The Mercy Seller - Hardcover

Vantrease, Brenda Rickman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312331932 ISBN 13: 9780312331931

Verlag: St Martins Pr, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Urged by her grandfather to seek sanctuary in England when their secret work as illuminators of forbidden books is threatened by a wave of religious intolerance sweeping through fifteenth-century Prague, Anna catches the attention of an undercover priest. By the author of

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Brenda Rickman Vantrease is a former English teacher and librarian who has traveled extensively in Europe and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Her first novel, The Illuminator, was translated into fifteen languages and chosen as a Book Sense 2006--2007 Reading Group Pick.

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Chapter One

 

Prague, Bohemia

July 1412

 

The Avon to the Severn runs,

The Severn to the sea,

And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad,

Wide as the waters be.

 

--FROM AN ADDRESS BY

DANIEL WEBSTER (1849)

 

Anna never went to the hrad, the great walled castle on the western hill overlooking Prague. It hunched just across the Vltava River, a world away. Nor did she go to the great cathedral standing guard over the castle lest she encounter the dread archbishop. Zybnek. The burner of books.

 

Anna attended mass at T´yn Church or met with the rest of Prague's dissidents at Bethlehem Chapel. After Zybnek's great bonfire of the Wycliffe tracts and the translated gospels, Lollard texts the Church called them, heretical texts because they charged papal corruption and challenged priestly authority, Hus had warned his growing congregation, "The day will surely come when Rome's prelates are not content to burn the Word but seek out for their fires those who would bring the Word to the people. We must pray for the strength to stand for our beliefs. We must fasten our courage against such a day."

 

Her grandfather had warned his little clutch of scholars and translators too, chastising them for their careless zeal.

 

And wasn't he the one to talk!

 

After all, it was he, her own grandfather, Finn the Illuminator, Finn the Lollard scribe, who, along with Master Jerome, had started Prague's secret enterprise to disseminate the banned translations. As a young exchange student, Jerome had returned to his Czech homeland from Oxford, bringing with him the Lollard texts. The Trialogus and De Ecclesia of John Wycliffe. Banned in England, they'd found new life at the new university at Prague. Its rector, Jan Hus, had translated the condemned texts, along with a good portion of the gospels, into Czech. And for years, right under the archbishop's nose, her own grandfather, a refugee from a long-ago brush with English Lollardy, had gathered a wellspring of university dissidents into his little town house, where they copied the banned pages.

 

Anna glanced at the castle and the cathedral spires of Saint Vitus standing sentinel behind it. She shivered even in the summer heat. But she would not think about the monster on the hill today. Not on a day when the sunlight flung dancing diamonds on the water and no smell of burning tainted the air. Not on a day when the birds wheeled in joyful circles above the river, their wing tips flirting with cloud pillows.

 

Not on a day when she was meeting Martin.

 

She turned her back to the castle and looked downriver. In the distance she could make out a camp of some sort, likely pilgrims traversing Christendom to any number of shrines--Jerusalem the holiest--in penance. That was what sinners did, sinners who could not afford to purchase expiation from the Church.

 

From the town sprawled on her left a familiar figure approached, but not the figure for whom she was looking. "Master Jerome! I thought Martin was coming," she said, feeling her face redden, her disappointment all too obvious.

 

"Martin is otherwise occupied, it seems," the gray-haired master said wearily. He handed her the bag that held the translated texts to be copied at the next meeting. "Thank you for doing my laundry, mistress," he said loudly.

 

Who knew the carp in the river had eyes and ears? Or that the woodcutter hauling his cart across the stone bridge might be a spy for the archbishop? But she bit back her sarcasm. She would not belittle him for his excess of caution. She had too much respect for all he had accomplished.

 

Anna took the university master's "laundry" and was about to bid him good afternoon when she heard rapid footsteps approaching from the other end of the bridge. She turned to see a lone figure running toward them as though the devil gave chase. Seconds later Martin joined them beneath the sheltering shade of the gate tower. He was gasping for breath and his face was flushed and his black hair fell in an unruly wave across his forehead.

 

"I'm sorry, Master Jerome. I was detained--"

 

"You didn't have time to put on your cap?" Anna pushed Martin's hair away from his forehead with her hand, a ruse to caress his face.

 

"I lost it. But in good cause," he said, breathing heavily. Winking at Anna, he sucked in air and lowered his voice to an almost whisper. "I'll show you at the meeting-- No. I can't wait. I have to show it to you now." He drew them deeper into the shadowy hollow of the tower gate and pulled from his plain brown student's doublet a black velvet packet. It was marked with a Jerusalem cross.

 

"Put that away," Jerome hissed. "How did you come by it?"

 

"Is that what I think it is?" Anna asked, not remembering to lower her voice. "I've never even seen one. May I see it?"

 

Alarm showed in Jerome's face. "Not here, Martin! You didn't--"

 

"No, we didn't hurt the pardoner, didn't even scruff him up--well maybe a couple of . . . you know, smallish bruises. He was just setting up shop outside Saint Vitus Cathedral. Stasik kicked him in his shins, and the pardoner dropped his 'grace notes.' While he was nursing his shins--he even curses in Latin--we took off down Crooked Alley. Stasik made for New Town. I headed for Old Town. As easy as taking pennies from a blind beggar."

 

You'd be more likely to give pennies to a blind beggar, Anna thought, but kept silent, letting him enjoy his moment.

 

Martin was grinning broadly as he darted glances across the bridge to assure himself he had not been followed. As was usual in the heat of the midafternoon, the bridge was deserted except for the woodsman who was exiting on the other end and a beggar who sat at the gate on the other side of the river.

 

Anna could see from Jerome's scowl that he was not impressed. "Fool, do you want to bring the archbishop down on our heads? Wait till Finn hears what you've done. This is not our way." He snatched the little packet of papal indulgences and hid them quickly in his shirt.

 

At the mention of her grandfather's name, some of Martin's bravado vanished.

 

Jerome's gray eyebrows bunched together in a scowl. "I don't think such exploits will weigh in your favor when the illuminator seeks a husband for his granddaughter."

 

He was nothing if not direct. Not now. Not ever.

 

Martin's smile vanished quickly.

 

"I want to see one, Master Jerome," Anna said. "All my life I've heard my grandfather and you ranting about the pope's sale of indulgences to finance his wars, as though they were written by the devil's own hand, and I've never even seen one."

 

The old man looked at her and shook his head. "You're as stupid as your suitor. You deserve each other," he said. "Just pray I'm not arrested before I can dispose of them."

 

"Please, Master Jerome. Bring them to the next meeting. Let us all see what it is we are risking so much to rid the world of. Then you can burn them. We'll have a little bonfire of our own."

 

She smiled at him, her wheedling smile, the same smile she had used from childhood on her grandfather to push him through the occasional cloud of melancholy that sometimes descended...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martins Pr
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312331932
• ISBN 13: 9780312331931
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar