Is Thessalonika independent or do they have a liege? They are being very aggressive in Eastern Anatolia/Armenia/Mesopotamia. Thanks
- 1
The Lions of Olomouc: a CKIII Ironman AAR (Duchy of Moravia, 867)
- Thread starter Revan86
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
[the original one, which was posted yesterday, was deleted to clear-up the top of the page]
Forty seven have become fifty nine chapters; there is no possibility to cover all without destroying the thread at this point.
<enter emergency mode>
<initiate evasive manoeuvres>
One necro, though, since it is mandatory; from Book Four Chapter Thirty-Four;
<It is rumoured that after hearing them, greatest rock guitarist Ghanaian-Japanese Baako Sugoi Hendrix (ヘンドリックス 凄い) said: "Not the best lyrics I've heard, but yeah, that bloke's all right. This one is for Želimír and Živana," before beginning a solo at a concert at about that much later date.>
Anyway;
Though; beware, excessive exposure to Manowar can cause ear-poisoning.
Too much 80s cheese -monster hair, what-da-faq outfits, trash-metalesque vocals-, not enough bass, and too cringe-borderline album art style.
(there can be no metalhead-ing without arguing the metal-level of bands)
The cure is, of course, Iron Maiden (lol, speak of 80s). Then all the way onwards Gernotshagen. Skipped the steps in-between for simplicity.
Also, unfortunately, this means the end-song now becomes obvious. Despite being only a guess, a strong prediction it is. Spoilers
Forty seven have become fifty nine chapters; there is no possibility to cover all without destroying the thread at this point.
<enter emergency mode>
<initiate evasive manoeuvres>
One necro, though, since it is mandatory; from Book Four Chapter Thirty-Four;
You did not think this was un-noticed, did you?
<It is rumoured that after hearing them, greatest rock guitarist Ghanaian-Japanese Baako Sugoi Hendrix (ヘンドリックス 凄い) said: "Not the best lyrics I've heard, but yeah, that bloke's all right. This one is for Želimír and Živana," before beginning a solo at a concert at about that much later date.>
Anyway;
Hmm.
Hmmmmm.
Wonderful.
Too much 80s cheese -monster hair, what-da-faq outfits, trash-metalesque vocals-, not enough bass, and too cringe-borderline album art style.
(there can be no metalhead-ing without arguing the metal-level of bands)
The cure is, of course, Iron Maiden (lol, speak of 80s). Then all the way onwards Gernotshagen. Skipped the steps in-between for simplicity.
Also, unfortunately, this means the end-song now becomes obvious. Despite being only a guess, a strong prediction it is. Spoilers
- 2
The only real cure for Manowar is, of course, Nanowar.
Born from the thunder, black steel wind and fire
Stormlords of power, we study Schopenhauer
For the metal we stand...
But also for Chopin!
Save the village, fight the dragon
Ride the big Station Wagon
Mighty warrior, come with me
Sail across the red sea!!
For the Power, for the Glory
For the movie "Toy Story"
For the "Hell On Stage Live"
And Eiffel 65!
- 4
Book Seven Chapter Twenty
TWENTY
Sting of the Bumblebee
14 April 1436 – 23 July 1442
I.
14 April 1436 – 15 November 1438
Sting of the Bumblebee
14 April 1436 – 23 July 1442
I.
14 April 1436 – 15 November 1438
The marriage of the Crown Prince of Moravia, Vojtech Rychnovský, to a low-born Russian peasant woman from Podkarpatská, was a matter of significant discussion and public interest, and the procession which accompanied the nuptial festivities stretched and snaked down practically every road in Olomouc, bustling with rubberneckers. If a peasant woman was preferred to marry the Crown Prince, so it was thought, she must be possessed of some extraordinary beauty. The dismay among the townsmen, particularly among the younger ones, may therefore be imagined when they beheld that Vojtech’s bride Predslava was fairly plain and ordinary-looking. At least at first.
Vojtech himself didn’t look overly pleased. In fact, he considered it an extension of his father’s punishment of his indiscretions with the palace maids, that he was being wed off to a nobody. Predslava, however, was the very image of poise and humble grace as she accepted the crown that was laid upon her brow, and ran the ‘gauntlet’ with her new husband. She was under no illusions at present that Vojtech loved her or even liked her. But a taut leash was what Róbert wanted her to provide this boy at her side—and that is what she would do as in duty bound. She didn’t appear uncomfortable with such a charge in the slightest, a fact which rather encouraged her father-in-law. Perhaps there was more to Predslava than met the eye.
As the procession returned home, however, something rather ominous happened. The mare upon which the Kráľ rode took sudden fright at something it saw or heard in the crowd, and began to spook and rear.
Róbert’s attempts to calm the beast did little good, however. The mare continued to take fright and bend her body dangerously backwards, and the Kráľ became dislodged from his saddle. One sudden yark from the mare’s shoulders back was enough to send him flying. The diminutive king went sailing in a long arc through the air and landed with a heavy thud on the cobblestone street. The ostlers came running to get the mare back under control, but it was far too late.
Kráľ Róbert suffered some heavy bruising and a nasty gash along his flank from the fall. Luckily, his head was still whole and none of his other bones had been broken. More significant was the wound the unruly mare had dealt to his pride. He got to his own feet and managed to limp back toward the procession, where the ostlers provided him with a different horse to bear him the rest of the way.
‘You ought to take better care, μωράκι μου,’ said Elisabet as she swabbed his wound with a clean damp cloth. ‘That mare’s always been an unsettled one. Next time, why don’t you pick a more biddable ride?’
‘Are you v—volunteering?’ asked Robin with a weak smile.
‘Bold of you,’ Ilse smirked, ‘but I think I’d like to keep our rides inside the bedroom where they belong.’
Robin put his hand on Ilse’s. She let it linger for awhile before she went back to cleaning his wound. She cleared her throat and asked again:
‘Are you still bound for Antioch once more? Even after this?’
‘Even after this,’ Robin answered her, as his face took on a far-off, rueful look. ‘There are sins of s—scarlet upon my soul. However Ioustinianos may have had c—cause to make his wars, I still partook in them. Men hail my name on account of my victories in those b—battles… but…’
‘But…?’
‘D—do you know, I met followers of M—Muḥammad there, who were t—truer to their word than many here who call themselves Christian. I s—saw in Âmid and Ḥarrân how Christians and Jews and Hagarenes and fire-worshippers lived t—together, side-by-side, in peace. How else can I atone for having d—disturbed that peace? Syria is a land of beauty. It should n—not be a land of blood and tears.’
Ilse’s hands slowed thoughtfully. ‘Bertík… I saw the scrawlings you wrote, on the ship. You have a fair hand, and you have much to say. Could you not write of what you saw there? In a book?’
The idea had been percolating for some time in Robin’s mind, but this was the first time it had been given voice. Once Ilse had spoken it aloud, it was like a spell lifting. Robin was still going to go on his pilgrimage—but this time, with the aim in mind of giving an account of the Syrian land, its people, and its beauty.
~~~
It was perhaps not the wisest choice for Róbert to undertake his pilgrimage while he was still recovering from his recent wound, and assuredly also not the wisest choice for him to begin it while Carpathia was again in the grips of civil war. Prelimír, the father of Vojtech’s spurned former betrothed, had risen up in revolt against Emperor Vyšebor Árpád-Ráb. The inevitable accompaniments to such disorder, whenever it raised its head, were the neglect of roads and the proliferation of lawless men. Róbert suffered from both as he traversed the Jerusalem Way.
The caravan of which Róbert was part completely lost the track along one mountainous stretch where the road had once wound and curved along the slopes, but now had been obliterated by the trampling of armies and the neglect of cities for its repair. The Moravian Kráľ was tempted—briefly—to show his prowess in finding the path himself, but in the end he relented and hired a local Magyar herdsman as their guide.
And as they went through the Bulgarian lands upon the approach to the Eastern Roman Empire and the Despotate of Thessalia, a band of deserters from one of the two warring Carpathian camps set upon the caravan in search of easy prey.
Róbert was there, with Pazúr swinging in his hands, and he fought bravely against the ruffians alongside the caravan guards even as the Magyar guide broke away from the road and fled into the woods. But his fall from the horse had weakened him, and the deserters were too many for him. They overpowered the Moravian king, beat him, kicked him, tore open his old wound and left him for dead as they rummaged through the caravan’s goods, took what they wanted, and melted back into the woods.
The Moravian king had lost a lot of blood, and his injuries now went far deeper than they had. But he was not so easily killed, or deterred from his goal. He bore his wounds as penitential stripes, and continued on his way to Antioch. This time, when he arrived there, he not only visited the churches of St Peter and of the Sunken Dome, but also took care to document and journal as much as he could of the lives of the ordinary people of the town, their lives and their faith. It was a great deal of work, however, and he was easily exhausted given the condition of his torn and battered flesh.
~~~
The Kráľ did not return to Moravia sensible and upright in the saddle. He had to be carried in on a litter, for he could not even stand. Ilse, her hair having turned wholly white with worry, ran to his side and broke down into tears over him, and when she came to herself she bade the physician Ctislava come to his side and tend to him. Ctislava unwrapped his wounds and examined both the wound and the used wrappings with clear approval. The flap of flesh still hung sundered from his side, ugly and ragged… but there was no gangrene, no abscesses or foulness to be seen.
‘The Syriacs know their art well,’ she approved with a nod. ‘The wound is deep, but it hasn’t befouled and festered. They used clean linen for the wrapping, and the herbal ointment they applied helped to keep the area clean. I doubt I could have done better myself with what I have here. Still—he should not have been travelling in the first place in this state.’
‘So I told him before he left,’ sobbed Ilse. ‘Is it too late?’
‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ Ctislava told her. ‘Go and get me some damson wine. Strongest you have—the stronger, the better.’
Ilse went and fetched some of the aged stuff, which had been distilled and fortified into strong liquor. She gave the container to Ctislava, who poured some of it onto a clean skein of raw wool and daubed at the wound with it, before preparing a herbal ointment of her own and rebinding the Kráľ’s flank. Ilse took the remainder of the damson liquor, sat heavily to the side, and poured it all down her throat. Worry and grief had taken their toll on the Queen, and she had sought refuge in one of the most traditional (but sadly least reliable) remedies.
But when Ctislava had finished treating him and bidden him be taken to a quiet room to rest, Ilse went with him, and sat by his side and held his hand. In his current state, she didn’t know whether he was aware of her or not. But she wanted to be near him. She even spoke to him.
