‘Oh, weep not o'er thy children's tomb,
O Rachel, weep not so!
The bud is cropt by martyrdom,
The flower in heaven will blow'
HEBER.
‘Are we oppressed upon our mountain sod?
Then must men arm, and women call on God'
MAY melted into June, June burned and brightened into July. Kepka and his household still dwelt at Pihel, although Vaclav had entreated, almost with tears, to be allowed to join the hosts of Zisca and the League. Chlum could not yet persuade himself that he or his ought to take up arms against Sigismund. The faithless, dishonored man was still in his eyes the lawful sovereign; perhaps he was even, under all the circumstances, the best sovereign that could just then be found for Bohemia. Moreover, the excesses of some of the popular party, and especially the destruction of certain monasteries, alarmed and perplexed a mind essentially loyal and reverent, also, perhaps, somewhat slow in its processes.
By this time the division, sure to supervene in all great parties, between the moderate and the more advanced, was showing itself distinctly amongst the Hussites. Those who contented themselves with demanding the communion in both kinds, and the free preaching of the Word of God, and maintaining the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures as the rule of faith, were styled Utraquists, or Calixtines. Those who went further, and rejected all, or nearly all, the distinctive tenets of Romanism, were beginning, on the other hand, to be called Taborites.
Chlum's acquaintances called him a Calixtine, whilst it was pretty well known that the sympathies of his family were with the Taborites.
None the less, but all the more probably, did his heart ache over the tidings of rapine, violence, and cruelty which reached him every day from the districts ravaged by the crusading army. His soul was torn asunder by conflicting claims and duties. Often, indeed, did the aspiration breathed in every time of sorrow or perplexity fall sadly from his lips: Oh for Master John! ‘We see not our tokens; there is no prophet more,' he would sometimes add mournfully.
Still, perplexity need not involve idleness, and did not in this case. Chlum found enough to do in keeping peace in his own neighborhood, and protecting his own vassals from the outrages of the crusaders. He could not, indeed, prevent the tragedy of which Frantisek and Aninka were the victims, but other acts of violence he was able to prevent. There was something else he could do. Pihel soon became known as a refuge for the distressed; and before long it was crowded with those left homeless by the ravages of the crusaders, or fleeing from them for their lives.
Hubert and Zedenka were betrothed formally, though without the festivities usual on such occasions. They joined their hands together as those might do who stood beside a grave. Yet love and faith will find out the path to joy even in the midst of sorrow. Zedenka confessed to Hubert that she ' had not liked him ill' since the days when they rode together to Prague, ‘nearly five years agone.' And Hubert said, ‘I think I loved you, though I knew it not myself, from the first hour I saw your face.' Both agreed that 'Love once begun can never end' —in the words of the soldier-poet, penned two hundred years after their day, and quite as many before ours.
The sixth of July was observed, as usual, with solemn religious services. Chlum further signalized it by an act of mercy. Seeking in the fields the solitude so hard in those days to find within doors, he came upon a gray friar, sitting under a hedge, sick and weak. He was one of the many left homeless by the pillage or destruction of the monasteries, in which, strange to say, the crusaders, who ought to have protected them, bore their full share. He had been trying to reach Leitmeritz, hoping to find refuge there, but, through fatigue and illness, had fainted by the way. Chlum assisted him to rise, and supported his tottering footsteps until they were near enough to the castle to procure other aid. The monk proved to be in fever, and had to be nursed and tended by Zedenka and her women: nor was he the only sick person in the castle, some of the fugitives being actually ill when they arrived, others bringing with them the seeds of the maladies engendered by want and exposure to the elements.
Next morning at the usual hour, that is to say about ten o'clock, all the inmates of Pihel, except the sick and their attendants, were seated at dinner in the great hall, the tables being so arranged as to accommodate the largest possible number. Chlum sat in his place at the head of the principal table; but he looked pale, and did not eat. Zedenka, who sat next him, watched him with some anxiety. The meal was more than half over, when they heard the sound of horse-hoofs outside. The arrival of a single horseman meant tidings, and a murmur of expectation ran through the company, as the porter rose from his seat at the lower end of the board and took from his girdle the great keys of the castle-gate.
Presently, with strong, rapid steps, as one upon an errand of life or death, Ostrodek strode in Bareheaded, dusty, travel-soiled, he stood before them all, his raven hair streaming over his shoulders, his black eyes wild with wrathful fire, an angry flush on his dark cheek. He saluted no one, not even Kepka, who for a moment was silent from surprise, then said gently, in words used before by another, 'Welcome, Ostrodek.'
