Free The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty Page B

present conduct.”
    Rudolf’s back stiffened at the words.
    “May the plague take Matthias and send my brother’s soul to hell!”
    “You must not let him have an advantage. Show your supreme strength and banish your son before Matthias plays his hand.”
    The king looked at his minister. He swallowed hard.
    “Suggest a solution! I cannot condemn my son to that place we saw!”
    Rudolf thought of the bald women, the screaming heads of the wild men, begging to be freed.
    “Yet the bastard shall not cost me my throne, I swear it! Perhaps the astrological prognostication was right, and it will be a member of my own family who will bring me to my death.”
    The king worked his ruby ring around his finger, thinking of the prophecy.
    “Tell me, good Rumpf, tell me! What do you propose?” the king said. “But I will not commit my son to the hellhole we visited.”
    “I have tried to have him enstated in Transylvania as you hoped, but they will not accept him, my lord,” said Minister Rumpf. “We would have to go to battle with the Wallachians again to gain him the post.”
    “No,” said Rudolf. “That would give us another vulnerable front to Suleiman’s Ottoman army.”
    The minister reminded the king of the other alternative they had already tried, interning Don Julius in a monastery.
    “My lord, you well know that eighteen months with the monks in the Alps did nothing to extinguish his disease.”
    “That was my mother’s idea,” grumbled Rudolf. “She always insists he is lacking in religious discipline.”
    “Yes, well, you know how I feel about the clergy,” whispered Rumpf. “They only seem to complicate matters. However, I do have one more idea that might appeal to Your Majesty, and I have taken the liberty to investigate the possibilities. There is a township in southern Bohemia, less than two days’ ride from Vienna. It is a place called Cesky Krumlov, on that same Vltava that flows through Prague. Petr Vok and the Rozmberk clan have fallen on hard times financing the Bohemian resistance to the Turks. Ithink we could persuade them to sell you the castle, and we could keep Don Julius under guard there.”
    “A prisoner?”
    “Under guard only until his humors improve. He will be ensconced in a beautiful castle that rises on a hill above the village. The Rozmberks have furnished it lavishly. It rivals your
hrad
itself. They keep wild bears in the moat to remind the people that they are of the royal Orsino blood of Italy.”
    “A Bohemian family related to the Orsino? Impossible!” sneered the king.
    Rumpf nodded, knowing the Bohemian lords and especially the Protestant Rozmberk clan were thorns in the king’s side. Rudolf could not even raise taxes without the consent of the Bohemian estates.
    “Certainly, it is highly disputed, but my point is that they have spared no expense or luxury in the castle. Surely your son would find solace and his wits in such a situation.”
    A smile spread across the king’s face. He pulled his ear, contemplating his son as master of his own castle and Bohemian estate.
    “The matter is settled! Negotiate a good price with Petr Vok and acquire the castle and the township, too, while you are at it. My son will become Lord of Krumlov. The matter is settled.
    “Now I must ready myself for Prague. Dwarf, fetch my valet.”
    “Then I have your permission to send Don Julius to Cesky Krumlov?”
    “I have just said so. He is a nuisance and a menace. But I must insist that a priest accompany him, to appease my mother—she and my uncle Felipe would never let me hear the end of it were he not administered by a Jesuit.”
    The king stopped, his hand in the air.
    “And, Rumpf. I know that it will be difficult to persuade Giuglio to go willingly, let alone cooperate once he is confined tothe castle. Yet he must improve his conduct or I shall take even sterner consequences—I will cut off his allowance and send him back to the monastery in Austria and let the bloody