‘Our eldest,’ she told him, ‘has mended his ways. You’d be proud of him. I don’t know what craft Predslava noted upon him, but Vojta no longer even looks askance at the maids these days. Predslava’s given birth, you know. You’re a grandfather now. His name is Bohodar. Also, Bertčík is up and grown. He took to wife a woman of Italy, named Lucrezia—you should have seen their wedding, Robin. It was truly wondrous.’
Teardrops fell from Ilse’s eyes and landed on Robin’s bed-shift.
‘Don’t leave,’ Ilse begged him. ‘Don’t leave me, please. Don’t leave me alone. You have so much more to do. I haven’t your strength of faith in God, but I’ve always believed in you. I believe in you still. Only come back to me.’
~~~
‘It’s slow work,’ Ctislava informed the Queen, ‘mending a wound like that. But the Kráľ is a strong and healthy man. The flesh is knitting at last… we just have to keep it clean and tend it with attention.’
‘He will live, then!’ Ilse couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt hope like this.
‘The Kráľ will live if I have any say at all in the matter,’ Ctislava told her briskly. ‘I doubt I could keep him in bed a day longer than he desires, and those days are running down quick. But it will be your job, milady, to make sure that he doesn’t tax himself overmuch once he’s up again.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Elisabet said earnestly.
And she did. Elisabet had never been the sort to sit on her hams when someone needed her help. She set the bottle aside and tended to her husband as patiently and with as much care as if he were a child of her own. And slowly but surely, Robin began to recover.
Last edited:
- 2
Thessalonika is independent. In this timeline, instead of gradually falling to invasion by Turkish princes, the Eastern Roman Empire kind of just... fragmented. Basically kind of like what happened to Trebizond historically.
And yeah, they were being pretty aggressive on their southeastern border. But they had a power like Moravia backing them up, so...
Jimi as Ghanaian-Japanese? Now headcanon.
It's part of their charm! Sad thing is they've basically become redundant and lazy these days.
Cure for band with not enough bass? Band with Steve Harris on uber-bass. I approve.
Also, unfortunately, this means the end-song now becomes obvious. Despite being only a guess, a strong prediction it is. Spoilers
I've already got the chapter names up to the end of the AAR picked out, but you're welcome to guess!
Honestly, starting off I didn't think there was any real need for a Manowar parody band, because Manowar kind of parody themselves. But evidently I was mistaken. Thanks for letting me know of this!
- 1
- 1
II.
26 December 1438 – 23 July 1442
26 December 1438 – 23 July 1442
Ilse did her level best to keep her husband’s activity down to a reasonable level as he recovered, so that he didn’t overstrain or overexert his body as it healed. Robin was no longer a young man, and he could not expect his flesh to simply bounce back from injuries such as he’d sustained as quickly as it once had. But even Ilse’s entreaties couldn’t stop him entirely from taking back to the butts and sparring rings, the barracks and the quartermaster’s abode.
Kvetoslava’s son Demid, newly invested with noble office after his elderly mother’s passing, was currently using the courtyard in order to drill his own levies… and his efforts were not progressing well. Róbert could see at once that the recruits Demid was working with were raw indeed, barely better than conscripts. Demid would bark an order again and again and again, and it would take several minutes for the whole lot of them to fall into line. The Kráľ’s heart went out to his vassal—he well understood the challenges of cultivating discipline among troops who were not wholly used to it.
But Knieža Demid recoiled at Róbert’s stammering attempts to commiserate and advise.
‘It would be easier to teach a crow swan-song than to teach any of these brainless putzes as much as how to hold a weapon! A pox on this worthless pack of braying, dung-hauling donkeys!’
At that, Demid stormed off. The outburst took Kráľ Róbert rather aback. Most times, his courtiers and advisers, however impatient it might make them, could at least thole Róbert to finish a thought before they themselves answered. He had come to expect that kind of courtesy… and to his own mind, he’d rather well and truly earned it. The last time anyone had cut him off and blown up at him like that, had been when Róbert’s cousin Horislav Velehradský had disagreed with him about strategy during the first Thessalian war in Mesopotamia in which he’d fought.
Róbert dismissed the sorry Nitrans to their temporary quarterings and waited for Demid to cool off before speaking with him. At any rate, he was eager to train with his own troops again.
Vojtech and Bertčík came across the courtyard with the regular garrison, deep in private conversation as they passed their father and hailed him politely. Róbert was gratified to see his two sons getting along so well. Indeed, the two of them had bonded over their shared experience as new fathers. Predslava had birthed another son for Vojtech: Vyšebor Rychnovský[1]. And Bertčík’s wife Lucrezia had given birth to a fair-haired daughter, whom they had named Dušana.
‘Father!’ cried Bertčík. ‘I didn’t reckon on seeing you out today; I thought Mother had you cloistered up well! Did you come to review our new recruits?’
‘S—so I did!’ the Kráľ cried, clapping his son on the shoulder. ‘Come, let’s m—move quickly!’
Robin had been going a bit stir-crazy. More than a bit, in truth. Ilse, frightened into overprotectiveness by the severity of her husband’s injuries, had been keeping him on a taut leash indeed, supervising nearly his every move around the castle. The only tasks he had been allowed to perform as king under Elisabet Totilsdotter’s careful watch, were those which required him to remain indoors. And those tasks had become somewhat obnoxious to the king.
There had been that grating and tedious negotiation with the burgomaster and provost of Brno, who had come to him begging funds to repair the walls—which had been in a state of near-collapse ever since the Bohemian Uprising at the beginning of Róbert’s reign. Róbert had very nearly told them off and had them tossed out on their ears. But that had been an unworthy impulse on his part, and he was now glad he had resisted it. The repairs to the walls at Brno had been badly needed indeed, and he was happy to furnish the townspeople of Moravia’s third city with whatever they required to the purpose.
And then there had been that diplomatic incident between Róbert’s portly, one-eyed Silesian cousin Vojvoda Jaromír Rychnovský-Nisa, and the Bavarian Fürst Ekkehard of Tirol. Jaromír had always had difficulty keeping a check on his tongue, and he happened to lose it at a most inopportune moment while visiting Tirol on business. That had been rather mortifying to the good-natured king, whose natural desire was to remain on good terms with each of his immediate neighbours.
The one good thing about his confinement, such as it was, was the chance he had to begin putting quill to vellum in earnest about his experiences in the Levant, in Mesopotamia and in Armenia. He now had plenty of opportunity, with a great deal of time shut up indoors and nothing else to do. In addition, now that Despot Ioustinianos had passed on and left his realm to his infant son Leōn 2. (an alliance which was quickly renewed), Kráľ Róbert didn’t feel quite the same degree of qualms writing his true impressions and sentiments about the wars as he would have otherwise, and exposing those impressions and sentiments to the broader world. Reliving his experiences in Asia in peace and war, and attempting to recapture them in writing was a welcome, if partial, relief from the boredom.
But now he was out-of-doors again, and—healing wound in his side or no healing wound—he was determined to make the best of the opportunity! He went together with his two elder sons out to the mustering-grounds.
‘Did you invite Siloš, Bertčík?’ asked the brown-haired elder son.
‘I’m afraid he’s indisposed at the moment,’ said the blond younger one. ‘He’s still helping Knieža Drahomír try to clean up the mess he left. That little border dispute with Prelimír, you know. Drahomír doesn’t particularly like having to defer to someone that much younger than him, but given the egg on his face he wasn’t in much of a position to refuse.’
‘Ahh. What about Totil? Didn’t he want to come along?’
‘Totti spends most of his time shut up in his room these days. Don’t think he wants to be around other people that much,’ Bertčík shook his head ruefully.
‘P—poor lad,’ the father of all four boys interjected, wincing a bit. ‘He’s got the s—same thick t—tongue that I do. He’s just s—so self-cons—s—conscious about it.’
As they arrived at the training-grounds, they found that Knieža Vasilko had already broken out the Moravian recruits into lines for sparring practice. The blood beat strongly in Róbert’s breast—it had been too long since he’d really joined in the fray in the ring or on the sparring-grounds. He gripped the haft of his training-hammer a little tighter in anticipation.
‘Na ihrisku je Kráľ! Prezentujte!’ Vasilko commanded the men as he recognised Robin and his two elder sons. All the recruits stood to attention.
‘A—as you w—were,’ Robin bade them.
The recruits went back into their lines and broke into practice skirmishes. Kráľ Róbert examined several of these skirmishes and found that the results of Vasilko’s training were much more adequate than Demid’s had been. The men had come to attention at once; they had been given the rudiments of effective discipline. And Robin noted with satisfaction most of them were not swinging their weapons wildly or wastefully the way the truly green ones did—economy of movement was necessary for a disciplined fighter.
‘Shall we set you up?’ asked Vojtech of his father. ‘That fellow over there looks like he could be a good match for you! Ahoj! Radoslav!’
The bower’s son Radoslav that Vojtech had indicated drew closer. He was a fresh, beardless, round-faced boy with a ‘beanpole’ build, but he stood about half a head taller already than the Kráľ. The lad knelt before the king, who asked him to get to his feet.
‘J—just to p—practise, alright?’ Robin assured him.
The two of them squared off against each other, and at once Robin fell into the familiar swordsman’s stance; which came back to him as quickly as second nature. Against a fellow with longer reach, like Radoslav, Robin would need to be quicker on his feet, darting in and out of range with alacrity, in order to score a touch while avoiding being hit in response.
As the two of them touched off, Robin knew at once he would have to exercise caution. The training weapons were not ‘live’, but they were made to resemble real weapons as closely as possible in weight and construction—the blade that the bower’s son was bringing to bear wouldn’t slice through flesh, but it could very easily bruise. And Radoslav was taking this sparring session seriously; so the Kráľ—particularly with the lingering traces of his injuries—couldn’t do otherwise.
As they fought the first three passes, Robin came to understand two things about his opponent. First: Radoslav was in fact much better at duelling than he let on. Evidently he’d had some experience with arms before—perhaps against local bandits or ruffians. The second thing was: Radoslav had no sense of restraint. Even though it was only a practise fight, Radoslav was sending blows Robin’s way that, had they been handling live edged blades, could very well have killed. In Robin’s current recuperating state, even training steel could be dangerous.