Ostrodek took something from beneath his vest, and flung it on the table before him. ‘Noble Kepka, knight and baron, look there! You men, who have the hearts of men in your bosoms, look there! You women, who send men out to battle, look there! '
Chlum took up the thing, and looked at it, bewildered and uncomprehending. It was a very innocent, very homely thing—only a little, half-worn wooden shoe, such as peasant children used, when they had shoes at all. The child who wore this might have been seven years old. While all wondered what it meant, Vaclav filled a cup of wine, stood up, and offered it to Ostrodek.
Though his lips were parched and dry he put it by untasted. ‘I will not drink,' he said, ‘till I have told my tale. Then, if you are the men I take you for, you will drink with me in another cup.'
The word had a spell in it. ‘The Cup! The Cup!’ shouted several at once. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! We all take the Cup.'
‘You take the cup of wine,' said Ostrodek, with a fierce blaze in his wild eyes. ‘But today I bid you drink with me in another cup—the cup of the wine of the wrath of God—the cup of blood! For it is not with men we have to do, but with fiends. The crusaders are the armies of Apollyon, the locusts of the Apocalypse, sprung from the bottomless pit. Is it a time for you to sit at home at ease, to eat and drink, to marry and be given in marriage, when in Bohemia they are making their burnt sacrifice of babes like him who wore that shoe? '
‘What! They have been burning villages again, with the people in them!’ cried Václav.
‘That were bad enough, but the like has been done before. Heathen, Paynim, Infidels, Turks, and Tartars have wrought such things on the earth. But it was reserved for the soldiers of the cross to build piles and to kindle fagots for the burning alive of seven-years babes.'
Chum turned to Ostrodek, and spoke in a tone of authority. ‘In God's name, calm thyself, my son! Tell thy tale clearly, so that we may understand it. What is that which has been done?
Ostrodek made an evident effort to control himself, and to find coherent language. Twice over he began, but faltered—stopped, as if the words choked him. Some who watched him began to fear that the horrors he had witnessed had disordered his mind. But at last his eye fell on Hubert.
‘Master Hubert,' he said, ‘dost remember, last year at Tabor, the pretty babes thou and I caressed and played with, and carried on our shoulders about the field? '
‘Yes,' returned Hubert, wondering. ‘Pastor Wenzel brought them to Tabor from his village— Arnoštovič.'
‘Pastor Wenzel!’ cried Václav. ‘I trust in God no harm has come to him!'
‘Dost think it harm for him to die, as Master John died in Constance? '
Cries of grief and horror sprang to every lip. ‘Alas! alas!’ said Vaclav, bowing his head, 'that holy manta God!—It was he who first gave me the Cup of Christ.'
‘A holy man, a saint indeed!’ said Chlum's quiet voice. He was ever modest, calm, and prudent. He ran to no extremes, changed no custom of our fathers. He only preached the Word of God, and gave the faithful the Cup of Christ. 'At the cost of his life,' said Ostrodek.
‘How was it? How was it? Tell us!’ asked a dozen confused voices at once. Hubert's, following the rest, fell with the greater distinctness in the ear of Ostrodek. ‘How didst thou come to know of it?’ he asked.
To him Ostrodek seemed to direct his reply: ‘My lord, Zisca—who hath made me his aide-de-camp—sent me from the Vitkov hill of Prague, where he hath his headquarters, forth upon a special errand. No matter about that now, save that it was both secret and perilous, and that it led me through a district occupied by the crusaders-almost, I may say, through their very host. I disguised myself, however, and all went well; they being, I believe, like the hosts of Samaria, blinded of God. I was on my way back, glad enough of my success. Coming from Milič to Prague, I passed through Bystetič, where was the Duke of Austria with his crusaders. That was yestermorn. I saw the crusaders bringing fagots and preparing a great pile, and such of the people of the place as they had not driven away or frightened out of their senses standing around, looking on. I asked what it all meant, and was told that Pastor Wenzel of Arnostovič and his vicar were to be burned there, for holding the Communion of the Cup. I was told, too, how they had been abused, insulted, threatened, but all in vain. They were firm in their faith. That, indeed, I expected—but not the rest—oh! not the rest! I need not tell you I stayed to see all.'
‘Oh, how could you?’ cried Karel.
‘Karel, I am no child. Though, if I were a child like some, I might shame the mightiest. After long waiting, they led forth the prisoners. First came Pastor Wenzel, his face covered with blood, for one of the crusaders—a knight (God save the mark!) had struck him with his iron glove. His vicar followed. Then came four old men, peasants, brave and quiet, looking as if they were only going forth to their day's work in the fields. Then a little lad about the size of Karel when we came here first, and the two fair-haired babes we met at Tabor. I saw them run up to the pastor, and take each one of his hands. When all stood near the pile, the crusaders bade them abjure the doctrine of the Cup, and live. The pastor answered for them all. “Far be it from us! We would sooner die, not one, but a hundred deaths, than abjure so plain a doctrine of the Gospel." And they all said they would die with him.'
