The Lions of Olomouc: a CKIII Ironman AAR (Duchy of Moravia, 867)

[Revan86]

Whew! I just read this AAR from the start over the last week. Thoroughly enjoyed it. As many have said, your attention to historical detail and cultural flavour is out of this world. I know little about Czech/Slovak culture myself, so I can't verify most of what you've done, but your approach is so meticulous that I can only imagine I'm in good hands. (Almost ten years ago, reading Bloodsnake and Battlewolf was a major driver of my taking an interest in Norse history and culture.)

Your writing has some truly fantastic moments. My favourite is perhaps when you wrote from the perspective of a wolf without telling us at first. Some of your characters really do stick in the mind - Radko most of all - which is a serious feat when you're trying both to give a real sense of personality and to cover long centuries without leaving any big gaps. It helps that pretty much all your kings have been blessed with fairly long lives - or is life expectancy in CK3 a bit longer than in 2?

I'm looking forward in particular to seeing how Bohodar III and Czenzi turn out. Also a big fan of all the history seminar segments. The bit with Živana and the priest was nice, as it gave a tiny taste of where sexual mores stand in later Moravian society, though I don't know if that's what you meant to do

One thing: could we possibly see a religious map of Europe sometime soon? I see that Orthodoxy has made some headway to the north, and I remember you saying that a variety of heresies take root there in time, but it'd be nice to have a clearer picture!

Needless to say, keep up the phenomenal work!

Thank you for the kind words, and happy to have you on board, @Knud_den_Store! I'm also quite gratified that you enjoyed Bloodsnake and Battlewolf.

Also glad you're enjoying the history seminar segments. That bit was part of an experiment where I was attempting to get out of the classroom setting and into the 'real world', though it can be a bit difficult to arrange 'encounters with history' that don't seem too artificial or forced.

Re: the life expectancy of my kings... honestly I think I just got lucky in those early years. I don't think CK3 is any more forgiving than CK2 with regard to life expectancy (with some exceptions, like the fecund trait). Not all of my kings are this long-lived, as shall be seen.

Religious maps, eh? Those will be forthcoming! (Particularly when the religious landscape of Eastern Europe starts to get... interesting.)

For nice rulers, there have been a lot of rebellions. Which rebels will lose their heads as the day of reckoning approaches? Thank you for another glimpse of the Moravian court.

Which rebels will lose their heads, you ask? I don't think I'm spoiling too much by saying: at least one.

I'm trying to handle the transition between Slavic antiquity and high medieval culture with a certain degree of realism; I'm borrowing primarily from Russian, Polish, Bohemian and Bulgarian experiences in my attempt to reconstruct what a Moravian high medieval court would have looked like.

TEN
A Peacemaker in Wartime
5 July 1139 – 23 July 1139

I.

Botta cantered on his horse along the narrow path that wound its way east, leading downwards between the Maramoroš Mountains to the north and the long ridge of the Rodna Mountains to the south. He had already passed without incident through Prešov, Užhorod, Mukačevo and Volovec, and had just left Čern. The young rider kept his head concealed beneath a simple grey cowl and his tall broad body beneath a cotte and hose of the same colour. The only thing which could identify him to a stranger as the grandson of Přisnec King of Moravia the Great was the gold signet ring with a lion rampant on its face, which he kept on a leather strand around his neck and beneath his cotte.

Thankfully, he’d been able to breathe free and easy as he passed through the lands governed by Jaropolk Pavelkov. Botta was pleasantly surprised: he had always thought that Jaropolk had hated his father and grandfather. However, the Ruthenian had treated him with every hospitality and courtesy, and had been most genuine about it. Evidently Prisnec had come to an agreement with Jaropolk which had left him quite happy.

But travelling alone like this, through territory held by rebelling vassals and a vicious enemy, was a dangerous business. If either the Bijelahrvatskići or the Mojmírovci got wind of his errand, in all likelihood he would be used as a counter in brokering a peace unfavourable to his grandfather. The same fate would await him if he was captured by Velyky Knedz Pavel of the Červen Cities. Although they had embraced Christ, the Červeny still seemed never to miss an opportunity to weaken and undermine Moravia, if it was within their power.

But reflecting on these things did not daunt him; indeed, they exhilarated him. Having passed through Maramoroš, Bohodar was riding through hostile territory. All the same: ‘You’re on a mission of peace,’ his grandfather told him, ‘that is every bit as important as the war that is happening here.’ A mission of peace. And the olive branch that Botta would be offering… was himself.

He rode at a brisk clip through the forests of spruce and beech and juniper. Although the summer air was cool in comparison with that of Olomouc, it was nonetheless dappled with shafts of warmth from the bright blue July sky above. The sharp, fresh smell of the coniferous resins in the summer air gave Bohodar’s spirits a welcome lift, and caused him to slow his horse to enjoy the uninhabited road. This gave the young teenager some time to think.

The last time he had seen Árpád-Hotin Czenzi, he had been five years old, and she nine. He remembered the visit vividly. He blushed when he thought about how he’d behaved then, riled to childish anger by her splashing him harmlessly in the river, and he anxiously wished she wouldn’t hold it against him. His hand went to his scrip, and he fingered the well-burnished half mussel shell she’d given him… and then his hand went to the rougher surface of its mate—or something as close to it as he could find. Would Czenzi still find him childish if he gave her this?

In his memory, she still loomed over him—a tall, leggy, gangling, somewhat snub-nosed tomboy with tawny skin. He could still remember her sharp jawline and long mouth, and a pair of startling amber eyes. That was the image of her that he had continued to hold throughout his childhood. And ‘súhlas’—that had been his assessment. Botta left the Prut valley and made his way east toward the Dneister.

He did his best to keep to the forested areas, and well away from the large towns under Pavel’s sway. That wasn’t easy as he skirted Čern, though he managed to pick his way through that stretch without incident – sometimes staying with peasants, or sometimes fending for himself in abandoned byres or shepherd’s huts in the countryside. He reached the Dniester’s right bank without incident, and followed its snaking winds closely. However, Botta got careless. The steppe through which the Dniester wound was not entirely forested, and he thought he could get away with riding across the grassy plain between two of the river’s bends. That’s where he was spotted.

The two riders wore long blonde moustaches, were clad in mail, and bore upon their heads the conical helmets of the Eastern Slavs. Their teardrop-shaped shields bore the sky-blue field with a golden lion rampant, which signified their fealty to the Velyky Knedz. Botta’s heart froze. If they captured him here, his whole journey would be for nought. Still, he kept his calm and did his best to ride by them.

‘Hej, palomnyk!’ one of the Červeny called with a laugh. ‘Kudy zbyraeš? Yakyj pospikh?’

Bohodar had spurred his horse subtly to a trot as the Červen called to him. The two riders exchanged looks, and then began to ride after him. Bohodar heard the clop of hooves behind him, and spurred his horse on further. Soon he was head down over his mount, riding at a desperate gallop away from the two Červeny, and the two of them were riding hot on his tail.

Out on the open steppe like this, Bohodar knew that he wouldn’t be able to make a dash of it for long. The ground here was open, level and firm, and the two men behind him were the more experienced riders, weighted down though they were with arms and armour. Their horses were also bred and trained for the steppe, while the mare beneath his legs had never tasted of war or the hunt until now. The two Červeny knew this as well as Bohodar did, and they gave laughing, mocking shouts as they corralled him in toward the river.

Botta closed his eyes. Soon this would all be over, and he would be at the mercy of Pavel Daniilovič, to fetch back a hefty bounty from his grandfather.

But then he heard the unmistakeable whistle of an arrow flying past him, followed by a thunk behind. Botta pulled his horse up to a halt, and behind him his two pursuers did the same. Daring to turn his head, Botta saw the shaft of an arrow emerging from the blue-and-gold shield of one of the Červen riders. The fletching was red and grey.

‘Červeny,’ called a high, gruff voice from across the plain, speaking in an East Slavic dialect. ‘You are trespassing upon Csángóföld, the rightful riding of Nagyfejedelem Balassi Vilmos! Explain this outrage.’

‘We meant no trespass,’ called back one of the yellow-moustached riders. ‘But we lay claim to this person before you. He crossed our marches without identifying himself!’

‘Oh?’ asked the voice. Bohodar, listening to its mezzo-alto pitch, felt it must belong to either a very young man, or else a woman. ‘He bears no colours, and he bears no armament. What threat is he to your borders? Yet you come upon us in arms.’

‘He would give us no answer,’ the Červen persisted. ‘He must be a spy!’

‘Be that as it may,’ came the reply, ‘he is now upon Magyar land, and by Magyars he must be judged. Leave this place, now. Or I shall send your Pavel Daniilovič a gift of two fools’ heads in a basket.’

Not gladly, but with grumbling, the two Červeny turned their mounts and departed back, west along the Dniester. Who knew how many other Magyars were out here, apart from this one young marksman? Also, they knew too well that Velyky Knedz Pavel Daniilovič wouldn’t thank them for sparking a war between Csángóföld and the Červen Cities.

The Magyar marksman approached Bohodar. In fact, now he could plainly see that she was a markswoman. As they brought their horses up close to each other, they regarded each other with wary interest. The sharp, sparkling amber eyes which now looked him over from beneath a pair of slim sable brows struck a spot within Bohodar’s memory, with the same force that her arrow had struck the Červen shield. It couldn’t be—Czenzi herself? What were the odds—?

It was Árpád Czenzi—and yet it wasn’t. The rather gawky tomboy he remembered from a decade ago was gone. In her place was an apparition of arresting handsomeness and perilous grace. The high, tawny cheekbones were the same, but the sharp jawline he remembered had smoothed into a gentle poise, atop a long, well-formed neck. The mobile lips that Bohodar had once thought too thin and too long for her face, had filled into a dignified elegance—enough to give her mouth a hint of humour, and a subtler allure which was harder to define. The angular shoulders he remembered from their roughhousing in the water those ten years ago had smoothed and filled with a subtle curvature. The same refined curve and mild taper graced the folds of her skirts. And Bohodar’s teenage male eyes could not help but drift down over the shapely, protrusive pectoral attestations of her young-womanhood.

Czenzi addressed the spellbound youth. ‘Welcome to Csángóföld, sir,’ she told him. Although her spoken Moravian was flawless, there was still a lilt and a slight trill to her speech that made it somehow more attractive to him. ‘You’ve been expected.’

Only with effort did Bohodar find the use of his tongue. ‘Hálás köszönöm szépen a segítségét, hölgyem.’

Czenzi’s lips parted broadly, in a heart-melting smile. ‘Nagyon szívesen!’ she answered gaily. To Bohodar in her native Magyar, her voice sounded like song. ’But between us two, Bohodar—there isn’t a need to be so formal, is there?’

Bohodar was stricken at once with a sudden wistful yearning and pricking of the flesh, and also with his own lack of deserving. The one, the true, the elemental she, had transmuted so much, it seemed—and he so little. She had recognised him at once. ’I... suppose not.’

’Please, ride with me back to Szarka,’ Czenzi requested. ’I am sure you would agree that there are some important matters for us to discuss.’

Bohodar nodded. At that moment, he would have gone to the gates of hell if Czenzi had asked it of him.

 

[Revan86]

You are giving @Peter Ebbesen some serious competition in the NSFW category. Still too cute. Beautiful place. Thank you

I will have to check out Born to Breed it seems! I've heard a number of good things about that AAR.

ELEVEN
Krupina
29 October 1139 – 29 January 1140

The two massive armies assembled opposite each other on a heath-covered plain just outside Krupina. The Moravian king rode to the head of the line – the red cruciform banner of the Moravian state and his personal black standard with golden lion rampant flying high behind him. Dispassionately Prisnec surveyed the situation. Five thousand rebels under the Nitran maršál Bratislav arrayed themselves against nine thousand under Prisnec Rychnovský’s direct command. In the distance he could already see among the helms and spear-points the chequered gules, or and sable and various devices argent of the Mikulčických. He did not see the field or with bear rampant gules of the Bijelahrvatskići yet among them.

What little the Kráľ knew of Bratislav suggested that he would be a tough opponent. He was young, but his experience of fighting in chilly weather such as was approaching, was not insignificant. Also, Prisnec understood quite well that the men of Užhorod would be close behind the Nitrans, and that their forces well outnumbered Bratislav’s. Though he began with a clear advantage, the tide of the battle could very easily turn against the king before the day was out.

Prisnec turned about to survey his own forces. As he had ordered, the heavily-armed zbrojnošov were positioned, alongside the hired severan karls, to the fore in the centre, leaving the flanks to be headed by the light skirmishers. Eight vanes apart from his own flew; three on each flank and two in the centre. He raised one hand. Every passing moment brought the Bijelahrvatskići closer. They would need to strike swiftly and strike hard. The line advanced on his signal, and the archers readied their arrows.

The flight struck. In the space of two minutes, the lines clashed. Prisnec’s riders were few, but he stuck with them, and directed his troops from the thick of the fighting. The Kráľ had been in enough battles to understand that nothing about them was predictable. Up and down the line, where hundreds were clashing with hundreds, spear against shield and sidearm against armour, a thousand events could occur at any second. And among them God (or, more likely, the Evil One) could choose any one of them to turn a battle one way or the other. The Moravian king had a certain sense about these events—an intuition born of long experience.

As he had expected, Bratislav was a stubborn and skilful enemy. Even commanding a force only half the size of the king’s, he was still able to match and counter his manoeuvres. Prisnec saw that he was conserving his spear-bearers and leaning heavily upon his own zbrojnošov—which led the king to direct more of his attention to the flanks.

But Prisnec sensed among them a certain hesitation. Even though the Nitrans were being directed with skill and tenacity, the front line itself seemed to waver under his trained eye. And with the insight of a long-practised hunter and warrior, Prisnec understood how it arose. The Nitrans feared that the men of Užhorod would not come, and that they would be left stranded by their allies. As the day crept on, that fear seemed to be well-substantiated. Vratislav Bijelahrvatskić had flinched at the prospect of a battle he had deemed unwinnable, and had delayed his march to the Nitrans’ aid. Prisnec smiled grimly and sent up the red signal vane, to order his skirmishers on the flanks to press their current advantage and surround the enemy.

By the time the golden vanes of the Bijelahrvatskići arrived, it was already far too late. Over half of the Nitrans were in rout to avoid the worse fate of being surrounded. Worse still, Hrabě Jakub Abovský had broken through the lines and made a strong incursion into the Nitrans’ right flank. The burgomaster of Sľažaný, Vladimil, had been holding in that position; he went down under Abovský’s assault and was trampled. And worse still: an arrow from the Moravian archers’ line had struck home just as the Nitran maršál was raising his sword-arm. The arrow had nearly severed that arm at the elbow; it was now hanging onto him only by a few bloody strands of skin and tendon.

Such was the sight that awaited Knieža Vratislav when he arrived, for him to rue his hesitation. With a yell, the White Croat ordered a desperate all-out charge against the king’s left from all the way across the field to the north. He knew that victory was unattainable and that the battle had already been lost—but he would make the king pay for his laurels dearly if he could!

The knieža’s cousin, Vladimir Bijelahrvatskić, was at the head of the charge. The left flank was prepared, but not nearly well enough. His flying wedge caught the shield-wall at a weak spot, and the horses smashed through the steel-bristling timber with unexpected ease. Vladimir himself had drawn his sword and swung, and had caught the hired Polabian champion Krzesław across the shoulder.

The Nitrans took heart, and had managed to regather their strength upon beholding the Užhorodians’ charge. The divided attention on the left flank had cost Krzesław somewhat, but it cost the hrabě of Boleslav even dearer. The Greek komēs Valerios Hagiochristophoritēs—a stray transplant from Thessalonikē by marriage to an Abovská—met a sudden end, as a spear wielded by Hrabě Tvrdomil Mojmírov-Spiš caught him in the throat, right in his bushy beard and just above his mail neck-guard.

These last reversals, however, were not enough to win the rebels the day. They had staked all their fortunes on Krupina, and had lost. Only two days after the battle, Knieža Vojmil Mikulčický emerged under a white vane of truce and surrendered himself into the king’s mercy. With Vojmil gone, the other rebels lost heart—soon enough all of them were in Prisnec’s custody.

~~~​

It was the middle of November when Bohodar returned from Csángóföld together with his Magyar bride. Although they rode apart, from the glances that they gave each other, it was clear to any attentive observer that he and Czenzi were already close—closer by far than many new husbands and wives suddenly flung together. Prisnec greeted them both gladly.

‘Dedo,’ Bohodar hugged his grandfather tightly.

‘Vnúčik,’ Prisnec answered him. There had never been a need for many words between them; Prisnec had never been a man of many words to begin with… except with one person. And she was standing behind her husband, her faithful hound at her side. Although Viera’s marred face was never shown, it was clear from the tilt of her head and the carriage of her shoulders and back that she was smiling behind her veil. She greeted her grandson with equal affection when she embraced him, and her new granddaughter-in-law with a warm welcome.

The dog at her side gave a loud bark and leapt happily toward Czenzi, beating his tail frantically from side to side and looking up expectantly at her with his tongue lolling out. The Magyar woman laughed and gave the queen’s black sheepdog a friendly scratch behind the ears.

Viera folded her hands in front of her. ‘Púpavček has always been a discerning judge of character,’ she told Czenzi. ‘I think you and I are going to get along quite well together. Welcome! Come inside, and make yourself at home.’

‘You’re too kind, grandmother.’

The two women departed, leaving Bohodar together with his grandfather.

‘The rebellion is over, I hear.’

‘You hear right,’ Prisnec answered him.

‘What will happen to them?’

Prisnec shook his head sadly. ‘Most of them, I don’t know. But one of them… I don’t have a choice…’

~~~​

Even such a mild king as Prisnec could not, by the force of Slavic law, suffer a high traitoress and would-be regicide to live. High treason was one of the only two crimes in Moravian law—the other being arson—that carried a penalty of death.

Thus it happened that, two weeks after the rebellion ended, Hraběnka Bożena Přemyslovčá of Litoměřice was carted out to the scaffold in Praha, clad only in a simple homespun shift. Her hands were folded in front of her. She had long since resigned herself to her fate. A priest accompanied her, but she refused his counsel. Instead she went and knelt of her own accord at the block, where the hooded axeman who would end her life awaited her. A herald from Olomouc opened a scroll and read aloud from it on the platform to the crowd that was assembled below.

‘The criminal Bożena Přemyslovčá has been tried and convicted of the following crimes against the Crown: conspiracy, attempted murder, and high treason. In accordance with the dignity due to her station, the prescribed penalty of slow strangulation has been commuted to beheading by the axe. Does the criminal wish to make a statement before the penalty is executed?’

Bożena shook her head before laying it meekly on the block.

The herald gave the executioner the signal. The axe rose high in the air, and then fell.

Thus ended Bożena Přemyslovčá, hraběnka of Litoměřice.

No other executions followed that of Bożena. Indeed, most of the other rebellious nobles were kept under house arrest as hostages in Olomouc. The only exceptions to this—the only rebels to be thrown into the fonsels—were Hrabě Vitemir Budínský of Žatec and his granddaughter Živana. The old man had bowed his head and resigned himself to the punishment, but Živana had let loose the wicked tongue that had landed them both in the fonsels in the first place.

‘Utláčateľ!’ she had shrieked at Prisnec as she was led away. ‘Darebák! Krvopotník! Hnus! Syn zradnej kurvy! May your flesh rot on your bones! May your son drop dead where he stands! You won’t get away with this, I swear! Get your hands off me—! Let me go—!’

The rest of her screeching and abuse trailed off as she was led away with her grandfather, struggling against the guards the whole time.

There was only one other matter which touched closely upon Prisnec’s life in the month following the rebellion, though thankfully he was not impelled to a juridical intervention. Ladina Rychnovská-Nisa had Prisnec’s own brother Tomáš hauled forward in council, and presented him unceremoniously to the Grandmaster of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre.

‘Take this one back with you, would you? He has made a nuisance of himself in Kluczbork.’

‘My apologies, vojvodkyňa,’ the Grandmaster bowed. ‘If I may be given to understand how he transgressed…?’

Ladina flung a sour look at the offending Rychnovský. ‘He has been fornicating with one of my vassals—his own kinswoman, to boot. My hraběnka Vratislava Rychnovská has given birth to his daughter, conceived in my own house, under my very nose as it were.’

Ladina then glared at the Grandmaster, as though daring him to bring up her own family’s long history of illicit and incestuous liaisons in that very same house. However, he did not.

‘You have my apologies, madam. You may rest assured he will be given a proper penance.’

‘That would be well on your part,’ the cautious old lady nodded a trifle to him. ‘Thank you.’

 

[Revan86]

TWELVE
New Sprouts
29 September 1140 – 17 October 1143

Medieval street in Olomouc, present-day view​

Riding into through the western gate on her palfrey, the elderly Hildegarde looked eagerly toward the fine red rooftops of Olomouc, ensconced behind the town wall. She had, of course, heard stories of this town from her father Aribo, who had visited once during the reign of Tomáš and been duly impressed by the hunting-grounds and the generosity of his warm-hearted host.

Even so, she was unprepared for the wondrous sights that awaited her once she was inside the gate. Hildegarde’s many years in Western Europe had given her an appreciation for grand cities like Paris and Köln (and, of course, her native Salzburg). However, she had not expected to find such a refined atmosphere here, so close to the barbarians of the northeast! Olomouc had long since become a city which bridged east and west. The old-fashioned zemnicy had long been replaced with solid, cosy houses of wood post, stucco and properly-tiled rooftops. The remnant of the old style of Slavic architecture could be seen, however, in the low foundations and the steepness of the roofs with their long eaves.

Although in some quarters there was still a sharp tang of sewage (as was to be expected in any city of this size), the streets were properly cobbled, drained and regularly swept clean. Olomouc bustled gaily with commerce and gossip and entertainment. Hildegarde paused briefly to admire a street gašparko in his routine, tying his body into knots and performing remarkable feats of gymnastic dexterity and strength. The smithies, tanneries, mills and glassworks were particularly busy, as well as the marketplace stalls where men and women from other cities showed off their wares.

Then there were the churches. Moravia had its own style of churchly architecture, tripartite, with bulb-shaped domes—most of them, particularly in the countryside, were made of wood. However the churches in Olomouc had gilt domes with heavens-brushing, arched stucco exteriors, and most of the ones Hildegarde got to see had exteriors painted robin’s-egg blue and adorned with large iconic frescoes in the Byzantine style. This one was devoted to the Most Holy Theotokos. That one, to Saints Cyril and Methodius. Still others, to Saint Vitus, to Holy Evangelist John, to Apostles Peter and Paul, to Apostle James. Some were larger and some were smaller—but all of them were exquisitely-built and kept in good repair.

Rumour had it that, although Tomáš had expended his efforts in promoting the splendour of his court and consolidating his rule, Prisnec had done the same in promoting public works, and had even joined in the construction efforts himself with his own two hands—against the counsel of his ministers and family, who felt the station of a mason or a wheelwright or a joiner to be beneath the dignity of a king. But the energetic Prisnec evidently did not let that stop him. He had taken up level, plane and square with the eagerness of a journeyman. Although this earned him the disapprobation of the nobility who remained loyal, it did win him friends among the common people.

Up the streets rode Hildegarde until she came to the moat and bridge which led through the castle gate and into the courtyard. She could see and appreciate for herself the improvements that were still being made to the structure of the building, and was absorbed in that when she was greeted by the queen. She dipped a low courtesy. Hildegarde saw for herself that the queen did not show anything behind her veil, but she still exuded a kind of warmth that needed no reference to facial expression.

‘Herzelich willekomen in Olmütz,’ Viera greeted her, taking her by the hand.

‘Ich danke Înen sêr,’ answered the Bavarian noblewoman. ‘But where is your lord husband? I had been expecting to meet him as well.’

Viera looked a trifle uncomfortable, though that passed as soon as she saw Prisnec climbing down the scaffold he’d been working on. He lit to the ground, and Hildegarde, after the formal greeting, lifted a hand for him to kiss. He did so. She noticed that the king’s hands had the beginnings of calluses on the palms. Hildegarde smiled inwardly. A hardworking king might not be the most favoured among the nobility, but he would be quite suitable for her purposes, were she to succeed here.

‘Very good to see you,’ he told her pleasantly. ‘Come, come within!’

‘I had heard very good things about Olomouc, of course,’ the elderly Hildegarde said as she allowed the king and queen of Moravia to lead her inside. ‘I am pleasantly surprised to find that none of them have been exaggerated. So many fresh constructions, so many busy people and works, so many new churches—and even the castle is being updated! A true triumph, to God be the glory—though I hear you have had a hand in it all yourself. Together with running a state! How have you managed to keep your head during that time?’

‘Oh, I still find the time for relaxation,’ Prisnec said airily. ‘Spending time in the forest.’

Of course Viera showed no expression, but there was a cheeky little saunter in her step as Prisnec mentioned this—like a girl who’d just arisen from bed after a long-awaited tryst with her beloved. So that was the way of things, was it? Well, well. Moravian rulers and their consorts, from what she heard, had a long tradition of green-gowning in the great outdoors.

It was just then that a scurrying little imp crossed their path, trundling on a pair of sturdy—if somewhat overconfident—little legs beneath her well-tailored child’s shift. Her hair was a brilliant red-gold, and her eyes and face were round and inquisitive. She gave a crow of a laugh as she kept up her stride, and a voice called out behind her:

‘Léna! Gyere vissza!’

A young woman with dark sable hair and tawny skin came bounding after her, followed at a distance by an even younger man with a messy spiky thatch of dark brown hair. Hildegarde regarded them with interest. Although the daughter was fair and the parents were dark of colouring, there was little doubt that these were her parents. The imp clearly had the young man’s eyes and brows, and the young woman’s nose and mouth. The imp’s mother finally caught her and steered her by the shoulders out of the path of the king and queen and their guest.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Czenzi courtesied to Hildegarde. ‘Heléna’s quite the handful.’

Hildegarde smiled. ‘It’s good for a young girl to have energy. And is that another one on the way?’

The pleasant glow of Czenzi’s face answered for her. One slender hand went to her belly with its hint of a baby bump. Botta came up behind her and laid his hands fondly on her shoulders, and Czenzi lifted her free hand to touch her husband’s elbow. A simple gesture, but one which bespoke eloquently to the elderly Bavarian’s practised eye the gentle, totally-trusting bliss of this breeding young couple.

‘They aren’t the only ones, either,’ Prisnec told their visitor proudly. ‘Our Bohodar here has a new baby brother Daniel, and his aunt Karolína had a healthy baby boy as well, Vitemír.’