Robin, beginning to sweat now that Radoslav was pushing him like this, got serious himself. He kept his feet on the very ragged edge of Radoslav’s range, darting in and out like the bird which shared his name, and used his old techniques of shifting his grip on the haft of his training-hammer in order to hide where he intended to strike until the last possible moment.
Robin chose his moment, and shot out the blunt end of the hammer’s head at Radoslav’s sword-arm, catching him just below the elbow. His grip loosened and the training-blade slipped from the bower’s son’s grasp. The Kráľ tried not to let either his tension or his relief show as Radoslav let out the ‘yield’.
‘G—gather the men,’ Robin told his second son. Bertčík gave the signal—the men broke off their sparring and stood at attention. Kráľ Róbert cleared his throat and made to address them all—though Radoslav was the main target of his speech.
‘H—here on th—th—this g—ground you d—don’t face t—true foes,’ Robin spoke. ‘Y—you are not s—st—striving to h—harm each other, but to h—hone each other’s skill! R—remember th—that the man s—standing by you is al—als—also a Moravian and a b—brother! Wh—while you are h—here, you shall fight with o—o—honour, and n—not bear g—grudges for muh—matches fairly won or l—lost!’
Even this much of a speech was an effort for Robin, but his sons and Vasilko agreed that he was indeed still getting better at delivering such homilies in public. This outing to the training-ground had offered him the chance to practise more than just ado at arms.
‘K—keep q—qu—quiet about th—this to your m—mother, will you?’ asked Robin of his sons. Both of them agreed. None of them particularly wanted to be on the receiving end of Queen Elisabet’s ire if she ever came to discover what her husband had been doing out here.
In truth, however, there wasn’t that much healing left to be done. The itch and the restless boredom Robin had been feeling had been indication enough of that. There was an unsightly scar now running down his side where he’d been wounded twice over, but the flesh had knit cleanly and without any infectious complications.
[1] This is the same Vyšebor Rychnovský whose union with Perchta Obroditen produced the Rychnovský dynasts who came to rule the Archvoivodeship of Drježdźany, starting with his son Swjatopołk [Svätopluk] 2.
- 1
It doesn't seem real to me that we're arriving to the last point of this campaign
- 2
The bright side is the story continues further beyond, in eu4 and some others, vic3 probably.It doesn't seem real to me that we're arriving to the last point of this campaign
The negative side is it continues in eu4 and some others, which are not ck3.
Hopefully it will not be that much of a long waiting until another Revan86-story breaks in the kingdom of ck3.
- 1
- 1
Book Seven Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
Sign of the Hammer
5 October 1442 – 12 November 1446
Kráľ Róbert returned to the training ground with a vengeance after he had satisfactorily recovered. He trained with the training-hammers, and with Pazúr. The hammer was a perfect weapon for use against an opponent in plate armour or cuirass, because it could both dent the armour and tear it at the seams, but—far from being the brute weapon imagined by laymen—it actually required more than a bit of finesse to use well.Sign of the Hammer
5 October 1442 – 12 November 1446
He experimented with the versatility of the hammer’s grip, and with his stance. He found that the hammer required a little bit deeper stance than the sword, because the weapon relied upon its angular momentum to land injuring blows rather than upon a blade-edge. For the same reason, Róbert understood that fighting with a hammer required long, fluid movements and also great precision and knowledge of one’s own reach.
These days, he could fight as though Pazúr were simply a natural extension of his arm. The claw-shaped head whirled and sailed as he practised, withdrew and then shot out, bludgeoned at the targets as well as clawed. The king trained both by himself and with the assistance of Knieža Vasilko and the quartermaster (even in practice, hammer fighting could cause significant injury without the proper expertise), and soon became acknowledged as a proficient in the art.
‘Side holding together?’ asked Vojtech as he joined his father after one training session. Robin mopped the sweat from his brow.
‘W—well enough. Ctislava knew her art. It was a r—r—wrench having to p—part with her, b—but if an Emperor as—s—asked me to m—marry him, I d—don’t know if I c—could have refused either.’
Vojtech laughed. ‘It’d be a rather strange kind of Emperor who’d want to marry you, with the beard you’ve got! Still, even with Ctislava having gone off, it’s good to have Helene back home.’
With the vacancy left by Ctislava, Helene had returned to Olomouc with her Bavarian husband, and offered her services as court physician. Róbert took her up on the offer on the spot.
‘You’re needed up at the castle. The delegation from Great Rus’ has arrived.’
‘W—well, then! Let’s not k—k—keep them waiting, what say? L—Lev is a man of m—many virtues, p—patience among them, but s—still it’s not s—seemly for us to be remiss!’
‘It isn’t Lev who sent the delegation, Otec.’
‘It—It—It isn’t?’
‘No. The delegation is from Ľudmila’s elder sister, Rostislava.’
Robin took in a deep breath. So that was the way of things, then? Rostislava Ľvovná was now the Velikaya Knyaginya of Great Rus’. He’d known that Lev Kirillovič had not been in the best of health for some time—he was a bit too overly fond of strong drink, and he’d been given to bouts of melancholy which had sapped him of his strength. Still, he’d expected that the Veliky Knyaz would have had several more years left in him! Kráľ Róbert crossed himself and said a silent prayer to Christ for Lev’s soul.
Then he laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘How’s P—Predslava doing? And your l—littlest one?’
Vojtech tilted his head. ‘Milomíra’s well and happy, though Slavka’s not getting nearly enough sleep these days. She gets hungry pretty regularly on every third hour, whether or not his mother is wakeful. And Ostromír isn’t exactly happy to have to share Slavka’s breast-milk with a new younger sister.’
‘And—and you?’ asked the solicitous father. It was clear that he wasn’t merely referring to his son’s health or physical well-being.
Vojtech fixed his father with a firm regard. ‘You know, Otec—I rather resented you for having… curtailed my freedom in such a harsh way, back then. And I also resented Slavka. It felt like you forced her on me as punishment for my… predilections.’
‘Y—you don’t anym—more?’ asked the Kráľ.
‘Well…’ Vojtech said thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t say I get as much as I’d like, but what I do get is fine indeed. She’s a better sport in that quarter than I thought possible when we married. And she’s quite helpful and sweet-tempered otherwise. On balance, you chose well for me, I think.’
That was particularly gratifying for Róbert to hear. The Kráľ had had his doubts about that particular match—the only thing that had given him any degree of confidence in it was Predslava’s insistence that she could handle Vojtech’s “ruttish” ways. Evidently that confidence had been well-placed, and whatever her methods had been, the results had been satisfactory for her husband… and thus also for her father-in-law.
As they made their way across the bailey, Róbert and Vojtech found themselves confronted by two women, who were accompanied by a bevy of lamellar-bearing guards with armoured masques and bearing long voulges. The more regally-attired of the two women was speaking with Queen Ilse. Even if they had not been thus accompanied, Róbert would have recognised the two women on sight. It wasn’t merely a delegation from the new Velikaya Knyaginya of Great Rus’. It was the Knyaginya herself.
The last time that Robin had seen Rostislava Ľvovna Khovanskaya in person, she’d been merely a curious and rather impish little girl. There were still clear traces of that little girl in the woman who confronted him now, but what a remarkable metamorphosis she’d gone through! Rostislava was now an arrestingly-handsome young woman. The slate-grey eyes and level, honey-blonde brows which looked up at him had a definite sense of clarity and purpose. Maybe it was an old man’s fancy at work, but something about her reminded Kráľ Róbert of a younger Elisabet Totilsdotter. No doubt Elisabet herself, pleased as she was at conversing with the younger woman, might well have been flattered by the comparison.
‘It is truly a pleasure to see you again, Kráľ Róbert,’ the Rus’ Princess addressed him in flawless Moravian, dipping a courtesy that was immaculately measured to show the respect due between equals, and then kissing the Kráľ on each cheek as was expected between kin.
Róbert echoed her sentiments. ‘L—Likewise, Knyaginya Rostislava,’ said the Moravian king. ‘Th—though I’m s—sorry to hear about your f—father’s passing. He was a g—good man.’
A wrinkle of sadness appeared between those handsome level brows. ‘He… had his weaknesses,’ she told him ruefully. ‘They caught up to him. Prayer is no substitute for healthful habits. But still I intend to do all as he would have done. The Rus’ people shall not go wanting of aid for their problems or redress for their grievances as long as I command the boyary.’
One didn’t need to be a clairvoyant to tell that she meant it. Róbert was assured that the eastern Rus’ couldn’t have asked for a more conscientious or compassionate Grand Princess.
‘Allow me to present my sister Ľudmila to you,’ Rostislava told Róbert. She indicated the dark-browed girl at her side, who dipped the king a rather deeper courtesy. For all their difference in colour, this girl possessed the same regular and handsome features as her elder sister, though her mouth was a little narrower and her stance a little more rigid. ‘It is on her account that I’m here; I wish to make good on my father’s final plans.’
‘S—Surely f—for such an occasion you d—didn’t need to c—come yourself?’
Rostislava laughed—a clear, bell-like peal. ‘Need to? Surely not! But I wouldn’t miss my sister’s wedding for the world! Still less would I miss an opportunity to spend time in Olomouc. Moravia has long enough been the firmest of friends to Great Rus’; for the Princess to come here first is only meet and right!’
~~~
The wedding of Siloš Rychnovský, son of the Moravian Kráľ, to Ľudmila Ľvovna, sister of the Ruthenian Velikaya Knyaginya, was a matter of great pomp and boisterous joy. The feasting-hall was open to all and sundry, regardless of station in life, and whatever food was not eaten was trucked out into the working-class neighbourhoods and into the Olomouc countryside for the benefit of the poor. Neither the Kráľ nor the Knyaginya would have had it any other way. All was happiness and good cheer at the celebration, until the festivities were marred by a single, sudden outburst.
‘You varlet!’ shouted one of the guests, sweeping half a table’s worth of food to the floor and levelling an accusatory finger at none other than the king himself. ‘You will answer for this outrage! Your book is an insult to every man who bled and died in your wars in Asia! You spit on our sacrifice, and expect us to celebrate such vanities as this?’
Róbert was taken aback. He’d put all but the finishing touches on his Príbehy kajúceho pútnika, but he hadn’t yet shown it to any but his close kin. How Horislav Velehradský had come to know of it, let alone be familiar with its contents, was a mystery.
‘Y—you h—have much t—to explain, H—Horislav,’ said the king.
