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happens all the time mean death?”
                Erika muttered under her breath, “People are dying all the time.”
                Two cavalrymen came in by the kitchen entrance. The maids rushed to get food and drink ready for them, but they demanded bread and salt first. Erika served it to them on a wooden tray.
                “So how’s about a kiss for a couple of gallant heroes heading back to the front?”
                She blushed. They were such dashing knights, defenders of the land and faith. Exciting, and just a little scary, like all the Reiters .
                The cook interrupted with the master’s orders. Erika was to buy fresh eels at the fish market, the choicest meat from the butcher shop, and stop off at the apothecary’s for a packet of medicinal herbs.
                Erika was confused. Why the eels? Only the Papists had to obey the restriction against meat today.
                “Nobody asked for your opinion. He feels like having eels today,” the cook said.
                The other maids snickered. The fish market was the lowliest duty imaginable at this hour of the morning.
                Erika hurried through the dim streets, sidestepping boisterous soldiers with uniforms still stained from the battlefield, who laughed about how skittish she was. She passed the day laborers from the countryside gathering at Haštal Square without a word, and headed up Kozí Street to the waterfront. She could already hear the ferrymen hawking driftwood for heating and cooking fires, and smell the river.
                The Jews sold fish cheaper, since the Christian merchants always raised the price on Good Friday. But despite her mistress’s kind feelings toward the Jews, Erika wasn’t about to brave the foul streets of the Jewish ghetto to save a few pfennigs. Her master could afford it.
                The river was high with the early spring flood, and the waterfront was busy. She worked her way past a barge unloading cattle and barrels of wine, gave a wide berth to the longshoremen hauling crates of Italian figs, and paused for a moment at bins of Flemish brocade and cheap gray cloth from Poland . At the fish dock, heaps of carp wriggled hopelessly, mouths agape, still alive after many hours out of water.
                The big man unloading a crate of eels looked her over. His eyes were cold, emotionless, like an eel himself. He could see that there was a female body under those gray skirts as she walked toward him. Erika was nearly seventeen, but she looked about twelve. Thin and mousy, with stringy brown hair as dull and coarse as a straw broom. His thick lips curled up into that half-smile that some paintings are famous for. He’d have whistled at her, but the seamen would have blackened his eye for raising ill winds.
                Erika asked about the eels.
                The man said, “I’ve got a big, slippery eel for you, honey. Come into the shed and I’ll show it to you.”
                Eww . She found another merchant to buy eels from. Men were such…
                The sound of iron-rimmed wheels ringing on stone caught her attention. A gilded carriage clattered across the square, a coat of arms ennobling its polished doors, accompanied by four mounted escorts, two in front, two behind. No doubt about the position and privilege of the person inside that vehicle. She pictured him as young and handsome, naturally. Unmarried. Rich. Clever. Able to see the true value of a woman despite her outward appearance as a lowly kitchen maid.
                In a moment the carriage was gone.
                Her basket got much heavier at Cervenka’s butcher shop. She struggled to carry it, and counted the steps to the apothecary’s shop and back to Master Kopecky’s town house on the Langergasse.
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