‘The Rychnovský tree flourishes within,’ Hildegarde nodded, ‘just as Olomouc flourishes without.’

‘By God’s grace,’ Bohodar nodded his head modestly.

‘Will you come inside?’ asked Viera of their guest.

‘If it’s all the same to you,’ Hildegarde demurred, ‘I should like to continue touring the grounds. It would be a pleasure for me to see what you’ve done with the gardens.’

As Bohodar, Czenzi and Heléna went off one way, the king and queen and Hildegarde went off in another, out of the castle enclosure and around the outside toward the gardens. At this tide in October, the leaves of the plum trees were brown but still on their branches. The drying or yellowing haulms of the other herbs and flowers in the gardens were still there for the most part, though it was enough for Hildegarde to be able to identify them or their remains.

‘Marigolds. Hm, yes—those must have been quite lovely in season! Elder, blueberries, buckthorn. All excellent—I simply must sample your preserves while I am here. Ah! And who has been taking care of these wintergreens?! Clearly this is a labour of love. They are not the easiest of plants to grow even in their wonted wonings!’

‘The zimoľubky have been here since Bohodar slovoľubec’s time,’ Viera answered mildly. ‘I’ve heard that Mechthild was quite fond of the blooms.’

The smile on Hildegarde’s weathered, wrinkled face broadened into a grin. That the gardeners of Olomouc should have been tending such delicate blossoms, to cherish the memory of the founding duke and duchess, for over two hundred years… was quite a feat!

‘You like plants?’ asked Prisnec.

‘They are a… hobby of mine,’ Hildegarde waved a diffident hand. ‘I keep a small plot back at home. Nothing to compare to what your Majesties have here, I’m sure!’

‘You’re too modest,’ Prisnec’s lip tugged up at the corner.

Viera picked up the thread. ‘If what we hear of your reputation here in Olomouc is true, Hildegarde of Mürzzuschlag, your skills in getting even exotic plants to grow in an Alpine climate are unrivalled. My husband would, I’m sure, be delighted to take a few pointers from such an expert hand as yourself.’

‘My, my,’ Hildegarde narrowed a pair of suddenly-suspicious eyes. ‘Not exactly sparing on the butter, are we? I wouldn’t want to put any additional, ah… strain on his Majesty’s time. By God’s grace a man can only do so much.’

‘It would be appreciated,’ the Kráľ said.

‘Hm,’ Hildegarde twirled a lock of hair by her temple. ‘Appreciated, you say. How much? In truth, I do indeed know a thing or two about the ways of green things, and would be happy to teach you… in exchange for some considerations on a guestship agreement, perhaps? I would want a stipend of at least an obol of gold every fortnight and the dedicated services of three of your household staff, and that’s in addition to a castle chamber and nobles’ board.’

‘You drive a hard bargain,’ Prisnec told her.

‘So I’ve been told,’ Hildegarde placed her hands on her hips. ‘I would also want some assurances that my… work and tutelage here will not be interrupted or interfered with by any man in a cassock, if you get my meaning.’

‘I’m sure we can arrange that, too,’ Prisnec told her.

Hildegarde looked from Prisnec to Viera and back. She seemed to be considering whether or not this offer was genuine—or whether it fell astray into the lands of ‘too good to be true’. At length, however, she extended a hand to Prisnec, who took it.

‘Here’s to the new sprouts of next spring,’ she said.

 

[Revan86]

Sorry, pushed the button too early on this one. Now all of the images should show up. @Knud_den_Store - you will be happy to see that I have included religious and cultural maps of Europe and the region, respectively, with this episode! Unfortunately, you can already start to see the crackup of the Apostolic faiths and the growth of various heresies...

THIRTEEN
Pity the Warrior
18 April 1144 – 22 October 1146

‘… so you see, milady, I confess I am somewhat afraid. And not just of what my uncle Pavel will do.’

‘Yes, I do see that,’ Viera placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of Agafya Timofeevna Krakovskaya. ‘It isn’t easy to live in exile. I wasn’t born in these lands. Nor was I raised by my own father. He too had to flee from… less hospitable lands than this one.’

‘You, milady?’ asked Agafya. ‘You, a queen?’

Viera’s veiled head dipped affirmatively. ‘My father was a Jew.’

‘I—I see,’ Agafya set down her glass of wine. She toyed with her hands as though she wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Things are frightening now in the west,’ she repeated herself. ‘There’s these… wild street preachers, called Murmeln. I… I didn’t think they’d dare come to Bavaria but I was wrong.’

Viera shook her head. A sigh of profound sadness escaped from beneath her veil. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of the Murmeln. From what I hear, the sickness is all over Europe these days. The true danger to the faith is no longer from the severané, but instead from enemies within. Followers of the heresiarch Bogomil have captured large swathes of the Hellenic heartlands of Rome. I’ve even heard of some Greek hierarchs trying to “purify the calendar”—reverting to the erroneous method of calculating Pascha that is popular on the British Isles.’

So it begins...​

Agafya laid her hand on the queen’s. ‘Do you think he’ll help me?’

Viera clasped Agafya’s hand warmly. ‘I have never known my husband to turn someone away from his door who genuinely needed a hand. Whether or not he’ll go to war for your claim, though, is… doubtful.’

‘Just one chance,’ Agafya pleaded. ‘That’s all I ask.’

‘Then we shall make sure you have that chance.’

~~~​

‘Are you well, kedvesem?’

Czenzi looked back over her shoulder into the solicitous face of her husband, standing behind her as she gently bounced their young son to sleep in her arms. It had been important to Czenzi that their boy honour, in some sense, her ancestors in the Árpád line, bearing the name of Bertalan. The name of Bertalan reflected the English Æþelberht… or so Bohodar had thought[1], which he had then connected in his mind to its Moravian cognate Vojtech. Czenzi, hoping for a fifth Bertalan in her family line, had somewhat reluctantly at first agreed to this compromise. But now she warmed to her son’s Moravian name, even thinking it cute.

‘I’m well, zlatko,’ Czenzi answered him. ‘But… perhaps later, can I… talk to you? After Vojta’s asleep?’

Botta leaned over. ‘Of course, any time!’

‘Ó, moje jediné svetlo… nech je to čoskoro!’ Czenzi answered him, running her free hand along his cheek and giving him a lingering kiss. The Magyar woman delighted in giving voice to the movements of her heart in Moravian, for her heart moved only for one Moravian—and that Moravian, in turn, spoke sweet things to her in her own tongue for the same reason. Czenzi moved to the cradle and placed Vojta there after his eyelids had drifted shut and his head drooped. And then there was space and time for the hearts which spoke to each other in each other’s native tongue, to feel each other beating in the meeting of their tongues in each other’s mouths. Czenzi’s amber eyes drank in Botta’s hazel ones.

‘But how?’ murmured Czenzi upward toward her husband. ‘When our two peoples have been enemies and rivals, hated and been at war with each other for so long, how does it feel so easy—so right—for me to kiss you, embrace you, and desire you—not only your body but your heart?’

‘Sloviens and Magyars have been neighbours for hundreds of years,’ Bohodar observed reasonably. ‘Surely something like us two had to happen sometime. Does it matter?’

‘I really think it does,’ Czenzi insisted. ‘When I was still pregnant with Vojta, your uncle Harold started telling me stories about Ivan of Znojmo, and his… impious escapades. It called to mind when my older brother shared similar stories about Slovien lords, and how it made him happy to be living in a purer land, with purer customs, closer to the herds and the skies. I used to share in that happiness, but when Harold told me these stories now, I took no delight in them. Have I become a… bad Hungarian?’

‘Not one bit of it,’ Bohodar shook his head firmly. ‘Czenzi, you are such a sweet, mild and gentle woman! It’s because of you that I dearly love the Hungarian land and people who birthed and raised you. Even if you still lived in Csángóföld as a nomad, I could never see you taking such pleasure in the wrongdoing or suffering of others.’

Czenzi folded a pair of reassured arms around her husband.

‘But if you’re worried about such things, how about we leave Heléna and Vojta in the nursemaids’ care, and I ride with you back to Csángóföld for a week or two? Live together with you in a yurt, and spend time with your Magyar kinfolk?’

Hearing this, Czenzi hugged her husband closer, tightening her grip with every ounce of the gratitude and warmth she felt. Bohodar felt the front of his cotte moisten with her freely-flowing tears. ‘Ďakujem, zlatko. What would I do without you?’

~~~

Prisnec was getting old, and age did not come upon him lightly. He didn’t look it—the traces of it, so Kveta had told him, were in the vessels around his heart, and thankfully not in any place that one of his subjects, vassals or peers could see. But his physic had cautioned him against any sudden shocks or strenuous exertion on account of the state of his heart and his advancing fragility—a restriction against which the hardworking, handy old warrior chafed miserably.

It didn’t seem so long ago that Prisnec was leading his men in exercise training for cavalry charges and flanking manœuvres, or exploring old abandoned Slavic ring-forts with them afterward for hoards of gold and silver. Even now the state coffers overflowed with all the plate and jewels the Moravian army had brought back from one such hidden cache. Even now he longed to go with them, and sighed after them as he watched them depart on exercises. Viera lay a hand on her husband’s back in sympathy, but there was little that she, of all people, could do about it.

Instead, what she could do was support him in the one hobby and outlet for the strain of rule he had left: tending, reaping, sorting, drying and storing the herbs from the garden Hildegarde Mürzzuschlagerin had helped him set up.

‘I really wish you’d shown this kind of interest earlier,’ his queen remarked to him mildly. ‘I learned a great deal about this art from my guardian, Anna Rychnovská.’

‘So you did,’ answered Prisnec equably. ‘I really wish I’d shown this interest before. Before Hildegarde came, I never knew what a fascination each plant and its different properties could have, or how soothing the scents of their dried stalks could be.’

Viera looked to her husband with a bit of concern through her veil. Agafya Timofeevna’s request of him would have to wait… for the time being, at least. No doubt him doing the exiled Russian noblewoman a good turn would stabilise relations with the Carpatho-Russians living around Maramoroš—who, unlike the Bijelahrvatskići, had not seen fit to acculturate themselves to the customs of the Moravian court, and didn’t seem likely to do so in the near future. In the same way that having shown mercy upon the nobles of the northwestern marches in the wake of the rebellion had garnered him good will from the Czechs (whose dwindling influence in Moravia was confined largely to those same minor voivodeships). But Viera truly did fear for his health and strength, and didn’t wish to cause him undue added pressure.

Not that she could prevent such, all the time.

The king did insist on attending the summer hastiludes on the fairgrounds outside Olomouc, and Viera, knowing what pains it had cost him to forego joining in himself, had permitted it. However, not being able to enter the lists, for Prisnec, was almost as frustrating as not being permitted to go in the first place, and he had made the mistake of giving voice to his dudgeon in broad hearing. It was his bad fortune that young Vlastibor Rychnovský-Kluczbork had attended the same event, and taken advantage of the opportunity by behaving like the inconsiderate hoodlum that he was, and had been ever since he had blown up at Prisnec in open court that one time.

Splash!

The defenceless, elderly king had toppled face-forward into the horse-water, having been tripped and pushed into the drinking-trough by the twenty-year-old Vlastibor. Vlastibor let out a crowing laugh, and was joined in with chuckles from several of the surrounding nobles. Prisnec’s eldest son, however, reacted harshly.

‘Darebák!’ Radomír roared, grabbing Vlastibor by the front of his cotte and throwing him to the ground. He drew his blade and held it at his blond kinsman’s belly before the latter could scramble back to his feet.

‘Give me one reason,’ Radomír fulminated, his ruddy cheeks bright with anger. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t strike your swinish hide wide open, right here and now.’

‘Rado,’ Prisnec sputtered weakly behind him. ‘Don’t.’

‘But, father—!’

Prisnec shook his dripping head. ‘He’s just a stupid boy. Let him have his little japes; he shouldn’t suffer for a harmless joke on my account.’

It hadn’t been quite so harmless as all that, though. Viera went straight over to her husband with a dry cloth and a steadying arm at the ready. Though it wasn’t generally known and he didn’t want it to be, Prisnec was a good deal frailer than he let on, and his being dunked in the drink could very well have been the end of him. God be praised that it wasn’t—in all likelihood, it was Kráľ Prisnec’s patient and calm demeanour which had saved him from death that day.

His forbearance bought him only about eighteen months. He was able to witness, thank God, the birth of another grandson—Karolína’s second son Drahomír. And he was also able to make an agreement with another Prisnec, the independent vojvoda of Lemkovyna, for mutual defence. However, Prisnec’s heart gave out on the twenty-second of October, 1146, and he went to join his fathers in Velehrad.

---

[1] Erroneously, by false cognate. Bertalan is actually the Hungarian form of the Greek Vartholomaĩos.

 

[Revan86]

INTERLUDE X.
The Value of a Love Poem
10 December 2020

„Dňestr nesie moje sěrce po-proude
Na tocie jedinoję pamäte,
Prichodzam domovu do stanu vragu
Aby som tam našel moju právu lásku!

Ach, na město, kde nocujú sraky!
Taká je strašná sila lásky—
Že otáča vrag černy ako jeho krídlo,
Do světla zasneženého ako jej rameno!

V inej rěke sa ozýva šplěchanie.
Dotyk nohy v studenej vode.
Moja milá na brehu ležala so mnou:
Dar, ktorý si mi dal: pamätáš si tou?

Nikdy som nezábudol. Nikdy nebudem.
Modré kvety kvítnu na Dňestrem.
Nebeské krásky: nečudujte sa nefelejčom!
Světlo mizne zo světa—
Pred tvojem dotykom!“

A view of the Dniester River from Naslavcea, Moldova​

Standing, Cecilia Bedyrová finished reciting the Minnelied from their textbook—one of the oldest ones surviving in the Old Moravian language—with great feeling. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that she’d been awaiting this moment since the class began, and Ed Grebeníček had seen no difficulty in obliging her. Bohodar 3. letopisár’s intensely-personal song of enduring love to his Árpád wife, which he compared to the pale blue blossoms which returned every year to the Dniester, had been deeply cherished by the Árpádok. So much so, in fact, that the delicately-written scroll in its little silken pouch, which Árpád Czenzi had famously kept furled up on a halse-hang between her breasts lifelong, had survived to be placed in the Imperial Archives in Pest. A priceless symbol—not without its political uses in later times—of a lasting love which transcended cultures and borders and peoples, „Dňestr nesie moje sěrce po-proude“ had been on loan to the national museum in Olomouc for the past year.

‘Thank you, Ms Bedyrová,’ Grebeníček applauded her. ‘That was truly heartfelt!’

Cecilia blushed and sat with a smile.

‘Now… based on what we know about lyric poetry in mediæval Central Europe at this time,’ Grebeníček stroked his chin, ‘can anyone tell me what are some of the innovative features of this poem?’

Dalibor Pelikán raised his hand, and was acknowledged by the professor. ‘The nature imagery in this poem is particularly strong. Letopisár highlights the contrasting colours on a magpie’s wing to illustrate the power of his affection. He also makes reference to the shores of rivers, the splashing of water—and then of course the blue blossoms on the bank.’

‘Well observed!’ said Grebeníček. ‘Any other observations? Yes, Živana?’

‘The poem is incredibly secular,’ Živana Biľaková observed. ‘There is only one oblique reference to God here, and even that reference at the end of the poem to the Parousia is in the service of Bohodar’s proclamation of his affection for his wife.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Grebeníček lifted an appreciative palm. ‘That’s a very notable shift in tone and subject matter for poems of this age. Considering the rapid spread of general spiritual apathy and heresies during this time, the “earthly” focus of this love-song becomes a bit more understandable. But there’s one other aspect to this poem that I think needs to be highlighted. One reason why the Carpathian Empire in particular took such a strong interest in it.’

Illustration from a contemporary German collection of Minnesang​

Petronila Šimkovičová traced her finger down each line of the poem, mouthing it to herself until she came to the last stanza. Suddenly it seemed as though she had something of an epiphany. She slowly raised her hand as she did so.

‘Yes?’

‘Here, in the last stanza—‘ she observed, ‘He refers to the flowers as nefelejčov—like “nephews”. Rather odd in a love poem to use such distant, masculine imagery for a flower, right? But what if it’s not an Old Moravian word he’s using there, but a Magyar one? That would make sense for the theme of this poem. Isn’t nefelejcs the Hungarian word for nezábudka?’

Grebeníček nodded. ‘Otherwise known as Myosotis arvensis, or “forget-me-not”… You’re not a bio major, are you?’

Petra shook her head with a grin. ‘Organic chemistry.’

That drew a slight chuff of amusement from the professor. ‘My condolences, Petra. Never could keep all those functional groups, isomers and side groups straight, myself. All blends into a lot of chocholovité chocholy a chocholov[1] for me: that’s why I went into history.’

There were several laughs at that from Petra as well as the bio majors in the room.

‘But yes—he used the Ugric word instead of the Slavic one, for a detail intimately connected with the shared memories of their courtship. Moreover, he could not have been insensitive to the language of flowers, in which the forget-me-not is a symbol of a singular, deep and abiding love. No wonder that Czenzi cherished the poem so closely in her life, nor that the Carpathian Emperors among her kin would have done the same after Letopisár gave it into their care. As a rule, the Minnesang of this time were not lacking in natural imagery, and quite a few of them were secular and ribald in tone. But few of those which have survived to the present day have this degree of personality and intimate detail.

‘Now—turn in your textbooks to page 162.’

The class did so.

‘In the last class we discussed the reigns of Bohodar 2. and Prisnec 1. Rychnovský, and today we’re going to start on that of Radomír 2. Now, can anyone explain to me from last class or from the readings, why Prisnec’s and Radomír’s reigns are now thought to be a direct precursor to the Urban Policies of the 1520s? …’

---

[1] Literally ‘tufts and plumage’, but the professor is making fun of the presence of so many similar-looking C, H and O compounds (aldehydes, ketones, carboxyls, ethers, alkanes, alkenes, alkynes) in organic chemistry here.

 

[Revan86]

The Reign of Radomír 2. Rychnovský, Kráľ of Veľká Morava

FOURTEEN
Scent of Orchids
23 October 1146 – 25 June 1148

Alswit Wulfgifusdohtor, now Queen-Consort of Veľká Morava, had always enjoyed collecting plants. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d been born on a far North Sea island which was very nearly devoid of plant life, or perhaps it was the fact that her father-in-law had been an avid gardener and herbalist himself. The slender-but-tough Anglo-Færoese woman cherished Prisnec’s careful tending and arrangements, and it seemed that his garden was always full of surprises. It was always a delight for her to find the new blossoms of a flower which she hadn’t yet seen before, and such delights were not rare in a garden as deftly cared for as that on the royal estates in Olomouc.

She passed by a certain tree, from which was anchored a rare Asian betilla orchid which her husband, Kráľ Radomír, had obtained for her from the town of Spytihněv. She chuckled to herself a bit at the remembrance of it. The flowers, though they were somewhat picky about maintenance, had taken well to their transplanting, and Alswit made sure they were carefully attended. The blossoms, which had just opened with a fresh fragrance both light and sweet, would make for excellent pressing in due season!

Radomír had always been a good friend to her. He’d always had her back, just as she’d had his. That had been so ever since they were children growing up together. Marriage, and three children, hadn’t really changed that much between them—except that now they had Botta’s, Katka’s and Dani’s interests to look out for between them, and that had brought them even closer together. It had gratified Alswit to see Botta conversing so closely with Rado at this past feast just gone by. Even though the two sometimes butted heads in the past (particularly over Czenzi—who had been Prisnec’s choice, and not Rado’s, of Botta’s bride), they were more alike than either would be likely to admit: both being perfectionists, both being a bit sullen and introverted. It was also comforting to Alswit to see Katarína comfortably married and settled. She much preferred cold climates to warm ones, so it was a good thing she was marrying that Geatish lad Adalvard.

But now… it seemed somehow that since being anointed and sceptred at Velehrad, Rado had become more attentive. Tenderer. The orchids had been only one small token of his renewed interest. There was also that time he’d recited an English folk song for her—in a rather atrocious accent, but it was still endearing. And then there was the literature, which appealed to Alswit’s scholarly heart. And then there was that memorable hunt he’d taken her on, in the Ore Mountains… Large and small, Radomír’s romantic gestures had not been wasted. Alswit found herself looking forward each evening to Radomír’s return. She found herself eagerly invested in conversation with him. She had even occasionally caught herself looking in her husband’s direction when he wasn’t looking.

But then came the day that every new king in Moravia anticipated with dread.

Knieža Dušan Mikulčický of Nitra—whose antecedents had all laboured under the delusion that the Moravian crown was theirs by right of descent from Queen Bratromila—had fled the court and raised an army against Alswit’s husband. Of course Radomír had to take to the field and leave her behind. But he didn’t do so before coming to visit her in the gardens.

‘I will be back,’ Radomír had told her, twining his hands in hers, and giving her that deep gaze that she knew belonged to her alone. ‘Alive. I promise you, as a friend.’

‘And as a friend? I will hold you to that,’ Alswit told him, placing her hands sadly on her husband’s broad shoulders. Then she gave a disgusted shake of her head. ‘God’s wounds, when will these uprisings cease? I had hoped that Prisnec’s efforts would put an end to that!’

Radomir shook his head sadly. ‘Greed, ambition, jealousy… I’m afraid no number of projects adding to Olomouc’s landscape can excise these things from the human heart.’

Then she saw that there was a look in Radomír’s eyes – one which she didn’t like at all.

‘You’re taking Bohodar with you,’ she narrowed her own gaze at him.

‘He is an adult—a man,’ Radomír told his wife bracingly. ‘He is a Moravian of hathel birth. One day, he too will be king. His hand was made to wield the blade; and his place is in the saddle, directing the zbrojnošov! And the sooner he learns how to do that well, the better.’

Alswit shook her head slowly. ‘Botta is not a fighter; you know that as well as I do! If he were to follow in the gifts that God gave him, he would be a great scholar or a philosopher or a poet—but not a fighter. And so, that promise I had from you—double that promise I will have for our Botta. Bring him back alive and well!’

‘That I will also swear,’ Radomír held her close. ‘As a friend—and more.’

In another part of Olomouc Castle, Czenzi was grinning radiantly as she beheld Bohodar arrayed in his tabard, mail and helmet, with his blade at his side and his shield in his off hand. Looking him up and down, she saw before her nothing less than a paladin of legend: a pure and noble knight of the Moravian realm. ‘I knew it.’

‘Knew what?’ asked Bohodar, oblivious to the excellences that presented themselves to his wife’s eye.

Czenzi gave a low, secret laugh. ‘Never mind—only return to me laden with honours and glory.’

‘With my shield or on it?’ Bohodar’s beardless lip quirked upwards.

‘With it, preferably,’ Czenzi told him, sidling up to him and twining her arms around his shoulders. She already knew well how perfectly she would fit there, but that didn’t stop her from enjoying Botta’s embrace.

When at last he reluctantly and stickily broke away from his wife’s embrace, she accompanied him all the way down to the courtyard, and she stood together with her mother-in-law. Alswit and Czenzi together watched as their respective husbands departed for the field—and although their feelings for the men they had married were much the same, their attitudes regarding their goal were quite different. Alswit’s eyes were full of the worry that accompanies every mother that sees her son off to battle, knowing he might not come back. Czenzi’s—of the surety of her gallant young husband’s righteous victory, and of the certainty of his return.

~~~

Given who Botta Rychnovský’s mother was, the lad’s first face-to-face meeting with Danish mercenaries—not to mention the men of Bergslagen, who had come south from Geatland for his sister Katka’s sake—was humorous and ironic in roughly equal measure. The Væringjar of Micklegarth, who were led by Vjačeslav Foringi, were a fearsome and rowdy bunch. Botta was quite forthrightly appalled by their seeming lack of discipline.

‘Father, these men are drunkards, thieves, bandits and worse! Are you entirely sure that His All-Holiness hasn’t pulled a fast one on us by sending us these… highwaymen?’

Radomír gave his son a slow smile. ‘Ah, but you haven’t seen them in action yet, Botta. The severané may be a bit… looser in their command structure than we are. But they honour Christ the same way we do now, at least. And they keep their place in a line of battle far better than most of our zbrojnošov do. Having seen the Væringjar in action myself—I tell you, Botta—Moravia got its money’s worth and more.’

Bohodar shrugged, as though to say: I’ll believe it when I see it. ‘Very well, Father. But… then there’s Dalibor.’

‘What about Dalibor?’ asked Radomír calmly.

Botta drew in a deep breath, as he seemed to swell up in pure umbrage. It was practically an insult to be in the same room talking strategy with a Rychnovský-Kluczbork, especially one who had Dalibor’s reputation. To be truthful, it was something of an insult to Bohodar even to share the same surname as Dalibor: a preening, smirking, skulking, mincing wretch… the sort of good-for-nothing who probably trapped stray cats from back alleys and flayed them slowly just to watch them howl and scream.

‘Father—he doesn’t belong here. To be frank with you, he belongs in a fonsel.’

‘I agree,’ said his father equably.

Bohodar was taken aback.

‘I—I don’t understand…’

‘Our friend Ladina Rychnovská-Nisa brought certain affairs to my knowledge regarding our dear kinsman,’ Radomír told him confidentially. ‘Affairs that he assuredly wouldn’t want reaching other ears than mine. And so I’ve kept our friend Dalibor on a tight leash. A very tight leash. The sort that kept him from running off to join Dušan’s cause. He may not be your idea of good company; nor is he mine. But you know the old adage: udržujte svojich priateľov blízko... a nepriateľov bližšie. That is true, even in... maybe even especially in... a war like this one.’

Bohodar shook his head with a smile and a chuckle of mild disbelief. Governing a kingdom was clearly a more delicate matter than he’d assumed. When to strike hard in the open, and when to use the more subtle prod of the goad or the hidden knife… these were part of an art in which Bohodar still felt himself utterly out of his depth.

The Moravian valley was under attack from two sides: on the right bank by the Bohemians in revolt, and on the left bank by Nitra and Užhorod. As a result, most of the action in this war had taken place not far from home. The battle near Milokošť on the edge of the Vizovice had been valiantly joined by the king’s uncle Tomáš—who had held off the Nitran advance until reinforcements arrived, and even placed his own body in the shield-wall in order to hold the Nitrans off from entering the Morava watershed. The former Brother of the Holy Sepulchre had fallen in that battle, just as the reinforcements had arrived from the north. And then there had been the engagement near Boleslav. Zelimír Rychnovsky had lost an eye in that battle—taken by Árpád Tvrdomil, who had fallen in the same battle not long afterward.

And now the Moravian army was camped along the Bečva at only three miles’ remove from the walls of Přerov. The Nitrans and the men of Užhorod had aligned themselves in an attempt to beset the town and the fastening both, only to be intercepted here by the King’s men. Although his father didn’t let it show, Bohodar could tell that Kráľ Radomír was worried. The Nitrans had come too close to Olomouc.

Bohodar gripped the pommel of the sword at his side. This was nothing at all like the personal contest against Büzir-Üzünköl in the camp at Szarka. The safety of Czenzi, and of his mother, and of those he loved dearest—all were on the line here. And he did not want even the shadows of this war’s horrors, even the slim fraction that he had seen so far, to come anywhere close to those he loved. And all of a sudden, he could understand why his father had hired the Væringjar and called upon the severané of Bergslagen—or even a peevish blackguard like Dalibor. If it were up to him, he would place every body he could, not least of all his own, between his Czenzi and harm.