‘Y—y—you h—have m—muh—much t—tuh—to exp—pp—pplain,’ Horislav mocked the king’s stutter cruelly. ‘No, I needn’t explain myself to a tongue-tied dunce like you! Why do you give the praise and honour to those Saracen demon-spawn, while good Moravians lie in the ground? A pox on you, a pox on your sons, and a pox on this Russian whore your son is cavorting with!’
‘You g—g—go too f—far,’ Róbert growled. ‘Be s—silent and r—r—return to your p—p—place.’
‘I will not be silent!’ shouted Horislav.
Robin’s rage was mounting in his breast. It was a rage he’d kept—or tried to keep—under strict control, but ever since he was a boy having to deal with his deficiency in speech, it had been a sore point for him. Robin’s vision was narrowing, so that he could give only a single answer to Horislav’s impertinence, his insults and his opprobrium. He took off one of his gloves and threw it down at Horislav’s feet. The whole of the wedding-party fell into a tense hush.
Slowly, but deliberately, Horislav picked up the king’s glove.
‘S—s—so b—be it,’ Robin declared.
~~~
It was some days after the wedding was over when the courtyard was cleared for the two combatants for honour, and the sparring-ring was surrounded by men from the garrison to make sure that neither combatant could leave. A significant crowd had gathered around the ring; they craned their necks between the shoulders of the guards in order to get a better view of the oncoming spectacle. Robin put on his mail shirt and took up Pazúr and a buckler in his hands, while Horislav chose a flanged mace for his weapon of choice along with a shield. The Kráľ gave Pazúr a couple of experimental swings, and then turned to face his opponent.
Horislav and Robin were roughly equals in height and reach—which is to say, neither of them were particularly tall or long of arm. But Robin was not about to let down his guard in the slightest. That determination only hardened as Horislav took his first advancing steps toward the Kráľ. Robin could see what was coming almost before Horislav had delivered it—the flanged mace shot out in a flurry of pummels. Robin felt the force against his buckler as he warded them off as best he could, and knew at once that Horislav had trained in the use of his weapon very nearly as much as the Kráľ himself had.
Robin made doubly sure that his guard was well and truly closed before he took a swing of his own—a mighty, high overhead swing that was meant to come down just at Horislav’s collarbone. Pazúr did not disappoint him. Horislav was forced onto his back leg and his rhythm was disrupted, as he brought his buckler up to ward off a blow that might well have killed.
The Kráľ did not relent for even one heartbeat. Having gained the momentum, Robin ruthlessly moved to exploit it. Pazúr’s talon-like head smashed and crashed against Horislav’s buckler and his armour, withdrawing and then shooting out again with the same long, strong fluid strokes that Robin had spent such long hours practising on his own. Still, Horislav was no idle sparring-partner; he was a foe in deadly earnest, and he proved this with his determined strikes and attempts to get in over Robin’s guard, aiming specifically at his vital areas—his face and his neck in particular.
Out of the corner of his eye, Robin caught sight of Queen Elisabet. Her husband had never once known her to keep a prayer rule with any regularity, and he knew she had vanishingly little use for the Church. But now she had her eyes lifted to heaven and her lips were moving in what was clearly a supplication on high. Silently, he joined his prayers to hers, asking in particular the intercessions of Saint George of Lydda to grant him the victory here.
The fight went on for long, painful minutes, with the two combatants beating on each other and striving to get under each other’s guards without relenting. Horislav had the relative advantage of youth on his side, and now that advantage was beginning to show. Robin felt his limbs wearying and slowing despite the high alert his nerves were in. The Kráľ knew he had to finish this fight quickly and decisively if he was going to stand any chance of winning it at all.
Robin took a bold lunge forward, moved his hand up on Pazúr’s grip, and sent the head in series of swings as swift as a falcon in a dive. The sheer speed and fury of the assault sent Horislav onto his back foot, and as the hailstorm of strikes continued, Horislav’s buckler yielded by mere degrees below where his guard should have been.
Those couple of degrees were all Robin needed. He swung again, and caught Horislav right in the shoulder. He swung again and clipped him in the jaw. And he swung again and landed a solid blow on the younger man’s neck. The dazed Horislav wobbled, trying again to bring his buckler up, but it was well too late for that. Pazúr had tasted blood, and Pazúr would drink until sated.
Robin’s heart boomed like a houfnice in his chest and his vision went blood-red. The raw elemental rage that he’d kept bottled up all these years, the bitter fruit of an entire lifetime of frustrations over his slow tongue and all the indignities that attended it, came blasting out of him like a burst dam. Robin let up an unearthly howl as he pummelled Horislav to the ground, and then kept on thrashing him with Pazúr long after Horislav had fully fallen prone. A frightened hush fell over the crowd as the Kráľ took vengeance, not for one, but for a lifetime’s worth of slights out on Horislav Velehradský.
It took Robin a massive effort to regain his restraint. When he let Pazúr fall at his side at last, what lay before him was a sorry-looking heap of bloody pulp, recognisable only on account of the bent and battered armour that housed it. Robin looked over Horislav for any sign of life, and breathed a sigh of relief when at last his opponent’s hand relaxed and the flanged mace rolled free of it. Robin toed the weapon aside and held Pazúr at Horislav’s throat. It took him the space of several laboured breaths to get out the yield properly… but he was able.
There was no way for Horislav to recover from the injuries he had sustained at the Kráľ’s hands. He was taken to the infirmary and cared for as best Helene Rychnovská knew how, but there was little enough she could do for him but make him comfortable and send for a priest. Horislav Velehradský passed from the earthly life less than four weeks after the duel.
Robin regretted Horislav’s death, but found that he couldn’t grieve over it too much. After the slights and insults and venom Horislav had hurled so publicly, at an occasion which ought to have been joyous, it was hard for Robin to think that what had been done was anything less than justice. As for Robin’s subjects who had been witness to the bloody ado, they now went in awe and no little fear of the diminutive king. Few would have guessed, given Robin’s usual kindheartedness and willingness to hear all sides before coming to a judgement, that he was capable of such wrath, or the ability to exact so bloody a vengeance. As such, the way in which Horislav Velehradský had met his end (however deserved) stuck in the minds of the whole of the Olomouc court for many years.
- 1
Only two or three more episodes to come. (I know EU4.) How nerve wracking was the duel? Thanks
- 1
Book Seven Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
Into Glory Ride
30 November 1446 – 4 August 1449
Into Glory Ride
30 November 1446 – 4 August 1449
Vojtech whistled softly as he read the paper that his father had handed to him, and a look of consternation came over his face. ‘That’s, uh… quite the bombshell.’
‘You s—see my p—pp—predicament, then.’
‘I know a lot of us were questioning the timing… we all thought Zdravomil was more than a tad premature. Poor Siloš!’ Vojtech exclaimed. ‘And poor Ľudmila! Who knows how long she’d been carrying on with this boyar of hers? It may well have predated any arrangement we’d made—!’
‘No,’ Róbert told his son firmly. ‘No, it d—didn’t. I’m s—sorry, but there’s no ek—ek—excusing what—’
‘But I’m not excusing her adultery, Father,’ Vojtech told the king. ‘I’ve felt the burning too. I know how hard it is to control myself—the misery of being confined.’
‘I’ve al—already had a messenger f—from Kiev,’ Robin sighed. ‘R—Rostislava ap—pp—pologised p—profusely for her s—sister’s “in—infamous and d—disgraceful d—defilement” of the f—f—family honour, and off—offered to b—bring her back to f—face p—punishment. Sh—she’s also ar—r—rrested this boyar Yelisei.’
‘So it’s known there too, then,’ Vojtech grimaced. ‘Are you planning to send her back?’
Róbert heaved a sigh. ‘I h—hadn’t k—k—quite m—made up my mind,’ he admitted.
‘There can be mercy here,’ Vojtech advised his father. ‘As you had on me, once.’
Robin looked over his son with great fondness. He’d had his doubts about the lad, expecially in his teen years, but he’d matured remarkably. Vojtech understood the devilish pull of his own passions, and as a result he was willing to forgive those same passions in others… even as they led to as wretched and foul a betrayal as this had been. Vojtech was evidently a far better Christian than Robin himself was.
‘Sh—shall sh—she “g—go and sin no m—more”?’ Robin asked. ‘I s—suppose w—we shall see. I’ll s—send a l—letter back to Rostislava t—t—telling her of our d—decision.’
~~~
Vojtech’s and Predslava’s own children, Bohodar and Vyšebor, were nigh inseparable these days. The two lads (the one aged nine now, the other aged eight) were of a very similar temper. The names of Bohodar and Vyšebor were quickly becoming synonymous among the castle staff with sheer terror, mayhem and mischief in boyish form. Egg each other on though they might when it came to joyriding horses or racing the north Morava bridge or even (young as they might seem for such mischief) stealing the shifts from girls who bathed in the river—they were also quick to back each other up and go to bat for each other. Both were wont to dive straight into a situation regardless of the dangers, and both were willing to fight tenaciously to get each other out of them again. (Bohodar was usually the one pushing Vyšebor into such predicaments, though. He tended to be the bossier of the two.) Given that Bohodar was undertaking to become a fighter, the same as his grandfather, Robin looked on this active and boisterous brotherly bond with some degree of encouragement, despite the headaches they caused. With any luck, that bond would deepen into a lifelong friendship.
(Robin would be in no position to know of it in this earthly life, but he would be encouraged by the fact that eventually there would be much more to it than that—their bond would last down several generations. Eventually, Vyšebor’s son Svätopluk Rychnovský, and Bohodar’s grandchildren Jozef and Jakub, would develop a similar bond of friendship, often getting into similar sorts of scrapes.)
As for Robin himself, he still spent an inordinate amount of time on the training field.
There were two reasons for this. Their names were Hypatia and Lesana.
Hypatia, a Greek guest in the castle, simply wouldn’t leave the Kráľ alone, or take his subtle hints that he simply wasn’t interested. Indeed, his protestations of disinterest only seemed to spur her on further. There had been that hideous stuffed fox she’d sent him, for example.
And as for Lesana, well…
When she had lodged alone for that one night at that cottage outside Chýnov, she’d been tempting enough. But now it seemed she had been elevated to the stature of a purkmistrička in another town, one in the very far south of Moravia, in Břeclav. In such a position, she was within the Kráľ’s sight and hearing practically every day, as part of the Zhromaždenie. She was every bit as kind and sweet as ever. Every bit as knowledgeable as ever in matters of military concern. Every bit as enticing as ever. And still every bit as unattached.
