That afternoon, the new king's first decree was posted in every square and on every street corner of Prague.
The several hundred copies of the decree, written on parchment, were composed in Czech so that even commoners who knew no Latin could read them easily.
_________
By the name of Ulrich the First, King of Bohemia, it is hereby commanded.
The bishops of the Catholic Church, blinded by greed, have abandoned the teachings of the Lord and sucked the lifeblood of the people.
Now, holding them to account for that sin, all property of every Catholic church and monastery in the land of Bohemia is confiscated.
The gold and the land they have hidden away shall now return to the starving people.
_________
The voice of the herald reading out the decree rang across the square.
The citizens wore bewildered expressions at first.
He dares to lay hands on the property of the Church? Will heaven's punishment not fall?
But their bellies were far too empty.
"They say even Jesus had no house...... but those pig-like bishops live in castles, don't they?"
"That's right! Those are the ones who stripped every last thing I owned when my wife was sick, saying they'd pray for her!"
"The king says he'll give that money back to us!"
The hesitation was short, and the anger was long.
"Long live King Ulrich!"
"The king passes judgment on the corrupt Church!"
"Those greedy priests, serves them right!"
Immediately after, two thousand men of the Prague militia went out from the city gates bearing the king's banner.
Their objective was Sedlec Monastery, reputed to be the wealthiest in Bohemia.
By the time the sun was sinking low, the militia arrived before the monastery.
The peaceful monastery fell into chaos at the sudden appearance of an army.
The abbot shouted from behind the gate, his face gone pale.
"Who are you, that you dare set your soldiers' boots upon the house of the Lord! This is inviolable, sacred ground!"
The commander of the Prague militia unfurled the parchment bearing the decree and shouted.
"In the name of Ulrich the First, all property of this monastery is confiscated! Open the gate quietly and your lives at least will be spared!"
"Heretics and traitors! His Holiness the Pope will excommunicate you all! The lightning of the Lord will fall upon your heads!"
"Heaven's punishment ought to fall on you bastards who have sucked the lifeblood of the people! Move in!"
The moment the commander's order fell, the soldiers charged with a war cry.
"Waaaaaah!"
THUD! CRACK!
The heavy front gate of the monastery was smashed apart by an enormous log, and the soldiers poured into the courtyard like an angry tide.
"Stop them! Protect the holy relics!"
The monks resisted, swinging candlesticks and staves, but it was hopeless against the momentum of starving soldiers.
Screams and curses burst out on every side, but cruelly enough, not a single bolt of lightning came down from the sky.
The soldiers stormed straight into the nave. And they crammed into sacks whatever they could lay hands on: the golden candlesticks and silver chalices that decorated the altar, the jeweled reliquaries.
The religious paintings on the walls were torn down frames and all, and the rare manuscripts of the library were stacked up like firewood.
In the abbot's office a hidden strongbox was discovered. Out of it poured deeds to fertile vineyards near Kutná Hora and share certificates for silver mines.
"There's something here!"
"Tear open the wall!"
And at last, deep beneath the monastery, a secret storeroom was revealed.
The soldiers who broke through the door and stepped inside swallowed their breath at the sight before them.
Gold coin and silver ingots and jewels of every kind, scraped together over decades, lay heaped up in mountains, glittering greedily in the candlelight.
Before that mountain of gold the soldiers swallowed dryly without meaning to. One young soldier muttered blankly.
"So this was a den of thieves all along..."
From that moment on, the soldiers began stripping the monastery bare without a shred of hesitation.
That night, Sedlec Monastery was as bright as midday with torches. 'The property of God', loaded so heavily that the cartwheels sank, went toward Prague in a long line.
In just three days.
Twelve monasteries and forty-eight churches in the vicinity of Prague had all of their property confiscated by order of the king.
***
The royal treasurers of Prague Castle were, at this moment, witnessing a scene they would never forget for the rest of their lives.
The forecourt of the royal vault was pure pandemonium.
Because the procession of wagons that had followed one another nose to tail all night was disgorging mountains of spoils torn out of monasteries and churches.
"This lot is from Sedlec Monastery! Forty golden crosses! Sixty silver candlesticks! Thirty-two jeweled reliquaries!"
"Land deeds and debt bonds from Břevnov Monastery! Damn it all, there is so much parchment I cannot even finish counting it!"
"Altar ornaments from St. George's Basilica! It is all pure gold, pure gold!"
In the shouts of the Prague militia soldiers there was not so much as a speck of fear of sacrilege.
