A few days later, the bells of every church in Prague rang out at once.
Under a sky without a single cloud, the solemn tolling seemed to sound through every part of Prague, from the lowest alley of the city to the highest spire.
I now stood at the entrance of an enormous stone building, in a shaded cloister.
The place where the heart and soul of the Kingdom of Bohemia were enshrined.
Where the kings of ages past slept and the kings of the future were born.
St. Vitus Cathedral.
The sound of János swallowing dryly beside me came unusually loud. Unlike him, the signs of nervousness were plain.
"Are you ready, my liege?"
Instead of answering I nodded slowly. I was every bit as nervous. My throat was so parched it felt as though grains of sand were rolling in it.
'A coronation with neither pope nor cardinal.'
It was a thing without precedent in history, yet here in Prague it was becoming the new reality.
Creeeak—
When the enormous oak doors opened inward, the noise and light of the outside world were cut off, and only a cool silence and a vast sense of space met him.
Dozens of enormous columns stretched up toward the sky to form an arched ceiling, and the stained glass filling the spaces between them broke the sunlight outside into tens of thousands of colored fragments, creating an unreal beauty.
Yet even that lustrous light could not entirely drive out the deep darkness inside the cathedral.
With one deep breath I pressed down the unease lodged deep in my lungs. My steps over the soft carpet laid across the floor were soundless and heavy.
The inside of the cathedral was packed with the nobles of Prague, the city councilors, and the guild masters. Their gazes flew at me like blades and lodged all over my body.
Awe, envy, suspicion, and open hostility. Gazes of every mingled emotion made the air heavy.
In one corner in particular, the gaze of a man standing with his arms folded and leaning against an enormous column was uniquely savage.
The one-eyed general in worn leather armor, Jan Žižka.
From the moment I entered he had been motionless, seeing straight through me with that one eye alone.
Like an old wolf weighing up its prey.
I did not avoid that gaze. Rather I met it straight on as I advanced toward the altar.
With each step I took, the faces of the nobles lined up on either side passed by.
Men bowing their heads by force, men who could not bring themselves to meet my eyes and looked away.
'Are they swearing loyalty to a king right now? Or have they merely knelt to the shouting of the square, to the will of the people?'
Either way, even that suppressed rage was mine to hold and to govern. That, after all, was a king's portion.
At last I reached the altar.
What greeted me was not a bishop's splendid vestments but Jan Rokycana in plain linen garments.
Behind him, Hussite clergy stood quietly in rows holding banners painted with the chalice.
In Rokycana's eyes were suspicion and wariness, and a resignation that this vast current could not be resisted.
With a stiff expression, Rokycana began to recite the prayer. Not in solemn Latin but in Czech, rough but forceful.
Its content was not a prayer asking God to bless a new king.
It was closer to an oath imposing on the new king the duty to uphold the 'Four Articles of Prague' and to defend Bohemia from heretics, a sort of reading of a contract.
When the prayer ended, Rokycana took up a small vial of holy oil.
"On behalf of the people of Bohemia, I pour oil upon your brow, your breast, and your hands. By this you shall be born again not as a worldly sovereign but as a guardian of the chalice."
The cold oil ran down my forehead. It was nothing special, merely olive oil.
But to those watching, it would look like the blessing of God.
Just as I had rehearsed countless times for this moment, I kept a reverent and humble expression.
Next the attendants brought out the objects symbolizing kingship.
An orb and a scepter made of gold.
"This orb symbolizes the kingdom you shall rule, and this scepter symbolizes your just governance."
I took the orb in my left hand and the scepter in my right. A weight heavier than I expected pressed down on my arms.
This was the weight of power. The lives of tens of thousands and the fate of a nation were contained in these cold lumps of metal.
And then the final step. Two priests carefully brought forward the crown resting on a silk cushion.
The Crown of Saint Wenceslas.
The most sacred symbol of the Kingdom of Bohemia, whose making the great Charles IV had personally ordered.
Into the pure gold circlet were set, without a gap, sapphires said to be the largest in the world, along with rubies, emeralds, and pearls.
It shone more brilliantly than any jewel, but to my eyes it looked like nothing more than well-worked metal and lumps of stone.
What conferred sanctity upon it was not the material itself but solely the belief of the people who looked upon it.
And from now on I had to make use of that belief.
Rokycana raised the crown with both hands.
Everyone inside the cathedral held their breath.
A brief stillness, as though time had stopped.
And at last the crown was set upon my head.
Clunk.
It was far heavier than I had expected. And not only in physical weight.