Plunging his face into a bucket of cold water was helping… some. Indulging in frequent and spirited bedsports with Queen Ilse (finger-bowl of olive oil at the ready, as usual) was helping a little more. Still, Robin now felt like such a hypocrite for having chastised his son and having now come close to punishing his daughter-in-law for their sins of the flesh, when those same temptations were creeping up so close to his own heart.
What he really needed was exercise. Fresh air. A stiff ride in the hills. Such opportunities, a king can make.
As Robin approached the stables, he noticed that the ostlers were struggling with one particular animal, a young, unbroken sabino whose handiwork could already be noticed in the bloody heads and limps of several of the unfortunate handlers. The sabino flung his head haughtily and snorted, as though daring any of the other ostlers to come closer.
‘Wh—what’s going on here?’ asked the king.
‘It’s this new beast, sire,’ said the stablekeeper. ‘He’s a prize, no doubt about that. A model courser if ever I saw one: lean, but with a powerful hind leg. Sadly… you see the uses to which he puts that leg.’
‘S—so I do,’ the king noted. He gazed firmly at the chestnut-and-white stallion, whose own gaze locked with the king’s, in an expression of clear defiance and contempt. ‘I—I—I’d like to t—try my hand at t—taming him.’
The stablekeeper shrugged. ‘It’s your funeral. I’ve seen this one bloody up grown men who’ve been working with horses since they were raw prentices and stableboys. But… you’re the king, sire.’
Robin looked over the sabino once again. There were no marks on him, no indication of any previous rough handling. On the other hand, he’d clearly been kept in confinement a long while, the result of the ostlers not wanting anything to do with him. Robin had no need to wonder what manner of temper he’d have if he were cooped up like that. He knew exactly: from when he’d been recovering from his injuries. There was sympathy in his voice as he reached out to the animal.
‘Easy there, l—lad,’ he said. ‘Easy there.’
The sabino shot out one foreleg as fast as lightning as Robin came within range. It was only Robin’s discipline and skill at arms which saved him from a bloody head, taking him back out of range. The stablekeeper behind him suppressed a chuckle, but Robin was not deterred.
There were two convictions that formed in Robin’s mind about this beast. The first was that the stallion was merely another sparring opponent to be overcome and bested. And the second was that he was a sensible animal in need of compassion. These two convictions were not nearly as mutually opposed as one might think—particularly not for Robin, who had spent a lifetime battling his own tongue, and a career battling Assyrians and Bedouins and Armenians in the field whose cultures and languages he’d come not only to respect but to love. The sabino needed to be understood before it could be challenged; and when challenged it could be met with respect and honour.
Robin’s movements were measured as he approached the beast gently. It was slow going. There were many false starts, and a number of near misses as Robin had to dodge one iron-shod hoof and then another. But eventually the sabino—understanding that the Kráľ, despite his short stature, was not a human to be despised or scorned—allowed him to draw near.
Once the proud beast and the gentle king understood and appreciated each other, the rest of the work came easily. The sabino was soon allowing himself to be guided at the king’s hand, and even mounted. Robin had acquired an excellent steed—one perfect to be his personal warhorse, in fact. Robin’s light, lean build was uniquely suited to the sabino’s own courser conformation, which was tuned for alacrity and speed rather than for bearing heavy burdens, whether rider or plate armour.
‘He was a heavy grey, and you a light chestnut-and-white,’ Robin said thoughtfully to the beast, ‘but your personalities possess the same nobility. I think I shall name you Zúl-Džanáh, after the loyal and selfless steed of Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alî.’
~~~
Zúl-Džanáh got his chance soon enough to prove his worth, though this was in a training exercise rather than in a true battle.
Hrdoslav Mikulčický, the knieža of Užhorod, was leading a detachment of Moravia’s družinniki into the field. Robin joined them, mounted on the sabino whose trust he’d newly gained. Robin surveyed the field, and pointed out to Hrdoslav the plan of action he intended to make. It was a tricky manœuvre, a deep harrying action on an imagined enemy’s flank. It would require precision and perfect timing for the cavalry formation to strike and withdraw. But with Zúl-Džanáh beneath him, each nerve throughout his powerful body attuned to the slightest touch on rein or spur, Robin found he had a new boost of confidence in being able to pull this manœuvre off.
The manœuvre was a complete success. Zúl-Džanáh kept his pace measured, rather than wildly sprinting ahead, and stayed together with the other horses as they crashed into the imaginary flank and then withdrew to a safe distance. As a result, the other družinniki were able to follow each and every signalled order with clockwork timing. Robin was elated.
Although he had taken to the training field largely to forget about the fleshly temptation of Purkmistrička Lesana and to remain faithful to his beloved Ilse Totilsdotter, he had found another companion of a different sort… and a new surge of confidence as a field commander. He had as yet no inkling that he would be riding Zúl-Džanáh into glory in upcoming wars against Carpathia on Knyaginya Rostislava’s behalf. But the new cavalry tactics that would be used in those wars had been tried and found more than acceptable.
- 1
Caught up, just slightly before the end! It's a wonderful read, as always!
- 1
- 1
Book Seven Chapter Twenty-Three
Well, folks.
Here it is.
The
‘For the last time, Bohodar—leave me alone!’
‘But, Tiburge…!’
‘I told you before. I’m not interested.’
‘Why not, though?’ asked the stricken Bohodar.
Tiburge Vasconia-Boulogne wheeled around on Bohodar, and held up her hand. ‘Why not? You’re a ruffian who’s always getting into trouble, a boor who steals girls’ clothes while they bathe, and a thief who breaks into the rooms of visiting nobles to take their things!’
‘But I gave them back,’ Bohodar objected. ‘I never keep any of that stuff. And I apologised to Purkmistrička Lesana and promised not to do it again!’
‘Good for you,’ Tiburge snapped. ‘But it’s not going to get you anywhere with me. Nothing ever will!’
Bohodar’s grandfather happened to witness this exchange, as well as the glowering, resentful look that passed over his grandson’s face after Tiburge stalked off. Well. It was only natural for Bohodar to begin taking a keen interest in girls at the age of fourteen, so Robin thought. Although Bohodar had set his sights on the blue-eyed Frisian girl, whose accent and bearing lent her a kind of exotic appeal with which Robin could sympathise, it was immediately apparent to Robin that Tiburge was not such a fitting match for Bohodar.
A slender hand came up and touched Robin on the elbow. Robin turned and found his loyal wife at his side, and a surge of warmth swept through him. Not for the first time and not for the last, he found himself thankful that he’d been able to resist the pull of Lesana’s creamy skin and full lips. For Robin, faithfulness had not come naturally—to very few men does such a gift come naturally!—but as a choice. But it was a choice he was daily grateful that, with Christ’s help, he’d made. Although her skin was wrinkled and dry, her bones frail and her complexion dimmed from what it once had been, Ilse was still the central prop of Robin’s life—more precious than his silver cross, more formidable than Pazúr, more honourable than Zúl-Džanáh.
‘I see we’re going to have to betroth our grandson, and soon,’ Ilse noted.
‘Sooner would be b—better than later,’ Robin agreed, remembering what Vojtech was like at that age.
Ilse quirked her head to the side, rightly guessing what was on her husband’s mind. ‘You know, having deferred to your judgement once, I’ve come to a healthy respect for your abilities. I think I’ll let you take charge of this one again.’
Robin smiled. ‘You s—said once that Predslava would be out of her rightful s—stead here.’
Ilse chuckled. ‘And I’ve had to eat my words on that score, many times over.’
Robin might have been Queen Ilse’s soulmate, but it was clear to anyone who saw them that Predslava was Ilse’s closest bosom friend. Despite their massively disparate backgrounds—one a hathel lady of ancient Varangian and Taurican stock; the other a mere commoner from Mukačevo—the two of them quickly discovered that in the important things, they were far more similar than different. Ilse was impressed not only by Predslava’s depth of knowledge, and her appreciation for poetry, but also by her clear sense of personal integrity. Having mutually observed this of each other, it was only a matter of time before the two of them took each other into close confidence.
‘And Ľ—Ľudmila?’
Ilse’s brow furrowed. ‘At least Oleg and Ctibor seem to have been true-born.’
Her tone was as chill as ice, as though it were an offence for this even to have been a question in the first place. As a mother, it was difficult in the extreme for Ilse to forgive her faithless, adulterous daughter-in-law for having injured her son the way she had. In fact, she still hadn’t forgiven Ľudmila Ľvovna fully, and it was unlikely she ever would. Robin quickly returned to the original subject.
‘Wh—what m—manner of woman do you think would be best for Bohodar?’
Ilse smiled.
‘He’s a bold and haughty little knave. But he’s also earnest and true of heart. If I were you, I’d look for a woman who sets her sights high, and who understands her own needs. Such a woman would be able to answer Bohodar’s truthfulness with her own, and also stand up to him if he gets too high-handed.’
Bohodar wasn’t the only ‘bold and haughty knave’ who demanded the king’s attention.
Zúl-Džanáh required being taken on rides daily, or else he would pine and sulk. This was especially so after a recent bout of illness the stallion had suffered, which Robin had gone to considerable expense to have cured—but which had also seen Zúl-Džanáh laid up in his stall for a number of weeks. Now he was sure to let the Kráľ—still the only earthly creature to whom he would show any sort of deference—understand that such treatment was not to be borne now that he was healthy again.
The splendid sabino courser thus made a common sight, bearing the two-legged one whom he considered his worthy equal, coursing at speed across the Moravian countryside around Olomouc. He drew many an admiring eye after him, not least of whose was that of the Knieža of Užhorod.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an extraordinary creature,’ Hrdoslav said to the Kráľ. ‘Just once I’d love to be permitted to ride him! Would that not be possible, sire?’
Róbert was sorely tempted to let his vassal have his wish, as he understood Hrdoslav’s admiration to be genuine. But knowing Zúl-Džanáh’s temper, he decided against it. ‘B—better not,’ he advised Hrdoslav Mikulčický. ‘He’s a p—proud and r—rather ill-tempered beast; he d—doesn’t suffer any but m—me to ride him. I c—can appeal to my ostlers f—for witness of this.’
Hrdoslav didn’t look too happy about it, but he made no further objection.
On the other hand, Robin’s answer was considerably more affirmative, when a well-known handler and trainer of horses came to Olomouc Castle, and offered his services. It took him some convincing, but eventually Kráľ Róbert allowed the trainer to try his hand with Zúl-Džanáh. The fruits of the training were, to put it mildly, impressive. Although Zúl-Džanáh had been a swift courser before, after the training it seemed his instincts and reflexes had been honed to razor-keenness, and it seemed to the Kráľ afterward that he could outrun the wind itself, and often desired so to do.
