The Council
“Sigismund’s Crusades are going to bankrupt us!”
“What price can we put on the Holy Faith? These Hussite Infidels will destroy it if they’re not stopped.”
“Attacking them just seems to draw more to their cause and make them stronger….”
“We must think about our own. We barely have enough grain in the stores to last the winter. We’ll have to raise tribute next year if the war expenditures don’t decrease. The people will be hard pressed. We have already lost so many to the wars.”
“How can we say no to the King who’s bound for the Emperor’s throne?”
Leopold leaned on one arm of his chair at the head of the Council table and listened absently to his councillors bicker. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the Hussite boy begging him for his life in the streets of Prague as Gletscher’s hooves thrashed in the air over his head, and the black pool of blood spreading on the cobbles a moment later. He stood abruptly.
“Thank you for your counsel. I am going to pray on this matter.” And leaving the Council chambers, he muffled himself well and strode across the market—nearly empty at this early hour, and into St. Hildegard’s church. A few townspeople bowed or curtsied as he passed, but most paid him no mind, which was how he liked it.
It wasn’t a lie that he needed to pray, Leopold thought as he eased himself into the front pew of the family chapel, wincing at the still-healing lance wound in his thigh. But he was here as much because he needed the quiet. His Councillors meant well—honestly there wasn’t a rotten apple in the barrel at the moment, thank God. But none of them had been there, on the Bohemian battlefield in the mud and blood, burying boys on both sides scarcely old enough to grow a beard. It escaped Leopold how such a business accomplished the Lord’s work. It certainly wasn’t accomplishing anything for Sigismund—other than emptying the armies and coffers of the very vassals that he was soon going to need to count on to elect him Holy Roman Emperor. The Hussites were devout and determined, and so all Sigismund had to show for his crusades were leagues of once-beautiful Bohemian countryside now so battered that even if he won them, it would take years to coax even a sheaf of wheat from the blasted ground.
“Mein Gott.” Leopold dropped his forehead to the heels of his hands and rocked it back and forth. How many times had he wished he hadn’t been born Sigismund’s kinsman, that his father hadn’t died in the Baltic crusades and made him graf when he still wasn’t strong enough to lift his father’s sword. But wishing didn’t change a thing. He was Graf von Regensburg, and his lands bordered Bohemia, and Sigismund was never going to let him go. And even if Leopold felt strong enough in his convictions to defy the king and take the consequences—disinheritance, foreclosure, imprisonment, even execution—and he wasn’t sure he was, there were his vassals, burgers, and peasants to think of. “Lord, let it be a long winter,” he groaned into his hands. “Let my cousin stay in Venice savoring the oranges.”
He heard a squeal of laughter and looked round to see two boys come racing into the transept, chasing each other. When they saw he was sitting in the chapel, they skidded to a halt. Leopold frowned at them. “Come here,” he said sternly. They blanched and shuffled over.“Answer me,” he commanded. “Do you have brothers and sisters at home?”
“Y-yes, your grace,” stammered the eldest. “A sister and a brother.”
“Both littler than you?” They nodded. The graf dug in his purse and brought out four pennies.
“Your penance is to go and buy four pieces of lebkuchen from Herr Hanselmann and share them round. St. Nicholas is watching, remember.”
The boys just blinked at him for a moment, eyes wide and round as the panes in the stained-glass window of St. Hildegard over the altar. Then, they snatched the pennies from Leopold’s hand and scampered off. “Merry Christmas!” the littler one called over his shoulder, remembering at least part of his manners.
Leopold smiled ruefully, stood, and shrugged his hood back up over his head. “Merry Christmas,” he said quietly to the empty church, crossed himself, and headed back to the Council chambers.
The Rookery 