Along with the cold touch of metal pressing on my temples, an enormous invisible pressure bore down on my shoulders and my heart.
'So this is the weight of a king.'
Rokycana asked solemnly.
"You, Ulrich von Šternberk. Do you swear before God to protect the people of Bohemia and to uphold the Four Articles of Prague?"
Without a moment's hesitation, I answered in the loudest and firmest voice I had.
"I so swear."
Taking that answer as his signal, Rokycana stepped back a pace and cried out so that everyone in the cathedral could hear.
"We greet the new King of Bohemia, Ulrich the First!"
At the same moment those words ended, the firmly shut main doors of the cathedral were flung wide open.
Outside the cathedral, tens of thousands of citizens filling the square had been waiting only for the doors to open. Their longing and expectation surged in as one enormous wave.
"Whoaaaaaaaah!!!"
As though shattering the frozen silence inside the cathedral, a fervent shout came flooding in like a tidal wave. It was a cheer loud enough to deafen.
"It is our king!"
"Long live King Ulrich!"
I slowly turned to face the citizens who stretched their hands toward me and wept.
There was no joy. There was only the thought that the real beginning started here.
They had set a crown on my head.
Now I had to prove I was fit to wear it.
***
At an hour when the heat of the coronation had not yet cooled.
I stood alone in the innermost sanctuary of St. Vitus Cathedral, the Chapel of Saint Wenceslas.
The air of this place, where the remains of the kings of Bohemia through the ages slept, was cool and heavy, unlike the world outside.
I set the Crown of Saint Wenceslas, which I had worn on my head only moments before, down on the silk cushion on the altar.
That was when it happened.
Breaking the heavy stillness, the sound of someone approaching came from beyond the arched entrance of the chapel.
Tromp. Tromp.
The steady, heavy sound of military boots.
The one who revealed himself out of the darkness was the one-eyed general, Jan Žižka.
From his worn leather armor there seemed to seep the reek of blood that could not be washed out and the cold smell of iron.
"You sent for me, Your Grace."
Žižka used the address 'Your Grace', but there was not a speck of respect within it.
It was merely a dry voice, as though confirming a title the citizens of the square had attached to me.
He neither knelt nor bowed his head.
He simply stood planted before the door like an enormous boulder, looking at me from level height.
"Keep it to the business, briefly. We are both pressed for time."
His attitude was unmistakable. That he had no time to keep company with this sort of political game.
I did not point out his discourtesy. Now was not the moment.
"Where do you intend to go?"
Fortunately my voice came out calmer than I expected. The king's voice, rehearsed dozens of times.
"To where I ought to be."
An answer with nothing extra. A ruthless pragmatism that mixed in not a single word of unnecessary rhetoric. He meant he would return to the battlefield.
But Jan Žižka must not be let go like this.
The nobles of Prague could be coaxed or bludgeoned, but the Taborites were different.
They were fanatics armed with faith, and their gods were only the chalice and Jan Žižka.
If I could not win the heart of that old lion, I would be reduced to a puppet king who could not set foot outside the walls of Prague.
I laid down my card directly.
"General. Take the position of commander in chief of the Kingdom of Bohemia."
Žižka's one remaining eye narrowed. He stared at me steadily for a while, then let out a snort.
"Commander in chief... a fine, glossy title."
"It is a place that suits you."
"I have no need of it."
A refusal as firm as a knife cutting through a radish. It was the reaction I had expected.
Tapping the worn hilt at his waist, Žižka went on.
"My soldiers do not follow me because I am a general. They follow because I am this 'Jan Žižka'. Your Grace putting a hat on me will change neither their loyalty nor the sharpness of my sword."
Žižka took a step forward. The oppressive force of an old beast weighed down the space.
"And I do not trust you yet."
His voice hardened like stone.
"The citizens of Prague may have been taken in by that slick tongue and glossy bloodline, but if you mean to move the Lord's army with that three-inch tongue as well, you had best stop. We are men who fight by the word of scripture, not by the word of nobles."
"..."
Damn it.
My heart began to hammer as though it would break my ribs. My mouth was so dry my tongue kept sticking to the roof of it.
This pressure. Even facing tens of thousands on a battlefield would not have been this bad.
But I must not let it show. If I am pushed back on force of presence here, taking hold of the Taborites becomes forever impossible.
Forcing a show of composure, I pressed the mask down thicker, brazen-faced. And I slowly shook my head.
"This is not a proposal for my sake, General. If anything it is a proposal for you and your soldiers."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Sigismund will come. Leading an army far greater than before."
I took a step toward Žižka. Now the distance between us was less than an arm's length.
Žižka's scar-covered face, and the one eye shining fiercely within it, came close enough to touch.
"Bohemia is now torn between Catholics and Hussites, and the Hussites are split again into moderates and radicals, snarling at each other. Now they will divide again into those who accept a king and those who refuse. The enemy is at our doorstep and we point our blades at each other. Where is there a madder thing than this?"
Žižka was silent. But his firmly closed lips and the old scar on his cheek twitched minutely.
Proof that I was not wrong. He too must be sick to death of this divided state.
I went one step further here and touched his deepest grievance.
"I have no intention of taking your soldiers or interfering in your methods. If anything I mean to give you wings. In the king's name I will appoint you sole commander in chief."
"..."
"Then even those arrogant nobles of Prague will not dare quibble with your plans on the battlefield, and the whole chain of command will be bound into one with you at the center. Is that not how a fight is won?"
This was no empty hat. It was an offer to hand him the legitimacy to command the entire Bohemian army lawfully.
Žižka was silent for a long time. His one eye no longer tried to see through me.
Instead it sank deeper, coldly weighing the weight and the practical value of the offer I had thrown down.
After a long while he spoke.
"Why would you place such power in my hands?"
His voice was still full of suspicion. Naturally. There is nothing free in this world.
"Your Grace ought by rights to be wary of me. I am a man who could take your head. If I set my mind to it, I could turn my army around at any time and make this Prague a sea of fire."
"You would. If you judged that I was not fit to be king."
Without avoiding his eye, I looked straight back at him.
"But you will not. Because you are a man who loves this Bohemia more than I do. Because you are not the sort of man to shove this country into Sigismund's jaws over some personal ambition."
"..."
"I trust your loyalty. Not loyalty directed at me, but loyalty to this land and its people, and to that faith you trust as your own life."
I mixed not a single falsehood, not a single artifice into my voice.
This was not calculated performance but sincerity. Certainty about the human being I had grasped as 'Jan Žižka'.
"I have put on a crown but I know nothing of war. You are the finest soldier but you have no cause. We need each other, General. Your sword and my head."
The last sentence echoed in the empty air of the chapel.
It was neither entreaty nor supplication.
It was a ruthlessly cold analysis of reality, and terms of a bargain that pierced precisely through what each of us needed and could not be refused.
I held my breath and waited. To see what that old lion would choose.
How much time passed? At last Žižka opened his mouth heavily.
"...Very well."
That single phrase. The instant that short, blunt phrase struck my eardrums, the enormous pressure crushing my whole body vanished as though it had all been a lie.
He swept his large, rough hand once down his beard.
"You are right about one thing. Sigismund is coming, and Bohemia is biting its own belly like a wounded beast. The fools of Prague believe that justification and legitimacy will stop a crusade, but that is a delusion. Only steel and faith can stop them."
Žižka fixed his gaze on me.
Not hostility or contempt, but the look of a man appraising a coldly rational business partner.
"I will accept the post of commander in chief. But let me make one thing clear. Not for Your Grace's sake, but because I no longer wish to watch nobles who wave their bloodlines about on the battlefield give me advice on my own plans."
Žižka took one last step forward. A killing intent that stopped the breath in my throat washed over me.
"But mark this. I am loyal not to your crown but to the Four Articles of Prague. Soldiers, cannon, money, whatever is needed for the war, send all of it to me. With them I will crush Sigismund. But the moment you stray so much as one step from that road—"
Žižka's remaining eye flashed chillingly.
"I will face you not as your commander but as your judge."
Having finished his last words, he inclined his head in a motion that may have been the minimum courtesy due a king or may have been mere habit.
And then he turned without a trace of reluctance and left the chapel, the same heavy sound of military boots ringing out as when he had come.
Tromp, tromp.
Thud.
With the sound of the heavy door closing, the audience was over.
Žižka had not sworn loyalty. He had merely accepted the terms I set out.
A partial, dangerous, conditional victory.
...Even so, a victory was a victory.
Jan Žižka had taken my hand. This was the best result I could have obtained.
When I let out all the breath I had been holding at once, the tension went out of my whole body and my legs went wobbly as jelly.
"Whew... I thought I would die of the shakes."
In the end, dignity be damned, I dropped down onto the floor. I rubbed my palms, damp with cold sweat, hard against my silk trousers.
Now, at least for a while, the Hussites' blades would not be turned on one another.