CHAPTER 33
He was here on order of his queen, Christina, the sovereign ruler of Sweden.
His mission? Find and obtain the great private collections of Rudolf II, once Holy Roman Emperor, king of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, archduke of Austria, a member of the House of Hapsburg, dead now for thirty-six years.
Rudolf may have been the greatest collector of his time.
He also transformed a drafty, drab castle into a grand Renaissance residence.
Which von Konigsmarck now controlled.
And he understood why.
To maintain Sweden’s national prestige, a certain level of culture was required.
But Sweden’s treasures did not compare to those of any of its neighbors, let alone the rich lands of Spain and France.
Plundering was a quick way to bolster the situation, though armies were expensive and a military victory was not always assured.
But here, in Prague, victory had come.
Rudolf had been, by all accounts, an enlightened man.
Always reserved, secretive, and largely a recluse who did not like to travel or participate in the daily affairs of the state.
He was fascinated by the occult, astrology, and alchemy.
He methodically acquired paintings, sculptures, and objets d’art, both the sublime and the ridiculous, along with the inanimate and the living. All held in the famed Kunstkammer.
His chamber of art.
Von Konigsmarck had already been told about some of what the chamber contained, especially the Caravaggio canvases and Dürer woodcuts.
Drawings, prints, busts, statuettes, bowls, cameos, weapons, coins, precious stones, crystals, and assorted gems filled the rooms. More paintings lay in piles, one atop the other, hundreds of them.
Musical, astronomical, and scientific instruments, along with clocks, were there mixed with a wide variety of the ethnographical, zoological, and botanical objects, all reflecting Rudolf’s fascination with nature.
Now it all belonged to Christina.
Time for him to see it for himself.
“They are waiting,” his aide said.
“Lead the way.” He set out through the towering archway, entering the castle’s main courtyard.
The twin spires of St. Vitus Cathedral rose before him past the courtyard’s southern side.
Prague was a great, splendid, populous city.
The capital of Bohemia. A wondrous place of countless spires and underground dungeons, of basilisks, rams, skeletons, stars, and other esoteric symbols, that reached its zenith with Rudolf II.
War had definitely ravaged its beauty, but not its charm.
He kept walking, entering the castle through a side portal and climbing one flight of stairs to the first floor.
A long corridor stretched before him, one he knew connected Rudolf’s private apartment to the south wing of the Spanish Hall.
They approached a closed door with a Renaissance brass knocker.
When its two sides were brought close, the stylized figures of a naked man and woman came together in an act of fellatio.
Disgusting. It offended every bit of his Protestant sensibility.
If he’d planned to stay in the city any longer, he would order the obscenity removed.
But he, and his army, would soon be gone.
He approached the door, which was opened by his aide to allow him to enter an antechamber decorated with images of the four elements and a microcosm of the universe presided over by Jupiter.
An open doorway led to where four long rooms spilled into one another in succession, a decorated vaulted ceiling overhead.
Countless objects were everywhere, filling shelves, cabinets, and tables.
“It is overwhelming,” he said to his officers.
“We were amazed that so much of it remains.”
As was he. The pillaging had begun right after Rudolf died in 1612.
The king’s brother took many of the paintings.
Bohemian rebels stole and sold the jewels.
Maximilian of Bavaria carted fifteen hundred wagons full of booty back to Munich.
Now the Swedish army was prepared for a final sweep to take what remained.
He stepped through the rooms. Most of what he saw had little to no value, but there was one object he’d been told to specifically target.
“Show me the book,” he ordered.
They made their way to the fourth room. A hall more than a hundred paces long, sheathed in bright silver and decorated with various story depictions and paintings, most in gilded frames.
Tapestries hung on the wall, woven from silk, gold, and more silver.
Windows lined each side with panes of smoked glass.
Books lay everywhere on the side tables and stuffed onto dusty wooden shelving.
Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. The air smelled of old leather and aged vellum.
Lying atop a sturdy oak table was what he’d been told might be here.
“It is huge,” he muttered.
“And quite heavy,” his aide added.
Nearly a hundred centimeters tall, fifty wide, and about twenty thick. Perhaps the largest book he’d ever seen. He also knew the appropriate name by which many referred to it.
The Codex Gigas.
“Is the devil there?” he asked.
His aide nodded. “Folio 290. We have it marked. Would you like to see?”