~~~
As it turned out, the delegation from Biela Rus’ to Olomouc would be accompanied—on account of the common direction both were travelling—by the Kráľ’s new šafár, Gáktu (Rychnovský-Žič)[1].
‘I’ve made up a welcome just meet for him,’ Ilse had told her husband, with ever the slightest hint of malicious enjoyment. ‘Helene helped me on the cleanhoods.’
Róbert looked out into the courtyard below, where Ilse had indicated, and his jaw very nearly dropped. It seemed that not only all the garrison, but also the entire consignment of Olomouc’s zbrojnoši and not a few of the local levies had been called up as if for a formal review. They were arrayed in full military finery, armour and arms, and they bore the insignia of the Moravian state. Ilse gave an order with a wave of the hand, and the whole battalion, as it seemed, stepped up sharply to execute it.
‘There won’t be one lonely lane in all of Olomouc where Gáktu won’t be watched while he is here. That might be rede enough for even a Sámi lord not to make uprising against the rightful king!’
The memory of Wizlaw and his capture of Olomouc had clearly not faded from her mind. Nor from Helene’s for that matter! Róbert gave a nod.
‘L—Let him see them, then, but only on a regular parade. There’s no need to scare the p—poor fellow out of his wits to get the p—point across.’
He also didn’t particularly want to send the wrong message to the Belarusians when they arrived. He had taken his wife’s advice and sought out a bride for Bohodar who was honest and hard-working, but also bold and self-sure enough to stand up to Bohodar if he should get too overbearing. Such an eligible young woman had quickly presented herself by reputation, in the person of Liusia Rasćislaevna Óskyldr-Baranoviči—the daughter of the Knyaz of Biela Rus’.
After the parade was over and after an appropriately-chastened Gáktu had presented the tribute from the Kíllt Sámi tribe of Koutajoki, the Belarusian princess and her entourage of boyary came forward to greet the Kráľ. Liusia was indeed bold enough! She stepped forward to the king and made no hesitation at all at dropping him a short formal courtesy, kissing his hand and looking him squarely in the eye.
Kráľ Róbert approved of what he saw. Dark hair, walnut-brown eyes and fair skin always made a striking combination, and it was no less so in Liusia’s case. But that was accentuated by a well-formed jawline, a pair of smooth, supple round cheeks, dark arch brows, and a narrow mouth and nose which formed an expression of immaculate frankness and poise. Save for Christ Himself she would not give over an inch for any man, the Kráľ was immediately assured of that!
‘W—welcome to Olomouc, L—Liusia!’ he told her.
‘Obliged to you, O Kráľ,’ she dipped her head curtly. ‘It’s a fair city you have here! I was impressed by the party that came out to greet us as we rode in.’
Robin smiled. That hadn’t been wholly for her benefit, but she didn’t need to know that. Robin beckoned to his eldest grandson, who was standing to the side.
‘A—al—allow me to introduce B—Bohodar to you,’ Robin told Liusia. ‘Th—this is my g—grandson, who will be t—t—turning four—fo—fourteen sh—shortly. Come, lad, g—give her your greeting!’
Liusia held up a dainty hand with the confidence of a girl double her age. Bohodar struck his heels together, bowed deeply, and kissed Liusia’s hand. Liusia looked Bohodar up and down—from the state of his boots to the roots of his sable-brown hair—with a similarly gifted eye. Robin could already see forming there a keen glimmer, of the sort a marksman had when he took aim at the butts from a hundred yards. Evidently she was anticipating him, and considering the advantages of a political tie to the Moravian ruling dynasty.
‘N—naturally, I’d w—want the t—t—two of you to g—get familiar,’ said the Kráľ, trying not to let the satisfaction show on his face. ‘I’ll l—leave the two of you to b—b—better ack—kk—quaint yourselves.’
That satisfaction deepened as he saw Bohodar and Liusia talk together. The moroseness that had come over Bohodar since being shot down by Tiburge Vasconia-Boulogne was melting away—the precocious preteen that was engaging him in conversation was quickly taking her place.
~~~
Ilse and Robin looked back across the path in their walk, over the north Morava River toward the walls and the heights of their capital. The evening light smote the domes of the town’s eastward-facing churches and their three-bar crosses, and set them splendidly afire in glimmering golds and oranges in the waning twilight hours. The fifty-six-year-old king and his sixty-three-year-old wife and lady love together regarded the shimmering half-silhouette of the town to which, five hundred five and eighty years ago, a young Orthodox Slavic knieža had brought his newlywed Catholic German bride. Now their descendant, his red hair and beard now streaked with grey, was beholding the blossom of their legacy, standing side-by-side with a woman who likewise blended in herself Swedish and Gothic bloodlines with the legacy of the eastern frontiers of Eastern Rome.
Olomouc had gone, in the space of those five hundred five and eighty years, from being a somewhat obscure Slavic gord of wood stakes and rough-hewn zemnicy, to being the gleaming, bustling capital—half-timbered and tile-roofed—of a mighty European state which stretched from Cheb to Chust, and whose influence had been felt from Machynlleth to Mawṣil. In her halls, both Anglo-Farœse and Amharic had echoed alongside Moravian, Polish, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian. She had been ruled by both iron-fisted tyrants and velvet-gloved dilettantes, by both men of thought and men of action. She had seen ages of splendid peace, as well as the cruel heartbreak of war and famine. She had borne witness to the outbreak of heresy and the triumph of Orthodoxy.
And when the dawn rose again in the east, the morning light would once again catch those steeples. And the rays would descend to where the warehouses lay ready to ship Silesian glass and pewter, Moravian wine and Bohemian beer to market, where it would be priced and traded in Hory Kutné-mined silver for various and sundry other goods, ranging from wheat flour to exotic spices from beyond Constantinople. Those rays would shine into the windows of homes of great painters and artists, dousing in the medium of sight those beauties and dimensions and proportions that would capture them in their divine madness. Those drops of radiance would grace the heads of Bohemian and Moravian, of Silesian and Nitran, of Sámi and Ruthenian, of landowner and burgher and bower alike. Their thoughts and aims and struggles, their loves and their vengeances, would all be illumined by it. The two elderly monarchs watched as one page in the human drama fluttered closed, as another prepared to open.
‘A lovely sight,’ Ilse whispered to her husband, squeezing his arm.
‘It is,’ Robin agreed.
The two of them stood together for longer in that autumnal pre-dusk. The distant calls of roe deer as they began their winter gathering, the whit-whit-whit calls of quail, and the gentle lapping of the Morava over its bed and against its banks mingled with the breeze.
‘How do you think they will fare?’ asked Ilse. ‘Vojtech and Predslava? Bohodar and Liusia?’
‘I—I don’t know,’ Robin answered truthfully. ‘Only God knows. We c—can only hope, and commend them to His grace.’
For once, Ilse didn’t scoff. She held her husband even tighter to her, and rested her white head on his lean, wiry shoulder. Robin nestled her head beneath his and savoured the moment. As the last slender segment of reddening sunshine dipped below the horizon, and vaunted its final brilliant rays skyward in a heavenly riot of hues, the Kráľ and Kráľovná of Moravia stood thus embracing each other, their gaze fixed in the same skyward bent. Whatever lay in store for them and for their descendants, it would be overseen by the same providence that had this day.
[1] As the grandson of Wizlaw and Giste, Gáktu belonged indisputably to the Rychnovský-Žič patrimony. However, following Sámi custom, which did not recognise surnames of any sort until the sixteenth century, Gáktu referred to himself ever and only by his given name.
Here it is.
The
FINAL CHAPTER
My Spirit Lives On
5 September 1449 – 1 January 1453
My Spirit Lives On
5 September 1449 – 1 January 1453
‘For the last time, Bohodar—leave me alone!’
‘But, Tiburge…!’
‘I told you before. I’m not interested.’
‘Why not, though?’ asked the stricken Bohodar.
Tiburge Vasconia-Boulogne wheeled around on Bohodar, and held up her hand. ‘Why not? You’re a ruffian who’s always getting into trouble, a boor who steals girls’ clothes while they bathe, and a thief who breaks into the rooms of visiting nobles to take their things!’
‘But I gave them back,’ Bohodar objected. ‘I never keep any of that stuff. And I apologised to Purkmistrička Lesana and promised not to do it again!’
‘Good for you,’ Tiburge snapped. ‘But it’s not going to get you anywhere with me. Nothing ever will!’
Bohodar’s grandfather happened to witness this exchange, as well as the glowering, resentful look that passed over his grandson’s face after Tiburge stalked off. Well. It was only natural for Bohodar to begin taking a keen interest in girls at the age of fourteen, so Robin thought. Although Bohodar had set his sights on the blue-eyed Frisian girl, whose accent and bearing lent her a kind of exotic appeal with which Robin could sympathise, it was immediately apparent to Robin that Tiburge was not such a fitting match for Bohodar.
A slender hand came up and touched Robin on the elbow. Robin turned and found his loyal wife at his side, and a surge of warmth swept through him. Not for the first time and not for the last, he found himself thankful that he’d been able to resist the pull of Lesana’s creamy skin and full lips. For Robin, faithfulness had not come naturally—to very few men does such a gift come naturally!—but as a choice. But it was a choice he was daily grateful that, with Christ’s help, he’d made. Although her skin was wrinkled and dry, her bones frail and her complexion dimmed from what it once had been, Ilse was still the central prop of Robin’s life—more precious than his silver cross, more formidable than Pazúr, more honourable than Zúl-Džanáh.
‘I see we’re going to have to betroth our grandson, and soon,’ Ilse noted.
‘Sooner would be b—better than later,’ Robin agreed, remembering what Vojtech was like at that age.
Ilse quirked her head to the side, rightly guessing what was on her husband’s mind. ‘You know, having deferred to your judgement once, I’ve come to a healthy respect for your abilities. I think I’ll let you take charge of this one again.’
Robin smiled. ‘You s—said once that Predslava would be out of her rightful s—stead here.’
Ilse chuckled. ‘And I’ve had to eat my words on that score, many times over.’
