Prague in 1606 was a fairy-tale city of massive encircling walls with high towers at every corner, huge gates of timber and iron, crooked streets filled with tiny houses whose roofs of red clay tiles almost touched the ground, and a fortified castle with turrets and a drawbridge. Green and yellow banners hung from the battlements, gilded angels kept watch over the city from the top of soaring church spires, and rising on a hill in the very centre of the city gleamed the sparkling whitewashed facade of a grand palace. To Wilhelmina it looked like something the Brothers Grimm might have concocted as a backdrop to a story about a spoiled prince and a selfless pauper. Mina had treasured such a book as a child and had always thrilled to the subtle horror of those antique stories.
“It’s like a dream,” she gasped upon seeing their imposing destination suddenly revealed in all its glory.
They had come upon the many-towered city quite without warning. The open, rolling countryside gave little hint of what was lurking just over the next hill. There was but a slight buildup along the road-a few more farms, a tiny settlement or two-and then, as they came over the rise, they were all at once confronted by the majestic city walls and a view of the imposing brown stone castle, flags aflutter in the breeze. A generous river skirted the southeastern quarter of the town, and a great many shacklike dwellings had been erected on the low ground. Englebert did not approve of this, as he imagined the area would be prone to flooding. “They should know better,” he huffed. However, he did approve of the hefty stone ramparts that encircled the city and the sturdy, ironclad city gates, and pronounced them very good work. “Strong walls are important,” he declared.
The weather had turned cold. There was a shimmering skin of frost on the grass and trees. Travelling in the country, they had the road mostly to themselves, but the traffic greatly increased the nearer they came to the gates. Englebert left his seat and guided the mules as they joined the slow-moving parade that included oxcarts, horse-drawn carriages, and more than a few hand wagons: mobile businesses of several varieties, all pulled by their proprietors-tinkers, shoemakers, weavers, carpenters, and the like-as well as scores of people on foot, and even a goat cart or two. Most of those on foot bore bundles on their backs: sticks, straw, rope, and bales of grass for fodder.
They passed through wide-open gates and rolled on into the heart of the city. Wilhelmina took in the sights and sounds-geese honking, dogs barking, and from somewhere she couldn’t see, the plaintive bleating of sheep-and the smells! The whole of Prague, so far as she could tell, stank of cheese and, unaccountably, apples. Why this should be so, she could not say, but under the pungent scent of rancid milk and rotting apples she detected, unmistakably, the sour, nostril-curling pong of the cesspit. The latter did not surprise her in the least since the gutters of the rough-paved streets ran with raw effluent, and there were mounds of garbage heaped willy-nilly over footpath and pavement everywhere she happened to cast her eye.
Englebert led his wagon directly into the spacious central square of the city, an area marked out and dominated by four immense buildings: a military barracks, a Rathaus, a guildhall, and the great hulking mass of a gothic cathedral. Numerous other structures crammed themselves between the larger buildings, wildly random in size and style-tall and thin brick next to short and squat half-timber, next to ornately plastered and painted and neatly curved facades-forming a sort of mad infill that gave the extravagant city square an outlandish, and slightly demented, character.
The sprawling open space hosted a generous number and variety of pedestrians, human and otherwise. A market appeared to be in full cry: merchants and customers haggling over the various wares on offer outside flimsily constructed booths; hawkers stalking, shouting for attention; dogs barking at ragged, quick-darting children; jugglers juggling, dancers prancing, and stilt-walkers swaggering through the milling throng.
All in all, Wilhelmina thought it breathtaking. And when Etzel announced, “Here is where I shall have my bakery!” she felt a genuine tingle of excitement.
“Why not?” she replied.
“Ja! ” He beamed at her with his happy cherub face. “Why not?”
Etzel drove his wagon to a corner of the square where he found a stone trough and hitching post. He halted and climbed down, tied the mules to the post, and allowed them to drink. “We have arrived!” he called happily. “Our new life begins.”
