Chapter 19: The Lion’s Table

The frost of Christmas Eve bit through Konrad’s wool cloak as he crossed the castle courtyard, the Great Hall of Prague glowing before him like a furnace mouth. Torches spat and hissed against the cold, and the air smelled of roasted boar, mulled wine, and the sweet rot of hay strewn for the horses of a hundred guests. Ottokar II of Bohemia kept a court that dwarfed any in the Empire—silver plate, Flemish tapestries, and a menagerie of exotic beasts that roared from the lower bailey. Konrad had seen the lion once, in its cage, pacing with a hunger that reminded him of Rudolf.

He paused at the threshold, brushing frost from his sleeves, and felt the weight of eyes upon him. The dark-haired lady of the powerful house stood near the hearth, her gown the color of dried blood, her gaze a blade that found him across the crowd. She did not look away when he met her stare. Instead, she tilted her head, a slow, deliberate motion, as if she were reading a page he could not see.

“Sir Konrad.”

The voice came from his left, low and familiar. Brother Anselm, his Franciscan habit stained with travel, appeared at his elbow with the quiet of a man who had learned to move unseen. The friar’s face was gaunt, his eyes red-rimmed from vigil, and he carried a leather satchel that clinked with the weight of ink and parchment.

“You should not be here,” Anselm said.

“I was invited.”

“Invited and caged are not the same thing.” The friar’s hand found Konrad’s wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. “There is a woman in grey who has been asking after you. Not the lady you met in the stable—another, older, with a scar across her left cheek. She moves through the kitchens, the chapel, the servants’ quarters. She knows your name. She knows your father’s name.”

Konrad’s blood chilled. “Where is she now?”

“Gone. But she left this.”

Anselm pressed a scrap of parchment into his palm. The writing was cramped, feminine, the ink uneven as if penned in haste. It bore a single line: *The river remembers what the ice conceals. Come to the chapel at the third hour.*

Konrad read it twice, then tucked it into his sleeve. “Sister Hedwig?”

“She is no sister,” Anselm said. “But she wears the habit when it suits her. The lady Margarethe called her a friend. Be wary of what friends mean in this city, Konrad. In Prague, even the saints carry daggers.”

From the far end of the hall, a herald’s trumpet blared. The crowd parted, and Ottokar II entered—the golden lion of Bohemia in the flesh, resplendent in a tunic of cloth-of-gold, a ruby the size of a hen’s egg pinned at his throat. He moved with the easy arrogance of a man who had never known defeat, and his eyes swept the room with a hunter’s precision until they found Konrad.

The king smiled. It was not a warm expression.

“Sir Konrad von Eppenstein,” Ottokar called, his voice carrying over the murmur of the court. “The emperor’s shadow has come to warm himself at my fire. Approach.”

Konrad walked the length of the hall, feeling the weight of every gaze. The dark-haired lady watched him with that unnerving stillness. A cluster of Bohemian nobles whispered behind their goblets. At the high table, Ottokar’s second wife, Kunigunda, sat with a face like carved ivory, her eyes fixed on some point beyond the crowd.

Konrad knelt at the dais, his knee pressing into the cold stone. “My lord king. I bring greetings from Rudolf, King of the Romans, who prays for your health and your prosperity.”

“Does he?” Ottokar’s laugh was a bark. “I am touched. Truly. The old fox prays for me, and yet I find his envoys skulking through my capital, sniffing at my alliances, my betrothals, my borders.” He leaned forward, and the ruby caught the torchlight like a drop of blood. “Tell me, Sir Konrad. Does your uncle send you to bear gifts, or to count my silver?”

Konrad rose, meeting the king’s gaze. “He sends me to speak truth, my lord. And truth is the rarest gift a king can receive.”

A ripple of amusement passed through the court. Ottokar’s smile widened, but his eyes remained cold. “Truth. Then tell me this truth: does your uncle intend to press his claim on the duchies of Austria, Styria, and Carinthia? Does he intend to take what my father’s sword won and my hand holds?”

The hall fell silent. Konrad felt the trap closing around him, a door of steel and stone. If he denied Rudolf’s ambition, he would be a fool and a liar. If he confirmed it, he would be feeding Ottokar the pretext for war.

“My lord,” he said slowly, “my uncle seeks only what the Empire has granted him. The electors chose him. The Pope has confirmed him. If he presses claims, he presses them as King of the Romans, not as a private lord.”

Ottokar’s eyes narrowed. “A careful answer. You have your uncle’s tongue, if not his years.” He reached for his goblet, drank, and gestured to the musicians in the gallery. The strings of a viol began to weave a slow, mournful air. “Sit, Sir Konrad. Eat. Drink. Enjoy the hospitality of my hall. Tomorrow we will speak of borders and claims. Tonight, we will speak of nothing at all.”

It was a dismissal, and Konrad took it. He found a place at the lower tables, among the knights and petty lords who had come to curry favor with the Bohemian court. Anselm settled beside him, his satchel clutched like a shield.

“He knows,” Anselm murmured. “He knows what Rudolf intends.”

“He knows what any man with eyes knows,” Konrad said. “The question is what he will do about it.”

The feast wore on. Courses of swan and pheasant, boar’s head glazed with honey, and a tower of marzipan shaped like the walls of Prague itself. Konrad ate little, watching the room with a spy’s attention. He saw the dark-haired lady rise from her seat and slip through a side door. He saw Kunigunda whisper to a servant, who hurried out into the night. And he saw, for just a moment, a figure in a grey habit pass before the far window, her face turned toward him, a scar pale against her cheek.

Konrad set down his goblet. “I need to find the chapel.”

Anselm grabbed his arm. “You cannot leave the feast. Ottokar will notice.”

“Ottokar noticed me the moment I walked through the door. He will notice when I leave, and he will notice when I return. But if Hedwig has answers, I need them before the dawn.”

He rose, threading his way through the tables with the ease of a man who had learned to move unseen. The corridors of Prague Castle were labyrinthine, cold stone and hanging tapestries that swallowed sound. He passed a guard who nodded, mistaking him for a Bohemian knight, and came at last to the chapel door.

It was a small space, barely larger than a cell, lit by a single candle before a carved Virgin. The air smelled of incense and damp. And there, kneeling at the altar, was the woman in grey.

She did not turn when he entered. “You came.”

“You knew I would.” Konrad closed the door behind him. “Who are you?”

She rose, and the candlelight fell across her face. The scar ran from her left cheekbone to the corner of her mouth, a white seam in weathered skin. Her eyes were dark, ancient, and she smiled with the patience of a woman who had waited many years for this moment.

“I am Hedwig von Eppenstein,” she said. “Your father’s sister. The sister Rudolf would not let you claim.”