The Letter
Leopold sat down at his desk and looked at the letter lying on it in front of him. Bernard had given it to him as soon as he had returned from Regensburg. Leopold recognized Sigismund’s own spidery hand in the address. He shook his head. Things were not going well. He was not doing well. And he knew full well this was because he did not have at least two key attributes of a successful graf: namely, the ability to talk without saying anything, and the ability to say one thing and do another. So, he had just told Paulus he would not marry his stepdaughter; and, he had come home from that debacle to a letter from the man he had just told his Councillors he would not go to war for again, at least not in Bohemia.
He took a deep breath, let it out, opened the letter:
“My dear cousin Leopold, Graf von Regensburg, Knight of the Order of the Dragon,
“I hope this missive finds you well and enjoying some well-deserved rest in your beloved Kiefersheim. I know how much the burg and its folk mean to you. You have fought valiantly to protect them, and the other subjects of your domain, from the corrosive incursion of Hussite protestantism from Bohemia. I have valued the contributions of your domain of Regensburg to our noble Crusade and am sending with this letter a bounty that I hope expresses at least a portion of my gratitude. Please share it among the men who have fought alongside you in whatever way you find most fitting.
“Naturally, the Hussite threat is far from neutralized. The infidels are likely using this most sacred holiday to gather their troops for another invasion of our Holy Roman Empire. I anticipate this invasion early in the spring and hope I can count on you to muster a force of at least 5,000 men to counter the attack. I will be in touch after the holiday with better intelligence and strategy. In the meantime, I remain your devoted liege lord and send my holiest embrace–and the blessings of our Pope, for our sacred Christmas holiday,
“Sigismund of Luxembourg, Servant of Christ, King of Hungary, Croatia, Germany, and Bohemia.”
Five thousand men. Leopold felt his heart dropping slowly, as if down a dark well. He didn’t have 5,000 men of fighting age left in the domain. That meant hiring mercenaries, and the “bounty” Sigismund had sent wouldn’t come close to covering their contracts. The king was nearly broke himself, and mad, Leopold thought. If what the man truly wanted was to be Holy Roman Emperor he should be consolidating his uncertain powers in the Catholic strongholds of Germany, Hungary, and Croatia, not obsessing about a bunch of protestants in Bohemia whose grand ambitions–as far as Leopold could tell–amounted to avoiding being burnt at the stake.
The bells for Nones rang outside his offices above the Council chambers, and Leopold could hear children running out to meet each other in the square, freed from their chores in the happy chaos of the holiday week. He felt a surge of anger–at Sigismund for taking away so many of their fathers, at himself for being too much a coward to stand up to his cousin, to stand for anything…. At all of it for taking away his joy at Christmas, which had always been his favorite time of year. Leopold sensed the twinkling of a dark star just outside the range of his vision–a star he didn’t want to look at because if he did, he would have to face the realization that he was never going to feel joy again, that joy was the price exacted for the power and privilege he had been born into, which he had never once wanted.
Leopold heard his mother’s voice in his head then: “Feeling sorry for yourself, my son? Then stop looking at yourself.” He pushed back from his desk, leaving the king’s letter lying there, and headed toward the hospital and see how Mathilde and Ursula were coming along with the patients.
The Rookery 