There was only a strange pride at having taken part in a historic feat, and the primal greed for the gold glittering before their eyes.
The faces of the old treasurers and clerks responsible for the vault, by contrast, had gone ashen.
Those countless treasures were the absolute authority of the Church itself, which had reigned over the souls of the Bohemian people for centuries.
With those things rolling about on the floor like meat in a butcher's shop, it was no wonder their jaws trembled.
Perhaps in their eyes I looked like a horned devil.
Well, it made no difference.
I sat at the largest table inside the vault, watching all the commotion with indifference.
On the table were freshly baked bread, fresh cheese, and a cup of warm milk with the steam curling off it.
Compared to the black bread like a lump of stone and the sour-smelling ale of Šternberk, it was a luxury to bring tears to the eyes.
I broke off a piece of bread and soaked it deep in the warm milk. A rich, soft flavor spread through my mouth.
"Mm."
A languid, leisurely breakfast, thoroughly insulated from the bedlam before my eyes.
But my head was turning colder and faster than it ever had.
'Far more than I expected. And not simply gold and silver. Land deeds, trading rights, debt bonds...'
The Church, before it was a religious institution, was the greatest feudal lord and the most vicious financial capitalist of this age.
Was it not common knowledge in this era that a single abbot was wealthier than most nobles?
Just then, János came over, clicking his tongue and grumbling.
"My lord, no, Your Grace. Do you truly mean to count every last one of these? Can we not simply match up the number of sacks and hand them out? At this rate we will be here till dawn, till dawn."
"No."
I cut him off flatly.
"This is not a band of brigands dividing up stolen goods. This is the process of transferring the kingdom's property into the national treasury. There must not be an error of even one groschen. That is how there is no trouble afterward."
Accuracy breeds trust, and trust is power.
If I was to prove that I was superior to those nobles of the old age, I had to overwhelm them not only in force but in intellect and system as well.
I picked up a quill and scrawled numbers on clean parchment.
Not the long, inefficient Roman numerals the clerks used. A system simple and yet perfect. Arabic numerals.
"Use this format. Item, quantity, estimated value, source. Classify by those four. I will do the calculations myself, so all you need to bring me are the tallied numbers."
"Yes, understo... but, Your Grace? What in the world are these symbols? I have handled ledgers all my life and I have never in my born days seen such characters..."
"It is a new method of ledger keeping. My method. Before long every ledger in the kingdom will be replaced with this. For now, do not argue and do as you are told."
The clerks looked at one another with stupefied expressions, but they could hardly defy the king's razor-edged order.
From then on, a strange scene unfolded in the forecourt of the royal vault.
Three or four clerks would flick abacus beads, write and erase Roman numerals, groan and strain, and finally bring me a result.
I would skim it over and produce a total in an instant and record it.
While they were counting on their fingers to work out 'MMCLXXIV plus DLXXX', in my head the calculation '2174 + 5830' had finished in half a second.
As time passed, the look in the clerks' eyes changed. Beyond fear and obedience, into something like awe at the sight of a being outside the category of human.
'Well, they are not wrong. By the standard of this age I might as well be a supercomputer.'
By the time the sun hung at the top of the sky, the all-night labor was finally done.
János swallowed dryly and asked. His voice trembled faintly with anticipation and excitement.
"So... how much is it altogether?"
I set down the quill and cracked my stiff neck. Then, leaning deep into the back of the chair, I spat out the number without emotion.
"In assets that can be converted to cash alone, roughly one million two hundred eighty-six thousand five hundred Prague groschen."
Silence.
A complete stillness settled, as if even the sound of the wind had stopped.
1,286,500 groschen.
Not only János but even the old head clerk, who had handled money his whole life, froze with his mouth hanging open as if he had forgotten how to breathe.
This was an age in which a skilled craftsman had to work a full day for one groschen, and a mercenary risking his life earned two a day.
This was an astronomical sum, more than enough to buy an entire ordinary country outright.
The more frightening part was that this was the tip of the iceberg.
"What I just quoted ignores artistic value entirely. That is the price if you simply melted it all down into silver ingots."
I grinned at János, who was standing there blankly.
"If we add in the land deeds rolling around over there... well, I doubt putting a value on it even means anything."
János muttered like a sleepwalker.
"...Is all of this ours?"
His gaze was fixed on the platinum crosses and golden chalices sprawled on the floor and the mountains of sacks of silver coin, and it would not come away.
