Mercy Seller

Chapter One Prague, Bohemia July 1412 The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be. FROM AN ADDRESS BY DANIEL WEBSTER (1849) Anna never went to the hrad, the great walled castle on the western hill overlooking Prague. It hunched just across the Vltava River, a world away. Nor did she go to the great cathedral standing guard over the castle lest she encounter the dread archbishop. Zybnek. The burner of books. Anna attended mass at Tyn Church or met with the rest of Prague's dissidents at Bethlehem Chapel. After Zybnek's great bonfire of the Wycliffe tracts and the translated gospels, Lollard texts the Church called them, heretical texts because they charged papal corruption and challenged priestly authority, Hus had warned his growing congregation, "The day will surely come when Rome's prelates are not content to burn the Word but seek out for their fires those who would bring the Word to the people. We must pray for the strength to stand for our beliefs. We must fasten our courage against such a day." Her grandfather had warned his little clutch of scholars and translators too, chastising them for their careless zeal. And wasn't he the one to talk! After all, it was he, her own grandfather, Finn the Illuminator, Finn the Lollard scribe, who, along with Master Jerome, had started Prague's secret enterprise to disseminate the banned translations. As a young exchange student, Jerome had returned to his Czech homeland from Oxford, bringing with him the Lollard texts. The Trialogus and De Ecclesia of John Wycliffe. Banned in England, they'd found new life at the new university at Prague. Its rector, Jan Hus, had translated the condemned texts, along with a good portion of the gospels, into Czech. And for years, right under the archbishop's nose, her own grandfather, a refugee from a long-ago brush with English Lollardy, had gathered a wellspring of university dissidents into his little town house, where they copied the banned pages. Anna glanced at the castle and the cathedral spires of Saint Vitus standing sentinel behind it. She shivered even in the summer heat. But she would not think about the monster on the hill today. Not on a day when the sunlight flung dancing diamonds on the water and no smell of burning tainted the air. Not on a day when the birds wheeled in joyful circles above the river, their wing tips flirting with cloud pillows. Not on a day when she was meeting Martin. She turned her back to the castle and looked downriver. In the distance she could make out a camp of some sort, likely pilgrims traversing Christendom to any number of shrinesJerusalem the holiestin penance. That was what sinners did, sinners who could not afford to purchase expiation from the Church. From the town sprawled on her left a familiar figure approached, but not the figure for whom she was looking. "Master Jerome! I thought Martin was coming," she said, feeling her face redden, her disappointment all too obvious. "Martin is otherwise occupied, it seems," the gray-haired master said wearily. He handed her the bag that held the translated texts to be copied at the next meeting. "Thank you for doing my laundry, mistress," he said loudly. Who knew the carp in the river had eyes and ears? Or that the woodcutter hauling his cart across the stVantrease, Brenda Rickman is the author of 'Mercy Seller' with ISBN 9780312331931 and ISBN 0312331932.