Ostrodek paused. Not a sound was heard from anyone. Chlum sat motionless, his head buried in his hands. Karel and some of the women were weeping, but in silence.
He resumed. ‘I stood as near the pile as I stand now to thee, Kepka—it was then I got you token. I saw the fagots kindled—I saw the flame rise up—I would have seen the end, only for the children—' His head sank down, his voice faltered, stopped, ‘For the children's cry?’ suggested someone.
‘For the children's singing!' said Ostrodek, raising his head again. ‘Pastor Wenzel put his arms round them, and held them to his breast. Then, as the flames rose up they sang aloud a hymn of praise to God. That childish singing was the last sound I heard as I turned away. I hear it now —I shall hear it till I die.'
Almost everyone at the table was weeping now. Ostrodek looked down the long lines, and said, ‘To you women who weep have I naught to say; but to you men, this—if for such deeds you sit there and weep womanish tears, then are you men no more at all. Men? No, nor women like those who in our beleaguered Prague tend the sick and wounded, or stand on the ramparts beside their sons and husbands. Men? No, nor children like those who sang their hymns of praise in the fire. You will be like the dumb creatures of God, the beasts of the field, to whom He hath denied the understanding to combine against their oppressors. You will deserve to see your own children burned at the stake before your eyes, and your own wives and daughters— Woe, woe is me that I have not the tongue of the learned! My words are at my sword's point, and I trow they will be graven deep with that!’
‘Hubert, thou art eloquent; speak for me! Vaclav, thou didst love me once; speak for me! No—thou art a man now; speak for thyself. Claim thy right to take a share in the war of vengeance, of freedom, of God!’
Václav rose up, left his place, came to where his father sat, and knelt down before him. ‘Father,' he prayed, ‘bless thy son for this war, for it is the war of God.'
Chlum withdrew his hands, revealing a pale and troubled face; but he did not speak.
‘The noble Kepka will lead you himself!’ cried Ostrodek. ‘The sword that fought so well against the Turk and the Italian will spring once more from its scabbard in a nobler, holier cause.'
‘I think,' said Chlum, and he spoke feebly and with effort— 'I think another hand must wield it now. Rise up, Václav. Hubert, still at least for this day my good squire, go thou to the oaken chest in the wardrobe thou wottest of—here is the key. Fetch thence my suit of Venetian armor.'
When he was gone, Zedenka touched her father's arm, and whispered something in his ear. He answered aloud: ‘I shall be when this thing is done.'
Hubert soon reappeared, carrying a very beautiful coat of mail of Venetian workmanship, made of minute steel scales or splints, so exquisitely fitted as to be flexible as a glove, and at the same time wholly invulnerable. No mirror could have been brighter, part of Hubert's duty as squire being to keep it, and other armor belonging to his lord, in perfect order.
‘My son,' said Chlum to Vaclav, ‘I give thee this to wear in the war of freedom. Be thou a true servant of God and of the Cup.'
‘Knight and father, wilt thou not wear it thyself?'
‘Not now, my son; I send thee in my place.'
‘Sir knight,' asked Hubert, ‘shall I put on the coat? '
‘Not so; no hand but mine shall arm my son for this conflict. I trow Zedenka will do the same service for thee, Hubert. As for you, my children,' he added, standing up and addressing those who sat below the salt—' as for you who hold service under me or live upon my lands, I leave you free this day to follow the Pane and Master Hubert if you will, and to fight under the banner of the Cup for your faith and your country. If you return in safety and honor I will bid you welcome, and give you back your places or your lands; if you fall, no mother, sister, wife, nor child of yours shall lack a friend while Kepka lives. Or,' he added, apparently correcting himself— ‘or the Fame being lord here in my stead will do all I would have done.'
Every man present sprang to his feet with a shout that made the old hall ring again. ‘For God and the Cup!’ they cried. ‘We will die for God and the Cup! '
While they were still shouting, Chlum passed slowly out into another room.
Zedenka followed him, but presently returned with an agitated face, and said to Hubert, ‘My father is ill. I misdoubt me sore he has caught the fever from that friar. But he will have nothing changed or delayed on his account. It is his will that thou and Vaclav and the rest—save only a few of the older men, and Karel, who is too young—prepare at once to march with Ostrodek to Prague and to join the army of Zisca.'