Robin might have been Queen Ilse’s soulmate, but it was clear to anyone who saw them that Predslava was Ilse’s closest bosom friend. Despite their massively disparate backgrounds—one a hathel lady of ancient Varangian and Taurican stock; the other a mere commoner from Mukačevo—the two of them quickly discovered that in the important things, they were far more similar than different. Ilse was impressed not only by Predslava’s depth of knowledge, and her appreciation for poetry, but also by her clear sense of personal integrity. Having mutually observed this of each other, it was only a matter of time before the two of them took each other into close confidence.
‘And Ľ—Ľudmila?’
Ilse’s brow furrowed. ‘At least Oleg and Ctibor seem to have been true-born.’
Her tone was as chill as ice, as though it were an offence for this even to have been a question in the first place. As a mother, it was difficult in the extreme for Ilse to forgive her faithless, adulterous daughter-in-law for having injured her son the way she had. In fact, she still hadn’t forgiven Ľudmila Ľvovna fully, and it was unlikely she ever would. Robin quickly returned to the original subject.
‘Wh—what m—manner of woman do you think would be best for Bohodar?’
Ilse smiled.
‘He’s a bold and haughty little knave. But he’s also earnest and true of heart. If I were you, I’d look for a woman who sets her sights high, and who understands her own needs. Such a woman would be able to answer Bohodar’s truthfulness with her own, and also stand up to him if he gets too high-handed.’
~~~
Bohodar wasn’t the only ‘bold and haughty knave’ who demanded the king’s attention.
Zúl-Džanáh required being taken on rides daily, or else he would pine and sulk. This was especially so after a recent bout of illness the stallion had suffered, which Robin had gone to considerable expense to have cured—but which had also seen Zúl-Džanáh laid up in his stall for a number of weeks. Now he was sure to let the Kráľ—still the only earthly creature to whom he would show any sort of deference—understand that such treatment was not to be borne now that he was healthy again.
The splendid sabino courser thus made a common sight, bearing the two-legged one whom he considered his worthy equal, coursing at speed across the Moravian countryside around Olomouc. He drew many an admiring eye after him, not least of whose was that of the Knieža of Užhorod.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an extraordinary creature,’ Hrdoslav said to the Kráľ. ‘Just once I’d love to be permitted to ride him! Would that not be possible, sire?’
Róbert was sorely tempted to let his vassal have his wish, as he understood Hrdoslav’s admiration to be genuine. But knowing Zúl-Džanáh’s temper, he decided against it. ‘B—better not,’ he advised Hrdoslav Mikulčický. ‘He’s a p—proud and r—rather ill-tempered beast; he d—doesn’t suffer any but m—me to ride him. I c—can appeal to my ostlers f—for witness of this.’
Hrdoslav didn’t look too happy about it, but he made no further objection.
On the other hand, Robin’s answer was considerably more affirmative, when a well-known handler and trainer of horses came to Olomouc Castle, and offered his services. It took him some convincing, but eventually Kráľ Róbert allowed the trainer to try his hand with Zúl-Džanáh. The fruits of the training were, to put it mildly, impressive. Although Zúl-Džanáh had been a swift courser before, after the training it seemed his instincts and reflexes had been honed to razor-keenness, and it seemed to the Kráľ afterward that he could outrun the wind itself, and often desired so to do.
~~~
As it turned out, the delegation from Biela Rus’ to Olomouc would be accompanied—on account of the common direction both were travelling—by the Kráľ’s new šafár, Gáktu (Rychnovský-Žič)[1].
‘I’ve made up a welcome just meet for him,’ Ilse had told her husband, with ever the slightest hint of malicious enjoyment. ‘Helene helped me on the cleanhoods.’
Róbert looked out into the courtyard below, where Ilse had indicated, and his jaw very nearly dropped. It seemed that not only all the garrison, but also the entire consignment of Olomouc’s zbrojnoši and not a few of the local levies had been called up as if for a formal review. They were arrayed in full military finery, armour and arms, and they bore the insignia of the Moravian state. Ilse gave an order with a wave of the hand, and the whole battalion, as it seemed, stepped up sharply to execute it.
‘There won’t be one lonely lane in all of Olomouc where Gáktu won’t be watched while he is here. That might be rede enough for even a Sámi lord not to make uprising against the rightful king!’
The memory of Wizlaw and his capture of Olomouc had clearly not faded from her mind. Nor from Helene’s for that matter! Róbert gave a nod.
‘L—Let him see them, then, but only on a regular parade. There’s no need to scare the p—poor fellow out of his wits to get the p—point across.’
He also didn’t particularly want to send the wrong message to the Belarusians when they arrived. He had taken his wife’s advice and sought out a bride for Bohodar who was honest and hard-working, but also bold and self-sure enough to stand up to Bohodar if he should get too overbearing. Such an eligible young woman had quickly presented herself by reputation, in the person of Liusia Rasćislaevna Óskyldr-Baranoviči—the daughter of the Knyaz of Biela Rus’.
After the parade was over and after an appropriately-chastened Gáktu had presented the tribute from the Kíllt Sámi tribe of Koutajoki, the Belarusian princess and her entourage of boyary came forward to greet the Kráľ. Liusia was indeed bold enough! She stepped forward to the king and made no hesitation at all at dropping him a short formal courtesy, kissing his hand and looking him squarely in the eye.
Kráľ Róbert approved of what he saw. Dark hair, walnut-brown eyes and fair skin always made a striking combination, and it was no less so in Liusia’s case. But that was accentuated by a well-formed jawline, a pair of smooth, supple round cheeks, dark arch brows, and a narrow mouth and nose which formed an expression of immaculate frankness and poise. Save for Christ Himself she would not give over an inch for any man, the Kráľ was immediately assured of that!
‘W—welcome to Olomouc, L—Liusia!’ he told her.
‘Obliged to you, O Kráľ,’ she dipped her head curtly. ‘It’s a fair city you have here! I was impressed by the party that came out to greet us as we rode in.’
Robin smiled. That hadn’t been wholly for her benefit, but she didn’t need to know that. Robin beckoned to his eldest grandson, who was standing to the side.
‘A—al—allow me to introduce B—Bohodar to you,’ Robin told Liusia. ‘Th—this is my g—grandson, who will be t—t—turning four—fo—fourteen sh—shortly. Come, lad, g—give her your greeting!’
Liusia held up a dainty hand with the confidence of a girl double her age. Bohodar struck his heels together, bowed deeply, and kissed Liusia’s hand. Liusia looked Bohodar up and down—from the state of his boots to the roots of his sable-brown hair—with a similarly gifted eye. Robin could already see forming there a keen glimmer, of the sort a marksman had when he took aim at the butts from a hundred yards. Evidently she was anticipating him, and considering the advantages of a political tie to the Moravian ruling dynasty.
‘N—naturally, I’d w—want the t—t—two of you to g—get familiar,’ said the Kráľ, trying not to let the satisfaction show on his face. ‘I’ll l—leave the two of you to b—b—better ack—kk—quaint yourselves.’
That satisfaction deepened as he saw Bohodar and Liusia talk together. The moroseness that had come over Bohodar since being shot down by Tiburge Vasconia-Boulogne was melting away—the precocious preteen that was engaging him in conversation was quickly taking her place.
~~~
Ilse and Robin looked back across the path in their walk, over the north Morava River toward the walls and the heights of their capital. The evening light smote the domes of the town’s eastward-facing churches and their three-bar crosses, and set them splendidly afire in glimmering golds and oranges in the waning twilight hours. The fifty-six-year-old king and his sixty-three-year-old wife and lady love together regarded the shimmering half-silhouette of the town to which, five hundred five and eighty years ago, a young Orthodox Slavic knieža had brought his newlywed Catholic German bride. Now their descendant, his red hair and beard now streaked with grey, was beholding the blossom of their legacy, standing side-by-side with a woman who likewise blended in herself Swedish and Gothic bloodlines with the legacy of the eastern frontiers of Eastern Rome.
Olomouc had gone, in the space of those five hundred five and eighty years, from being a somewhat obscure Slavic gord of wood stakes and rough-hewn zemnicy, to being the gleaming, bustling capital—half-timbered and tile-roofed—of a mighty European state which stretched from Cheb to Chust, and whose influence had been felt from Machynlleth to Mawṣil. In her halls, both Anglo-Farœse and Amharic had echoed alongside Moravian, Polish, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian. She had been ruled by both iron-fisted tyrants and velvet-gloved dilettantes, by both men of thought and men of action. She had seen ages of splendid peace, as well as the cruel heartbreak of war and famine. She had borne witness to the outbreak of heresy and the triumph of Orthodoxy.
And when the dawn rose again in the east, the morning light would once again catch those steeples. And the rays would descend to where the warehouses lay ready to ship Silesian glass and pewter, Moravian wine and Bohemian beer to market, where it would be priced and traded in Hory Kutné-mined silver for various and sundry other goods, ranging from wheat flour to exotic spices from beyond Constantinople. Those rays would shine into the windows of homes of great painters and artists, dousing in the medium of sight those beauties and dimensions and proportions that would capture them in their divine madness. Those drops of radiance would grace the heads of Bohemian and Moravian, of Silesian and Nitran, of Sámi and Ruthenian, of landowner and burgher and bower alike. Their thoughts and aims and struggles, their loves and their vengeances, would all be illumined by it. The two elderly monarchs watched as one page in the human drama fluttered closed, as another prepared to open.
‘A lovely sight,’ Ilse whispered to her husband, squeezing his arm.
‘It is,’ Robin agreed.
The two of them stood together for longer in that autumnal pre-dusk. The distant calls of roe deer as they began their winter gathering, the whit-whit-whit calls of quail, and the gentle lapping of the Morava over its bed and against its banks mingled with the breeze.
‘How do you think they will fare?’ asked Ilse. ‘Vojtech and Predslava? Bohodar and Liusia?’
‘I—I don’t know,’ Robin answered truthfully. ‘Only God knows. We c—can only hope, and commend them to His grace.’
For once, Ilse didn’t scoff. She held her husband even tighter to her, and rested her white head on his lean, wiry shoulder. Robin nestled her head beneath his and savoured the moment. As the last slender segment of reddening sunshine dipped below the horizon, and vaunted its final brilliant rays skyward in a heavenly riot of hues, the Kráľ and Kráľovná of Moravia stood thus embracing each other, their gaze fixed in the same skyward bent. Whatever lay in store for them and for their descendants, it would be overseen by the same providence that had this day.
[1] As the grandson of Wizlaw and Giste, Gáktu belonged indisputably to the Rychnovský-Žič patrimony. However, following Sámi custom, which did not recognise surnames of any sort until the sixteenth century, Gáktu referred to himself ever and only by his given name.
