“You heard. Smiřický has legged it. He escaped from prison. I don’t have all the details yet, just one thing is known: his lover, the daughter of a Prague weaver, helped him to escape. An appalling affair indeed, judge for yourself. A knight from a noble family and his mistress, a plebeian, a weaver’s daughter. She must have known she was only a plaything to him, that nothing would come of their liaison, but she still risked her life for her lover. Did he serve her lovage or something?”

“Or perhaps humanity sufficed?” Reynevan maintained eye contact. “A voice beyond him, whispering: Hominem memento te? ”

“Is everything all right, Reynevan?”

“I’m weary.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Thank you, but on an empty stomach…”

“Ha. Precisely, Doctor. I say, innkeeper! Over here!”

On the Thursday after the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the eleventh of September, five days after the attempted coup, Prokop the Shaven, the victor of Tachov and Stříbro, reached Prague. He arrived with an entire army, the Tábor, the Orphans, Praguians and their supporters, war wagons, artillery, infantry and cavalry. There were twelve thousand soldiers in toto.

Among them was Scharley.

Chapter Three

In which Reynevan finds out he must beware of an Old Woman and a Maiden.

“Those scrambled eggs were pretty decent,” said Scharley, “although I have to say the celery spoiled it a little. It doesn’t go with eggs at all. Who, for God’s sake, puts grated celery into scrambled eggs? And why? It’s some bizarre culinary fantasy of the dear landlady. But let’s not gripe, the main thing is my belly’s full. The landlady, incidentally, isn’t at all bad-looking… Junoesque curves, pantherine movements, a gleam in her eye—ha, perhaps I’ll also rent a room and stay here for a while? I’m thinking about the winter. I won’t be here long now because if not tomorrow, then the day after, Prokop will give us our marching orders. We’re heading, so I hear, to Kolín to pay Lord Bořek of Miletínek back for his treachery… I say, Reinmar, are we going the right way? I don’t know Prague very well, but oughtn’t we to go in that direction, beyond the new town hall, towards the Carmelite monastery?”

“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.”