Rosa Mystica of Neretva

By John Peric

A letter arrives from southern France rekindles memories and feelings for Hercule, a mercenary turned Franciscan, living a quiet life on the coastal city-state of Ragusa on the Dalmatian coast. The past was anything but quiet as his life was intertwined with Katherine, an apothecary from Montpellier on the southern French coast. This letter from the Abbess brings an earnestness that Hercule cannot ignore. His beloved Katherine is dying and she has a secret to tell him. Will she be able to handle the ramifications if he does not find out her secret?

Is the past coming to haunt him?

His memories return to inflict torment on him. A time of long ago. A time of dreams and adventure. A time of love, war, blood, and death. A wagon of gold. Janissaries on a mission to apprehend that gold—even if they have to kill to get it. And they have, for the sultan. The Ottoman Empire is awaiting its tribute from the West. The question is, who will get to the gold first? It is a race against time as Hercule, his friend and confidant Hasan, and Katherine must reach for the safety within the fortress walls of Ragusa before the Turks can steal the gold.

Can Hercule amend for his past transgressions?

In his debut novel, John Peric brings to life a story of unsuspecting lives and forbidden love that have been brought together by the powers that be in the mountains and valleys of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which lay between the two major empires of Europe and the Ottomans. Will Hercule and Katherine be able to survive the certain death waiting for them? Even worse, if they escape, will they survive the memories and the love they cannot forget?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662429569

Book preview

Chapter One

Villefranche-sur-Mer

August 1585

He stood silent for several minutes, waiting for her to finish the letter. She continued to slowly write the words that came from her whispers, still eying the page closely, as if looking for that mischievous mistake that, at times, would elude her. Though her hands still remained their youthful softness, her fingers felt stiff. Over the past few months, the swelling came and went, but now it remained, a constant pain that always reminded her that she was not well despite the medicinal herbs and plants at her disposal. The Lord takes, sure, but when He weaves my fate around His finger, why do I have to always find the holy reason for His work?

She sat behind her wooden desk, a gift from the bishop of Montpellier as a thank-you for the work she had done, treating the sick of the surrounding villages. It was solid, made of Swiss cherrywood. Her chair, with multiple shapes of roses engraved along the backrest and a defining rose petal in the center, was her favorite chair. She gave orders to her maids, discussed daily plans for the sisters of the Abbey, and reprimanded her associates when the need arose. From that chair, she was empowered. The rose was delicate yet harsh with thorns when needed.

Finished. She quickly skimmed the wet ink for mistakes. None. She signed her name, and it was over. She leaned back onto her flower, sighing in contemplation. Arnaud still stood uncomfortably in front of her, wondering if there was anything of him that was expected. He took a step forward, but her right hand rose up, and he withdrew to his original stance. She still thought about the letter. Did it have everything? She folded the parchment after being assured that her writings were dry. The letter was sealed in burgundy wax by her ring. She stood and looked at Arnaud and noticed the bored stare of her assistant. He appeared almost sullen as he found himself under the rays of the afternoon sun that shone through the small gothic windows. The voices of swallows singing in the distance arrived on the northern winds that found its way into the small room, cooling the air inside from the stale humid air so prevalent to the region of Southern France. Another season had passed without Satan’s plague. It had been three years since she heard the ghostly cries of the innocent along the streets of town, lining up against the walls of the Abbey, as they prayed to uncaring ears above. Maybe God did not look kindly on his own in this part of the world. At her age, it became less of faith than that of acceptance.

Arnaud was to be trusted as he always had been as her courier, going back and forth from Milan, Venice, Al Hambra, throughout Christendom, always carrying her messages to those that needed her. And he had the missing right ear to prove his loyalty to her. Or was it to the holy church? He got the mark from drunken Englishmen under the service of Satan’s child herself, Queen Elizabeth, three years ago in the Lowlands. But they never found the message. It did not matter what the contents were in the letter tucked between the hidden layers of his belt; the fact remained that they did not get it!

Katherine rose from the table and walked in front of Arnaud. In the process, she had taken up a leather pouch that gave the sound of coins. It was gold, and he knew it. After years of being in her service, he was able to discern between the distinct sounds of Spanish ducats and florins and sterling from copper. Every coin had its own sound. And he heard gold; something was very important. She smiled at him.

