enter the stage that Scharley called: “Wine, vomit and song.” “Women” had intentionally been left out of the set.

Reynevan went out into the street and took a deep breath. Prague was quietening down. The sounds of the noisy revelling were slowly being drowned out by the choirs of frogs along the Vltava and the crickets in monastery gardens.

He walked towards the Horse Gate. As he passed taverns and beer cellars, his senses were assaulted by sour smells and the clinking of dishes, girlish squeals, shouts now a little drowsy and increasingly listless singing.

I’m a butcher, you’re a butcher, we’re both butchers

We’ll go off looking for heifers

I’ll be buying, you’ll be haggling

We’ll court pretty maidens

A breeze was blowing, bearing the scent of flowers, leaves, sludge, smoke and God knows what else.

And blood.

Prague still reeked of blood. Reynevan was still being tormented by that stench, still had it in his nostrils. He felt the anxiety it triggered in him. There were fewer and fewer passers-by and no sight or sound of Flutek’s spies, but the anxiety didn’t diminish.

He turned into Stará Pasířská Street, then into a lane called V Jámě. As he walked, he was thinking about Nicolette, Katarzyna Biberstein. He thought about her incessantly and quickly experienced the effects of that thinking. The images appeared before his eyes so vividly and realistically, in such detail, that at a certain moment it all became unbearable—Reynevan stopped involuntarily and looked back. Involuntarily, because he knew there was nowhere to go anyway. Back in August 1419, barely twenty days after the Defenestration, every last brothel in Prague had been torn down and every last woman of easy virtue driven from the city. The Hussites were very strict regarding the observation of morality.