- 2
(However, stay tuned for one last map post and a present-day epilogue.)
- 1
Only one or two left before EU. It will not be the same. Thanks
Written before last chapter. Sorry
Written before last chapter. Sorry
- 1
EUROPE ON 1 JANUARY 1453
Map of Europe on 1 January 1453
Map of Balkans and Asia Minor on 1 January 1453
Map of Northern Europe on 1 January 1453
Map of Western Europe on 1 January 1453
Map of Europe on 1 January 1453
Map of Balkans and Asia Minor on 1 January 1453
Map of Northern Europe on 1 January 1453
Map of Western Europe on 1 January 1453
- 2
Border Gore! Thank you for allowing me to ride with you on the Moravian journey. I await the epilogue before joining you in EU4.
- 1
Epilogue
EPILOGUE
A Relaxing Day on the Millrace
11 May 2021
.jpg "Olomouc_(268).jpg")
A Relaxing Day on the Millrace
11 May 2021
Živana Biľaková and Cecilia Bedyrová reclined on the grass on the north bank of the Mlýnský potok—the old millrace—just downhill from Univerzita svatého Michaela Archanděla. The friends and roommates had decided to take advantage of the sun and the unseasonably warm 28-degree weather and simply bask for a while outside—a chance of which no few of their classmates had also availed themselves. For attire, the two girls had dressed appropriately—and for a summer like the one in Olomouc right now, that meant: sunglasses, buns, tank tops showing a hint of midriff but not too much, and light breezy skirts three or four inches above the knee. (Still, there was sweat.) Živana, who burned a little too easily, had applied copious amounts of Telada Krém na Opaľovanie to her forehead, ears, nose, cheeks, neck, shoulders, shins and feet.
Živana heaved a deep contented sigh. Term was over. Exams hadn’t yet begun, but at last term was over.
A sudden welcome gust of breeze caused a fragment of shade to flicker across one of her polarised lenses. A bough of bright summer beech had wavered between her face and that of the sun. Živana stirred. As her eyes opened and their focus returned, they lit on a bronze statue—actually three statues—that was standing nearby them, overlooking the old millrace.
In a more wakeful mood, Živana would simply have passed the statues by unnoticed and unmarked. But the drowsy mind, more idle, more open, more amenable to suggestion, clasps upon sights that would be too familiar to otherwise mark as worthy, and examines them as a child might who has just caught a large and fascinating insect. Živana did the same for these three statues.
They were three young women—in kneeling pose, arranged in a circle, around a small sapling—not a real one, but also cast in bronze, which stood atop a water fountain running in a concrete channel into the millrace. Clearly the sculptor intended to show the three of them planting it and tending it with care. The first of the women was slender and graceful, with a mild and tender expression; and she had in her arms a vessel for watering. The second of the women, athletic, snub-nosed and round-faced, clearly wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty—she had one hand on the earth and the other hand on the sapling itself, tending to the roots and assuring herself that the stem was straight. And the third of the women, visibly younger than the other two but also broad-hipped, bosomy and bearing a tiara—she had a slightly imperious look to her, her back was straight, and her hand graced the leaves of the young tree.
Normally, Živana would have taken such a statue as bearing some sort of conservationist public message. But now the image struck a chord in Živana’s half-awake mind, a kind of free association. The statues reminded her of something she heard in Grebeníček’s class. Three maidens tending a tree. Three maidens…
‘Say, Cili,’ Živana asked Cecilia who was lying beside her, ‘are those three statues by any chance of Viera, Vlasta and Blažena Rychnovská?’
Cecilia inclined her own head toward where Živana was looking.
‘Sounds like a good guess to me. In late-medieval art, that’s often exactly how the three Rychnovská sisters would be depicted.’
It was a long struggle, but Živana’s curiosity won out against her desire to stay sedentary.
She went to examine the statues. The clothing on them was clearly meant to be medieval in style, though some of the usual Romantic exaggerations were present. The image of a lion rampant was visible on the brooch pinning the gown of the tiara-wearing youngest, marking her clearly as a Rychnovská. The expressions on the three faces were all indicative of motherly concern.
The plaque below it read:
КОРЭНЕ МОРАВСКЕГО НАРОДА ЗАЛЕВАЛА КРВ, ПОТ А СЛЗЫ НЕСПОЧЕТНЫХ ГЕНЕРАЦИЙ.
А ПРИ ФОНТАНЕ, ПРИ КТОРЕЙ БОЛ ЗАСАДЕНЫ ВЕЛЬКЫ МОРАВСКЫ СТРОМ, БОЛИ ТРИ СЕСТРЫ, КТОРЕ ЗДЕЛЬАЛИ ОТЦОВУ ВЕРУ: ВЕРА, ВЛАСТА А БЛАЖЕНА.
СТАЛИ СА МАТКАМИ РЫХНОВСКЫХ А МАТКАМИ МОРАВЫ.
НЕХ СУ ВСЕТКЫ МАТКЫ А ИХ НЕЗИШТНА ПРАЦА ВШАДЕ БОГАТО ОДМЭНЕНЕ В СПОМЕНКАХ А ВДЯЧНОСТИ СВОИХ ДЕТИ.
В ИМЕНЕ ПРЕСВЯТЕЙ БОГОРОДИЧКЫ ШТАТ ДРАЖДЯНЫ ДАРУЕ ТУ ТО ПАМЯТКУ УНИВЭРЗИТЕ СВЯТЕГО МИХАЙЛА АРХАНДЬЕЛА В Р.С. 7345
The roots of the Moravian nation were watered by the blood, sweat and tears of countless generations.
And at the wellspring by which the great Moravian tree was planted, were the three sisters who shared their father’s faith: Vera, Vlasta and Blažena.
They became the mothers of the Rychnovských, and the mothers of Moravia.
May all mothers and their selfless labour everywhere be richly honoured in the memories and thanksgiving of their children.
In the name of the Most Holy Mother of God, this monument is presented by the State of Drježdźany to the University of Saint Michael the Archangel in the Year of the World 7345.
А ПРИ ФОНТАНЕ, ПРИ КТОРЕЙ БОЛ ЗАСАДЕНЫ ВЕЛЬКЫ МОРАВСКЫ СТРОМ, БОЛИ ТРИ СЕСТРЫ, КТОРЕ ЗДЕЛЬАЛИ ОТЦОВУ ВЕРУ: ВЕРА, ВЛАСТА А БЛАЖЕНА.
СТАЛИ СА МАТКАМИ РЫХНОВСКЫХ А МАТКАМИ МОРАВЫ.
НЕХ СУ ВСЕТКЫ МАТКЫ А ИХ НЕЗИШТНА ПРАЦА ВШАДЕ БОГАТО ОДМЭНЕНЕ В СПОМЕНКАХ А ВДЯЧНОСТИ СВОИХ ДЕТИ.
В ИМЕНЕ ПРЕСВЯТЕЙ БОГОРОДИЧКЫ ШТАТ ДРАЖДЯНЫ ДАРУЕ ТУ ТО ПАМЯТКУ УНИВЭРЗИТЕ СВЯТЕГО МИХАЙЛА АРХАНДЬЕЛА В Р.С. 7345
The roots of the Moravian nation were watered by the blood, sweat and tears of countless generations.
And at the wellspring by which the great Moravian tree was planted, were the three sisters who shared their father’s faith: Vera, Vlasta and Blažena.
They became the mothers of the Rychnovských, and the mothers of Moravia.
May all mothers and their selfless labour everywhere be richly honoured in the memories and thanksgiving of their children.
In the name of the Most Holy Mother of God, this monument is presented by the State of Drježdźany to the University of Saint Michael the Archangel in the Year of the World 7345.
Živana ran an appreciative hand over the plaque as she read. Once she reached the end, she called back to Cecilia: ‘Yup. It’s them. Evidently this statue was a gift from Dresden to the University.’
Cecilia made a noise of acknowledgement, but continued to bask where she was.
Živana was by now fully awake and alert, her mind was fully active—but her faculties of imagination were still highly engaged. Živana looked out, following the stream of water which flowed from the base of the statues toward the Mlýnský potok. The water looked cool and inviting as it bubbled and lapped against its banks and flowed languidly in its path toward the Morava.
In her mind’s eye, Živana at once sympathetically beheld the girls who had inspired this statue as they surely must once have been. Surely they also had once looked out over this very same millrace, even bathed and played in it during the summer months—felt the same sort of carefree joy then that the college students on the millrace were feeling now. The three daughters of Bohodar Rychnovský and Matylda Štíhradsková surely weren’t aware of the mighty burdens that they would go on to bear, the mighty destiny they would one day be responsible for fostering.
Živana wondered about them, as she ‘watched’ them play. Did those three girls also study under schoolmasters, learning the Cyrillic alphabet which had only just been invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius for their benefit? Did they also worry about being late for lessons? Did they also take care of their grandparents, and listen to their priests? Did they also worry about love, before they found it? Did they listen to stories from their own ancestors?
For a moment, the monument to them, with its stentorian inscription as a paean to motherhood, seemed to Živana far too simple, far too convenient. Those girls had had full lives here. It seemed somehow wrong to her, somehow artificial, to reduce them to symbols of the nation. And yet, this was the nation to which the three of them had given birth. Among how many others, though? Dresden as well could claim them! So too could half a dozen other central and eastern European countries. And she was sure that there were no small few Englishmen, particularly around Bedford, whose pedigrees included more than a trace infusion of Rychnovský blood.
In the popular eye, the Rychnovských belonged to the old, pre-Imperial society: the feudalist Moravias of Late Antiquity and of the Middle Ages which she had just studied. After them came the Hlinkovcí and the Empire. And after the Empire came the tides of Revolution. But even this view was itself far too pat. The Rychnovských didn’t just belong to the past. They belonged to the present as well.
But despite the oversimplification of their lives which the monument represented, Živana still felt that it carried an important truth. What was common to them, was something that could be felt by every girl, every mother. And suddenly Živana envisaged herself standing, howbeit in different waters of a different time, in the same stream under the same sky as those three girls, Viera, Vlasta and Blažena Rychnovská.
She took a breath. This summery air was really fine.
‘Hey, Cili?’
‘Mm?’
‘What say we go back up to the dorm and get our bathing-suits? It’s a great day for a swim.’
К О Н Ь Е Ц
- 3