~~~​

The lines shaped up on either side. At the moment, the Moravian Army was only half the strength of the rebels’. But it was not Dušan’s banner which flew—but instead Slavomíra Bijelahrvatskića’s, the kňažná of Užhorod.

Bohodar took up his place at the head of the left flank. The lines on his side were worryingly thin. He crossed himself and prayed to Jesus to have mercy upon him. Now truly did he regret his rash words to his father about the Væringjar! Drunkards, brawlers and thieves they might be… but he would gladly sell the Danubian mare between his legs to have their shield-wall at his side now.

The blast of the horn sounded and echoed over the Bečva flowing to their side, and the shields of the men in front came up to ward off the first volley from the opposing side. The black swarm of airborne death swooped down upon the King’s men, pummelling and cracking down upon the Moravian timber. The cries of several wounded reached Bohodar’s ears under the deadly rain—several dark holes were punched among the ranks where men had fallen. But the line held firm.

And then the armies began to move forward, both at once. Bohodar spurred his horse forward and held up one gauntleted hand to the ensign bearing the signal vanes. He didn’t want to strike too precipitously. When they were at a (however temporary) disadvantage of numbers like this, timing could make all the difference for them between victory and rout.

The devices of the red bear upon the shields opposite them became clear to Bohodar’s eyes. He clenched his fist and lowered his arm. The red signal vane went up, and the Moravians leapt into a full charge at his order. Matching each other stride for stride, just as in training, the many-pincered wall of spears closed the gap between themselves and the Užhorodian line and met it with an almighty crunch. Bohodar himself charged into the mêlée with his blade out and flashing in swooping arcs, and the solid tonne of angry horseflesh underneath him wading between the shafts of spears.

He was not the only nobleman to be seen on the field. Down the line he caught sight of Siloš Bijelahrvatskić trying to break through the Moravian line, and being stoutly opposed by the Greek cataphract Anatolios. That particular duel was not going particularly well for the Greek, sad to say.

And then there was the sight that made Bohodar’s heart freeze.

The rebelling Hrabě Soběslav Mikulčický of Jihlava had punched through! He had led a small contingent of riders through a gap in the lines left between Anatolios and Dalibor, and stood poised to mount a flanking action—or make a break for Přerov. Bohodar’s blood went from cold to hot in the space of a breath. He gave a signal to the ensign, who raised the rallying flag, while he led a handful of the zbrojnošov in across the line of battle to give pursuit to the Nitrans.

Bohodar leaned down close to the mane of his mount, and spurred it to a gallop. The dapple-grey Bulgarian mare leapt and bent her neck and bounded forward through a lane which was empty of spear-ords for one blessed moment, and she creditably closed the difference between herself and Soběslav. Bohodar let up a bloody shout and raised his sword arm as he went past.

And then the moment which would come forever afterward to visit his worst nightmares.

For Bohodar, the motion of shoulder and wrist, the turn of the hilt in his hand that would bring the slashing edge of his blade down in one smooth stroke—was pure muscle-memory. He did it practically without thinking as he came up alongside Soběslav. But Bohodar felt on his wrist, not the jarring squeal of resistance that he expected, which mail would give him. Instead, the feeling was one similar to that which met a child’s hand when the head of a hatchet cleaved into the neck of a chicken.

Bohodar turned his head to look at his blade. And it was clear that it had connected—with something. The hard gleam of his steel bore upon itself a streak of moisture—dark red in colour. Turning his head back even further, he saw…

Soběslav’s narrow head with its short-cropped beard was staring at him in a gape of disbelief—almost in embarrassment. So young! He couldn’t be more than two years older than Bohodar, if he was a day. And just underneath that incredulous long face, an uncontrolled spurt of blood burst from the rupture of his carotid artery, which Bohodar’s sword-blow had caused, staining his tabard in the shapes of so many blood-red orchid blossoms. Soběslav’s head swung at a sickening lopsided angle as his body crumpled and toppled nervelessly forward in the saddle.

A strangled sound caught itself in Bohodar’s throat as his own eyes went wide. He had killed. And the helpless, chagrined face of Soběslav Mikulčický seared itself into his memory, to haunt him lifelong.

 

[Revan86]

@Midnite Duke: Indeed; correct on both counts! Thank you for reading!

FIFTEEN
A Friend in Need
27 September 1148 – 30 January 1150​

A party of several riders drew close to the King’s camp in early autumn. One of them, having the light build of a slender woman of her later middle years beneath a good woollen autumn cloak, flashed a bull’s-head signet ring toward the captain of the watch. The captain immediately allowed her and her party to pass, and approach the king’s camp freely. The woman and her little formation of riders cantered toward the centre of the camp, dismounted and handed their horses off to the grooms. There, the young woman with the bull’s-head ring took her leave of her guard, and made her way into the king’s teld, where again she was admitted at once.

Radomír looked up toward the woman’s figure, with her antigonine neck and narrow, sharp-jawed face. He was already beaming with welcome recognition, long before she drew back the hood of her cloak to reveal a sheaf of platinum-blonde locks beneath her cap. She courtesied deeply.

‘Gorislava Zvonimírovná Pavelková-Sigetmarmoroská, at your Majesty’s command.’

‘No need for all that between us, Slavička,’ Radomír bade her rise. ‘Have you journeyed well?’

The kňažná of Podkarpatská Rus’ stood, straightened her swan-neck, and levelled a blunt, sky-blue gaze at the king. ‘It’s a rather hard road to travel incognito between Maramoroš and here. The fewer times I have to make that run, the better. But I am as you see me—hale and sound.’

‘Well, thanks to God for that,’ the king grinned. ‘But you did agree to be my kancelárka, did you not? Travel demands and all.’

‘So I did—before you chose to provoke Dušan into this war.’

Radomír widened his eyes in a look of mock offence. ‘Who, me? Provoke Dušan Mikulčický, the brass-eyed fighting-cockerel whose shoulders break under the weight of so many chips? God forbid!’

That got a laugh out of Gorislava. If one couldn’t laugh at this civil war, one could only despair. And neither liege nor kancelárka were willing to do that.

‘How’s Alswit?’ asked Gorislava in genuine concern.

‘She’s recovering well. The birth went smoothly from what I hear. She’s named our newest daughter Rodana.’

Gorislava crossed herself in thanksgiving, and nodded her approval of the name. ‘Good. Strong name—Slavic. Better than Katarína or Daniel, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘And how was Zdravomil Nonnovič when you left him?’

The Rus’ kňažná tilted her flaxen head to the side with a fond smile. ‘Zdravko’s doing a bit too well, if you ask me. He’s been helping me with various gifts and considerations meant to keep the rest of your loyal vassals sweet. Lord knows how a sinful old miser like me married my first cousin to keep the lands in the family. But of late, having him as a helpmeet in political matters has been… a pleasant surprise.’

Slavička’s candour was one of the things that Radomír most highly valued in her. Even if she did always have an eye toward her own interests and advancement, the fact that she frankly acknowledged it as a failing spoke well of her self-awareness. And she had never failed to place her duties to Radomír first—even going so far as to help streamline the integration of Podkarpatská into the rest of Moravia. ‘A pleasant surprise’, she said? Yes. Quite so.

‘What’s this?’ asked Gorislava as she stepped further into the teld. Aside the diagrams and maps and figurines that one would expect to find inside a military command tent, she saw one large dusty old volumes, as well as some fresh parchment and quill-cuttings. And was that an astrolabe for tracking the stars? She turned over a leaf in the elder book as Radomír looked patiently on. ‘The Mathēmatikē Syntaxis of Ptolemy?’

‘Just a little… translation project,’ Radomír owned. ‘Of course I haven’t gotten very far in it, things being how they are…’

‘Hmm. I didn’t know you were interested in astronomy,’ Gorislava mused. ‘I tell you what, liege. Once this war’s over, I’ll send for you to come to Pop-Ivan in Čornohora—at my own expense. Astronomy students from Hungary, Wallachia and even the Červens come there all the time. High mountain peak, no clouds, perfect for tracking the movements of the cælestial spheres. But in the meantime, make sure you get some sleep. No offence, Kráľ, but you look like death warmed over. And no one ever won a war without taking care of themselves first!’

‘Of course I’ll heed my kancelárka’s wholesome advice.’

~~~​

Gorislava didn’t stay long in the king’s teld. Her purpose in visiting had been solely to update the Kráľ on the tax situation in Maramoroš and apprise him on further measures aimed at integration. She had also promised to commit two thousand more Rus’ warriors to the war-effort against Dušan Mikulčický. Soon she would leave back for Olomouc to rest a few days before making the incognito run back to her native Beskids. As she was leaving the camp, however, she came across the king’s son, inbound into the camp.

‘Bohodar!’ she cried out to him. ‘God greet you, lad!’

‘God keep you, Kňažná,’ Bohodar answered her. ‘How’s Father doing?’

‘He needs to take better care of himself, get more sleep, and leave any translation projects until a better time,’ Gorislava noted archly. ‘He’s doing no one any favours wearing himself out like this.’

‘So I keep telling him.’

‘Is there something the matter with your neck?’ asked Gorislava in concern. ‘You keep rubbing it.’

At once Bohodar stopped, putting his hands behind his back. ‘No, it’s nothing.’

‘Hmm,’ Gorislava traced her mouth doubtfully with one hand. ‘Well. Same goes for you—make sure you sleep and eat well, and keep your head during battle. No pointless heroism from you, young man: just burn those siege towers.’

Gorislava missed how Bohodar blanched white as she said ‘keep your head’. But when Bohodar’s answer came, it was calm and level. ‘I shall, Kňažná.’

This civil war had been devastating for central Moravia, mostly because the bulk of the fighting had taken place there. The Bohemian and Nitran armies had basically had free rein whenever the King’s men were not present, and they had behaved as armies normally do when moving through enemy territory. The unwilling requisitions of food, shelter and ‘companionship’ from the bowers of the Morava valley had earned Dušan and his noble rebels nothing but enmity from the common people of Moravia, the more so because it was in pursuit of a claim on the Moravian throne dating back to Bratromila Mojmírova’s day that none of them any longer felt was legitimate.

Radomír had moved his armies into position around Hradec and Boleslav, and lay siege to both rebel-held northern Bohemian towns over the winter, bombarding them relentlessly with arbalests and mangonels. The king led his own army personally to encircle Hradec, while Bohodar had been assigned to command the siege of Boleslav. These sieges were worth the effort to take the cities, but they did cost the Moravian Army several long months of absence from the defence of the home territory.

Both towns fell to the King’s armies in the lean months of the Year of the World 6657. That was enough time for Dušan, with the help of Slavomíra Bijelahrvatskića, to raise an army of a strength rivalling that of both of Radomír’s combined—and send it straight up the Morava toward Olomouc. This rejuvenated Nitran rebel army despoiled as they went, and once more they got as far as Přerov.

Kráľ Radomír 2. personally led his army back to Přerov in order to defend the town and the lands further upstream. He knew from the start that his own force of thirty-five hundred men, eight riders and ragtag groups of assorted armigers would stand not even the ghost of a chance against Dušan and Slavomíra’s eight thousand on their own. But the point of engaging them at Přerov was not to win the battle, but rather to play for time until the king’s son could reinforce them… and perhaps fight them to a draw.

A red June dawn gleamed over the Bečva as the King’s men drew themselves into position against the superior rebel forces. Once again, observed Radomír, the red bear of Užhorod flew prominently over the commanding front of the rebel forces—it was Slavomíra calling the shots, not Dušan. Among the rebels, Radomír observed, there was heavy armour—the zbrojnošov of Trenčin were readily and prominently seen at the front. But he also saw that there were specially-trained and -equipped Bohemian arbelists from Ústí nad Labem who would be firing deadly volleys into his line from the rear right flank. He sighed in silent dismay. The battle had not yet begun, but he could already see how dearly he would be paying for his delaying action.

The lines moved forward. The small handful of the Moravian armigers and riders took up their positions, and their orders were to misdirect, stymie and confuse the momentum of the rebels as much as possible. Radomír hoped it wasn’t too obvious to the unit commanders that he was essentially playing for time rather than to win; he knew how that would affect morale. But there was no hesitation or flinching from the riders or the skirmishers as they led off.

The Moravian lines were not stationary, but fluid—Radomír was trying to use them to probe for weak points in the rebels’ depth, exploit them quickly, and get out. Unfortunately, that was usually a losing strategy in battles like these, which were battles of attrition. Soon the quarrels were flying and the lances were breaking, and Moravian blood flowed freely into the Bečva.

The sun slowly and painfully crossed over the sky, and began to set in the west. The Moravians had held the line and prevented the Nitran advance on Olomouc—but at great cost. Out of the thirty-five hundred Radomír 2. had brought with him, only four hundred remained standing firm and fighting. The rest had died, or had been grievously wounded, or had fled the field of battle. Things were looking grim indeed for the Moravian king.

But that was when his son Bohodar showed up, leading his four thousand, including Vjačeslav’s Væringjar. Shortly behind him were the men of Bergslagen, courtesy of his son-in-law Adalvard. Fresh fighting men swept into the breaches and shored up their beleaguered and wounded comrades. Bohodar’s command added depth to the Moravian line, and gave the arbelists something selse to shoot at besides the skirmishers at which they’d been taking potshots for the whole past afternoon. The riders careened into the entire arbelist formation and scattered them into the woods, which took significant pressure off of the King’s other armigers.

This sudden reversal clearly stunned the Nitran and Bohemian rebels, who had already been hounded and baited into wrath in several places by the Moravians’ stalling tactics. Entire sections of the Nitran line collapsed—including one which led a straight path back to where Slavomíra Bijelahrvatskića was! The kňažná of Užhorod attempted to flee, but with everyone around her breaking past in a rout, she was left stranded amidst a knot of Bohodar’s men. She was left with little choice but to surrender herself into Radomír 2.’s mercy. A small rebel rearguard in Doudleby was quickly rounded up and captured, but the will to fight had all but been struck from the rebels. Dušan was brought to terms at the end of the following January, and peace was restored in Moravia.

The devastation within the Morava valley had been significant, and it would take many decades to rebuild what had been lost. Many were the wooden caskets which were shipped back into the villages; long were the processions that accompanied them to burial. And indeed, the Hrabě of Jihlava himself, having had his throat severed in the heat of battle by the king’s son, was sent to his rest among the sons of Mojmír, the Mikulčických of Nitra.

The pain of war was not always entirely visible. Radomír 2. had attempted to distance himself from these horrors by throwing himself into his study of the stars, and a new Moravian translation of the Mathēmatikē Syntaxis had been the penultimate result. Others, however, bore much more deeply than he did the pain of what they had to witness, and what they had to do with their own hands.

 

[Revan86]

@Midnite Duke: Yes, this does seem to be the plague of every new ruler in the game thus far. We shall see if the same holds true for Bohodar when his time comes.

SIXTEEN
I Malmfälten
16 March 1151 – 11 February 1154

‘I sent Bo and others to your aid during your war against your uprisen vassals,’ Adalvard insisted, sparing no appeal upon his father-in-law’s noble sensibilities. ‘Many Malmfäldingjar gave their lives in order to help you keep a firm hold on your throne, for Katarína’s sake. Now I’m asking you to assist me in the same course. Help me now to defend against Henrik and his invading Geats.’

There was an uncomfortable silence in the council chamber. The shaven-jawed, tow-headed severan youth and the formidable, grizzle-bearded Moravian king, son-in-law and father-in-law, regarded each other warily. On the side, the king’s kancelárka Gorislava Pavelková and his spymistress Ladina Rychnovská-Nisa flicked their eyes between one or the other, waiting for the tension to be broken. It was nearly a full minute before Radomír 2. gave an answer.

‘Very well, Adalvard. If the Malmfälten call for my aid against the Geats, I won’t ignore or dismiss them. You shall have Moravian troops at your side within these three months—you have my word.’

‘And I value it, O Kráľ,’ Adalvard spread his arms out before him in a gesture of thanks.

As Adalvard departed from the council chambers, his business in Olomouc having been met a successful conclusion, Radomír gave a heavy sigh. It had been a difficult decision to make. To be called to war again, so soon after his realm had been put back in some semblance of order, with only a single year’s meagre growing season in which to recover—! It was a heavy thing that Adalvard had asked of him.

Not to mention the personal costs. The demands of his previous defence of the Morava valley had already stretched him thin. He’d found himself tugged and shoved about by various lascivious fantasies and urges… and although Alswit had always happily answered the summons to his chambers to help him sate the brute physical urge when it came up, he still hadn’t found a proper outlet for the strain of his mind. Yet now he would be leading Moravians into the chilly northlands, inserting them into a conflict between two groups of severané who were all but alike to his view.

Still, Radomír was too much so his father’s son to ignore such a demand upon his honour, particularly for an ally under threat.

Gorislava approached the king. ‘Well, Radomír—I can’t recommend this course of action from a finical point of view. In fact, I think it’s probably a waste of our men and treasure.’

‘Is there another point of view?’ asked Radomír.

His friend’s lips softened. ‘Well. There’s always something to be said for honouring one’s word and defending one’s family.’

Radomír couldn’t help but smile in answer. Despite their differences, there was a good reason he enjoyed Gorislava’s company. ‘There is. Even when the costs of doing so are high.’

‘Especially when the costs are high.’

~~~​

‘Mamka?’ asked Heléna when she came into her mother’s room. ‘What’s wrong?’

Czenzi had been kneeling in prayer at the miniature iconostasis in her chambers, and there had been the bleary remains of tears in her eyes. She turned to her adolescent daughter, and embraced her firmly. In truth, Léna was more a young woman now than a girl. Her hair had darkened (just as Bohodar’s had in his youth) from blonde into an oaken brown… and Czenzi could see both Botta and herself in that face as she caressed Léna’s cheek. She had Botta’s handsome brow, something of the intensity of his stare, and of course the shape of his nose. The caramel colour of her skin was somewhere between Czenzi’s dusky and Botta’s fair hue. Unfortunately, Léna’s mouth had the same unfashionably long shape as Czenzi’s.

‘You’re worried, aren’t you?’ she asked from it. ‘About Otec.’

‘Is it that obvious?’ Czenzi looked away, trying (not altogether successfully) to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Damn her—did she have to be so perceptive?

Heléna kept her arms around her mother and squeezed, offering her what comfort she could provide.

Czenzi sighed. ‘Léna… something happened to him out there, last time he went to war. I don’t know what, and he won’t tell me. It’s like… like he went out there one person, and came back another. And that scares me.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Czenzi couldn’t stop the burning behind her eyes, or the sting of fresh tears as they welled and poured from the corners. And with them came a memory from the past year as it was dragged out of her.

Czenzi remembered stirring and awakening after first sleep, and looking across at her husband in the flickering brazier-light. Not for the last time, the Árpád had savoured a moment of pure æsthetic appreciation of the rear view of the man she’d married. Having so fine a piece of tall-and-handsome to hold onto at night was a rare bit of good fortune which she felt it only proper to relish. Every bit of his face shone with cubbish good looks, from his fine brown brows, to his smooth boyish cheeks, to his deep, straight jawline. And then there was his long, sturdy neck, his broad bare chest with its still-sparse sprinkling of hair, and firm muscular shoulders, all for the enjoyment of her sight and touch and taste…!

Botta was there, yes—in his night shift. But she could tell he hadn’t slept at all. There was an exhausted slump to his shoulders, and he kept reaching up a hand to touch his neck, as though it hurt. She remembered that he kept glancing toward the same iconostasis that she’d just been praying at in the present, but he did not go over there to pray. Instead he turned away and let out a sigh—the sigh of a weary man twice his age.

Just that. Just an impression from the recent past. But it encapsulated the entirety of the difference between the youthful, tender, attentive and playful young man she’d fallen in love with… and whomever it was that had come back from the war.

‘I can’t help but wonder,’ she said aloud to her daughter, ‘if he’s still there… the true Bohodar, the Bohodar I know. He left me before the war, and he hasn’t come back.’

‘Mamka,’ Heléna told her patiently, ‘Father’s still the same man he always was. He’s still the same ocko to me, and brother to Dani, who always took us with him out to play down by the millrace whenever we badgered him into it. And he’s still the same husband who loves you. All wars will end. But he’ll still have us two, and Vojta… and whichever one’s in there waiting to meet me. We have to be patient. Support him—but don’t smother him. He’ll come around.’

Czenzi laughed as she wiped away a tear. ‘When did my daughter get to be so wise?’

‘Well, I think we can blame my parents for that,’ Heléna shrugged diffidently. ‘From what I hear, they’re supposed to be rather clever people themselves.’

Czenzi took her daughter by the shoulders. ‘So, about that… or rather, about Míra…’

Heléna blushed to the roots of her hair and nimbly extricated herself from her mother’s grasp, making her way to the door. ‘I thought we, uh… weren’t going to talk about that.’

Czenzi went after her daughter, but Heléna was just a little too nimble on her feet, darting out the door and closing it behind her, skipping off down the hallway. She knew her mother well enough to know she wouldn’t pursue her far.

Besides, when it came to matters of the heart, Heléna took her own counsel. Heléna was aware enough of herself to know that she was of Sappho’s inclination. And even if Blahomíra was not, and took no interest in her back, that wouldn’t change how Heléna felt about her.

~~~

Bohodar had been unhorsed. He’d lost his shield, the helmet atop his head had been knocked askew, he was bleeding freely from a wound in his left leg which who could tell how he got, and his face was streaked with mud and sweat. He’d been trying with difficulty this whole past hour to find his way, either back to the Moravian line or to a vantage point where he could see his father’s vane—but to no avail. However, he could still very well hear the shouts and clangs of battle coming from all around him in these Dalecarlian woods, bright and shining green from the warm August sun above the treetops. He clutched his sword close and forged ahead, climbing up one of the stony fells with difficulty.

He swung up behind one of the pine boughs that presented itself before him. He found himself face-to-face with a young severán—truly, even in the eye’s-blink allowed him Bohodar couldn’t think there was even five years’ difference between the two of them—with a long, blond beard. The young Geat barked a yell at him and raised his axe. Bohodar yielded with his front foot and swung back behind the pine bough, letting it swing forward. He felt as much as heard the axe-head bury itself in the heartwood of the tree branch—which, better the tree than his head! And he leaned into the tree from behind to steady himself and get another foothold on the other side.

It quickly became clear that the young man in front of him was more frightened than enraged, as he frantically struggled to free his axe from the tree and, upon his success, took another wild lunge at the dark-haired Moravian in front of him. Bohodar backed out of his reach with a practised step, and then ducked back in again with his sword, making a slash that forced his Geatish opponent to yield a step. The blond-beard caught Bohodar in the face with the edge of his shield, forcing him back again.

Bohodar and the young severán battled back and forth like that, in a desperate close-quarters mêlée that was as much each of them trying to stay on both feet as trying to bring down the other one or force the other one back, but slowly Bohodar was the one to gain ground. He brought his foe, unwittingly, to a place where an elder pine’s roots had anchored a cluster of earth over a precipitous slope. In a sudden spasm of pain and anger Bohodar made a lunge for a sudden opening as the Northman stood on this ledge. The Geat fended off the blow with his axe-blade, but wrong-footed himself and tumbled backwards from Bohodar’s lunge. He pitched backward from the ledge with a hoarse cry, and Bohodar saw him tumble over the edge of the root clean out of sight—only to have an ominous crack meet his ears from below. Bohodar stepped forward onto the root with his good foot, and peered down.

The Geat’s blue eyes were fixed wide open on him, but what little life there was left in them was ebbing away, leaving only a glassy stare. The mouth beneath the blond beard was fixed wide in shock, and his neck jutted at an unnatural angle. He had broken it on the bole of a dead pine, some ten feet below where Bohodar now stood.

Again Bohodar’s mouth fell open with dismay. It was not the same kind of shock that he’d felt upon turning his mount to see Soběslav of Jihlava’s neck split open from his blade. But the face of sudden, violent death—death which he had caused—still struck straight at his heart.

It was war. Of course it was war. And men kill, and men die, in war.

Bohodar had had little other choice—having met face-to-face on that fell-slope, one of the two of them had been doomed to such an end in this battle. But Bohodar still couldn’t help but see in the Northman’s face, just as in Soběslav’s at Přerov, a reflection of his own. He couldn’t help but be stricken with the enormity of what he himself had done—ending another man’s life. In destroying this boy, whose will to live had been evident in every desperate swing of his axe, Bohodar felt that he had destroyed part of himself.

A trill of notes from a horn went up somewhere below him. It was a jaunty snatch of a Moravian folk tune—and by that Bohodar recognised it as one of his father’s. He also recognised the signal: it was the signal to pursue. Evidently the battle had been progressing well in the woods, and the Geats were on the run. The battle in the forested fells outside of Mora had evidently been won.

~~~

There were only two other battles in the Moravian war to defend Adalvard’s claim over the Malmfälten against the Geats: one at the Tingvalla in Värmaland, and one at Sundby on Lake Malar in the east. After that, Adalvard died suddenly of a fever—causing a precipitous and absurd end to a war that had cost Moravia more than enough as it was. Radomír took Katarína, now a young widow, back home to Moravia with him from Malmfälten, and left the Geats and the Svear to sort their severán-tribal quarrels amongst themselves.

 

[Revan86]

SEVENTEEN
Heartache
11 February 1154 – 14 March 1155​

It was only natural for Czenzi to follow her daughter’s advice, upon her husband’s return. She was of such a nature that being of service to the ones she loved gave her pleasure, and placing herself as the warm and steady support that Bohodar needed came to her as naturally as a glove fitted for a hand. One of the first things she had done, of course, had been to present Botta with the infant daughter he’d sired with her before shipping off into the Malmfälten.