His inclusion of her was so easy and natural, she accepted it herself. In any case, it was not as if she had any better option.
The strangeness, the utter impossibility of her plight, was not lost on Wilhelmina. But benign acceptance of the peculiar situation was steadily, stealthily creeping up on her. She had to keep mentally pinching herself to force her wandering and easily distracted mind to remember that what she was experiencing was in no way normal. Yet, bizarre though it surely was, more and more she was discovering that her otherworldly sojourn was also curiously compelling. The weird cavalcade of events exerted its own beguiling influence. Old-world Prague was winning her over.
Englebert was gazing about him with equal amazement. Finally, he drew himself up and turned to her. “I am wanting to ask you something, Fraulein,” he said, his voice taking on a note of unexpected gravity.
“Go on then,” she said warily.
“Would you watch after Gertrude and Brunhild for me?”
Mina gazed back in bewilderment.
He indicated the mules.
“Oh! Of course.”
“I will not go far,” he told her, climbing down from the wagon box.
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay right here.”
But he was already gone, disappearing into the wheeling, swirling traffic of the square. Mina sat in the wagon and continued soaking in the sights and sounds around her, trying to gain some measure of the place. Prague, she thought, in the thirtieth year of Emperor Rudolf the Second-is that what Etzel had said? What did she know about the seventeenth century? Not much. Nothing, really. Didn’t Shakespeare live in the 1600s? Or was it Queen Elizabeth? She couldn’t remember.
If she had ever once in her life given the realities of life in seventeenth-century Bohemia a fleeting thought- and she most certainly had not-she would have pictured a world of superstition and suffering where obscenely rich and powerful aristocrats oppressed the miserable mass of grimy peasants whose lives were nasty, brutish, and short. Yet the folk she observed bustling around her, while admittedly grimy and short, seemed a fairly happy lot- judging solely from the air of amiable bonhomie permeating the Old Town square. Everywhere she looked, people were smiling, laughing, greeting one another with formal handshakes and kisses. Uniformly dressed in dull browns and drab greens-long knee-length cloaks and breeches for men, and short bodices with long, full skirts for the women-they nevertheless seemed prosperous enough.
It was the ladies who caught her attention, and from what she could see from her seat in the wagon, long hair was definitely in fashion-piled high and extravagantly curled or braided. Nearly everyone wore some sort of head covering; a scant handful of women covered their elaborate locks with fine, lace-trimmed hats; simple linen caps were in abundance, as were scarves. While their skirts might have been plain, their shawls were not; whether fringed, tasselled, square-cut, rounded, fine-woven, or knitted-all were as vivid and bright as possible: crimsons, yellows, blues, and greens, in any and all combinations. In fact, both men and women wore shawls. And children, of which there were many, were dressed exactly as their elders: adults in miniature.
The market crowd occupied her complete attention so that when the great clock in the city hall tower struck for the second time since her arrival in the square, she stirred and realized sitting so long in the wagon had made her cold. She rubbed her arms and blew into her cupped hands. Where had Etzel got to?
As if in answer to her thought, she heard a piping call and turned to see her companion, his arms laden with cloth-wrapped packages, bowling toward her through the throng, a small tribe of ragged foundlings around him. “Wilhelmina!” he called as he came to the wagon. “Our luck is good!”
He began handing up packages to her, which she took and stowed behind the wagon seat. The children were clamouring in a language Mina did not understand. What did they speak in Prague? Czech? Slovak?
“There is only one bakery on the square,” he announced, “and it is very small.” He passed her another package. “This one is for you.”
“For me?” Wilhelmina savoured an unexpected delight. “What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
She pulled one of the strings and unwrapped the parcel to reveal several small glazed cakes with chopped nuts and tiny seeds. “Honey cakes!” she cooed. “How sweet of you.”
He beamed. Taking another package, he handed it to the nearest and tallest of the ragamuffins around him.
