“They would’ve hunted us down. They planned to arrest me either way, even before we met. I’m a threat to them.”
His knuckles were torn—he’d fought back at some point during this nightmare. I brought his hand to my lips and kissed it again. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Crinkles claimed the corners of his eyes. “That was some scene this morning. You’re a natural revolutionary.”
“It didn’t do any good,” I whispered. “It didn’t stop them from whipping you and they even gave you more lashes. It was reckless of me and you paid the price.”
“What you did was important, Mila.” Marc grimaced as he sat up.
I gently pushed him back onto his stomach. “You need to rest.” I petted his hair. “Your back is in bad shape.”
“Is Henrik safe?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was with me in the square. I told him to hide before I ran out there. You should see it—people are rioting in the streets. Prague is in chaos and everyone inside the castle is terrified.”
“It’s begun.”
I squeezed his hand. “I’m going to get you out of here. I promise.”
“Mila, there’s no way out of Daliborka Tower.”
“Henrik is going to—”
“No,” Marc said. “It’s too risky. If Radek or your father found out you were here—I don’t know what they would do to you.”
“I’m not going to sit around and watch you hang.” I decided not to tell him about my plan. It would only worry him. I’d leave it to Henrik and trust that he’d know what to do. Together we would, somehow, get Marc out of here.
“I don’t want you to be there on Friday,” Marc said. “I don’t want you to see—”
“You’re not going to hang.”
“Promise me you won’t be there.” His one eye was bloodshot—the dark iris floated in a sea of red.
“Fine,” I said. “But it’s a pointless promise. We’ll get you out before then.”
A slow grin spread across his lips. “You are so stubborn and so strong.”
“Not strong enough. Or we wouldn’t be sitting in a dungeon.”
His grin faded. “You’re marrying Radek tomorrow night.”
“They told you.”
Marc’s lips curled into a smirk. “I received the news firsthand. Radek paid me a visit this afternoon.”
“Did he do that to your—”
“Don’t antagonize him, Mila. Not while I can’t protect you. Get as far away from Prague as you can. Go to Henrik; he’ll help you. You’re not safe in the castle.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” I bent and kissed him softly on the lips. He tasted of salt and blood.
He kissed me back, but after a moment, he pulled away. “I have to tell you something important.”
“Hmm?”
“Mila, your father killed your mother.”
It was as if his words had stabbed me in the chest with a dagger of ice. A cold, hollow sensation spread from my heart and oozed outward through my veins to every part of my body.
“What did you say?” I whispered.
“Your mother didn’t kill herself. Your father did it and made it look like a suicide.”
“Why? How?” I asked. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Radek told me.”
“What?” I shook my head. My heartbeat thumped in my ears. “What are you talking about? Radek was a child when my mother died.”
“He told me this afternoon. Václav must’ve confided in him,” Marc said. “Radek said he was going to marry you and if you didn’t comply, then he’d just kill you like Václav had killed Isabella. Everyone in the castle would think you committed suicide because you were upset over my death.”
My mind reeled from the accusation. My mother didn’t commit suicide? She hadn’t abandoned me? I swallowed. “My mother converted to Protestantism before she died.”
“What?”
“That has to be why my father killed her,” I whispered.
The guard banged against the hole’s iron grate. “I’m sorry, Lady Nováková. Time’s up. You have to leave.”
The rope toppled into the cell and fell into a puddle on the floor.
I squeezed Marc’s hand. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Be careful, Mila. I love you.”
I kissed him gently on the lips, savoring the way his mouth felt against mine. “I love you, too. And I’ll see you soon. I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Birds chirped from the trees outside my window, but the sound didn’t wake me. I hadn’t been to sleep since I’d left Marc at Daliborka Tower. The memory of him bloody and helpless on the dungeon floor wouldn’t allow me to close my eyes. The pain I felt for his suffering was insurmountable, but what Marc had revealed to me had shook me to the core. I couldn’t pull myself away from his revelation—my father had killed my mother.
My blood turned to ice as I recalled my father’s inconsolable cries as we stared at my mother’s flower-covered coffin. It all made sense. My father killed her because he believed she had betrayed him—the powerful Catholic chancellor couldn’t have a Protestant wife who sympathized with the rebellion.
Despite the shocking revelation, a burden had been lifted from my chest. My mother hadn’t committed suicide—her soul wasn’t damned and barred from Heaven as I had been led to believe. She hadn’t left me—she’d been taken from me. Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes and ran to my pillow. I didn’t bother wiping them. It felt good to cry.
I’d spent the last seven years damning my mother in her unconsecrated grave. Chastising her for her selfishness. Yelling at her memory for abandoning me. When, in fact, my father had taken her from me in the most brutal fashion. He’d dismissed her with two flicks of a dagger along her wrists. How many years had I prayed for my mother’s soul? How many sleepless nights had I passed worrying that she was being tormented in Hell? And to make matters worse—as if murdering her in cold blood wasn’t enough—my father had soiled her reputation and humiliated her.