‘I’ve called her Anna,’ Czenzi told him. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

That caused Bohodar to crack a smile. ‘Now you’re teasing me. I’ve always liked that name. Good Rychnovská name—it was the name of Babka Viera’s foster-mother.’

Czenzi pursed her wide lips. ‘It’s also a perfectly serviceable Magyar name, you know. For a pet name, we could call her Ancsa, or Anikó.’

Bohodar chuckled. ‘Don’t press your luck.’

It still gave Czenzi pains to watch Bohodar carrying around so much weight that she couldn’t see. But one of the benefits to having Bohodar back from the Malmfälten was that she was able to ascertain, through careful listening (earnest and outgoing and amiable as she was, she was good at inviting confidences), at least part of what was weighing him down and gnawing at his heart.

‘… just don’t cross the King’s son. Don’t you know? He killed three men in the wars, in personal combat. I heard he went forty passes with Soběslav of Jihlava, before cutting his throat—khghkk!—just with one stroke of his sword. Sent his head flying thirty yards. Then in the most recent war? Friend of my husband says there was a Nitran mercenary among the Geats at Tingvalla, whom the King’s son ran through the chest with his blade—cut through armour and shield like warm butter.’

‘That’s nothing. I heard Bohodar went toe-to-toe with a Northman berserker—one of those insane ones that gnaw on their shields? Killed him just by looking at him. My cousin swears, he saw it with his own two eyes, the berserker fell. Cracked his head open just trying to get away from him!’

Such were the tales that swirled around Bohodar upon his return. Now, Czenzi was a shrewd enough woman not to blindly credit all of these tales. She had been a first-hand witness to his prowess in a one-on-one fight, against Büzir-Üzünköl in Szarka—in the fight to win her hand. But she also knew her man well enough to understand that if it came to killing someone, he wouldn’t easily be able to live it down. If he had taken lives in this war, by his own hand, that very well would lie heavily upon his conscience.

‘Bohodar—!’

Czenzi went to her husband as he turned to face her, and she laid her hand upon his cheek. She didn’t want to remind him of anything he might have done in the wars. But she did want him to know that she was here for him.

‘Come with me for a walk later? Along the Morava?’ she offered. ‘Just the two of us—no kids.’

‘I… I really don’t feel like talking…’

Czenzi shook her head. ‘That’s okay, Botta. We don’t have to talk. We’ll just walk. And then later we can go to Vespers together at the Church.’

Bohodar shuddered a bit.

‘… or not,’ she corrected course quickly. ‘Whatever you want, I’m here for you.’

‘A walk… sounds good,’ Bohodar managed.

Czenzi beamed. ‘Ez randi!’

~~~

Kráľ Radomír, however, had a rather more difficult time dealing with the strain his mind was under. Although poor Alswit made herself every bit as solicitous and available to him as Czenzi had for Botta, Radomír was considerably more set in his ways and more stubborn in keeping his own counsel than his son was. And in addition, as Kráľ, he simply had more on his plate to deal with.

And so he found himself too often going over and over again in his mind—every decision that had committed him to a certain course, every challenge that he had risen to meet. He tried to figure out where he had gone wrong. How had it been that his father had managed to hold this kingdom together seemingly with nothing but spit and string, while his own efforts to hold Moravia on a steady course seemed to have ended so poorly?

Radomír had difficulty sleeping at night on account of such thinking. The Morava valley was still utterly desolate from the last war. Too many families had lost too many men to a far-off war on behalf of a boy who no longer lived.

Although—

‘Lord Kráľ!’

Radomír turned. There stood a tall, clean-shaven, wedge-faced man with olive skin, some years younger yet than himself. He had a certain boyish handsomeness despite his middle age, which was accentuated by his swarthy features.

‘Ah, Konstantyn!’ the Moravian ruler grinned. ‘Welcome!’

Konstantyn Anchabadze, who hailed from an ancient and well-respected Hellenised Iberian noble family far to the east, had inherited the chiefdom of Poznań to the north some years ago. His lands bordered upon Moravia by a slender ten-mile stretch on the northern border of Moravian Silesia, located just around the town of Rawicz. That he was here seemed to be a promising sign.

‘Have you had a chance to consider my offer?’ asked the Kráľ.

‘I think I’d like to speak with the girl myself first,’ Konstantyn demurred. ‘She’s just lost one husband. It would be… indelicate of me to impose myself as her second while she’s still in mourning.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Radomír told him.

‘However, apart from that consideration, I would be more than happy to ally myself to Moravia,’ the Iberian bowed. ‘Such an arrangement strikes me as being mutually beneficial.’

Radomír clapped the slightly-younger man on the shoulder and steered him up toward the castle keep to discuss such a mutually-beneficial arrangement a bit further.

In fact, sometimes Radomír felt that his only real successes in his rule had been with his descendants. Little Dani had come to him several months prior to that, and given him a long, firm hug. As a father, Radomír took no greater pleasure than in his children’s well-being… which is why he had reached out to Konstantyn with the offer of Katarína’s hand. Konstantyn was well-known for being a circumspect man of modest life and generous habits—and he would be well-suited to Katarína’s temperament, at least from what Radomír had already been able to ascertain. The fact that the chieftain of the Polish town had voiced such concerns over Katarína still being in mourning was a good sign indeed.

Radomír was still reflecting on this, when he happened to see his grandson Vojta playing in the courtyard.

Among the other children was the bigger, stronger Diviš—a lad with stringy blond hair and a rather short temper. Evidently Vojta had done something Diviš didn’t like, because Diviš pushed the dark-haired boy to the ground with a vicious shove.

Radomír and Konstantyn paused in their stride. The Kráľ was wondering whether or not he should intervene on behalf of his grandson. But Vojta apparently didn’t need it. He just took the shove in stride and went back to whatever game they were playing. Later on, he and Diviš were laughing together and clapping each other on the shoulder, the loser congratulating the winner good-naturedly.

‘Lads seem to be turning out well,’ remarked Konstantyn.

‘I agree,’ said the Kráľ. He would have to speak to Vojtech later about it, but he was pleased to see that the youngster had developed such a forbearing attitude.

The resulting conversation between Konstantyn and Radomír over the marriage agreement and alliance was blessedly straightforward. Border markers between Moravia and the Poznań lands were determined and mutual assurances of defence against attackers from outside were formalised. Konstantyn left not only satisfied but pleased.

The dull pain that afflicted Radomír’s chest and left arm suddenly returned, and he found himself light-headed, and wheezing for breath. That usually happened during such attacks, but it would pass. Radomír sat. Attending to the rebuilding of the Morava villages damaged by the war—that was just the thing to take his mind off the pain.

~~~​

Kráľ Radomír was found in his study a couple of hours later, slumped over a stack of papers. The physic was brought in at once, but by that time there was nothing he could do. It was determined that the king’s heart had simply given out—the result of overwork and mental strain. Alswit, weeping and donning the mourning colours, accompanied her husband’s casket all the way to Velehrad, as did Botta and his wife, Katka, Dani and little Rodana.

The procession and funeral, solemnly observed over three days, were followed by Botta’s solemn anointing and vestment as Kráľ of Veľká Morava and Dani as Knieža of Česko. There had been neither a king nor a prince in Bohemia since the days of Slovoľubec. But the fact of two eligible Rychnovských men in the main line had prompted the resurrection and Christian consecration of the title.

The reign of Bohodar 3. had begun.

 

[Revan86]

The Reign of Bohodar 3. letopisár, Kráľ of Veľká Morava

EIGHTEEN
The Jihlava Decrees
14 March 1155 – 28 August 1157

I.
14 March 1155 – 9 September 1155

Bohodar did not return to Olomouc straightaway upon his anointing as Moravia’s king. Instead, he made a sharp detour south and west toward Jihlava. Stopping at one of the manor homes on the outskirts belonging to the Mikulčický family, he rode toward the chapel and dismounted, handing off the reins of his mount to the lay brethren who served as grooms. He went over to a relatively fresh grave—the one that had been dug for the former Hrabě of this land.

‘O God of spirits and of all flesh, Who has trampled down death and overthrown the Devil, and given life to Your world, do You, the same Lord, give rest to the soul of Your departed servant Soběslav—in a place of light, a place of verdure, a place of rest, from where all sickness and sighs and sorrow have fled. Pardon every transgression which he has committed, whether by word or thought or deed. For You are a good God Who loves mankind. There is no man who lives yet does not sin, for You only are without sin. Your righteousness is to all eternity, and Your word is truth…’

A bit disarmingly to those who were present with him, Bohodar knelt down at the foot of the rebellious nobleman’s grave, and wept freely for him. Only Czenzi dared to approach him, and at that only to lay a sympathetic hand upon the grieving king’s shoulder. When he was done paying his respects, he gave five silver obols for fresh flowers to the monks who tended the graveyard, and asked their prayers for the departed soul of Soběslav Mikulčický, and for himself, a sinful man.

It continued to weigh upon the king’s conscience, that he could not do the same for the two men he had slain in the Malmfälten. Neither the brash blond-bearded man who had attacked him on the fell-slope at Mora; nor the frail-looking Slavic boy—hardly a man!—among the hirelings at Tingvalla who had fallen to Botta’s blade as they’d stormed the gates. He didn’t even know their names, although their faces in death haunted him still, just as Soběslav’s did.

But after that, he went directly to the manor house, and made a request of the manor’s lord, Hrabě Zelimír Kopčianský, Soběslav’s diminutive and youthful first cousin. (Soběslav had died without issue.)

‘May I borrow the saddle and belt that belonged to Soběslav Mikulčický? I swear to you as king, that I shall treat them both with the honour they are due, and return them to you whole and with respect.’

Now, the loyal and upstanding vassal couldn’t rightly refuse such a request, offered this humbly and deferentially, when it came from the rightly-anointed king of Moravia. He may have been suspicious about it—and he certainly wasn’t happy—but he did give both the belt and the saddle of the former lord over to his slayer. Bohodar took them with thanks, and then made his way to the town centre of Jihlava.

A modern-day view of the Jihlava town centre​

There, in the open and in broad daylight, Bohodar summoned about him all of his vassals and court. He looked around impassively at them as they gathered about him in a semi-circle at the town square. The twelve-year-old Knieža Daniel had, of course, accompanied the party all the way from Velehrad, having been invested together with his elder brother. There were a handful of assorted burgomasters and -mistresses, most prominent among whom were: Múdroslav the Poet of Hodonín; Dušana of Hradec nad Moravicí; and Boromír of Ivančice.

Two among those gathered were trusted friends of his father: Vojvodkyňa Ladina Rychnovská-Nisa, the elderly lady of Upper Silesia; and Kňažná Gorislava Pavelková-Sigetmormoroská, the mistress of Podkarpatská. And two among them, Bohodar would have counted as powerful potential enemies: Knieža Bystrík Mikulčický of Nitra; and Kňažná Slavomíra Bijelahrvatskića of Užhorod. These were the two against whom he would have to contend in the event of another uprising. An event which, he prayed to God now, he could avert with a suitable show of strength and determination. In the general direction of these two, he lifted saddle and belt.

‘O vassals! Hear ye all now, the decrees of your new Kráľ.’

A hush fell. Bohodar did not have to raise his voice in the slightest to be clearly heard.

‘In the wake of my dear father’s repose, two paths now lie open to you, Moravians. Will you continue to walk the stubborn path of rebellion against right order and against the anointed of God? Or will you submit yourselves to His commandments upon you, in a proper love of peace and order and justice? Will more brotherly blood be shed? Will more lives come to ruin? Will the five fingers of the Moravians, Bohemians, Nitrans, Silesians and Rusins—which belong to the same Slavic hand, and which ought to make the Sign of the Cross together in peace—be severed from each other? Or will we live together, as we ought to do, in harmony and goodwill?’

There was a low murmur among the crowd, which fell silent as Bohodar spoke again.

‘See here the saddle of Soběslav Mikulčický. See here his belt.’ Bohodar laid them out reverently in front of him. ‘Now—if any of you would care to do so, you’re welcome to come before me and pick them up.’

It was a direct challenge—just as much of one as if he’d thrown his own riding-gauntlet upon the ground. And there was no mistaking it for anything else. He was daring Bystrík Mikulčický in particular to face him in the open, one-on-one. Bohodar was not unaware of the reputation for ferocity in single combat that he’d earned in part by slaying Soběslav Mikulčický, and it was his hope to leverage that reputation to head off any conspiracy to rebellion among his vassals now. Bystrík and Slavomíra did exchange a darkling glance. A full, uncomfortable minute passed. But, just as the new Kráľ had hoped, no one dared come forward to pick up the gauge he had laid upon the ground.

‘Well, then,’ Bohodar took on a lighter tone. ‘Hear now the first of my decrees. All men and women who are presently kept confined at Olomouc are to be released. Those who are held on charges of minor crimes, are to be released at once, without condition. Those who have not yet professed faith in the Holy Trinity, in Our Lord Christ, and in His One, Holy, Conciliar and Apostolic Church—may choose to be baptised as a condition of their release. And those who have been caught in the recent rebellion and remain confined for their participation, may pay a simple vražda to the Crown for their liberty. This amnesty is absolute in perpetuity, and may not be reversed by myself or by my descendants.’

This was an unexpectedly magnanimous decree from the new king, and it met with a noise of general approval and respect from the crowd in Jihlava. Hrabě Árpád Iván of Znojmo, a distant kinsman of Czenzi’s who had risen in revolt—was sure to be pleased, as it meant he would be released upon payment of his debt.

‘Hear now my second decree: a fund of one hundred and fifty gold denár shall be given, at once, out of my personal coffers in Olomouc, into the keeping of the Orthodox Church, and His All-Holiness the Œcumenical Patriarch himself shall take stewardship of it. It is my hope and my prayer that the first-among-equals of our Church, the right-guided vouchsafer of the Word of Truth, shall in the wisdom and virtue see fit to use this money for the benefit of the poor, the bereaved, the widows and the orphans, both in our land and in those lands that have likewise been ravaged by war and hardship.’

Again this decree met with a noise of approval, though there might have been a trace of doubt in it. Why would he give the money all the way into Constantinople’s hands, when Archbishop Vladimil could disburse such a fund just as well, with results nearer to home?

‘And hear now my third decree: I shall honour all of the treaties and personal ties which my dear departed father, Radomír 2. of blessed memory, saw fit to cultivate. That includes most importantly my dear sister’s bridegroom, Konstantyn Anchabadze of Poznaň. However—I shall not spend the blood of Moravia’s fighting men without a clear just cause. All war is sin. I know this well. The only war which can be excused is a war that protects our life, or that restores justice where it is trampled down. What I swear to you now, O men of Moravia, I swear as solemnly as any treaty written in my blood or the blood of my kin. I hereby decree that as long as I am alive, with the Prince of Peace Himself as my witness, I shall never declare, and Moravia’s men and boys shall never be called on to join, any war of offence!’

This decree earned an outright cheer from the men and women assembled there—an uproarious cheer which lasted for several minutes. Many of them remembered too keenly the losses they had suffered both in the recent revolt, and in the war in the Malmfälten.

‘Bože, Morava, a Bohodar! Sme tvoj ľud, Ó Bohodar! Morava, Boh ochraňuja!’

Such were the cries that accompanied Bohodar as he descended from his place in the town square, and as he was accompanied back to the local king’s-court in Jihlava, where he and his retinue would take their leisure before the four-days’ journey back to Olomouc. Not only in Jihlava would the so-called Jihlava Decrees by which Bohodar had inaugurated his kingship be remembered, and nor would they be soon forgotten.

~~~​

As soon as Bohodar had a private moment together with his family, he took his twelve-year-old brother Daniel aside. Now he was a knieža in his own name, not merely by virtue of his birth—though he had lost his father before he could rightly hold a sword or lead men in battle. He needed a mentor now more than ever. And so Bohodar sat down together with Dani beside the window that evening.

‘Dani—I’ve got a fourth decree that I’d like to make.’

‘A fourth?’ Dani asked. ‘Why not give it in public, then?’

‘Because it’s a promise I’d like to make only to you—if you’d allow me.’

‘Of course, brother! Name it!’

‘Dani, if you’ll agree to it—both as my younger brother and as knieža of Česko now, you’re fully within your rights to refuse me—I’ll happily serve as your guardian and guarantor, until you come of age.’

Dani considered shrewdly, weighing his options. ‘What? You? Not mamka?’

Bohodar leaned close to Dani. ‘Well, if you’d be more comfortable with mamka, I’m sure that can be arranged. But, between the two of us… she’s just lost ocko. And you know better than I do how close they were. Don’t you think we two should be the men of the family now? Leave her her space?’

Dani gave his elder brother’s shoulder a fond squeeze. ‘Very well then, Botta. I accept your decree.’

Bohodar offered an imaginary sword-hilt to his younger brother, grinning broadly. ‘Serve me well, O my sworn vassal. You shall do credit to my zbrojnošov, and bring honour and glory upon the Rychnovských.’

And so it was Bohodar who saw Dani off to bed. As soon as he was asleep, Czenzi approached her husband and began massaging his broad shoulders.

‘You’ve made a lot of promises today,’ she told him.

‘I mean to honour them.’

‘And I can only hope you mean to honour your previous promise,’ she told him sharply, striking a knot in his muscles just beneath his shoulder-blade, drawing a sour pleasurable-painful wince out of him.

‘Which one?’

‘I knew you wouldn’t remember,’ Czenzi’s wide mouth widened further. ‘But that’s alright when I’m here to remind you. You, O Kráľ, owe me a walk. A very nice, long, private walk along the Morava, if I remember right.’

‘So I do,’ Bohodar reached over his shoulder and clasped his wife’s tawny hand fondly.

 

[Revan86]

NINETEEN
Another Bohodar in Antioch
21 September 1157 – 16 December 1158

It was sometime after King Bohodar had downed his fifth glass of rich Niemcza wine that night, that he’d begun talking about his plans to Vojvodkyňa Ladina. He wasn’t normally so uninhibited… but this truly was a fine vintage she’d gotten her hands on, and it had been flowing freely from the amphorae ever since the feast had begun. Already this feast, his cousin Bratromila—her eyes having been rather larger than her liver, as usual—had gone and soiled the front of Bohodar’s best tunic. And Bohodar himself had evidently given his elderly vassal some unguarded pledges whose content he couldn’t rightly remember. Not a good sign. Even so, he continued speaking to his spymistress openly about his plans.

‘It’s something of a tradition,’ Bohodar was explaining, somewhat slurrily. ‘It goes back to Slovoľubec, I think. Every Moravian ruler named Bohodar must fare as a pilgrim at least once toward the great city of ‘Anṭâkiya! It is our step upon the journey toward the heavenly kingdom.’

‘Why, yes, of course,’ Ladina answered him. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. It wasn’t much more than… what… forty-five years ago when your great-grandfather was making his own journey thither. I remember it quite well.’

Bohodar sighed. ‘It’s a pity my grandfather and father never made it to one of the Holy Places. And how Dedo did love to travel! I shall be sure to offer my prayers for them while I’m there.’

Ladina laid a wizened hand upon her royal kinsman’s shoulder. ‘They would, I am sure, appreciate that. It would be of great benefit to both their souls. I take it Czenzi’s staying here.’

Bohodar nodded. ‘For one thing, she can’t bear to leave you, Slavomíra and Gorislava for such a time. And for another thing, she’s still nursing little Blažka—and insists, of course, on doing that herself. I’m sure, though, that she’ll hold down the fort redoubtably.’

Ladina smiled. What an admirable girl Bohodar had married! Like most Slavs of her generation, Ladina had long harboured a not-so-hidden grudge against the Magyar people in their entirety: barbarian brutes who had ridden out of the east on horseback with their short-bows drawn, bent only on plunder and spoil. But Ladina hadn’t taken long in coming to appreciate this sweet, steady, warmhearted, ebullient and hardworking Ugorka, who had gone out of her way to befriend her and the other female vassals in Moravia. Czenzi had engendered such deep trust in such a short length of time, that it was hard to believe she hadn’t been raised Slovien. And not only her trust! It wasn’t every husband who would feel comfortable leaving his wife for months, in full assurance not only of her loyalty but of her competence, her dependability!

For his part – Bohodar had already let his tongue wag too freely at this feast. He drank out his wine politely, and then didn’t imbibe any further. Ladina was already getting too close to comfort to his true reasons for going to ‘Anṭâkiya. Reasons he had imparted only to his wife and to his sister Katka—the two people who understood him well enough to be privy to such motives.

Bohodar’s reign had begun auspiciously. The Jihlava Decrees had intimidated Slavomíra and Bystrík such that they would not openly oppose him. Although the Moravian commons were still slightly sceptical of a king’s promises not to engage in any offensive wars, at the very least they had already seen the results of the fulfilment of two of his promises. Dozens of common prisoners-of-war had been released back to their families without condition—in general, the only prisoners who came off the worse, and at that only by a light fine, were the lesser nobles who had been direct parties to the rebellion. And Patriarch Constantine 3. had indeed been good to his word with Moravia’s funds, and as a result: walls and roads were being repaired, garrisons were being resupplied, country patrols were being reëstablished, women widowed and children orphaned by the wars were receiving food and shelter, and bower and townsman were beginning, slowly but surely, to rebuild.

But…

~~~

‘Bohodar, my child, what lies upon your heart?’

Before coming to this feast, Bohodar had gone to confession. With the comforting voice of Archbishop Vladimil at his side, Bohodar looked toward the icon of the Mother of God before him, let out a sigh, and unburdened himself.

‘Vladyka,’ Bohodar began, ‘I can still see their faces before me. Soběslav Mikulčický… and two other young men… boys… whose names I never learned. The boys whose lives ended at my hand, by my blade. Now, I know that it was war—that I had my duty. But I can’t forget the looks on their faces when they… died. They all looked so… shocked. Surprised. Even… embarrassed. Like victims of a pickpocket when they discover their purse is missing. Vladyka, how can I be worthy as a king, when I am no better than a thief? In fact, I’m worse than a thief, because I stole from them even their chance to repent, even as I’m doing now, of their sins!’

There was a silence. Vladimil’s hand rested warmly on Bohodar’s shoulder.

‘You feel that loss?’ he began.

Bohodar nodded. Vladimil took a breath, as though considering what to say, and then went on.

‘Don’t ask me to judge the rights and wrongs of your ancestors,’ the Archbishop said meekly. ‘This is, after all, your confession. But I have tended to a lot of soldiers in my day. And most of them—the better ones, in my opinion—felt the same shame over killing, even in a righteous cause, that you do. And here is what I tell them. Saint Basil recommended to soldiers who had killed in war, that they not approach the Chalice for three years.’

‘And so I have done,’ Bohodar nodded meekly. ‘And I would do still.’

‘That—’ Vladimil cautioned his spiritual child sternly, ‘—is pride and arrogance. What? You think you’re a better doctor of souls than Saint Basil?’

Bohodar hung his head and shook it meekly.

‘No—you should return to the Chalice, as the three years of your penance are over,’ Vladimil went on softly. ‘As King, it’s your obligation to share in the same life of Christ that all of your subjects do. But… I can see that the memory of Soběslav still weighs darkly upon your heart, and gives you unease.’

‘What should I do, Father?’

‘Well…’ Vladimil had told him, ‘if it still burdens your mind and soul… perhaps a penitential journey might be advisable. Your great-grandfather was, I believe, also a soldier under his father’s command?’

‘He was.’

‘And did he undertake such a penance?’

‘He went to ‘Anṭâkiya, Vladyka.’

‘Then, might I suggest,’ Vladimil went on, ‘that the same journey, with the same destination in mind, might not be a bad idea for you.’

So close was he to Czenzi, that he divulged to her both his confession, and Vladimil’s recommendation to him for it. Czenzi had nodded, understood.

‘I’m not happy that you’ll be away from me for so long, kedvesem,’ Czenzi told him. ‘I also know how much these things which you were forced to do in the wars, have weighed upon your heart. Almighty God in heaven knows, I have tried to help you carry some small part of them. But if you can lay your burden down in the first Christian city, beloved—I will not stop you from going. I will pray only for your return to me, safe and swift.’

~~~

‘Anṭâkiya—a city which had been inhabited so long, many ages upon ages, that even the stones of the road were storied far out of time. As Meroë, this site had been a city already in antiquity, long before the city’s formal ‘founding’ by Seleukos Nikatōr over 1500 years ago. By the time Bohodar 3. reached the ancient fortification at Baġrâs in late October, he had already spent the better part of two months on the road, both riding alone on the Jerusalem Way and travelling as a member of various pilgrim convoys from as far afield as Compostela and Köln. It had been an instructive journey, and a difficult one, for Bohodar.

The ‘instructive’ part of it came while he was travelling through Hungary. Several pilgrims from East Francian had taken to talking within earshot of him around one of the fires at their camp, and Bohodar had happened to hear his own name mentioned amid an uproar of derisive laughter.

‘Got grüez iûch, mîna guota herren,’ Bohodar greeted them politely in a passable German tongue. ‘Waz ist so lustec?’

Everyone except the tow-headed man who had mentioned his name fell still at his approach. But the yellow-headed East Frank went on blithely:

‘Ich sprëche vo’m künec von Grôzmären, nördlich von hier. Necheine sorge, mîn herr! Îr wirt gar nihtes niht wie diser narrenkünec!’

A ‘fool-king’, eh? Bohodar leaned forward, interested, and took a seat among the fellow-pilgrims.

As it turned out, the oblivious storyteller had indeed heard of his exploits living alone in his cabin while he was wooing his wife against her homesickness. However, he had attributed it instead to a kind of madness or eccentricity, a queer indulgence of a king who didn’t care about his lands or his folk. As such, the Bohodar in this story was something of a ‘wild man’, akin to the ‘masterless men’ and riff-raff who lived in the hedgerows trying to eke out a living on their meagre hunting skills.

Bohodar had found such a view of himself to be intriguing. If this East Frankish pilgrim had taken such a low view of him, little doubt that many within his own kingdom did so as well. Bohodar made a note to himself, to attend more public functions, and to take a more active hand in the administration of his lands and the well-being of his tenants. If he would uphold his own decrees, he would need to rely upon the support of the Moravian commons, not merely the sufferance of the nobles.

And then came the ‘difficult’ part. It was when he passed into the marches of the Eastern Roman Empire that his head began to feel like it would split in pain, and his sinuses and back of his throat stubbornly refused to clear themselves of mucous. The Kráľ of Moravia was wracked by a wet cough as well as his splitting headaches. Yet he forged on across the Bosporus and into Asia Minor. But not before he paid a visit—suitably scarved about the face to prevent contagion—to the Œcumenical Patriarch himself, Konstantinos 3., to thank him for his generous consideration to his country and people, and to receive his blessing for the journey.

He came to Baġrâs in the middle of this fog the size of his own head. And even though his eyes swam and his head would not steady itself, he nonetheless was breathtaken by the ancient fortification and its environs. From here he could make his way down the old wall and pass through the Iron Gate, and from there he would visit the ruins of the Golden Dome and the Cave Church of Saint Peter, before kneeling before the Patriarch of Antioch like any other sinner, and asking for the heir of Peter’s blessing and absolution.

The kindly Patriarch placed the sign of the Cross upon Bohodar’s head, and gifted him also with the customary small silver token which was given to all pilgrims who made their way to the Golden Dome. And while passing the ancient wrack of the church, Bohodar touched the stones and offered up prayers for the souls of his father and of his grandfather, hoping that Saint Peter, the Theotokos, and Christ would hear them and speed them toward blessedness. He prayed also for the souls of Soběslav Mikulčický and the two others whose names he knew not, and asked for their forgiveness of his sin toward them. And there, among the ruins of the church of Antioch, Bohodar finally left the burden of his guilt and began instead to look to the future.

