The Bohemians passed the winter of 1414–15 in the darkest possible circumstances. Lord John and the knights of Chlum remained encamped outside Constance, not willing to return to Bohemia while Hus remained in prison. While they waited, the knights grew bored and restless, and many fell ill with diseases brought on by the cold, harsh weather.
Anika knew the nobles worried about matters back home. Both Lord John and Lord Venceslas had left their estates in their stewards’ capable hands, but some things even a steward could not handle. With a pang of sorrow Anika recalled that Lord John had left his youngest son behind. Svec would be several months older by the time they returned, precious time that could never be recaptured in the child’s life.
But Jan Hus fared far worse than his fellow Bohemians. After one week in the precentor’s house, where he was closely guarded and allowed no visitors apart from council representatives, guards moved Hus to a Dominican monastery situated on a small island in the center of Lake Constance. When Anika first learned that Hus had been transferred to the graceful building near the water, she wept in relief, but her relief turned to despair when she learned Hus had been cast into the dungeon of a round tower only a few feet from the monastery sewer and the water’s edge. In this dank and dismal place he remained for over two and a half months. Not until a noxious fever seized him did news of his pitiable condition reach those who prayed for and worried about him.
“The pope,” Lord John told his Bohemian allies one afternoon when he had returned from another fruitless round of meetings with the pope’s emissaries, “does not want Master Hus to die a natural death. They tell me Master Hus was at death’s door, but the pope sent his own physician to restore our friend to health. On the doctor’s orders, Hus has been removed to a more healthful cell and treated with greater humanity.”
While the physicians worked over Jan Hus’s body, prelates scoured his soul. After the doctors left Hus’s cell each morning, witnesses from the council entered the small chamber and worried the preacher with complex questions. Once when Hus lay at his weakest, his mind wearied by fever and unrest, they brought fifteen witnesses who peppered him with sly questions, hoping to catch him in some mistake or heresy.
The attack against Hus advanced on a third front, as well. The council appointed three prelates to investigate and report on Hus’s public statements. Michael de Causis and Stephen Palec drew up a series of accusations based on Hus’s treatise on the church, De Ecclesia. Hus’s beliefs, as set forth in this document, were a declaration of independence for the individual believer in Christ, for he effectively reduced the cumbersome system of priestly rule to rubbish. Hus stressed that faith, not connection with the Roman Catholic body, was the true basis of membership in the spiritual Church of Christ. And he steadfastly maintained that human distinctions of clerical rank paled to insignificance when considered in the light of Christ’s admonition that “whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” The concepts of De Ecclesia frightened the cardinals, and with the aid of Palec and Michael de Causis, the commissioners twisted some of Hus’s statements and fabricated others to make the document appear heretical.
And yet, through all his trials, Jan Hus did not slip or falter. He did ask for help, begging that he might be allowed to employ an advocate for his defense, only to hear that a man accused of heresy had no right to expect the protection of the law.
In the end, the council members had only lies and misrepresentations with which to accuse him. Peter Mladenovic, Lord John’s secretary, kept a careful account of the proceedings as news trickled out and wrote that the final formal accusations against Hus, forty-four articles drawn from De Ecclesia, were totally misleading. “These have been falsely and unfairly extracted from the book by Palec,” he wrote in his journal, “who has mutilated some sentences at the beginning, others in the middle, others at the end, and who has also invented things that are not contained in the book at all.”
For months, Anika and the other knights helped Lord John and Lord Venceslas of Duba attempt to free the Bohemian preacher. The nobles wrote countless letters to the emperor and badgered cardinals in their offices, trying to rouse all of Constance in Hus’s defense. Their efforts were fruitless, but when Emperor Sigismund finally arrived in the city at the end of December, a ray of hope dawned. Anika knew Lord John placed great faith in the emperor—after all, Sigismund had provided Hus’s safe conduct, and was King Wenceslas’s brother. He should prove to be an ally.
For a day or two, Lord John’s hopes were fulfilled. After his arrival, Sigismund sent a message commanding the cardinals to release Hus according to the terms of the safe conduct. But his demand was refused. “Faith need not be kept with a heretic,” the cardinals replied, “since he has none.”
Though sick, weak, hungry, cold, and often burning with fever, Hus was not forgotten or abandoned. In spite of the vigilant spies who surrounded him, Bohemian visitors managed to smuggle letters in and out of his prison. One of Hus’s jailers, a man called Robert, proved particularly helpful, and Hus often referred to him in his letters as “that good man” and “the faithful friend.” Despite the preacher’s physical weakness, he wrote almost daily from his prison cell. When his letters reached friends encamped outside Constance, they were copied, translated, and spirited away to those who prayed for him in Bohemia.
In one letter addressed to Lord John, Hus asked for a Bible. Anika could almost see him as he wrote, his hands trembling upon the parchment, his eyes still blazing with faith and a hint of mischief:
Acquire for me a Bible and send it by this good man. If your scribe, Peter, has any ink, let him give me some, as well as several pens and a small inkwell. I know nothing about my Polish servant or about Master Cardinal, I only hear that your lordship is here and is with the lord king Sigismund. Accordingly, I beseech you to pray his royal majesty, both for my sake and for the cause of the Almighty God, who has so magnificently endowed him with his gifts, as well as for the sake of manifesting justice and truth to the honor of God and the welfare of the Church, to liberate me from captivity, that I may prepare myself for and come to a public hearing. You should know that I have been very ill, but am already convalescing.
Written with my own hand, which your scribe Peter knows well. Given in prison.
Sitting in the tiny closet that served as a lavatory in his vast apartments, Baldasarre Cossa blew out his cheeks and tried to ignore the rumbling in his stomach. He felt the grip again in his gut, the scratch of fear that had arisen to plague him ever since Sigismund’s arrival in Constance. For two months he had been the highest power within a week’s ride, the ruler of his immediate universe, but now he sensed a subtle shift in power, almost as though the stars overhead had turned on their axes to shine the light of authority upon someone else’s head.
His nervous fingers found a bit of hardened skin along his cuticle, and he brought his finger to his lips, gnawing away the offending flesh. He had hoped to distract the council from the issue of papal power with the controversy surrounding Jan Hus, but while the preacher underwent examination, those who intended to heal the great schism worked, too. Three popes were too many, they said. Of course! So why didn’t the other two surrender to him? He was the one in Constance, cooperating with the council. The others, that cowardly Benedict and troublesome Gregory, hadn’t even bothered to appear.
Baldasarre bit hard on his finger, ripping away a shred of skin, then cursed softly as the bite exposed the tender flesh. He should be more careful. Every man in the council room tomorrow would have to kiss his ring, and the shrewdest of them, in an unguarded moment, might notice his bitten fingernails and wonder if he had cause to be nervous. And if they wondered about him—as many of them already did, he knew—they’d soon be calling for his head. He might be imprisoned, even burned at the stake, for what the council would perceive as excesses and abuses of power.
He had whited too many sepulchers to be easily deceived. Of all the men in Constance, he had the most reason to be wary because he had the most to lose. His spies had been busily ferreting out all sorts of information, including a report that the council was about to propose that Pope John follow the example of Christ, who willingly laid aside the glories of heaven to serve a fallen world.
They were such fools! He’d lay down his crown when those cursed cardinals gave up their palaces, their rings, their wealth. They would never relent, and neither would he, which might make for a violent end unless …
His mind drifted back to an Austrian castle he had visited on his way to Constance. Beside a roaring fire he promised Duke Frederick a fortune in exchange for a promise of help, should the need arise. Frederick had conveniently followed Baldasarre to Constance and now waited for the time when he might prove useful.
Grunting, Baldasarre pulled himself up from the chamber pot, peering through a crack between the door and the doorframe to make certain no one lingered in the room outside. Without a doubt, the time had come to send word to Frederick. This impasse would not last long.
Four days later, the knights of Chlum received an invitation to a spring tournament hosted by Duke Frederick of Austria, a nobleman who sought to provide comfort and entertainment for the hundreds of men who had to remain in Constance while the council conducted business. The council would adjourn for the special tournament, the messenger told them, so the cardinals and even His Holiness might witness the skillful knights’ exploits.
“Should we enter?” Manville asked, turning to Novak. “’Twould give the men something to do besides hunting. Nervous energy does a man no good, and a tournament might take the edge off their raw nerves.”