My father had to pay.
A sharp knock catapulted me back to the present. My heart thumped in my chest and it took a moment to find my voice. I wiped at my swollen eyes. “Yes?”
“It’s me.” Branka’s familiar voice floated through the air.
I raced to the door and flung it open. My nursemaid stood in the doorway with two overflowing buckets of hot water. Her face was still bruised—one eye shut to a slit—but she was up and walking.
She smiled.
I grabbed the buckets from her and set them inside the room. I embraced her, but not as tightly as I would’ve liked. The large white bandage was still wrapped around her torso. “How are you feeling?”
“They can’t kill me that easily,” she whispered. She pushed my hair from my face. “You’ve been crying.”
“Come in, close the door.” I ushered her inside and guided her to the edge of my bed. “Has anyone hurt you again?”
“I’m fine, Ludmila.”
“Will you tell me who did this to you?”
“It’s not important,” she said.
“It is to me.”
She pressed her lips together in defiance. She didn’t want to talk.
“Tell me,” I urged.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Two guards came into my room in the middle of the night. It was dark. I didn’t see any faces. The message was clear. I’d failed in my duties.”
“They blamed you for my kidnapping?”
“Someone had to be blamed.”
I embraced her again. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to get hurt.”
“Do not worry about me, Ludmila,” she said. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m going crazy. Have you heard anything? About Marc?” I lowered my voice. “Has he escaped yet?”
“Escaped? He’s in Daliborka Tower. There’s no escaping that place.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you planning something, Ludmila?”
“I’m not going to let him die.”
“You need to be concerned about your own life,” Branka warned. “Peasants are rioting at the gate and everyone in the king’s court blames you.”
“I don’t care who they blame.”
“Marrying the duke tonight is the only reason you’re not going to hang beside the blacksmith’s son tomorrow morning.”
“Will my father slit my wrists like he did my mother’s?”
Branka flinched, but she didn’t deny the accusation. She tugged me to the bed beside her. “Sit, Ludmila.”
“You knew?”
She sighed. “I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know for certain.” Branka nervously twisted my mother’s bronze ring around her finger. “But you must be careful. Your life is in danger now, too. You can’t poke the bear and not expect the beast to attack you.” She retrieved the buckets and poured the hot water into the tub. “Get in. I’ll tell you what I know.”
I undressed, eager to hear Branka’s side of the story.
“As you know, Isabella was a member of Rudolf’s court in Spain. She came with the king when he decided to make Prague the imperial seat,” she said.
I sank into the warm water, but it wasn’t enough to relax the tension from my neck and shoulders. I was wound too tightly. Too much had happened.
“The marriage between Isabella and Václav was arranged and you came shortly afterward. Everything seemed happy on the outside, but inside, Václav and Isabella were worlds apart.” Branka’s soft voice was barely above a whisper. “Isabella spent many days—and nights—with King Rudolf. They were inseparable.”
“Did she love him?”
“I think so,” Branka said. “He loved her, but they could never marry because she only held the title of a baroness.”
“Did their relationship upset my father?”
Branka tilted her head. “Yes and no, but I believe it was politics that drove the wedge between them. There was a peasant’s rebellion about ten years ago. The same one—”
“That the noble led? The man they imprisoned in Daliborka Tower with his violin?” I tried not to think about Marc in the dungeon’s hole.
Branka nodded. “Your mother was always sympathetic to the peasants. I don’t believe there was any evidence, but I suspected she was involved in the small rebellion. It was nothing like what’s happening now, mind you, but any push against the Crown isn’t taken lightly. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Did Rudolf know what my father did?”
“I don’t think so. Your mother was unhappy with her life here. She hated it, so it wasn’t a stretch to believe that she’d killed herself. Word of your mother’s involvement in the rebellion was never spoken of outside the court’s whispers. Judgment, rather harshly, was rendered from your father against the rebels and all of those involved in the uprising. A few weeks later, your mother’s body was found in the tub.”
I slid underwater with my eyes open. I wanted to disappear in its quiet depths. Sound vanished. I exhaled and bubbles rose to the surface. Everything had changed for me. My mother had converted to Protestantism. She was a supporter of the rebels’ cause, and my father had killed her for it. Marc and my mother were right—there had to be a change, and if that meant toppling the Catholic Church, then that was what had to be done. Wasn’t that what the king had implied?
Could I finish what my mother was unable to? Could I free Marc and help him win this rebellion? Could I topple my own church?
When I resurfaced, Branka nervously leaned over the tub. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
She frowned. “My advice is to play along with what your father and the duke say until you have the chance to run. Then you take it.”
“What about you? You have to get out of here, too,” I whispered. “I can send you on an errand to town and you can leave. Disappear.”
“What would I do outside the castle walls?” She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay here.”
“But you—”
Someone knocked at my door.
Branka rushed to open it and three women walked into the room carrying baskets of wedding paraphernalia. My team of servants had arrived to prepare me for my wedding day.