~~~​

When Bohodar 3. returned to Olomouc, just in time for the Christmas feast, he was greeted at the town gate by his son and heir, Vojta.

Vojtech Rychnovský, a fourteen-year-old boy now—nearly mature enough to wield a sword and be counted fully a man, still had traces of his old rambunctious and inquisitive demeanour he’d had as a child—and his high forehead attested to the formidably-organised and rational mind beneath. Czenzi often joked with Bohodar that Vojta was his father’s son through and through, but looking at him now Bohodar could see every bit as much of his mother in him. Vojta had his mother’s dark hair (though it was as unruly as Bohodar’s), and a pair of dark eyes shaped like his mother’s as well, with evident epicanthal folds. More importantly: under his own and Czenzi’s tutelage, Bohodar had seen Vojta mature into a thoughtful, kind and forbearing young man. They greeted each other warmly, with the kiss due between kinfolk.

‘Father,’ Vojta laid a solicitous hand upon Botta’s shoulder as he suddenly wracked himself with a deep, phlegmatic cough. ‘Are you well? Shall I call for Kostolanská to come see you?’

‘No, no,’ Bohodar answered his son thickly. ‘The Arab doctors in the first Christian city did what they could for me.’

‘Father…’ Vojta began bracingly. But in response, Bohodar reached into his travelling-cloak and produced from it an ampoule of some bitter-smelling vitreous substance.

‘Kveta is a fine woman and a credit to her art. But I still doubt that we have any wisdom here to match theirs. The leeches in Antioch consulted not only our own ancestress “Helvius Turonicus”, but also ibn Sînâ, ibn Ṭâriq, Tzoumenēs, aṭ-Ṭabarî, al-Fazârî, Mâsarġawai’s Abdâl al-Adwiyya, and half a dozen others more I’d never even heard of. This stuff here—’ he turned the ampoule in his hand in front of Vojta’s eyes, ‘kept me alive, upright and in the saddle the entire journey back.’

‘I see,’ Vojta said appreciatively. They continued their walk up toward the snow-bound castle.

Bohodar clapped a fond hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, though, for caring that much for me. I feel I haven’t done particularly well by you these last years. I intend to set that right.’

‘Father,’ Vojta shook his head with a smile, ‘don’t reproach yourself too much on such things!’

‘Had you given any thought to marriage?’ asked Bohodar.

Vojta blushed. Sure, there’d been girls he’d looked twice at. And more. But no—Bohodar could see that there was nothing any more serious yet for his son than the usual infatuations of his age. That boded well. ‘I… hadn’t given much thought to it yet, Father.’

‘Well, perhaps that’s something we ought to look into together,’ Bohodar told his son gently.

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY
Betrothal Feast
14 February 1159 – 11 August 1160​

Of course, the natural place to start when looking for suitable brides for your son, is with the politically-advantageous families within your realm, no? And then, if that fails, you continue looking for suitable brides among the politically-advantageous families outside your realm. This is common sense.

… Well. That hadn’t been the common sense for Prisnec, who had married his distant cousin Viera Rychnovská, and then given his eldest son in marriage to his foreign lowborn foster-daughter Alswit. But that had been a different generation. Botta was determined to avoid the mistakes of that generation, to ward off any further civil violence from Moravia’s lands. And if his eldest son’s marriage could aid him in that goal? So much the better!

Bohodar was looking through the papers in front of him, examining the reports he’d had Gorislava Pavelková draw up on each of several eligible young ladies for Vojta, when he heard a light knock on the post of the door of his study.

‘Ahoj, Daršik!’

Bohodar paused. There were only two people on earth who were privileged enough to call him ‘Daršik’, and one of them made a decided point of not doing so. Bohodar looked up toward the doorway. He saw there a familiar, welcome sight: the arch-browed dark reddish-brown head of—

‘Katarína!’ he cried happily, standing to greet his younger sister. ‘When did you get in? I’m sorry, I’d have come to greet you at the gate myself if I’d known you were coming.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Katarína Anchabadze shook her head briskly, then indicated the stack of papers on his desk with her hand. ‘Surprise visit. I wouldn’t have had you do that for me anyway, given the weather you’ve been under. Good to see you’re feeling better, anyway. Foreign affairs or domestic?’

‘Domestic,’ Bohodar glowered at the papers. ‘Very domestic. I’m looking for a bride for my son.’

‘Hm,’ Katarína raised an eyebrow. ‘Have you ever given a thought to letting the boy choose for himself? Might be a bit less strain on you, for one thing.’

Bohodar made a decidedly sceptical noise. Katka grinned.

‘At any rate, bro—still looks like you could use a break. Since you’re feeling better, how ‘bout coming with me for a walk outside the town walls? Been awhile since you’ve had one of those, I’ll bet.’

Bohodar cast one last reproachful stare at the pile of parchment littering his desk. The pile of parchment, frustratingly, stood there in silent nonchalance, roundly ignoring him. Then the Moravian king turned back to his sister with a heavy sigh.

‘Alright, let’s. I feel like I’m not making any headway here anyway.’

And thus Bohodar and Katarína made their way out of the courtyard, through the town gate and out over the Morava on the north bridge, then turned left to take a loop around the town walls. The pace they took was slow, deliberate, familiar, a couple paces apart between them but no less companionable for all that. Despite Katka having been (through no fault of her own) at the political centre of one of the wars that had caused Bohodar so much inward pain, Katka herself was very much a salutary influence on him. Her wry sense of humour and tolerant demeanour had always been a source of comfort to her elder brother—and now was no exception.

‘So… I hear you’ve taken up trapping as a hobby,’ she noted airily as they walked. ‘And journeying off to the east of the Middle Sea. I hope these won’t be taking up too much of your time and your treasury?’

‘The trip to the Middle Sea was useful. Just ask Kveta Kostolanská if you doubt me.’

‘Translating medical texts is a time-consuming hobby as well, bro.’

‘True, but I’m not about to let it get in the way of the business of ruling.’

‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Katka grinned at her brother. ‘Not that I ever really took you for much of a ruler either, come to that. You’re way too… how should I say it? Idealistic.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Katarína,’ Bohodar grimaced in mock offence. ‘Always knew I could count on my close family to support me.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Katka replied placidly. ‘Who’s going to keep you down to earth, if we won’t? Wait… there’s always Kres.’

(Katka was one of very few people privileged enough, also, to call Czenzi ‘Kres’… and to use that privilege. The two of them were fairly close as sisters-in-law.) Botta shook his head and chuckled at the thought. It was true that Czenzi had always sought to keep his notions grounded in reality, tried not to quash but instead to curb his adventures into the shape of sense, and keep him sound and sane and healthy in the process.

‘Well. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve consulted her on this matter, at least.’

‘Good to hear, Daršik,’ Katka nodded. ‘Though I’ll say it again: you might also want to get Vojta’s opinion. And the young lady’s: since it’s them who’re going to have to live with your decision, their whole lives.’

Bohodar felt much better after their perambulation of the Olomouc foregate. Katka’s gentle, always well-meaning, teasing actually helped him put things in their proper light and perspective.

And then, once he was back in the castle, Czenzi greeted him with no less good humour. His loyal, proper, traditional Hungarian wife had a yen to celebrate his good health according to her own wifely prerogative (in chambers, on bed, with skirts hiked up over hips). This made Bohodar feel much better as well. And it was to no one’s surprise two months later when she found herself pregnant once again.

Unfortunately, Czenzi’s friend and Bohodar’s kancelárka Gorislava Pavelková had passed away of old age. She had left all her titles and her considerable wealth to her (truth be told, rather unprepossessing) son Nonn Zdravomilovič—and to Bohodar she had bequeathed one last word of well-considered rede: to look to the household of his šafár for a bride for his son. It was owing to this piece of advice that Bohodar took a second look at Hrabě Rodislav’s granddaughter.

Bohodar hadn’t remembered this Kostislava Balharská-Borsa with any particular degree of fondness. True enough, she had a very pretty face: rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, straight white teeth and all that, all framed by a lustrous and well cared-for pair of auburn braids. But there was no warmth to those eyes: they sparkled like shards of ice. She was agreeable, yes, but she had a kind of caginess in her speech that was startling to Bohodar, coming from the lips of a child of such tender years. The one time he’d met her, he’d come away with a very unfavourable impression of her.

Ah, well. First impressions could be misleading. The next time he went to Znojmo, he took Vojta along with him—and once Rodislav had welcomed them into his manor, Bohodar had taken his son aside and pointed out Kostislava to him.

Bohodar surreptitiously kept an eye on the girl throughout the meal, and Vojta did the same. Vojta, of course, saw little past her fair rosy cheeks and glimmering smile. But this time Bohodar observed more how she treated those around her—and this time his impression of her was considerably more favourable. She might not exude warmth, but Bohodar noticed how she helped her grandmother to her chair, how she made sure that her siblings were served before she loaded her own trencher, and how she gave the scraps to the dogs when she was done—patting them on the head when she thought no one was looking. So this was how Kostislava behaved in private!

‘Vojta,’ Bohodar asked, ‘what do you think of her?’

His son’s cheeks reddened. ‘Kostislava? Quite the comely young lady. Seems rather accomplished.’

Accomplished. High praise from the budding éminence grise. ‘You like her, then?’

Vojta nodded.

‘Well enough?’

‘Well enough,’ Vojta told his father firmly. ‘I’d have no objection to taking her as a bride.’

Bohodar talked to Rodislav together in private after that, making sure all could go smoothly for the banns, the bride-price and the dowry. Naturally, the hrabě was not going to say no to a direct familial alliance with his liege. He didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting, and he kept the haggling over the finical considerations blessedly short.

‘But, I say, milord—would you not consider staying for a feast in the young people’s honour? I mean, you’re already here, together with your Vojta, and in truth, me and Mila had been planning to hold a feast for quite some while already.’

‘Far be it from me to stand in the way, my vassal!’

And so the feast was prepared. Bohodar had been expecting, truth be told, something of a small, impromptu affair. The wine was a local Moravian vintage: but it was a surprisingly refreshing one. There were sausages, cheeses, fowl, berries, radishes and turnips—all of a select quality that surprised Bohodar, chosen and prepared at the very peak of their proper age of ripeness or soundness. The centrepiece was a yearling pig, cooked to perfection; the meat had a delicately-sweet glaze and a nice crispy exterior, but inside it was so tender it could almost melt in your mouth. Everything was prepared with wondrous attention and tasted exquisite, taking even Bohodar by surprise. The Kráľ was already happy that his son approved of the bride—he hadn’t been expecting to meet with such a palate-embracing repast!

Bohodar made something of a remark to this effect, to which the lady of the house—Hrabě Rodislav’s wife Pravomila—replied with composure:

‘And who would do any less, give any less, for kin? “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?”’

‘That is certainly true,’ Bohodar nodded. The Kráľ wasn’t entirely certain that this was what Saint Matthew had meant when thus recounting these words of Our Lord, who was using this example when speaking of spiritual discipline, the necessity of not judging others before one had meetly judged oneself, not speaking of holy things to those who were not ready for them, and praying without cease. Still, the lady didn’t look like she was in the mood for such an involved theological discussion, and so Bohodar let that particular line of thought rest.

‘It’s truly the most important thing,’ Pravomila went on, ‘taking care of the younger folk who will come to take care of you in turn. It’s not like you can really rely on anyone else. And our Kostislava—truly she’s a dependable young girl, not likely to let anyone cheat her or get the upper hand. Kin look out for each other, you understand.’

Bohodar nodded. He had seen the solicitous young Kostislava help her grandmother to her seat at the table before and approved. He and Pravomila spent the rest of the evening talking children and (in her case) grandchildren, and Bohodar found he had a good deal in common with his hostess. When Bohodar returned home, it was in a truly refreshed frame of mind—having concluded this matter of business for Vojta, and having also come to a new appreciation for the lad himself.

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-ONE
Scions of a Kind
28 August 1160 – 22 February 1165​

‘Turnips, cabbages, onions… what else were we supposed to get from the market?’

‘Fennel,’ Anna reminded her companionable aunt. ‘Tea for mother.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Rodana sniffed slightly at the queen-consort’s little… peculiarity. Assuredly, Rodana would not be among those women who personally breastfed their children. Of course, Czenzi had been thus attending to her latest niece, the fair-haired Blahomíra, for the past two years—and now somehow there was yet another child growing large in her womb, due soon! Rodana’s sister-in-law would evidently need a fairly steady long-term supply of fennel. ‘Sister has been extraordinarily blessed.’

Father can’t keep his hands off her, more like, Anna grumbled inwardly. Dear God in heaven, it’s embarrassing being seen with those two. Bad enough they hold hands in public, but—!

‘I say, niece,’ Rodana pointed out a roan animal being led to the stables by the groom as they left by the castle gate to the town. ‘That’s Dani’s horse, or I’m a plucked chicken. I’d know it in a heartbeat.’

‘What’s Uncle Dani doing in Olomouc?’ wondered Anna aloud. ‘It’s nearly harvest season—he should be tending to his Bohemian lands, not coming to court.’

Rodana raised her eyebrows mischievously at her niece. ‘I know one way we can find out, once we come back. Come on.’

The two girls ran off to the market and obtained the vegetables they had been sent for—including the fennel. On the way back, however, they came by a strange sight.

‘Someone’s been put in the husle,’ Anna remarked.

The husle in question was not a musical instrument, but instead an instrument of chastisement and public exposure which had been put to use by the magistrate of Olomouc since the institution of the general amnesty. It was a wooden plank with a hinge that had been designed to fit around the neck and wrists of the offender, with a chain connecting it to a central post, and with a bell hanging from the front to alert passers-by if they moved. The offenses for which time in the husle was prescribed were things like engaging in public brawl or disturbing the peace. Kráľ Bohodar didn’t entirely approve of the use of the husle, but the most he did against it was to forbid its use in winter.

In this case, the man who was in the husle was a well-known local drunk who had evidently been brought before the magistrate earlier in the day, for being loud and disruptive after the town watch had begun their night rounds. The middle-aged man looked miserable—draggle-bearded, bleary-eyed, hung over, with the slightly sour tang of stale vomit hanging around the fringes of his clothes and beard, and now with the mortification of public exposure to add to the physiological torment his devil of choice had left him with last night. Thankfully the King’s subjects in Olomouc were in something of a mild mood today—none had pelted him so far with anything more wounding than a scoff, a mild insult or an exhortation to sobriety. No—this poor soul in the husle had his punishment already, and much of it between his own ears.

‘Young misses,’ he called out hoarsely as Rodana and Anna passed by, not knowing them for the royalty they were, ‘could you bring me a bit of fresh water to wet my lips?’

Rodana, for her part, curled her lip and sauntered away. Clearly this filthy sot was ‘wet’ enough as it was from last night’s escapades. Rodana had been lucky in her upbringing—Kráľ Radomír had been a temperate sort, wont to wet his whistle with nothing worse than the occasional bowl of ale or Moravian wine (and one a night at that), and Alswit and her elder sister Katka never touched anything stronger than small beer. Rodana was blessedly and blissfully unaware of the cruelty of strong drink—that it can leave you far drier in the end than when you started.

Anna was about to do the same and follow after her aunt, walking away with an upturned nose. But then she remembered something her father had told her once. One or two things from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, which Bohodar especially loved to read: ‘And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain’, and ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them’. She tried to imagine how it might feel if she were stuck in the husle after having done something naughty, with people around her pelting her with pebbles or harsh words. She turned aside to the public well and drew up a bucket of the water there, filling up her empty scrip and bringing it to the man under punishment to drink from. She offered it to his mouth and poured slowly, as he didn’t have the free use of his hands.

‘Thank you, miss! God remember you, miss!’ the hoarse voice called out to her as she ran to catch up with her aunt Rodana, with vegetables under-arm.

‘Waste of time,’ Rodana shook her head with a mildly-disdainful click of the tongue. ‘He’s only going to get himself landed in the husle again in a week, you know.’

‘That may be true,’ Anna defended herself, ‘but he’s had his punishment already. Surely it can’t be wrong to spare him further?’

When they got back up to the castle, Rodana did remember her brother’s horse, and the stables. She turned to Anna in excitement, the incident with the drunk from town forgotten. ‘Let’s go take a look at what Dani brought in his saddlebags! Just a harmless little peek won’t hurt, right?’

Anna wouldn’t have thought of it herself—and she certainly wouldn’t have gone sneaking around at a suggestion like this under normal circumstances. Still, Rodana was her best friend—that was one thing. And there was also the fact that… well, she had a certain other reason to go looking in at Dani’s things. Even though Anna was a bit mortified by her parents’ conspicuous closeness (as most girls would be at that age), she couldn’t help but feel a bit… curious. Not about Dani—no—but Dani’s wife, Felicita Bagrationi-Uplistsikhe. The older Georgian woman was so graceful, so mature, so… alluring, with her dark hair, her dark eyes… her lush full lips, which made Anna’s heart skip every time they smiled—which made her wish they’d smile at her that way. Was this strange feeling—was this what other girls her age felt for boys? Was it normal for her to feel this way about her uncle’s wife? But Anna had given Rodana the nod, herself only half-knowing the fascinations that drove her to it.

Rodana and Anna dutifully presented the vegetables they’d been sent for to the kitchen staff, and then snuck out the back, taking the narrow, shaded walk between the inner and outer walls of the castle around toward the back of the stables. The two naughty little girls climbed up the lattice on the rear, and slid into the loft through the thatching. Anna, the smaller of the two, got through first. She opened the trapdoor in the loft, swung her legs down, and dropped neatly into a loose pile of hay.

As luck would have it, she’d landed right next to Dani’s roan beast. The horse turned its head idly in her direction, but seeing nothing there but a dark-haired imp of a girl, the roan turned back away from her and continued its rest. Anna snuck over to where the saddlebags were hanging—on a nail halfway up the far post of the stall. Rodana, who by now had gotten safely through the thatching into the loft, poked her head down the trapdoor and gave her niece a gesture of encouragement. Anna lifted the soft leather flap of Dani’s saddlebag and sifted through the contents with her fingers.

There were a couple of tubular leather cases for carrying documents, as well as some spare clothes and a few loose coins. But—as Anna was lucky enough to discover—Uncle Dani carried with him a small linen satchel, within which was a locket. This locket contained a single lock of kinky black hair—it didn’t take Anna much guesswork to figure out whose it was. And the satchel also contained some lady’s perfume.

Anna knew it at once for Felicita’s. Her body responded with shudders as teenage hormones raged up and down her spine. Almost without knowing what she was doing, she lifted the linen satchel up to her nose and breathed the warm, spicy scent in deeply—allowing the dark smoky, sultry impressions of Felicità’s bare skin to imprint themselves on the poor teenage girl’s subconscious.

There was a sound of alarm from behind her. With a bit of annoyance at being yanked out of her olfactory reverie, Anna turned. Rodana was beckoning her to come back up and out—quickly. But Anna did not want to part with her newly-found treasure. The time she took in securing it cost her dearly. She had it stowed nearly fully away in the breast of her gown, and was making her way back up the pile of hay to the trapdoor, when a shadow fell across her path.

It was her father. Rodana retreated back up the loft and safely out of sight… but Anna was caught. She wouldn’t be able to reach the trapdoor in time. More: one drawstring of the linen satchel was still trailing over the front of her gown.

Bohodar lay a firm hand on Anna’s shoulder, and held out the other to receive her ill-gotten keepsake. With aching reluctance Anna parted with it. There was no sense hiding it now.

The Kráľ turned the linen satchel—an intimate gift from Felicita Bagrationi to her husband—over in his fingers, and then, without once leaving go his daughter’s shoulder, lifted the flap of Dani’s saddlebag and replaced the precious thing where it had been found.

‘Now,’ Bohodar told Anna, ‘what were you doing in here?’

Anna looked up into her father’s disappointed eyes, flushing brighter and hotter than she had ever done (so it seemed to her now). She wished that the trodden earth of the stall floor would open up and swallow her, but it stubbornly refused to acquiesce to her wishes.

‘I—I took it,’ she told her father in a small voice. ‘I went through Dani’s things, and I took that… because it looked pretty. And it reminded me of Aunt Felicita. I’m sorry—I know it was wrong.’

Bohodar’s hand squeezed Anna’s shoulder. He asked her gently: ‘You… admire Aunt Felicita?’

Anna was grateful for the ambiguous way her father had phrased that. She nodded, her eyes still low.

‘Well,’ Bohodar told her, ‘perhaps there are… better ways to show your admiration than stealing, what say you to that?’

Anna nodded. Tears welled in her eyes. Even this oblique scolding her father was giving her stung—as, of course, it was meant to. Her father’s disappointment was worse than any spanking.

‘Still—I’m happy that you told me the truth, without embellishment or excuse,’ Bohodar continued gently. ‘And I’m happy to have raised a daughter who knows the value of her word. You still, however, owe Uncle Dani an apology.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Anna answered her father.

~~~

The crash resounded in the courtyard, followed by the cries of half a dozen men. The tone of these cries was urgent and dire—even at this distance, Bohodar’s ears did pick up that much. And even in his current predicament (actually, his wife’s), Bohodar could not ignore such a cry when it came. With some effort he broke his concentration away from the door which led to his wife’s birthing-chamber, and flung himself down the stairs in the direction of the courtyard. It was several weeks after the incident in the stables with Anna, and their seventh child was past due.

Bohodar sprinted out the door and across the courtyard, where he could see that a half-moon of the castle watch had gathered: and there was an unconscious man right in the middle of them, lying in a pool of his own blood. And little wonder—the jagged end of what looked like a practice-spear was lodged deep in his side.

Actually, now that he was closer, Bohodar knew his face by sight. This red-bearded man was a scion of the kings Mojmír and Rastislav, kin to the kniežatá of Nitra: his name was Pribina Mikulčický. Now it was somewhat less wonder that he’d come by such an injury. Pribina was one of the most fearless, and simultaneously most incorrigible, of Bohodar’s watch-captains. His character could well be considered ‘foolhardy’. But this was no time to judge rights and wrongs. Pribina’s life was at stake and every minute would count.

Kveta Kostolanská was busy assisting the midwife with Czenzi. Botta wasn’t about to call her down. But he himself was here. He sent for a bucket of clean water and tore off a long section from his own tunic to serve as a basic tourniquet. He’d washed the wound and removed the jagged splinters, and was beginning to struggle in wrapping it around Pribina’s midsection when another face appeared, blessedly, in the half-ring of dismayed looks. It was Knieža Daniel.

‘Brother,’ Botta gestured to Dani. ‘Come here and help me!’

Daniel neither hesitated, nor dithered, nor asked needless questions. Instead he lent whatever adroitness was in his fingers and whatever muscle was in his shoulders and arms to do the king’s bidding, occasionally lending his own voice to whatever practical considerations Botta had overlooked and needed voicing. Somehow, the Kráľ of Moravia and the Knieža of the Czechs somehow muddled through together, and Pribina’s wound was cleaned and staunched. The man was out senseless and would likely be weak and tender for the next few weeks—but he would live.

A sweating, panting Bohodar turned to Dani. ‘Thanks, brother.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Dani told him, clouting the king friendly on the shoulder.

When it came time, Daniel accompanied Bohodar up to the chamber he’d come from. By the time they got there, Kveta was already waiting for them. The pair of them made quite a sight—sweating, tired, and smeared with large gouts of another man’s blood. But Kveta kept her composure and held out an infant girl for her father’s inspection.

‘Milady the Queen already gave her a name,’ Kveta told him. ‘Apparently that’s “Eva” you’re holding.’

‘Hello there, Eva,’ Botta swayed gently with the newborn. Daniel looked over his shoulder and grinned.

‘She’s pretty, your Eva. Looks a lot like our Slávka,’ Dani noted. That was no small praise—Slávka Rychnovská was only two, but already quite the prepossessing little princess.

‘That’s hardly a surprise—the two of them are cousins.’

‘Even so.’

Bohodar handed the baby back to Kveta. ‘How’s Czenzi doing?’

‘She’s well. But she’s getting on in years for childbirth—come back after she’s had some time to rest.’

Bohodar nodded his understanding and sympathy, asking Kveta to promise Czenzi for him that he’d come and visit her later, and went off with Dani.

‘By the by,’ Dani said to Botta, ‘I never got the chance to thank you for talking with Burgomistress Guta. I don’t know what it was you told her about me, but she’s been much more cooperative with me since then. Lot less reticent.’

‘I only told her the truth,’ Bohodar shrugged.

‘Is that so?’ Dani laughed diffidently. ‘I’m surprised she isn’t more reticent now!’

‘Well…’ Bohodar shrugged. ‘I told her about Benny.’

‘No!’

‘I told her all about Benny—how you kept dragging that dirty ragged old thing around like a baby till you were nine. I also told her about you chasing Živa all over the courtyard and into the town.’

‘You didn’t!’ Dani laughed nervously. ‘Did you?’

‘I did,’ Botta deadpanned.

Dani swung a fist, pummelled Bohodar hard in the back, and laughed. ‘You’re terrible!’

Bohodar kicked a stone aside in his stride. ‘Dani—you’re my brother. If I’d gone and showered you with nothing but praises from the off in front of our good Burgomistress, she’d have been suspicious, and rightly so. But… you know… Guta’s a mother with grown children of her own. She understands boys. Letting her know these things about you—that helped build her sympathy. From there, it was only a simple matter to convince her of your judiciousness and goodwill.’

Dani smirked, offering a gentler hit this time. ‘Well… thanks. I guess.’

‘Anytime, bro!’

‘Given how successful your ploy was with Anna—and I’m still not sure you did me a completely good turn there—I take it your little “test” worked just as well with Anna?’ asked Dani.

Bohodar sighed. ‘She’s a sharp one. Saw right through it.’

Dani breathed out a low whistle.

‘I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s a kindhearted one, as well as being quick-witted—I’m sure she noticed something was “off” about the whole situation. Of course she insisted on taking the animal home, nursing it back to health and releasing it back into the woods… but she’s still suspicious of me.’

‘Maybe this will teach you to be more straightforward with your wards,’ Dani twirled a stray lock of his thin red beard innocently.

Bohodar chuckled. ‘Maybe.’

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-TWO
Two Hearts as Close
5 March 1165 – 24 July 1166​

Bohodar traced a finger down Czenzi’s shoulder, as he lay behind her, big spoon, beneath the covers. The two of them were lax in afterglow, comfortable in each other’s warmth.

Her tawny skin was no longer bright and flawlessly smooth with youth, but in some places mottled with the marks of middle age. The hairs which teased across it were no longer solid sable-black, but streaked here and there with strands of silver. Botta slid his hand down. The proud and prominent curves which he had admired and desired in his youth, had gently sloped and drooped with use—the flow and ebb of mother’s milk. He slid his hand further down. His fingers brushed over the long, thin traces upon her wame, of their seven children, who had lain and grown and been born within. And he slid his hand still further down. There was a notable sag now to her haunches—the horsewoman’s haunches that had been so firm and strong when he’d wooed her, but which had grown accustomed to an easy life as the lady of castle and kingdom.

But she had never before, in Botta’s eyes, been as beautiful as this. Never before as desirable. It felt wrong even to call these marks of age ‘imperfections’, because they were so familiar and reassuring to him! Were these the eyes of love he saw her through? Was this the feel of love? There were no secrets between them—not even the secrets he learned of his vassals were kept hidden from her. Was she the dearer and the sweeter to him for being his, for having been his so faithfully and so long, that to touch her was like the feeling of an old leather glove?

‘What are you doing?’ Czenzi sighed in sleepy tolerance into her pillow. ‘Haven’t you had enough?’

‘I can never get enough of you,’ Botta murmured back to her. ‘But I didn’t mean… I was just thinking…’

‘Mm?’

Botta shook his head. Never mind. To say aloud to her in mere words, what he thought and felt now, would be to cheapen it. Instead he let his hands speak for him, to let her understand through a more intimate mode of expression. Czenzi turned around where she lay to face him, and traced his cheek and neck in turn. She gave a slight smile as she returned his reverent gaze. Yes, she understood what he meant. And evidently, she felt the same way.

~~~​

‘Still got it,’ Czenzi told her husband a couple of months after, having emerged from their bedroom.

‘No… it can’t be,’ Bohodar smiled.

‘It is. Your seed is strong, my flesh is fertile, and the Mother of God, blessed among women, is gracious.’

Czenzi drew her husband’s hand down to her belly… where their eighth child was. Bohodar laughed aloud, and looked into his wife’s merrily sparkling amber lights. She had passed her forty-sixth birthday, but their bed was still warm with passion, and somehow she still had the gift—her earth was still receptive and lush with life. It seemed to be the will of God that the royal nursery be filled to overflowing with their Moravian-Hungarian scamps, both black- and fair-avised.

One more to join the nursery, just as another had left it! Seemed fitting. Not only had their eldest two already begun making their way in the world, but Bohodar’s youngest sister Rodana as well. The elder brother had hoped Rodana would follow in his and their father’s footsteps, but evidently the life of knowledge and contemplation was not exactly the one for her.

Bohodar went straight back into the bedroom after Czenzi had settled down to breakfast, knelt in front of the iconostasis and gave thanksgiving to the Most Holy Mother of God for her blessings upon him and Czenzi.

Many had been the blessings that they had enjoyed. He had two sisters, one of whom he respected deeply as a friend, a younger brother who was a loyal vassal. He had seven children—all of whom were remarkably intelligent and virtuous, each after their own personality—and another on the way. And he had Czenzi: more loyal than a spaniel, more reliable than a draught horse, as patient and humble as a saint… the only woman he’d ever love.

And, as king, he had managed to retain the peace of the realm without disturbance.

Actually, that part was no mystery. Bohodar had, in fact, spent a great deal of time and energy on actively maintaining the justice of the realm, to keep violence far from the horizon. On the surface, it was a matter of a ready ear and an open hand. When Bohodar visited a town, a village or a manor within his realm, he took care to listen not only to his host, but to his host’s household. He took care to observe the children in particular where he went. He asked about the winters and the roads. In this wise, he was able to assign Rodislav Balharski-Borsa to the towns and fiefs that needed the most attention—and the roads were well cared-for and safe. Banditry was rare, and Bohodar was broadly hailed as a caring monarch with a popular touch.

Regular gifts were enough to keep most of his vassals contented. Czenzi’s friendship had been enough to pacify Slavomíra’s and Gorislava’s ambitions, while they lived—and, of course, now it was her cousin Ľubava who was happily eating out of her hand. The fact that his son and heir was marrying Rodislav Balharski-Borsa’s granddaughter was enough to keep his šafár loyal. (Though Bohodar had sent Rodislav the carcase of a great hart which he’d managed to bring down in the late spring.)

But that was just on the surface. Bohodar had quickly learned that a bit of subtlety was required under the table… not that subterfuge was his strong suit, but his natural intelligence was such that he’d picked up on a few of the basics. He’d long had a suspicion that Bystrík Mikulčický had been behind the attempt on his life and Czenzi’s in their forest dwelling, but had never been able to prove it. And although, in the open, he got along fairly well with Bystrík, there had nevertheless been several incidents—diplomatic faux pases, various forms of interference with state affairs from within his own household… All of these incidents had borne the subtle signature of having originated in Nitra, or were otherwise somehow connected with the place. Bystrík had clearly not given up his efforts to undermine Bohodar’s rule from the shadows. As a result, Bohodar played his cards fairly close to his chest when consulting with concerned parties, making calls upon vassals, managing his household or entertaining foreign delegations and persons of importance—and he structured these events such that Bystrík would not get a firm hold on them until after the plans were already well in place and in hand.

Czenzi gave birth to another healthy baby girl. Although both she and her husband were more than happy with this late blessing they’d been given, still Bohodar detected a faint trace of sadness in her.

‘What’s wrong, kedvesem?’

Czenzi hesitated, shook her head—then spoke: ‘She is beautiful and precious, just like all of our children. It’s just that—in all this time since Vojta was born, I’d hoped I’d give birth to another boy! I wanted to name at least one of our children after you.’

Bohodar was touched. He stroked a lock of his wife’s hair away from her sweating brow, and told her gently: ‘Well… you could always call her Bohdana, couldn’t you?’

‘Bohdana?’ Czenzi tilted her head doubtfully, then looked back down at the pink, doughy-faced little infant in her arms, with just the barest dusting of dark hair upon her still-soft scalp. She returned her gaze to her husband, and smiled. ‘And what patron would “Bohdana” take for her own, then? Not Saint Matthew, as yours is!’

‘The martyr and virgin Dorota of Cæsarea, I believe, is the patron of Bohdanas in the Slavic lands,’ the knowledgeable king answered.

Czenzi considered. ‘One of the martyrs of the Persecution of Diocletian, hm? Very well… Bohdana she is.’

‘I’ll have the painter commission an icon of Saint Dorota for the chapel before her churching,’ Bohodar promised his wife.

The icon collection of the personal palace chapel at Olomouc had grown significantly since Bohodar’s marriage to Czenzi. The icons of Christ, the Theotokos, Saint John the Baptist and the Icon-Not-Made-By-Hands had seemingly always been there. The icon of Saint Matthew the Evangelist, of course, the patron of Bohodar slovoľubec and all of the Bohodars after him, enjoyed a certain pride of place, as did Saint Martin the Merciful (the patron of the Radomírs). Saint Crescentia of Lucania—Czenzi’s patron—was currently prominently displayed, as was Saint Ealhswiþ, the patron of Bohodar’s mother Alswit.

And then of course there were the icons of Great Martyr Catherine of Alexandria (for Katka), Holy Prophet Daniel (for Dani), Virgin Martyr Gaianē of Armenia (for Rodana). For Czenzi and Bohodar’s children there were: Equal-to-the-Apostles Helen the mother of Constantine; for Vojta a certain locally-recognised saint, Adalbert of Praha, who had been martyred in the north while preaching among the pagan Poles; the Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God Joachim and Anna; Saint Chloë of Corinth (for Rósza); Queen Blažena’s old icon of Virgin Martyr Beatrix (scarcely used by said ancestress, now venerated a bit more diligently by her descendant); an icon of the Protecting Veil of Our Lady (for Blahomíra); and one of the Holy Resurrection (for Eva). An icon of Virgin Martyr Dorota would not be difficult to add!

The icon was already painted, blessed and shown when Bohdana herself was dunked three times in the Morava, and afterward presented at the altar.

It was sometime after this that—of all men—Bystrík Mikulčický, the Knieža of Nitra, issued a very polite invitation of the king and his family to a feast at his hall in Nitra, delivered decorously by one of the zbrojnošov of his personal retinue. Such honours from the descendants of Mojmír extended to the dynasts from Rychnov nad Kněžnou were rare and precious indeed, and Kráľ Bohodar felt he would have been deeply remiss to refuse. For her part, Czenzi was quite excited to receive the invitation.

‘What would you say, dear,’ asked Bohodar, ‘to giving the Mikulčických a nice full dinner set of Bohemian crystal as a gift?’

‘It would certainly be valuable enough,’ Czenzi considered. ‘Yes. I like the idea of bringing glassware, but guests in our position ought to be careful. If we offer them a full dinner set, and bring it with us as a gift for a feast they’ve prepared—the hostess might consider it an insult to her hospitality, as though we are passing a judgement upon their current wares.’

‘Ah,’ the king nodded, appreciating his wife’s diplomatic subtlety.

‘Perhaps a vase… or a wine decanter of Bohemian glass,’ Czenzi indicated with a decisive finger. ‘Our hostess would not be offended if we offer an additional centrepiece. And… perhaps some silver or cast-iron figurines? Bystrík strikes me as somewhat of a collector—not keeping the figurines necessarily to play or model with, but just to have and appreciate.’

Bohodar laughed. ‘What would I do without you? You’re two steps ahead of me on this.’

‘And that’s why you love me,’ Czenzi grinned.

Once Bohodar and his consort arrived in Nitra, the Kráľ had a chance to appreciate just how correct his wife was. Bystrík had pulled out all the stops. The wine, which had been imported from Byzantium, was of the very highest quality—unwatered, sweet and strong. Bystrík had set out all manner of fine pastries: sweet rolls dipped in honey and crushed almonds; rolled záviny filled with apples, blueberries, cherries and other such confections; feathery-light laskonky, delicately-sweet, dripping with buttercream. This in addition to the full roast pig on a spit; chickens, ducks, quails and other gamefowl done to perfection with crispy skin and succulent meat; eggs of the same prepared in mouthwateringly savoury ways; turnips and radishes prepared with both savoury and sweet sauces; candied apples and plums. All of it so elaborately and ornately shown out upon platters of silver and silver-plate and intricately-coloured glassware, that it was as much a feast to the palate of the eyes as to that of the nose and the tongue. (Of a sudden, Bohodar was happy of his wife’s considerate advice not to bring the entire Bohemian glassware dinner set as a gift—surely she was right about how it would be received here!)

Their host, his bushy salt and pepper beard stretching at the edges in the delight of anticipation, appeared before them. Bystrík spread his arms wide and said to the assembled guests, casting a more lingering glance over the royal couple who had arrived— ‘Everyone, please sit! Be comfortable and be merry! Enjoy in the graciousness of Our Lord and Saviour the blessings of this day!’

There was not one mouth in that hall which showed any trace of displeasure or anguish as they all sat down and set to. Bohodar found himself seated next to an elderly, choleric-faced burgomaster with whom he was not familiar, of a local town named Levice not too far from Nitra, who went by the name of Drahomír. Bohodar struck up a most intriguing conversation with the fellow, who possessed a rather limited store of information and that of a rather parochial quality. But despite this paucity of external knowledge, Drahomír was blessed with the infinitely more important clarity of mind, open goodwill and curiosity that Bohodar found not only refreshing but admirable, and rendered him a most companionable conversation partner. The two of them spoke happily about the state of Drahomír’s town and the surrounding villages, the various guests he’d entertained at Levice, the recent surplus of crops and tax receipts, and the plans that Drahomír was entertaining for improvements to Levice on the basis of this newfound wealth.

‘Was a youngster came by on the Užhorod road, name of Branislav,’ Drahomír was saying. ‘Told me that our town water wheel that we use for the mill could stand some repair, and even made some suggestions for improving the scoops. See here, this is what he showed me—’

Drahomír began to draw with the edge of his knife upon his plate, using wine as ink, the general shape of the new scoop that Branislav had suggested. ‘He said if it were angled this way, we might catch more of the river, get more turns out of the water each minute, than if we just kept them straight. Also might save us wear on the wheel itself.’

‘Ahhh…’ Bohodar nodded. This was not his particular area of expertise, but he could tell that the design might indeed work the way it was promised. ‘A fair idea. Did he model it for you? And what was the price he offered?’

‘Well, he—’

At that point, Bohodar felt a tug on his left sleeve. Czenzi had so gestured, to get his attention. Making a noise of polite disengagement from Drahomír, he turned to his wife.

‘I do not wish to worry you, my love,’ Czenzi told him. ‘But Bystrík our host has not taken his eyes off you this entire time you’ve been speaking with Drahomír. Perhaps it’s nothing, but my thumbs prick.’

Do not wish to worry me! Bohodar thought incredulously. Well, that was exactly what he was doing now. Indeed, now that Bohodar’s eyes were more turned toward the high table, Bystrík seemed to have left off the intensity of that regard slightly, and turned to the guest seated on his left instead. And that was when Bohodar took notice of a large, gleaming, enticing confection made up of caramelised pears—that had been set by one of the servants right before his eyes. Right within his reach… and that of no other guest save Drahomír and Czenzi.

Now, Kráľ Bohodar loved pears. And he loved caramel. The people who knew this intimate detail of his were privileged indeed—Czenzi was one such.

‘Eat nothing the other guests don’t eat,’ Czenzi cautioned him in a low voice.

Bohodar needed no second reminder. But each time he caught Bystrík looking his way it was with an odd gleam in his eye. And—was it just paranoid fancy? Or did it seem to him that Bystrík’s temper with the servants grew shorter and shorter, each time the host noted that the caramelised pears had not been touched?

With a brusque and irritable clap of the hands, Bystrík ordered the desserts to be carried away and for another round of wine to be served. If there had been anything wrong with those pears, Bohodar would never know now… though perhaps that was for the best. Bohodar came away from that feast in Nitra with a still deeper appreciation for his consort, who may well have just saved his life.

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-THREE
Balharská-Borsa
3 December 1166 – 2 August 1168

‘Father?’ came the daughter’s familiar voice. ‘What are you up to?’

Bohodar looked up from his alchemical apparatus and toward where his insatiably-curious daughter had come into the room. He smiled as he beheld Anna’s face, her small nose wrinkling at the malodorous pall hanging about her father’s laboratory, then showed her what he was working on.

‘I’m trying to refine some of my ancestor Slovoľubec’s theories,’ Bohodar showed her. ‘He set up an experiment similar to this one, which produced a shiny yellowish substance when lead was heated up in a cast-iron vessel with burning pine resin amid molten brimstone.’

‘Is that so?’ asked Anna. ‘Well, that explains the smell. You be careful, Father—I hear folk are already calling you “another Slovoľubec”, and you might well end up stuck with that reputation.’

‘There are worse things,’ Bohodar shrugged. ‘The founder of our house wasn’t a bad sort, from what I’ve read of him.’

‘And do you think you’ll succeed where he didn’t? At least, here in the laboratory.’

Bohodar laughed. ‘Even with our ancestor’s translation of the Risâlat in hand along with the original, I doubt I’ll make much headway myself. But I have made some other substances out of the original base with different processes, which I’ve taken note of in my journals.’

Anna pored over them, her delicate eyebrows rising appreciatively. ‘Sweet lead, salt of Saturn and vinegar of Saturn—you went back to the old “golden rain” experiment here, I see. Natural enough place to start. Massicot, litharge, red and white lead, of course, and that wretched Venetian stuff… and then with the non-lead bases: green and blue vitriol. Verdigris. Powder of Algaroth. Regulus of antimony. Butter of tin. Fulminating substances. You’ve been busy here.’

‘I see you recognise them from my notes,’ Bohodar answered his daughter. ‘You’ve been busy as well!’

‘I pay attention, and I listen,’ Anna answered modestly. ‘People who don’t tend to… lose their edge. Speaking of which—what’s this I hear from Mother? That bastard Bystrík tried to have you poisoned this summer just gone?!’

‘Mm,’ Bohodar muttered darkly.

‘I hope you’re not accepting any more invites,’ Anna told him archly. ‘Lucky thing Mother was there with you, else… I don’t want to think of it.’

‘Well, you’ll be happy to know that I’m not going back to Nitra anytime soon,’ Bohodar assured her.

‘I am. A bit. I still wish you wouldn’t alienate your kin. Last time I saw Vojvoda Svätopluk he didn’t seem too happy with you.’

Bohodar regarded his daughter thoughtfully. Anna was among the brightest of his children, and he had grown close to her as she’d grown up. She was one of the few among his offspring who could hold her own in discussing theology or history or politics with him, and the fact that she knew her alchemy as well was an added bonus. An idea was forming in his mind, but he kept it percolating along with the various oils and vitriols he was concocting for some time before he broached it to Anna.

‘Anka—you’re going to come of age soon.’

‘I’m aware.’

‘No need to give me that look. With age come responsibilities,’ Bohodar continued amicably. ‘Now that Kveta Kostolanská is no longer with us, what would you say to taking on some of her duties, once you’re ready for them?’

‘Me, sir?’ Anna blossomed into a becoming smile. ‘Be the court leech?’

‘You surely have the gift. Not all the duties at once, of course. And I’d see to it you’d be compensated accordingly,’ her father told her. ‘I’d be willing to give you an advance of ten denár once you start.’

‘That’s not all there is to it,’ Anna said, a slight cloud coming over her brow.

‘… No, it isn’t.’ Bohodar was getting better about being more straightforward with his wards—and Anna in particular he knew well enough not to try to conceal the truth from her. She was naturally perceptive and, after the incident with the doe, understandably suspicious. ‘If you’re going to be my court leech, I would want you anchored here for good. I’d have to arrange a morganatic marriage for you… and I’ve already found a willing boy.’

Anna’s nose wrinkled more than when she’d first stepped foot in the room. ‘Who is he?’

‘His name’s Rogvolod,’ Bohodar answered her. ‘A White Russian, recently hosted by the lord of Šrensk.’

Anna sighed. ‘Well, I suppose I must, if I must.’

Bohodar looked at his daughter with some concern. ‘I know you have… different tastes. The benefit about Rogvolod, in my view, is that he seems to be a fairly tolerant and understanding young lad.’

Anna shook her head. ‘No, father. Don’t worry about me. I know my duties. I shall fulfil them.’

~~~​

Bohodar was a great deal more sanguine about the marriages of his older children. Helene had been married off to Mavrikios son of Nerseh, the heir to the Euxine port city of Lykostomo on the Danube—a politically advantageous match. And then, of course, there was the match between Vojtech Rychnovský and Kostislava Balharská-Borsa. A son and heir’s job was to get more sons—Kostislava had the physical enticements, and Vojta had the will. That boded well enough for the Moravian Kráľ.

The blood of the great Khan Krum and Khan Presian of the Bulgars flowed in the Balharski dynasty. This once proud dynasty had seen its fortunes decline precipitously since the days of Eustach. What had once been the Bulgarian Empire had been riven apart into various feuding principalities and petty kingdoms—those parts of it, that is, that hadn’t been swiftly swallowed up between the Byzantines on the one hand, the Vlachs and the Magyars on the other. Many prominent Bulgarian families had sought refuge in Moravia in the wake of these wars. By the time the Balharski-Borsas showed up in Znojmo, the blood of the Great Bulgarian Khans had thinned to a mere trace. They had already intermarried with numerous successive generations of Rus’ and Slovien women: Rodislav’s wife was Pravomila Devínská; their son Ivan had married Slávka Rychnovská-Kluczbork. Kostislava was their daughter.

The time-honoured handfasting of the two youths had taken place in Znojmo. As the Balharská girl appeared, it was clear that the ‘ripening on the vine’ had been all to the good for her. Her heavy auburn braids, twined through with red ribbons as the custom demanded, had grown fuller, sleeker, richer in the intervening five years since Vojta had seen her last. Her high cheekbones and heavy-lidded eyes gave her an earthy, matronal allure even at the tender age of sixteen, and her apple-wedge lips couldn’t have been redder if they were petals on a late-summer Bulgarian rose.

As for Kostislava—looking at the king’s son (whose rank gave him an appeal all its own) she saw a becomingly-tall man with a thick crop of lustrous black curls on his head, a neatly-trimmed beard, and a pair of dark eyes nearly as pretty as a girl’s. Yes—she would be more than happy to marry this young man. She extended her hand, and her groom gripped it.

According to the time-honoured Slavic custom shared between the Bulgarians and the Moravians, the handfasting was the point of no return. All the rest of the ceremony was formality, as the groom’s family and the bride’s family haggled over the fine points of the nuptial agreement, honoured and renewed their pledges of political assistance, swapped gifts or undertook various ceremonial competitions, mock fights and staged kidnappings. If Vojta and Kostislava chose to touch and kiss each other, or even to sleep together at her manor during their handfasting and prior to their vows, that was broadly considered to be their right and prerogative: the families were already bound. This was one of those areas in which the Church piously frowned upon the local traditions, but didn’t speak too loudly on the matter particularly where powerful local families were concerned.

But Vojta and Kostislava kept themselves circumspectly apart during the handfasting—neither bride nor groom were inclined to make any particular rush of things. Kostislava was still a virgin when she exchanged her red ribbons for strands of pearl, and then tossed her strands of pearl to her maids. And she remained so when she put her arms around Vojta’s neck, was lifted up by the backs of her knees, and carried over the threshold into Olomouc Castle.

And the once-mighty Balharski family’s position within the Moravian patrimony was thus rendered secure—as it would so remain for several generations afterward. Perhaps the Balharskis would return to their former greatness, and become mighty again once more.

 

[Revan86]

Thank you for the update. Do you have any ideas how prevalent the stat value? IE, learning of Botta (35) and Anna (19). Do you think that Botta is 1 in 10,000 level and Anna in 1 in 100. Good luck with the munchkins.

I haven't dug deep enough to know anything like that. I know that base stats can go as high as 99, but it's a very blue moon that I see any character, player or otherwise, with a score above 40. Based solely on what I've seen, I would guess that the median base attribute score for an adult character (in good health, with no handicaps) is about 10, with a standard distribution of 3 or 4 points in either direction. But you'd have to ask a game developer about that. Thanks as always for the comment, @Midnite Duke!

Well, that's another marriage that's up to a good start, it seems. Kostislava both has an agreeable personality, smarts and... other benefits. Vojta's understandably happy, for now at least.

Yup. And Vojta stays understandably happy for awhile. Welcome back and thanks for the comment, @alscon!

TWENTY-FOUR
Once Again in Antioch
12 September 1168 – 19 December 1173

Anna took to her new duties as her father’s court leech with zeal and dedication that could only be described as ‘religious’. She walked about the castle with a copy of the Animadversiones de occasu ossium crooked under her arm like a Psalter. She could be seen in her off-hours poring over Arabic and Greek tomes that had been brought back from their native lands, in an attempt to supplement her Norman French great-great-great-great-grandmother’s formidable repository of medical knowledge with the wisdom of other sources. And—more to the point—her cures took such effect that she had scarcely turned seventeen before she was already trusted by her patients, and accounted to be a physician of noted skill.

This was of great and consequential help to her elder brother. Kostislava had not spent two months in Olomouc Castle before it was determined she was pregnant—the newlywed couple had lost no time. Anna accompanied and counselled her sister-in-law all throughout her term, with Queen Czenzi close at hand the whole time, whose experience in pregnancy and childbirth had been the most extensive. And Anna presided with midwife and priest in the delivery of their child when her due day arrived. Soon the young court physic held in her hands—her first nephew, a healthy youngster whom their parents named Želimír. Vojta and Kostislava both shared the wish, that the peace which Vojta’s father had built would be preserved through his reign and his son’s and his grandson’s.

Not sure I've seen a bride give birth before turning seventeen before...​

Naturally the Kráľ welcomed his grandson’s birth with great joy—and approved his son’s choice of name for the little boy. The king had his hands full, however, tutoring two other children.

It had not escaped his attention that Czenzi did favour somewhat their daughter Rózsa—who alone among their children bore a Hungarian name (which still held meaning among the Slovien). And so he had taken to giving her his personal attention.

In addition, he had taken on the tutelage of his maršal Knieža Nonn’s grandson Rostislav Koceľuk. It took some effort for Botta to refrain from calling him ‘Pavelkov’: the reigning Pavelkov branch had taken to cleping themselves, not after Pavel the father of Boľka, but instead after his more illustrious Pannonian Slavic ancestor Koceľ, the better to add to their glory. And the little golden-haired lad was more comfortable in his own Carpatho-Russian tongue than in the language of the court, and Nonn had gratefully taken the opportunity of having his grandson be educated in Olomouc—by the king, no less!

Rózsa and Rostislav were two pease in a pod! In truth, little Roško rather hero-worshipped his elder foster-sister. Whenever the bookish little Rózsa would pore over the Scriptures as part of her lessons, so too would Roško. When she spent extra time kneeling at prayer before the icon of her patron Saint Chloë, little Roško would do the same. When she took to speaking of the mercy of Jesus Christ and the necessity of living a pure and blameless life of fasting and prayer, Roško fastidiously imitated her.

‘What do you mean by that, you little peasant?’ one of the town boys gave the blond-haired boy a heavy shove, pushing him backward.

‘I mean—I mean—’ Roško looked around at the ring of Moravian lads, all of whom were older and bigger than he was, fighting to keep the panic from his voice, ‘just—if we aren’t careful to adorn ourselves with virtue—if we don’t keep our wicks trimmed, and oil in our lamps—’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ the older kid sneered. ‘Listen to this villain’s brat, lecturing us like he’s some starec! Don’t you think we ought to teach him a lesson, boys?’

Roťko made a weak attempt to push the older kid away and get out of the ring, but he was shoved squarely back into the middle. The Moravians closed around him, their eyes beginning to gleam with the cruelty eyes bestowed only upon those who know their quarry has no means of fighting back.

They didn’t see a slender, wiry form come shooting into the ring, black braid flying out behind her like a bandit’s banner—throwing sharp little fists and elbows into the field of Roško’s attackers. She managed to bloody some noses and jab a few throats before coming into some bruises and scrapes of her own as she got flung onto the cobbles of the street. Roško flung himself, with a boldness that seemed to come from outside him, onto the back of the one who had thrown his foster-sister down—and bit him hard on the ear. A yelp and a curse rewarded him, but he was quickly enough dislodged and flung off. But between them, Rózsa and Roško had exhausted the town boys’ taste for fighting, and they picked themselves up and left.

‘Are you alright?’ asked Rózsa of little Rostislav. She already had a black eye starting to swell, a cut lip, a torn skirt and a bleeding shin.

‘Okay,’ he said, nursing a couple scrapes of his own. ‘Thanks.’

‘Do not let them stop you,’ Rózsa told him, laying a grave hand on his shoulder. ‘You do honour to Our Lord by spreading His word, even if some of the seed may fall on stony ground. Focus on your own reward—do what you can, but leave them to theirs.’

Rostislav nodded seriously, and the two of them made their way back up hand-in-hand to the castle.

That wasn’t the only time Roško had taken to imitating his elder foster-sister. When Kostislava was still in bed recuperating from the birth of her firstborn, Rózsa had come in with a game-fowl soup she’d boiled herself to help her sister-in-law feel better. And that afternoon, not many hours later, Roško had come in with some fresh blueberries he’d picked himself for Kostislava to eat. It made the Kráľ happy to see both of his wards follow in Christ’s footsteps not only in word, but in deeds of mercy and love.

Rózsa managed to make her father proud in other ways. Despite her willingness to jump into scuffles and her seemingly inexhaustible zeal for Holy Orthodoxy, she was a remarkably clever girl with a particular gift for managing lands. Seeing how the girl was (understandably) the apple of Queen Czenzi’s eye, King Bohodar made arrangements with the headwoman of the Serbian zadruga of Užice, Marija Markića, to have her young son Ioan betrothed morganatically to his daughter. Rózsa, understanding that this would afford her the opportunity to stay home with her elder sister and her mother, agreed readily to the match.

~~~​

The Kráľ spent his time these days still circuiting the lands which he ruled. He might go on the occasional hunt or two and bring back a trophy for one of his daughters, but by and large these hunts served primarily as a pretext for continually examining the state of the roads and the villages. Bohodar was not content to sit behind the walls of Olomouc Castle and rule from afar. Much like Kráľ Eustach, Bohodar wanted very much to place his rule closer to the common people of Moravia, to the bower and to the craftsman—and to ensure that the peace he desired to build in his realm reached them. The king’s court therefore often was held in the open, in the villages where he went ‘hunting’.

Also, if Rózsa had learned zeal in her childhood, at least it could be said that she had come by it honestly. Bohodar still suffered pangs of contrition for his violent youth, and routinely sought to ease his conscience by sending money to Constantinople, or by seeking solace in… unconventional methods of meditative prayer. Once had he very nearly earned a rebuke from his own Archbishop Vlastimil for his pursuit of such methods.

It got to the point where he began very seriously to contemplate yet another journey to the ruins of the Great Dome.

‘I will say it again,’ said his ever-practical and ever-sensible wife, ‘don’t take any unnecessary risks. I know the romantic turn of your mind. I didn’t want you taking such risks for my love. I don’t even want you taking such risks for God’s.’

Bohodar held his wife soundly to him. ‘I won’t.’

‘Promise me.’

‘I promise.’

That turned out to be a fairly expensive promise to keep. The king hadn’t set out for a week on the Jerusalem Way before he found himself to be hopelessly turned about on a side road! Thankfully, still being within the borders of his own realm, he had no need to fear bandits. But it still cost him great effort to find a guide back to the main road—not to mention the promise of a hefty reward from his treasury! It was enough to elevate said guide to a minor honour upon the king’s return.

Bohodar’s common touch proved to be the stuff of stories well afield of his own marches, as well—as he quickly found upon listening with care and discretion to the tales that his fellow-pilgrims told. Bohodar learned that he was known by many cognomens abroad: ‘Ploughman-King’, ‘the Dove’, ‘Bower-Friend’ and ‘the Eccentric’… none of which nicknames seemed to have stuck at home. Bohodar wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful for that favour.

The walls of Antioch were known to Bohodar this time as he approached from the north. But this time, before he got there, he took a vantage point on the slopes of Mount Silpius. He took out a loose sheet of parchment, a knife, some charcoal and vinegar and a quill, and began to draught a view of the city of his pilgrimage. A gift for Czenzi.

Czenzi might not be able to accompany him on this journey—she was busy watching after Kostislava and their new grandson Žeľko—but at least Botta could bring her this back, along with a couple of other keepsakes from the journey. A worldly motivation? Perhaps. But he would not only pray for her and for those he loved here. When he returned to her, he wanted Czenzi to understand that even when she was apart from him, she was always within his mind and within his heart, never having left it for a second.

Maybe that was the ‘romantic turn of his mind’. But that mind was all Czenzi’s.

 

[Revan86]

WARNING: contains NSFW images!

TWENTY-FIVE
Ringwall
2 March 1174 – 13 January 1177

When Bohodar returned to Olomouc from Antioch, he found that a number of changes had occurred in his court. First and foremost among them, a pair of guests had arrived from the south of France: Faidida de Caorle and her husband Laurent de Conti. Laurent was unfortunately a bit haughty and aloof, but Faidida soon proved that she could be the life of any event she found herself in.

Perhaps this was not remarkable in and of itself—guests came and went from the castle all the time. But these two gave the Kráľ some misgivings. For one thing, despite clearly being highborn and secular, and despite clearly having the means for better, they refused to dress in anything but the most simple linen and homespun. For another thing, there was something a bit ‘off’ about them. It was not surprising that they would absent themselves from Vespers on Saturday or from Liturgy on Sunday—the West was Catholic. But the two of them didn’t even visit the merchants’ quarter on those days either. And when the topic of discussion turned to religion, Faidida and Laurent tended to speak about holy things in the kind of superior, smug tone of those to whom a particular and private knowledge had been given.

Kostislava was once again pregnant. Also, Blažena had come of age—and no sooner had word of it reached the ear of the sovereign lord of Sadec, Sokol Aqhazar, than he came to Bohodar to request the young lady’s hand. Bohodar happily allied himself to Sokol, a good man of a trusted family, who had long been allies of the Moravian crown.

And yet another piece of important news greeted Bohodar upon his return. Dani had founded his own house and moved his portion of the Rychnovský inheritance permanently into Prague. He called his branch of the Rychnovských ‘of the Upper Castle’, or Rychnovský-Vyšehrad. This decision prompted the convocation of a so-called council of heralds in Olomouc, the like of which had never taken place before.

It was an intriguing exercise for Botta to trace his family’s history back to its source. The wellsprings of the various Rychnovský houses’ fortunes sprang, ironically, not from any of the sons of Slovoľubec, but from the wombs of two of his daughters: Vlasta Rychnovská and Blažena Rychnovská.

Vlasta, through her honourable union with the Avar batyr Tüzniq of Humradž, had mothered two of the minor houses of Rychnovský: Rychnovský-Kluczbork through her great-grandson Nitrabor; and Rychnovský-Nisa through Nitrabor’s great-great-granddaughter Ladina. All of the other houses, including the main one, were birthed from Queen Blažena Rychnovská and her loyal, passionate but infamously-incestuous love for her nephew. Blažena’s and Bohodar 1.’s granddaughter Mislava, the eldest daughter of Kráľ Pravoslav, had taken Bogöri Srednogorski as her husband. Bogöri’s and Mislava’s great-grandson VojvodaMihail had been the one to formally found the house of Rychnovský-Žič, Mihail’s great-nephew Ján was the founder of the Rychnovský-Lehnice family, and Mihail’s great-grandson, Hrabě Krzysztof (nicknamed ‘Kito’) of Ukria had lately founded the house of Rychnovský-Berlín.

Olomouc; Kluczbork; Nisa; Žič; Lehnice; Berlín; and now Vyšehrad. Seven houses of one dynasty.

The Rychnovský clan had sprawled to such numbers, and risen to such multifarious honours not only within Moravia but also in Milčané and Slieszko, that new and formal methods of keeping track of them became necessary. Thankfully, there was no shortage of monks and clerks and armourers upon whom Kráľ Bohodar 3. could call, in order to draw out the many-branched and often-tangled family tree of the Rychnovských, and provide a formal register of the titles, lands and retainers which belonged to each branch.

There were, thankfully, some precedents to draw upon. The lion had long been a symbol of the Rychnovský family. There was a record of Slovoľubec bearing a round shield with a golden lion device on the front, though this was probably just a personal device rather than a symbol of his family. The association of the lion with the Rychnovských was solidified by Kráľ Jakub, who had an appearance and a voice which resembled a black lion—and this became his informal cognomen among the zbrojnošov who served with him. Thus, Bohodar decreed it, under the advice of his armourers, that the symbol of the Rychnovský family would forever be a single golden lion upon a black field.

The other heads of the respective houses of Rychnovský had been summoned to Olomouc on this occasion—not only Knieža Dani Rychnovský-Vyšehrad and Hrabě Kito Rychnovsk‎ý-Berlín, but also Arcivojvodkyňa Radomíra Rychnovská-Žič of Milčané, Vojvoda Svätopluk Rychnovský-Nisa of Horne Slieszko, Hrabě Ján Rychnovský-Lehnice of Lehnice and Burgomistress Miloslava Rychnovská-Kluczbork of Szeged. They were invited to discuss with the armourers and clerks the honours by which they would divide the field of their bearings.

Some common patterns quickly emerged from the heraldic council. The Kluczbork and Nisa families chose to signal their common descent from their Avar progenitor Tüzniq, by choosing a golden turul for placement upon their device. Žič and Berlín both chose to add a black lion to their device alongside the golden lion—and in addition, Kito chose the black bear as a symbol of his belonging to the town of Berlín. Dani chose a simple black field with a horizontal golden stripe to quarter his arms. And finally, Ján: an eagle with one red wing and one black wing.

The final ceremony by which all of these devices were blessed and processed around, through and out of the Olomouc courtyard, was indeed a grand one—as all of the various Rychnovský dynasts and cousins returned to their various seats of honour. It attested to the fecundity as well as to the power of the King’s line, and reflected great glory back upon his house.

And there was another benefit to all of the Rychnovských being gathered in one place. Vojta had taken it upon himself to open a proposal intending his firstborn son, Želimír, to the fair and well-favoured only daughter of Ján Rychnovský-Lehnice, named Živana: another match of a good-looking boy to an equally good-looking girl. And with all the talk of pedigrees flying about, it was quickly and openly determined that the two of them were in no danger of a too-closely-consanguineous relation. The Rychnovských-Lehnice, however, were a bit reticent to speak of a betrothal so soon.

~~~

Kostislava gave birth to another son that June, and she named him Bohodar.

The behaviour of their Occitan guests, however, grew—not really ‘stranger’, over the summer, fall and oncoming winter. Rather, it became clearer to those who were accustomed to their habits that the two of them were hiding some kind of secret.

This came at the same time that strange whispers of troubles in the Church of the West had begun to reach the ears of the Moravian court. Whenever rumours like this surfaced, Bohodar took care to exhaust in his own soul’s defence, the proper avenues for the health of the Church in Constantinople. But still they worried him. Fiery lay preachers had taken to traversing both banks of the Rhine preaching the end of the world. Others in Franconia had begun making freehand translations of the Gospels into vernacular German. In one Bavarian county, nearly the entire population had converted to Judaism. These were dark times for the Church.

And Faidida in particular clearly had an opinion on such matters.

‘We are clearly coming to the end,’ she opined one evening at the table. ‘Dissension is growing. The corruption among the clergy is boundless. Humankind is in decline, and the Antichrist will surely arrive soon to lead the mass of mankind to perdition. The only way to prepare is by casting aside all worldly vanities, all inhibitions and hypocrisies, all false distinctions between persons—and going back to the beginning. To the source.’

‘Oh?’ asked Bohodar. ‘And how would we go about doing that?’

Faidida smiled vaguely. There was a flirtatious play about her lips. ‘Oh, there is a method to it. And you do seem like a man who’s… open… to other methods of prayer. If you’re interested, I can show you.’

Czenzi’s eyes flashed up at that, and she sized up Faidida for the first time as a possible rival.

Faidida had long, wild black hair every bit the equal of Czenzi’s in lustre, and it was paired with a fair milk-and-roses complexion. She had a long, straight nose and a slender chin—the sort of beauty a Frenchwoman could pull off with ease. She was probably eight or nine years younger than Czenzi by this point… barely past her childbearing years, if that.

Czenzi looked back to her husband. It was clear that Faidida amused him—there was a little smile playing around his own lips. And for the first time in their marriage, a shadow of a doubt flitted into her heart.

Later that night, after the guests had retired to bed, Czenzi made off to her own chambers… but then doubled back and went to the guest rooms. She arrived at the end of the hall just in time to see her Botta at the end of the hallway.

‘Come here… I’ll show you…’

‘Wait, what are you—!’

Czenzi crept closer as the woodwork of the doorjamb they were standing in muffled their voices. She could hear them a bit more clearly now, but she had to stay in the shadows if she wanted to remain unseen by them.

‘What does this mean?’

‘Distinctions. Vanities. Inhibitions. Yes… even this one. Let them all go…’

Spoiler: Oh là là, but in Occitan

‘I had heard of this doctrine. I didn’t think anyone actually followed it.’

‘I do. And many more do. And many more will.’

Their voices fell to a whisper. Czenzi dared a step or two closer.

‘Here. Here. And here. You can touch me. Touch… and be healed…’

Czenzi felt a white-hot wave of jealous anger and hate rise within her. It was like a scene out of one of her darkest nightmares, playing out before her. How dare another woman approach her husband, a married woman at that, and with such shameless lechery! And how dare Bohodar allow himself to be approached like this! Czenzi made one step forward more, stepping out of the shadows, preparing to show herself to them, when—there was the sound of cloth being snatched out of a hand. Loud and audible. And then her husband’s voice came, low and rough.

‘You’re poison. Do not dare come into my presence again.’

Spoiler: A pruposta hè rifiutata

As soon as it had come, the wave of jealousy in Czenzi abated. Realising where she was, she scuttled back into the shadows at once, as Bohodar bolted, fuming, away from Faidida de Caorle’s guest room. Czenzi went back into the queen’s chamber, did off all of her clothes and even undid the braids from her hair, letting it hang loose around her shoulders, and waited. Bohodar arrived not long after. Czenzi stood and walked up to him, her bare feet padding as lightly as a cat’s to where he stood.

‘Oh, my Ahasuerus…’ she murmured to him. She felt her husband’s familiar hands cross her bare back. She hugged him back with her naked arms, and then turned around, rubbing her naked shoulder-blades against her husband’s chest. She let his hands explore around her front, and let the familiar excitement wash over her—his touch on her sensitive spots. He really was all hers. ‘You really do love me.’

‘Did you ever really doubt it?’

Czenzi considered, and then shook her head. ‘Never.’

~~~​

Faidida and Lorenzo left Olomouc the following month. Not having much to travel with, their departure was fairly brief and unceremonious. Bohodar did not come to see them off. Instead, the Kráľ turned his attention to other matters.

Rózsa married Ioan Markić, and Bohodar threw a feast at Olomouc Castle in their honour. He had invited all the close family for the occasion, and got the chance to catch up with Rodana once again—she had taken holy orders and lived a life of contemplative prayer at a women’s cloister in Bohemia, not too far away from Prague. Czenzi, of course, did what she did best: she saw to all the entertainments and made sure that everything that could be seen or touched or tasted was within the bounds of good taste set by established custom, yet imbued with meaning to make each guest feel cared-for. Bohodar once again wondered what he ever would have done without his Czenzi—his warm, outgoing, sweet, but loyal and dutiful wife. And he was rewarded with a smile that was worth his kingdom when he said as much aloud.

Kostislava (ever the busy daughter-in-law) had again conceived, and shortly after the feast she gave birth yet again, to another son: Svätoslav. Her third pregnancy overlapped with that of her sister-in-law’s first: Anna gave birth to a daughter for her husband Rogvolod, whom they named Živoslava.

But Bohodar did not neglect the needs of the rural Moravians, even amid all of this family business of his: councils of heralds, betrothals, marriages, births, feasts and the like. He began undertaking a massive project to reinforce the walls of the fastnesses all up and down the Morava, and expand the grounds so that the bowers could bring their fee and crops inside them without suffering loss in the event of an attack. A ring of walls began to rise—Olomouc, Opava, Přerov and Velehrad.

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-SIX
Hope, Faith and Love
21 February 1177 – 2 May 1189

I.
21 February 1177 – 16 May 1180

The betrothal agreement between Želimír and Živana was solemnised on the twenty-first of February, 1177—Moravian Rychnovský and Silesian Rychnovská-Lehnice. The precocious seven-year-old Želimír spent the entire time quietly attentive and listening to Vojta and Ján as they negotiated his future, while four-year-old Živana fidgeted and eyed the doors of the room, as though looking for an opportunity to duck out of view and make an escape to go play.

‘She’s quite the handful,’ Vojta observed as Živana attempted again to wriggle out of Ján’s grasp.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Ján chuckled.

‘Still, energetic young folks do make vigorous adults,’ Vojta stroked his thin beard.

‘On the other hand,’ Ján answered him, ‘tichá voda brehy myje.’

A tight little smile crept up the corner of Želimír’s mouth at this praise. But Vojta frowned.

‘Do you think they’d be a good match for each other?’

Ján gave Vojta an impatient look, then turned to Želimír. ‘Well, boy? What do you think?’

The boy’s curly ginger head turned from father to daughter, who had given over the battle for the present but whose eyes were still glinting rebelliously with a desire for liberty and play. He tilted his head toward her and caught her eye. There was a mischievous glint there.

‘I think I can handle her,’ Želimír said, a bit overconfidently.

Ján laughed. ‘A fine day when the son is more enthusiastic about a betrothal than his father! But what say you, Vojta? This whole operation was your idea.’

Vojta stroked his beard again, but then nodded. ‘Yes. You’re quite right, of course. Forgive my caution—and please do not mistake it for reluctance. I’ve already made the agreed-upon betrothal settlement for Želimír; I’ve already instructed Father’s retainers to send this portion of the jewellery and plate directly to your guest-room, with the rest to be paid upon their handfasting.’

Ján grinned. ‘And the generous hospitality you’ve shown us here—I extend it also to you, and especially to little Želimír. You’re always welcome in Lehnice. We are kin, after all!’

After making their polite goodbyes after the agreement was settled and seeing Ján and Živka off by the courtyard, Vojta laid a hand on Želimír’s shoulder and told him sternly:

‘It’s a good thing I didn’t tell him about the fight you very nearly avoided today.’

‘Look, I didn’t do anything—!’

‘But you must have said something to get all those other court lads angry,’ Vojta scolded his son. ‘It’s a lucky thing that Roško stepped in for you and got those other boys to back down, else…!’

‘What?’ Želimír’s eyes lidded sullenly. ‘You think I couldn’t handle my own in a fight?’

Vojta sighed. ‘I’m sure you could, Žeľko. But you shouldn’t have to. Your grandfather is an irenic and merciful king, with an ear to the voice of the common people. He has worked hard to build this peace both inside our realm and outside it, so that you don’t have to fight with the other court boys. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be prepared, but it’s always best to exhaust all other means of solving strife first. I shall have to go and find Roško, and thank him. I trust you have already done so?’

‘Yes, father,’ Želimír said.

The Carpatho-Russian knieža’s grandson, it turned out, had grown into a very fine young man indeed under the Kráľ’s tutelage. His fair hair and good looks only served to accentuate a disposition that was mild, forbearing and warmhearted… Roško practically had to fend off the young Moravian court ladies wherever he went these days. Not only that, but he had perfected the social graces and was fully in command of whatever company he kept. He had proven a very good friend to the Kráľ’s grandson so far, and it was Vojta’s prayer that he would continue so.

Kostislava greeted them from down the hall with a wave, before she placed one hand on her hip and paused for breath. Her belly was once again large with their fifth child, and she would be due in May.

‘Ah, gentlemen, there you are!’ Žeľko’s mother called. Her tone was light, but her face was a bit sad and grave. ‘You were just in the courtyard, I saw. Has Tichomil Mikulčický arrived yet?’

‘No… Hrabě Vladan came here yesterday for Blahomíra and took her back with him to Balaton, but I haven’t seen Nitra at all. Why?’ asked Vojta of his wife. ‘Was he expected?’

Kostislava lowered her eyes. ‘Ľubava is dead.’

Vojta frowned and crossed himself. ‘Well… she was of the age. How did it happen?’

‘She fell ill on the road home to Užhorod. Her maids found her a bed at a wayhouse and made her comfortable… called for a priest… she never awakened. It was quick—a blessed passing. I only learned of it just now, but your father knows.’

‘What does that have to do with Tichomil?’ asked Vojta.

‘Well, the wayhouse was inside his demesne,’ Kostislava rested a thoughtful hand on her belly, ‘and the Kráľ wanted to send his condolences to the Bijelahrvatskići.’

Vojta put an arm around his wife’s shoulder. ‘And how are you doing, wife?’ he asked.

‘Stop babying me, Vojtech,’ Kostislava smirked sidelong. ‘This isn’t my first pregnancy, you know.’

‘That isn’t what I mean,’ Vojta persisted. ‘I mean… your grandfather…’

Kostislava let out a long sigh, blinked, and lifted a hand to one side of her face as though wiping away a tear. ‘Of course I still miss him, Vojta. But what can I do? My home is here now—with you.’

Vojta held her close. ‘Listen… if you need to take a couple of weeks, pay Znojmo a visit…’

‘That’s kind of you, husband,’ Kostislava told him. ‘But I’m going nowhere until I bring this fifth one of ours into the world.’

~~~

Kostislava gave birth that May, just as expected—and their fifth child was, like their first four, a boy. Vojta favoured the name Tvrdomil at first, but his wife prevailed upon him to name the lad Zvonimír. (This was a choice that Botta, who had studied Moravian history somewhat, rather frowned upon: the rebellion of Zvonimír Pavelkov was still remembered bitterly by some elderly monks. But it was still a respectable Slavic name, and even the Kráľ eventually reconciled himself to the choice.)

Anna was visibly pregnant again by May as well—a cause for great rejoicing. Unfortunately, Botta could easily have lived without knowing how it came about, and he could certainly have lived without his spymaster informing him about the sordidly ‘unconventional’ details… which involved a second female partner for Anna, a rope harness, whips, candles and some exceptionally complicated positions. Botta tried to put it all out of his mind; he wasn’t about to use this knowledge against his daughter or her husband in any way.

Kráľ Bohodar had more important tasks to deal with anyway. One of the benefits to having standardised the genealogy of his family and having formalised the Rychnovský family charge, was that he could propose a change to the law that favoured the foremost heir of family fortunes for all noblemen inside the Moravian realm. However, this law first had to pass the zhromaždenie of the same nobility.

The zhromaždenie (the predecessor to the Stavovské Zhromaždenie of later days) was also something of an innovation which Kráľ Bohodar had introduced… a semi-democratic institution inspired by and similar to the witena-gemót of his mother’s culture, or the věče of the Old Rus’. Formally, it consisted of the Kráľ’s council along with the Orthodox bishops of the realm, the most respected members of the nobility, and honoured representatives of Moravia’s chief towns. The zhromaždenie helped Bohodar hear from and respond to the issues and worries of his realm without the expense and hassle of a travelling court.

‘The law is a favourable and reasonable one,’ Kráľ Bohodar’s cousin Bohuslav spoke to him, sotto voce, before the zhromaždenie came to order, ‘and most of the nobility should approve it. However, I think I can claim that Ľubava’s son will not approve, your Highness.’

‘Well, why shouldn’t he?’ asked Bohodar with a twinge of annoyance. ‘The same law favours Tvrdomil Bijelahrvatskić and his line!’

‘What Tvrdomil truly desires is a seat on the council,’ Bohuslav told the king.

Bohodar shook his head. ‘The position was Ľubava’s. It belonged to his mother on account of her skill.’

‘Even so, your Highness, the word is that she was given that position on your council in the first place, solely owing to your lady wife’s influence,’ Bohuslav insisted. ‘Czenzi and Ľubava were close friends—it is foolish to deny this—and so you must understand how it can appear…’

Bohodar rubbed his temples. ‘Fine, fine. How can we get him to agree?’

A law proposed by the king could pass only by a consensus of the zhromaždenie. If even one member of the zhromaždenie disapproved it, he could veto it indefinitely. Of course in doing so, particularly if he held an unpopular position among the rest of the zhromaždenie and tried to hold out too long, a stubborn councillor might find himself kicked out, replaced… or worse. But Bohodar had no desire to place Tvrdomil Bijelahrvatskić in such a position.

‘Perhaps a suitable gift might be in order,’ Bohodar pondered aloud.

‘It would depend rather strongly on the gift,’ Bohuslav answered.

Bohodar considered. If Tvrdomil was upset simply because he wasn’t on the council, then perhaps a gift that emphasised his family’s standing in Moravia might be the thing? One that assured him that the Bijelahrvatskići would always be valued in Moravia? That made sense.

Bohodar went through the royal treasury and store-rooms, and looked for something of value that had belonged to his ancestor Pravoslav—who had been the one to settle the honour of Užhorod upon the Bijelahrvatskić family in the first place. As he was going through one store-room, he found a dusty, deeply-aged tome with a gilt and jewel-encrusted cover, that within was written in archaic Slavonic—one which could very well have belonged to one of his distant ancestors. Gingerly Bohodar turned the precious cover over, and found inside that it was a Slavonic Psalter. It had belonged, indeed, to Pravoslav. And within the front cover, there was a small pilgrim-token of bronze which was probably worth more than the Psalter itself, for it had come from Saint Catherine’s on Mount Sinai.

Bohodar’s breath caught. This was indeed a precious find! Part of him, a rather strong part of him, coveted what he had found here. A Psalter which had accompanied his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather all the way to Mount Sinai and back? Bohodar had to remind himself that he was in fact a king and not merely a collector of books—and that he needed Tvrdomil’s goodwill if he wanted to ensure that the peace he’d built lasted beyond his own lifetime. He must look to the future for his people. He couldn’t take refuge in the past with things. But he was still desirously clutching the Psalter to his chest when he emerged. He forced his steps to go their way into town, to a silversmith, to a leatherworker and to a bookbinder, to have this Psalter restored to a presentable condition.

Seeing the gilt and gemstones gleam on the cover, beholding the freshness of the leather and bonework, and daring a look again inside at the tall ustav-style Slavonic lettering, the Kráľ was once again tempted by the preciousness of this thing he’d found in his own store-room. By rights, it was still his. He could still keep it, lock it away, enjoy it himself… and attempt to assuage Tvrdomil with something a tad more contemporary and less meaningful.

But instead he had the thing laid inside an ornately-wrought reliquary prepared by the silversmith. He took it back up to the castle and placed it upon his bedside table, contemplating the precious thing. This was what he was doing when Czenzi came upon him.

‘I’ve rarely known you to look so conflicted, kedvesem,’ Czenzi told her husband gently, running a hand through his messy grizzled hair.

Bohodar looked back up at his now-elderly Magyar wife with a tired smile. The deeply-lined face which had grown still darker with age, and the hair which was now an iron-grey hanging around her shoulders, was still beautiful to him—the more so when it shone upon him with such tender care.

‘This breviary belonged to my ancestor, Kráľ Pravoslav,’ Bohodar indicated the reliquary with the Psalter in front of him. ‘It went with him on pilgrimage. I was planning to give it as a gift to Tvrdomil Bijelahrvatskić, but I’m torn. I can’t imagine the prayers that went into it, the travails, the secret yearnings of his heart. It’s a thread which connects me back to him, and I find I can’t quite bring myself to cut it—even for the sake of the future, of my people.’

Czenzi sat beside him and slid an arm around her Botta’s waist.

‘I think I’m asking you to talk me back into giving it away,’ Bohodar sighed.

‘If you’re asking me that, you don’t need me to do the talking,’ Czenzi explained softly. ‘You know what you need to do. Between the two of us, you were always the more open-handed one. And I was the one always banging on about the importance of the ancestors and the traditional ways.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’

‘And besides,’ Czenzi told him, ‘If what you’ve told me of your family lore is true, there is little that the first Kráľ Bohodar and his son themselves valued more than the hospitality they showed to that first generation of White Croatian refugees—those who suffered at the hands of… well, of my people. If it helps: don’t consider giving this Psalter to a member of a family he cared for, to be severing any kind of link between you. Instead, consider in that act of giving, a part of Pravoslav which still lives in you.’

‘I see,’ Bohodar considered. The thought made him a little lighter of heart.

‘And making sacrifices like this… and I can see that for you, it is a sacrifice… on behalf of your realm, your people, and their future—wouldn’t that be something like the virtue Saint Paul described as hope?’

Bohodar laid a hand on Czenzi’s and looked into her amber eyes. He had known moments of passion with her more fiery with her, that was sure. But at the moment he couldn’t recall any time when he’d been more in love with her than now. Czenzi had just called him ‘the more open-handed one’ of the two of them, but the generosity she had just shown in describing a hated enemy of the ancestors she so valued—that was truly angelic! Once again the son of sedentary Slavic march-lords embraced this daughter of nomadic Magyar horsemen, and poured every ounce of his love through the warmth of his fathom into her, and he sealed that hug with a tender kiss upon those wide wizened lips.

‘What’s gotten into you?’ asked Czenzi with a laugh.

‘I just remembered something important,’ Bohodar told her.

‘Ahh. Well, by all means, don’t stop remembering on my account,’ Czenzi traced his cheek, pulling him back in for another kiss.