His eyes were sparkling like silver coins themselves; he looked ready to dive into that heap on the spot.
"Your Grace, be honest with me. Is it all right for us to swallow the whole of this?"
János gulped down his saliva and went on.
"No, honestly speaking! If we took this and ran for Poland or Venice right now, we could live like kings for the rest of our lives... no, for generations of our descendants!"
His usual cynical manner was nowhere to be found.
Well, with money like this, even the Buddha... no, even Jesus would have his head turned.
"János."
"Yes!"
"What are we, a band of brigands?"
János said with an incredulous look on his face.
"Judging by what you have just done, you are more than a band of brigands rather than less, I would say."
"That is not wrong."
I put the milk-soaked bread in my mouth and chewed. The rich flavor spread across my tongue.
"But it isn't all ours."
"What? Then who do we give it to? Surely you are not about to say something insane like giving it back to the Pope?"
I brushed off the crumbs of bread and held up two fingers.
"I only take half of the winnings."
"...What?"
János blinked as if he had no idea what I meant.
Right, there is no way you would know about a house cut. I grinned and gestured with my chin at the firmly shut iron door.
"It is time for the guests. Head clerk, go and open the door."
Screeeek—
The heavy iron door opened with a rusted shriek. The stale air of the vault, mixed with dust and the smell of iron and old parchment, mingled with the fresh wind from outside.
And two men came in.
A nobleman in gorgeous silk clothing but with a pallid complexion, Čeněk of Wartenberg.
A soldier in mud-caked battle dress with a hardened expression, Jan Roháč of Dubá.
The head of the moderate nobles, and the second-in-command of the radical Taborite faction.
Two men who could no more mix than water and oil set foot into the vault side by side.
"Your Grace, you summoned... hup."
Čeněk could not finish and sucked in an empty breath.
Gold bars rolling on the floor, silver coins spilling out of sacks as if vomited up, and a jeweled reliquary set carelessly on the table.
"Th-this is..."
His throat bobbed violently up and down, and his eyes rolled about busily.
Jan Roháč's reaction, by contrast, was different.
Brows knitted, he glared at the gold and treasure as though looking at filthy sewage.
"...So this is the pus gathered up by the whores of fallen Babylon."
Roháč spoke as though chewing and spitting the words. His voice dripped with disgust.
"The idols made by wringing out the lifeblood of the poor were all gathered here."
"Welcome, my lords."
Sitting crooked in my chair, I lightly tossed the gold, ruby-set cup I held in my hand into the air and caught it.
Clink. A clear, bright metallic note cut through the heavy silence.
"Sit. This will be a long conversation."
The two of them sat in the chairs across from me, one awkwardly, the other with a displeased expression.
Čeněk's gaze was still fixed on the golden cup toying about in my hand.
It was a very strange look, greed mixed with terror at the sacrilege.
"Your Grace... I had heard the rumors, but did you truly strip every monastery bare? The papal court will not sit still! Excommunication is certain, and perhaps all of Europe will turn against us!"
Čeněk spoke with a trembling voice.
I shrugged as if it were nothing.
"Sigismund bringing a crusade down on us was only a matter of time in any case. One more writ of excommunication changes nothing."
"But this is... is it not too extreme!"
"Extreme, is it..."
I set the cup down on the table.
"Lord Čeněk. What is the annual revenue from your estate?"
"What? Th-that, why so suddenly... it comes to roughly ten thousand groschen."
"Ten thousand."
I gave a light kick to a sack at my feet. With a weighty sound the mouth of the sack gaped open and silver coins came pouring out. A silver waterfall.
"What is here alone comes to roughly one million three hundred thousand groschen. It is money you could only get your hands on if you spent a hundred and thirty years doing nothing but breathing and never spending a copper."
Čeněk's mouth fell open.
"One million three hundred thousand...?"
"And if you add in the land deeds and the value of the artwork? It will pass three million with ease, at minimum."
"Th-three million...!"
Čeněk's pupils lost their focus and wavered.
Three million groschen. A sum equal to several years of the Kingdom of Bohemia's budget. The weight of that number blew his reason clean white.
I turned my gaze to Roháč.
"General Roháč. I have received reports that the soldiers of the Taborite army have been going hungry of late."
Roháč's eyebrow twitched. It seemed I had touched his pride.
"...The warriors of God do not bow to a thing like hunger."
"Their spirit is admirable, but a hungry soldier cannot fight. And are you not also short of powder and short of horses to pull the wagons?"
"..."