I finished my bath in silence, soaking in Branka’s words. If what she said about Rudolf was true, then the state of the castle was worse than I’d originally suspected.
The other women giggled and talked, jubilant about the day’s festivities. I was dying to ask them if they knew Ruzena and if she’d showed up for work today, but I didn’t. I didn’t know whom I could trust anymore. More importantly, I didn’t want Branka to know anything about the plan. The less she knew, the safer she was.
The women sprayed me with lotions and oils and all sorts of floral-smelling ointments. The too-sweet aroma gave me a headache, but I stood compliant as they tugged, pulled, and prodded me.
Morning ran into lunch and a tray of food arrived. I picked at the bread and sausage, but my stomach was too full of nerves to eat anything. Since my return to the castle, the extravagant royal meals only reminded me of how many people were starving outside the walls.
After lunch, Branka led the way for two guards carrying my wedding dress. The men wore white gloves so their hands wouldn’t soil the satin. The dress was positioned on an adjustable stand with a bust. The long train was twisted and held off the ground by a hook.
It was beautiful—the white silk gown was piped at the rounded neck and waist in ivory and hung slightly off the shoulders. Tight sleeves flowed into lace cuffs and the corseted bodice was lined with pearls that curved over the hips before flowing out to the floor. The train was on the hook, but I suspected it was long. The hem was edged in ivory lace.
The silks, satins, lace, and pearls were gorgeous, but I turned away when the gown was brought into my room.
I wasn’t interested.
Each second that ticked by brought me closer to the ceremony. There was still no word on a prison break. No alarm had sounded. No activity from the rear of the castle.
“All done.” The servant patted me on the shoulder. “Your hair looks lovely.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
“Would you like to—”
“Ludmila,” my father’s voice sliced through the room like a knife. “You look divine.”
I reluctantly glanced toward the door.
My father had a strange grin on his face. All of the women, including Branka, bowed deeply.
“Leave us,” my father said.
The women scurried out of the room.
“Did you come to gloat?” I asked.
“I came to congratulate you.” He closed the door behind him.
“I doubt that.” I felt uneasy. He’d imprisoned an innocent man, killed dozens of Protestants, and murdered my mother. He wouldn’t think twice about hurting me.
“I wanted to congratulate you on last night’s splendid performance,” he said. “You had Radek practically eating out of your hand again. And so quickly. He must really love you. Though I can’t understand why, soiled as you are by the blacksmith’s son. But nevertheless, you are extremely talented, my daughter. A master manipulator—just like your mother.”
A hiss escaped my lips.
“But see,” my father said. “I’m not stupid. I know you would never give up something that you feel so strongly about. I know you’re up to something. I saw you knock the soup from the servant girl’s hand.”
“You are paranoid.” I smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from my robe. “You must be losing control.”
“You bumped her arm.”
“I did not.” I stalked across the room and stood in front of him.
He looked bad. He was skinnier, if that was possible, and his skin had a yellowish tint to it. He was dying and he knew it, which made him even more dangerous—wounded animals always struck first.
“Come, Father. You wouldn’t w
ant to upset me on my wedding day, would you?”
My father grinned. Excess skin under his chin flapped. “That’s another reason why I’m here to see you.”
“I don’t see a gift in hand.”
“Consider this warning my present to you. If anything goes wrong—anything; if you so much as stutter during your wedding vows—I will personally kill the blacksmith’s son and stick his head on a spike on the front gate.”
“Will you use the same knife that you used on my mother?” I whispered viciously. I would no longer cower from him. “No, of course not; you haven’t seen that dragon dagger in years.”
He blinked, but that was it. No other emotion registered across his features. He didn’t bother to address the accusation, but I knew it to be true. “You’ll marry Radek tonight and the blacksmith’s son will hang in the morning.”
I shrugged, trying to keep the upper hand in the exchange, but anger consumed me as I stood face-to-face with my mother’s killer.
“I’ll see you at the ceremony, Ludmila. Please know I mean every word I said.” He retreated from my room.
My hands were still trembling when Branka reappeared a few moments later. “Ludmila, it’s time to put on your wedding dress.”
Chapter Twenty-three
I was sequestered in a room in Saint Vitus Cathedral with stained glass windows on three sides. Torches reflected against the blue, red, yellow, and green biblical scenes.
My breathing was labored—partly from the too tightly laced corset, but mostly because I was scheduled to walk down the aisle at any moment. Crowds of the nobility—administrators, barons and baronesses, dukes and duchesses, and all sorts of people I didn’t know or care about—were making their way up the lantern-lined pathway, past the front palace to the beautifully Gothic construction that was Saint Vitus Cathedral. My guests would walk the same pathway where Urek and his gang had kidnapped me.
Daliborka Tower felt far away. I’d heard of no added guards. No riot or flames coming from the tower like I’d imagined. The tower was ignored. Was Marc still in the dungeon? Had Ruzena betrayed me? Did Henrik ever get my message?