~~~​

Tvrdomil Bijelahrvatskić stood before his liege in the council chambers. The heir to the White Croat ducal honour passed on to him from his grandmother Ľubava, was a well-favoured young man with a thin strawberry-blond beard and a closed face that must surely be a winner at games of chance and strategy in the tavern. He stood respectfully with his arms in front of him and his feet spread square beneath him… but only respectfully. He was not used to being here in Olomouc, that much was clear.

Bohodar opened one hand, and one of the retainers brought forward the precious gem-studded reliquary, with the even more precious book laid inside.

‘This,’ Bohodar told Tvrdomil, ‘now belongs to you. It belonged to an ancestor of mine, Kráľ Pravoslav, who also entrusted the lands of the White Croats upon your family. Please accept it as a token of our royal favour, and of the continuing promise we Moravian kings owe to the White Croats and their protection within our marches.’

Tvrdomil was taken aback, and the cautious mask he wore crumbled slightly to reveal a trace of genuine astonishment and delight that the king would bestow upon him so beautiful and meaningful a thing. He bowed deeply.

‘You honour me, my liege.’

‘Not at all, Tvrdomil. You are my vassal. But if you would have me honour you, I would ask of you that you stay here yet a few days and enjoy what hospitality Olomouc has to offer.’

‘I would be delighted, milord!’

After that, it was no matter at all for him to agree in the zhromaždenie to a law that would favour his own firstborn male heir… Bohodar didn’t even have to ask him for his vote. The ‘high partition’ proposal thus became the law of the Moravian land by the unanimous consent of its three estates in 1180.

 

[Revan86]

@Midnite Duke - it does seem like these two are a bit longer-lived than the average. In Bohodar's case, the legendary blademaster trait gives him a massive health boost, which increases his chances of living past 70. Czenzi doesn't have any special traits affecting her health, though - I guess she just got lucky. Speaking of health, again, thanks for the well-wishes! And that topic does provide a segue for the present chapter:

TWENTY-SEVEN
The Red Plague
31 May 1189 – 11 February 1191

‘Where are the patients?’ asked Anna Rychnovská.

‘This way, milady,’ said the foreman.

The heavyset, thick-jowled villager led the king’s favoured daughter and court into the vestibule of the Church of the Holy Dormition and off into a side room. Anna noted with approval that the air had been sweetened with lilacs and irises. Freshening the air helped reduce the chances of contagion.

‘When did you first notice they fell ill?’ asked Anna of the foreman.

‘About a fortnight ago,’ the foreman answered. ‘I sent for someone from town when they began to complain of aches and fever, and one of them began to… purge. Violently.’

‘I see,’ Anna spoke seriously. She had indeed gotten the message from Spytihněv three days ago, and was troubled by the symptoms the construction team’s messenger described. She approached one of the workers, who lay on a makeshift cot in the side room under a heavy wool blanket, surrounded by posies. She first felt the man’s pulse—he was still clearly feverish—and then drew back the blanket away from his face.

It was as she feared. There were open sores on the man’s lips—and the man’s face was beaded over—particularly on his forehead and cheeks—with patches of raised, inflamed skin in small pustules.

‘Ako som sa bál,’ Anna breathed worriedly. ‘Je to červený mor. It’s the red plague.’

She turned to the foreman and handed him a tiny clay pot filled with an herbal paste. ‘This is my special mixture. Apply it to the pustules as they grow.’

‘Anything else?’ asked the foreman, bringing the pot up to his nose and sniffing it, drawing back with a wrinkled expression at the overpowering reek.

‘Yes,’ said Anna gravely. ‘Have the rector here dose them with aspergillum and holy water twice a day, and make prayers for the sick over them. Make sure they are shriven. This mixture of mine can keep the inflammation down, but to tell you the truth, once they’ve broken out in pox like this, it’s in God’s hands whether or not they survive.’

The foreman nodded, his own gravity matching the physician’s own. The red plague was a cruel and voracious killer, which attacked first with fever, then the stomach and gut, and then the mouth with sores, and then the victim’s skin starting on the face. In the very worst cases, all of the victim’s skin would peel away from the flesh, causing them to die of exposure. The red plague tore away as many as half of the spirits from the bodies it touched, and it could spread like wildfire wherever it manifested. And in practically all cases, the red plague caused extensive scarring upon the affected skin.

‘And keep them sequestered. Make sure the posies stay fresh,’ Anna concluded.

The foreman nodded. Anna made sure the men were as comfortable as possible, enjoined everyone but the priest and his deacons to stay out of that room, and departed herself for home.

It was on the second night of the return journey, as she was staying with a bower whose cottage lay on the roadside back to Olomouc, when Anna Rychnovská was herself wracked with chills and a queasiness which turned her stomach inside out. She couldn’t keep any breakfast down the following morning before she set out. Being a cautious and vigilant physician, she didn’t ride in the open, but hired a wagon and kept herself under a tarp festooned with wildflowers to prevent the bad air which had made her ill from spreading to anyone else.

It struck at Anna’s heart with dread, that she might have contracted the red plague herself. The idea of being bedridden and in pain, of having her skin boil away from her flesh in sheets, covered with those ugly pustules—it was almost too much to bear. But bear it she must, as all of her body from her neck and down her spine, and out to her shoulders and hips and down each of her limbs, was taken with wracking aches, sapping her of all her strength.

It was Anna’s brother, Vojta, who met her in the courtyard of Olomouc Castle. Vojta ordered that a litter be prepared and that she be brought into a sequestered room. Vojta and Anna’s husband Rogvolod between them brought her down from the cart, and placed her on the litter. Rogvolod looked after his wife as she was carried inside and the door was shut behind her by the maids, blew out a long breath between his teeth, and went off slowly.

Vojtech could sympathise. When confronted face-to-face with a loved one in danger of her life, Rogvolod had leapt, without thinking, to her help. It spoke well of him as a husband. Such dauntless compassion was something Rogvolod shared with many of his Rychnovských in-laws, Vojta knew. (Foremost in his mind was his son Zvonimír, who had only of late taken vows as a novice.) The fear of contagion would set in only later with him. Vojta was feeling that now.

Illness—very likely the same red plague that had visited itself upon the workers at Spytihněv—had robbed Olomouc of the services of its own court physician. This became a problem, particularly when Vojta was wracked with fever, nausea and pains in his shoulders and back—just as Anna had been on the way back to Olomouc. Bohodar sent at once for a replacement… and after interviewing several people, he settled upon a well-travelled Moravian woman named Božena.

Božena, a confident, pert and youthful-looking healer with a rather high opinion of herself, had opined: ‘I have seen many cases of the red plague, and there is a method which has been adopted in certain Eastern climes. They trace the practice to a certain pagan faith-healer who goes by the name of Toučin Niangniang. If you will allow me to visit Anna personally, I can attempt to give her the treatment. It should be an effective cure even at this stage in the disease.’

‘What would I owe you?’ asked the elderly king, solicitous of Božena’s aid and worried for the fate of his two best-loved children.

‘No need to concern yourself with payment at this point, O King,’ Božena had told Bohodar, a little superciliously. ‘It will be enough if I can restore both your daughter and your son to you.’

Before she could leave the room, however, a servant burst into Bohodar’s audience chamber and bowed hurriedly.

‘Odpusť mi, môj pán!’ said the man. ‘Milord your son—you told me to inform you if he took a turn for the worse. He’s bedridden now, and cannot rise.’

Bohodar turned back to Božena. ‘Do it,’ he ordered.

~~~​

The young healer first visited Anna. As feared, Anna had already broken out in a rash all across her face, and the telltale pustules, angry and red, stood out to the healer. Covering her face with a piece of linen, Božena went to Anna’s side and examined the ointment she’d been using. Sniffing it, she approved the mixture of soothing herbs and oils, and applied it to the sick woman’s face. But as she was doing so, she made an incision and drained a few of the pox on her face of the fluid beneath. She collected this fluid in a small phial, capping it carefully.

She then heated the phial over an open fire for several minutes until it boiled. Then, once it had cooled off again, she took this fluid in to Vojta’s room—he hadn’t yet developed the lesions on his mouth. She uncapped the phial and applied the fluid from Anna’s pox to a small wound on Vojta’s arm.

‘What are you doing?’ Vojta demanded weakly.

Božena confidently spun to him her yarn about her travels to the east and her observation of similar treatments for plague victims in the villages she’d seen, as well as the tale about Toučin Niangniang. Vojta seemed doubtful, but Božena had the king’s trust, and he was in no position in any case to stop her from performing the treatment.

Božena was practising, in point of fact, an early form of vaccination against red plague—that is, smallpox—which would later be called ‘variolation’. By using a weakened form of the virus and applying it to a pre-existing wound on the skin in a less-vulnerable location than the orifices, she could alert the immune system to the infection before it became serious. Indeed, when Vojtech broke out in a rash several days later, the pox were spaced much further apart and were much less angry than those which affected Anna. Observing this to her satisfaction, Božena let the disease run its course in her male patient.

Unfortunately, Anna herself had gotten sick first. And she had already broken out in a rash around her face when Božena had come in to visit her. Božena had another treatment—far less pleasant—for red plague once it had gotten into the skin. It involved hot cauters. Anna survived the treatment… and the disease. But it left a visible mark—and one which Anna did not particularly care to show the world.

~~~

The recovered Anna did not make a bid to recover her position as her father’s physician. She was content enough to leave that to Božena. Her Russian husband Rogvolod, far from abandoning Anna now that the scars of the red plague were upon her, became even more attentive to her. Perhaps motivated by something of a guilty conscience, Rogvolod no longer attempted to foist his idiosyncracies upon her.

The king, too, was dismayed that his daughter had been so stricken. He made arrangements for her and Rogvolod’s eldest son, Tichomír, to marry a noteworthy local beauty from Poznaň, named Markéta.

And as for Božena herself, true to her word, she had restored both Anna and Vojtech to the king, living. Although she had not insisted upon any special payment for her services in containing the red plague, the king still felt it was necessary to honour her for her work, and he gave to her in marriage his spymaster and cousin Bohuslav—thus making her a member of the family.

 

[Revan86]

@Midnite Duke: At least one of them.

WARNING: NSFW images ahead!

TWENTY-EIGHT
Heretic in the Family
14 February 1191 – 17 June 1192​

‘Well,’ Bohodar said briskly to his wife, ‘theirs was certainly a… memorable “wedding”.’

‘Little Živka certainly didn’t have anything to hide. Nor did she leave anything to the imagination,’ Czenzi remarked archly. She couldn’t quite refrain from adding: ‘Not that I noticed any of the menfolk leaping to pose any objection—apart from the priest we brought. To tell truth, the poor girl shouldn’t be flaunting what she doesn’t have. Back when I was her age, my fruits had actually grown full and ripe enough for such a market-stall display.’

Spoiler: Nothing to hide

‘You wouldn’t have!’

Czenzi considered for a moment, tipping her white head to the side for a moment, and letting a lopsided smile peek up one corner of her long mouth. ‘Well… perhaps I ought to have done, so readily are male eyes drawn. Who knows? Maybe if I’d shown you up front what you stood to lose, you’d have thrashed Büzir-Üzünköl in merely two strokes!’

Bohodar laughed, knowing that Czenzi was teasing him.

‘Did you try to get Žeľko back? Talk some sense into him?’ asked Czenzi.

‘The two of them are at Ladislav’s estate in Kosteľ,’ Bohodar mouthed grimly. ‘Beyond my reach—short of war or other unsavoury methods. Believe you me, if they weren’t, I’d have them both hauled in and given a stern talking-to about keeping the holy things holy. What, do they think I’m renovating Eustach’s church in Uničov for nothing? But Živka’s father—he’s been blocking me at every turn.’

‘Your kinsman Ján?’ cried Czenzi in surprise. ‘Would he tolerate such vile heresy, let alone give into it? He’s always struck me as a sensible man, very logical!’

‘That’s the problem with heresies, though,’ Bohodar growled. ‘They latch onto one part of the truth, focus on it, enlarge it, and make that part the basis for judging the whole. Heretics can be very sensible and logical. But if the ground upon which they make their assumptions is anyone or anything other than Christ Jesus Himself, the Son of the living God, then all their sense and all their logic, all the powers of their minds, will lead them further and further away from the truth.’

Czenzi nodded gravely, then gave a proud Magyar harrumph as she began to reminisce. ‘Well. Call me old-fashioned, but I like a wedding with a bit more ceremony to it. When I wedded you, I wouldn’t settle for Emȍke and Rózsa sewing a grain less than three pounds of silver into my bridal train. Father Szilveszter, God rest his soul, very properly danced and chanted with his hide drums and bells to ward off Satan and his evil spirits, before garlanding the two of us with the nuptial wreaths and singing Psalm 128. When we wedded, the two of us became one in the beauty of the traditional way. None of this naked cavorting around a fire like a pair of brute beasts.’

‘No. We saved the naked cavorting for Halastavak,’ Botta smirked.

‘You!’ Czenzi swatted her husband. ‘Dirty old man, I knew you’d get merry thinking of that!’

‘You’re more than four years my senior,’ Bohodar pointed out reasonably. ‘And just as willing.’

‘Nooo…’ Czenzi turned one wrinkled cheek coyly, her crow’s feet deepening in an unmistakeable smile. But she had already loosened her girdle. ‘I’ve never been as merry as you!’

‘You were merrier,’ Botta tugged her girdle the rest of the way off, and lifted the hem of her skirts.

‘Oh?’ Czenzi turned her head. Her hair was all white, but the glint in her eye was that again of her twenty-year-old self. ‘Refresh my memory.’

~~~

Spoiler: The Birth of Vlasta

The news came north from Kosteľ, that the granddaughter-in-law of the King of Moravia had given birth to a healthy baby girl, and that the whole of the Gnostic community at the far western end of Lake Balaton had named the child Vlasta—as was their custom.

‘I have done some digging,’ Bohuslav Rychnovský told his liege. ‘The followers of the vile Adamite heresy which has spread like wildfire at Lake Balaton are not all of one mind—which may be to our advantage.’

‘How did you come by that information?’ asked Bohodar sceptically.

‘I know a right-believing priest in Kosteľ, Budimír,’ Bohuslav steepled his fingers. ‘The ordinary people of the town and surrounding country occasionally go to both the depraved nude fire-dances of the heretics, and the more proper Liturgies of the Orthodox faith—he is doing his best to extirpate this dual practice. But in the meantime, he informs my agents in the Pannonian lands of the heretics’ doings.’

Bohodar nodded. The name of Father Budimír meant nothing to him at present, but he did make note of the fact that he was engaged in God’s work. ‘And? What might be to our advantage?’

‘You remember how Živana Rychnovská herself gave voice to her… scepticism, even while she was here in Moravia?’ Bohuslav prompted him. ‘Well… it seems she’s now turned her doubts upon her new religious opinions. She has been censured by the heretics several times over the past few years for “sequestering herself” and “behaving in earthbound ways”.’

‘What “earthbound ways” are these?’ asked Bohodar.

‘Živana’s always been a fastidious one,’ Bohuslav shrugged. ‘From what I can tell, the heretics are upset because she refuses to join in their blasphemous orgies. Instead, she lives as a normal married woman ought to together with milord your grandson.’

‘Is it possible for us to turn her back to Orthodoxy?’ asked Žeľko’s grandfather.

‘Give me a free rein and four good men,’ Bohuslav gave a knife’s-edge grin, ‘and I’ll have her in the castle donjon within a fortnight. These Adamites are notoriously easy to infiltrate.’

Bohodar baulked at that. The conversion of his granddaughter-in-law should not come by force—that would solve nothing. From the sound of things, Živana was a woman of strong mind, and she would not be impressed by such skulduggery. However, another idea began to form in his mind about how to approach her, and he bade Bohuslav:

‘Send for my sister. My youngest sister—Rodana.’

~~~​

Kráľ Bohodar had always been closer to the elder of his two younger sisters, Katarína. Rodana, having grown up alongside Anna in her childhood, Bohodar had almost reckoned as one of his own children—and she had withdrawn into the cloister for a contemplative life of prayer not long after she had become a woman. It was only after she’d attended a recent feast in Olomouc at the king’s invitation, that Bohodar had discovered in her a kindred spirit. Now she was here in Olomouc again, clad in the simple, raven-black robe of her order.

‘God greet you, brother,’ Rodana bowed meekly. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘We have… a family situation,’ Bohodar told her.

‘“We have”?’ Rodana smiled mischievously. ‘Milord king, you know I died to the world, including to family, when I undertook my rasophore vows.’

‘This situation involves a threat to the faith of one of our earthly kin,’ Bohodar told her.

‘Go on.’

‘My grandson—the man who will one day be king, when Vojta and I are both gone—married a woman who has turned away from Christ and toward a vile heresy,’ Bohodar told her. ‘They are both currently living in a community of heretics on the shores of Lake Balaton.’

Rodana crossed herself, a look of consternation settling upon her blunt features.

‘You see my predicament.’

‘I do indeed. But what can I do to help? You understand that my vows prevent me from travel unless my mother superior allows it.’

‘If you could…’ Bohodar asked, ‘perhaps the two of us together might be able to draught a convincing letter to the new Patriarch in the City, asking for His All-Holiness’s aid. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the man, but that you, who commemorate him daily, might…’

‘Well,’ Rodana smiled sadly, ‘it’s not as though the lords spiritual in high places like the Imperial Palace care that much for the opinions of a lowly nun like me. All the same: I shall offer what assistance I can.’

And thus Bohodar and Rodana sat together, prayed together, and in preparation for making their petition to the patriarchal throne to intercede with Žeľko and Živka, discussed what they knew of the new Œcumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, who had been dubbed Samouēl upon his accession.

‘Do you know why he was elected by the bishops?’

‘From what Mother Superior said,’ Rodana mused, ‘it seems Patriarch Samouēl was chosen for the sternness of his abbatial rule, but he was also notable for his personal restraint. The penances he imposed upon the wayward monks and novices under his care were seen as incredibly harsh—he once locked a rasophore in his cell for seven years for spreading gossip about another monk, serving him only bread and water through a slat in the door. But there was another incident I heard of. One time he was preaching to a group of laymen, when an ill-behaved child—one notorious for not listening to any adult in the town—came up and tore the hood off of his robe.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘Well,’ said Rodana, clearly relishing her retelling of the tale, ‘everyone expected that when he found the child, he would scold and beat him at the very least. But when the child was brought before him, Abbot Samouēl bowed to the naughty brat and said: “You came up and you tore the hood from my robe because you were bored with my speech. I thank you for teaching me humility—please forgive my idle and long-winded tongue.” The child was stricken speechless, blushed to his ears, knelt before Abbot Samouēl and handed the hood back to him without another word.’

Bohodar whistled lowly. ‘I don’t know that I would have shown such mercy myself if I were in his place.’

‘Neither did the townsmen of Constantinople. They were shocked by the whole incident, and muttered among themselves that this must indeed be a holy man.’

‘If only the naughty children of our family could listen to him!’ Bohodar mused.

‘Write that down, then,’ his sister advised.

Soon they had the letter to Patriarch Samouēl draughted. It placed a great deal of emphasis on the hierarch’s mercy and forgiveness, and pleaded with him to admonish Žeľko and Živka and the Balaton Adamites in general. With it, the king enclosed a great sum of money and his own wish to repent of whatever sins he had committed during his time on the throne.

If this weren’t enough, another member of the Rychnovský family, speaking of his desire that his elder brother should repent, made his own way to Kroměříž. Svätoslav Rychnovský, who had a face and a mind which any woman might desire, took the tabard of the Phi-Tau and forswore them forever—leaving Žeľko alone among his brothers unsworn to tabard or tonsure.

It was several months before a letter returned from Constantinople. This was how it read:

To the most serene, peace-loving and open-handed polemarch of the Moravians, Silesians, Czechs, Sloviens and Carpatho-Russians, Bohodar, in the name of Christ our Lord I, the unworthy stable-monk Samouēl who tends flocks upon the seven hills, send greeting.

My dear child in Christ, I was deeply moved to have received your epistle, which I treasure deeply among my correspondence. It has been edifying to me, and I have read it many times in order to instil deeper in my heart a proper appreciation for the paternal love which you bear for your children and grandchildren. Though I have chosen one road to holiness, the other road which you have taken is one of great virtue from which even monks can draw useful lessons and inspiration. I confess also that my undeserving heart was moved that you would think of a badly-made monk such as myself, and send your well-wishes upon my appointment to the current office which I hold.

Slow and stupid though I am, I have shed copious tears, and prayed many times, for the sake of the grandchildren you spoke of with such godly sweetness and warm affection in your letter to me. It has given me the grief of oceans that they have placed themselves in peril by placing themselves so near to such a soul-destroying heresy. Together with this letter, I have enclosed for you the Studite Library’s copies of Saint Epiphanios’s Panarion and Saint Irenaios’s Adversus Hæreses, that you yourself may be edified and strengthened, and that your Moravian realm might be preserved from the disorders that have afflicted the Frankish West.

I am humbled and gratified that you have remembered some of the trials that have afflicted me as an abbot. You, dear polemarch, are deserving of the truth from my heart. Having been elevated to the status of first-among-equals of the four right-believing Patriarchs of the Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church has made me understand how large an arena I have been thrown into, and how many times in the day or in the hour I must call upon the name of our sweet Saviour Jesus Christ to come to my aid. Forgiveness! This is something I am happy that the Lord has given me opportunity to practise while my cross was yet lighter. That you mention it in your own epistle to me, demonstrates to me how I must continue in my practice of that virtue with the help of our Lord.

I offer for your two grandchildren my prayers, first and foremost, for their salvation, unworthy though my prayers may be. Secondly, I am personally sending an omophorion to the righteous priest Budimír whom you mention, giving him the status of a diocesan bishop in Pannonia, and sending him more priests to aid him in his righteous task of combatting through suasion the foul teachings of Karpokratēs which have again reared their ugly head in those lands. And thirdly, I am making bold to impose myself by correspondence upon your grandson in the hope that a direct chastisement might bear some fruit, whether in this age or in the age to come. I hope that these humble offerings can help to soothe your troubled mind and bring peace to your spirit.

With great affection and sincere admiration to you, Bohodar the Historian, Polemarch of Moravia the Great, the Œcumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Samouēl offers in the name of the Lord honour, safety, peace, health and length of days, as well as visitation, remission of sins and salvation in Christ Jesus…

The letter from the Patriarch was far more gracious and accommodating than the king had either expected, or felt he deserved. But he appreciated it all the more for that. With any luck, his prayers would have the effect he hoped.