Roháč could not refute it. It was a painfully true fact.
Žižka's army was powerful, but it was always tormented by the noose of insufficient supply. It got by barely on plunder, but the limits of that were clear.
And that plunder, in the end, was aimed at the people of Bohemia. However much it was the land of a Catholic lord (as mine had been), in the end those who suffered were mostly peasants.
"This money is the blood and sweat of the people. I have only recovered what the Church stole. Therefore it must be used again for the people."
I rose from my seat and walked slowly among the mountains of stacked coin sacks.
"Half."
I stopped and looked back and forth between the two men.
"Exactly half will be transferred to the national treasury. I will manage it directly, and it will be used to rebuild the kingdom's walls and to make weapons. Any objection?"
"...None."
"Good."
I nodded.
"Of the remaining half, three tenths I will allot to the Taborite army."
"Did you say three tenths?"
Roháč's eyes widened. Thirty percent of the whole came to nearly four hundred thousand groschen, an enormous sum.
"With that money buy food, buy powder, buy horses. Pay your soldiers proper wages so they no longer need to plunder civilian homes. Tell General Žižka this. Tell him to smash Sigismund with this gold."
Roháč's expression twisted into something complicated. He loathed the nobility, but he could hardly refuse support on this scale.
Roháč gave a short nod.
"...Understood. I will convey it to General Žižka."
"And Lord Čeněk."
"Yes, yes! Your Grace!"
Čeněk looked at me with the eyes of an expectant puppy. If he had had a tail it would probably have been worth watching.
"The remaining two tenths I will allot to the noble council."
"T-two tenths...!"
"But there is a condition."
I fixed Čeněk with cold eyes.
"This money is not given for you lords to spend on luxury. Use it to put your estates in a state of defense and to support the families of the conscripted serfs. If word reaches my ears that this money has gone into your lordships' pockets..."
I let the end of my sentence trail off and drove the quill I was holding into the table. The sharp nib buried itself deep in the hard oak.
"Then I will pay a personal visit to your castles to collect my share."
Čeněk's face went white. He nodded so hard his head might have come off.
"I-I will keep it in mind! Such a thing will never happen!"
"Good. I will take it that we are agreed."
With this, the immediate fire was put out.
The army would fill its belly, and the nobles, having had a taste of money, would wag their tails at me for the time being.
Just then, Roháč, who had been keeping silent, asked in a weighty voice.
"There is one thing I would ask."
"Hm?"
"Why did Your Grace... not take this money for yourself alone? If it were for the sake of strengthening royal power, it would have been better to monopolize all of this wealth and raise your own private army."
It was a sharp question. János and Čeněk both looked curious as well.
I snorted and picked up one more piece of bread from the table.
"As Sigismund did, and as every king in history has done, you mean?"
"..."
"This money the Church gathered is rotten. It has stagnated too long and the stench is overpowering. If I eat it alone I will die of a bad stomach. So..."
I put the bread in my mouth and chewed.
"Would it not be better for us all to share it out and all become accomplices together? So that when Sigismund invades, they will fight to the death if only because they do not want this delicious honey pot taken away."
Silence flowed.
Roháč let out a hollow laugh, Čeněk swallowed dryly, and János shook his head from side to side.
"I think I understand now why General Žižka keeps his eye on Your Grace."
Roháč said as he rose from his seat. In his eyes there was something different from before, something like a strange respect.
"Very well. I will arm the army of God with this filthy money. Cutting the throat of a crusade with the lifeblood of the Church... now that is sacrilegious, and yet it is to my taste."
Roháč gave me a short, weighty bow of the head, then swept out with his cloak flying, striding hard. With every step the sound of clashing iron rang out heavily.
Čeněk, by contrast, sprang up out of his chair.
"I-I shall also withdraw and convey Your Grace's will to the council! Your Grace's benevolence is immeasurable!"
He bent at the waist to ninety degrees in a flurry, like a man who had been sitting on a hot griddle.
After Čeněk left as though fleeing, the heavy iron door closed again.
BOOM—
In the vault, where the silence had returned, there remained only me, János, and the treasures left as my share.
Roughly six hundred thousand groschen.
An amount exceeding several years of any ordinary country's budget. A violent sum, in the truest sense.
János stared blankly at a sack of silver coins, then asked.
"My lord, what in the world do you mean to do with this money now? Are you going to hire mercenaries?"
"That is obvious enough."
I grinned and rose from my seat.
The use of this money was already written out in every detail on the blueprint inside my head.