“The knights of Lidice have already entered,” Lev added hopefully. “Lord Laco has sent a contingent of men to prepare for the jousting. His captain rode by here earlier and asked if we would participate.”
“We do not play games when one of our own is imprisoned,” Novak snapped, his eyes darting toward Anika at the mention of Laco’s name. “Let the knights of Austria and Lidice make sport. We are here for one reason only: to protect Jan Hus. And until he is free, we have no time for games.”
Anika pressed her lips together and smiled at Lev, signaling that she understood his intentions were innocent. Something in her would have liked to see if she could challenge one of the other knights, but the stronger voice of reason was content to let the challenge pass. She hated to admit it, but since she had worn Fida’s kirtle and seen Lord John’s eyes light in appreciation, her suit of armor had begun to lose its appeal.
Five days after the tournament, Manville rode breathless into camp again. “Lord John!” he called, his voice hoarse. “Sir! The pope has escaped!”
“What?” Lord John stepped out of his tent and gave the knight a sidelong glance of utter disbelief.
“It’s true,” Manville answered, swinging his tree-trunk leg over the rear of his horse as he dismounted. “He has not been seen since the tournament. One of Frederick’s servants reports that the pontiff disguised himself as a groom and escaped in the crowd.”
“He knew the council would destroy him,” Anika said, looking toward her master. “Lord John, if the cardinals would not spare one of their own, what do you think they will do to Master Hus? He has no opportunity for escape. While the pope dined on duck and beef in a palatial chamber, Master Hus has been chained in a dungeon—”
She stopped, silenced by the guilty look on Lord John’s face.
Vasek, who had been standing nearby, came forward and held up his hand as a strange livid hue overspread his face. “Is the pope’s retinue gone, too? His guards, his servants, everyone?”
Manville nodded. “Yes. They are probably gathered around an Austrian banquet table by now. It is widely assumed that Duke Frederick helped that rascal escape.”
Lord John’s brow creased with worry. “If the pope and his people are gone—who is tending Master Hus?”
They found him in chains, faint and prostrate, but alive. Anika, Novak, and Lord John had ridden immediately for the monastery after hearing Manville’s news, and there they found a lone monk at the preacher’s cell door. Hus had received neither food nor drink since the pope’s departure and had survived by using his tongue to gather moisture from the damp walls and floor.
Lord John would have removed Hus from the place by force, but the monk threw himself at the nobleman’s feet, declaring he would be imprisoned if the cardinals discovered that their prisoner had escaped. John finally relented but demanded that Anika and Novak be allowed to remain with the prisoner until he returned with news from the emperor.
“With the pope gone, Sigismund is now the master of the city,” he told Anika, giving her a tentative smile as he prepared to go. “And since the emperor was willing to release Master Hus only a few weeks ago, we can certainly hope he intends to keep his word. I will return shortly with good news for all.”
But Baldasarre Cossa was not the only authority to sense a shift in power. When Sigismund learned of Hus’s situation, he refused to hand the preacher over to Lord John, but instead sent word to the council. In consultation with Cardinal D’Ailly and other leaders, Sigismund decided that Hus should be committed to the custody of the Bishop of Constance. As the moon hid her face in the clouds on the evening of Palm Sunday, March 24, guards transferred the preacher from the monastery dungeon to Gottlieben, a castle on the Rhine.
Situated four miles outside the city, Castle Gottlieben was a majestic, sturdy structure with two quadrangular towers, each nearly two hundred feet high. A small wooden cage of two compartments had been built just beneath the roof of one tower, and into one of these Jan Hus was thrust. His jailers pinioned one arm to the wall, then chained his feet to a block.
While Lord John and the other Bohemians continued their daily efforts to have the preacher released, Hus waited in solitary confinement, suffering from hunger, cold, and painful attacks of neuralgia and hemorrhage. The damp spring winds swept almost continually through a small ventilation window. His brutal keepers did nothing to assuage his misery, hoping his spirits would be brought low enough to confess to almost anything when he was finally brought before the council.
Once he had been comforted by visits from his friends, but now only the commissioners assigned to torment him were allowed to enter his dismal cell. And while Hus endured their ridiculous questions and denied their false charges, he consoled himself with something Lord John had once told him: “There are many things worse than defeat, my friend, and compromise with evil is one of them.”