Thank you very much for leaving on short notice. I hope this will help out with any of the inconveniences that may arise. She handed the pouch to him. He gratefully accepted, with a simple thank-you and a quick bow. He looked directly in her eyes. She turned and retrieved the letter from behind her and continued to look down at the message in her swollen hands. A breeze ruffled the leaves in the tree outside her window as she handed the message to him.

Remember, you are to give this to Fra Hercule de Mornay. He lives with and teaches the Franciscans at St. Anthony’s Seminary outside the walls of Ragusa toward the north. It’s but forty minutes by foot. You will have no difficulty finding him.

She smiled and walked back to her chair, saying, If our Lord did not find my life worthy to administer His will to the French, I would have wrestled the devil himself to be on the Adriatic. But you will understand when you get there. He gently bowed again. There is a ship leaving for Venice, and it will be stopping in Ragusa for several days. It leaves tomorrow. I hope you can accommodate.

Yes, I can.

Good, make sure you see Arian before you leave. He will give you a dispatch bag and answer any other questions you may have for your travels. That will be all.

Arnaud turned and swiftly walked to the walnut door, and as he passed halfway through, he heard, Go with God. He did not reply nor did he turn. He simply closed the door.

It took several minutes for Katherine to reach the small window that looked down onto the courtyard. The gates were still closed. She continued to stand next to the window despite the pain in her legs. She took in a deep breath of the salty air and closed her eyes. Was that a hint of peppermint in the air? She opened her eyes and strained to see her garden. Yes, surprisingly, she could see the flowers of her peppermint in bloom. Strange, it wasn’t the season for peppermints to bloom. Maybe this is a sign. Was the Lord trying to tell her that Arnaud was going to be successful? Remember, O Lord, our bargain.

She caught a quick sight of Arnaud as one of the sisters opened the lock to the front gate. Arnaud, as was his style, bowed in respect to the sister. He always tilted his head to the sisters, regardless of who it was, as long as she wore a habit. Maybe since the time Katherine cured his daughter from the sweating sickness many years back. She couldn’t remember. She heard the gate close and saw that he was gone. He never looked back at the abbey. His eyes looked forward. It was his assignment.

With the passage of centuries those hills, the roots and interiors of which were inclined toward the dismantling sea, have been reduced by half, and therefore show outwardly their inclination toward the land. And the hills which in our days are thus half demolished, will be destroyed with the passing of years; their roots will become hidden quick sands; and the sea continuing to press, and gaining more every day on the land from the side, will swallow up again, little by little, that stretch of country, which perhaps it has abandoned little by little, and covered over again, in alteration, who knows how many times. This kind of prophecy is not based on intellectual chimeras, but properly on visible facts.

—Fortis, Saggio d’osservazioni sopra l’isola di Cherso ed Osero (1771)

Chapter Two

Dalmatia

September 1585

The low-lying clouds had descended down the straight rocky slopes quietly and blanketed the base of the mountain in a dense fog. It was too quiet, almost ghostly. One could even make out strange shapes that formed when a slight wind would mix the whiteness, creating ghostly images that would appear for a moment and then disappear, quickly reforming into another, as if the fog magically revealed the movement of spirits that were once hidden from view.

Hercule did not worry about spirits roaming the mountainsides. Time for that later. He was, however, worried about the two Turkish guards on the other side of the stone wall. He merely lay still, trying not to even breathe. He could not hear what they were saying, but by the tone of their voices, they were probably angered because they had to suffer on this particular day on duty. Hercule’s upper lip was wet with sweat. It only meant one thing. He was scared. He was always ahead of the Turkish authorities whenever he came into the Neretva river basin and the surrounding valleys and villages. There, the peasants still held to the simple faith while the sultan continued knocking at the door to the Austrian center and the rest of Europe. These simple, faithful followers managed to resist the Turkish onslaught even after the sultan advanced his armies and extended his borders to Vienna and central Russia. But the faithful here, his parish, the people whose children he baptized and administered communion, the couples whom he married, the sick he prayed for, these unknown people were passed over by the great armies of the East.

That was years ago. Long before anyone could remember. But there were some of the faithful still living on top of the mountainous regions along the coast, along the green pastures that hugged the Neretva river as it coursed its way from deep within the forests of inner Bosnia to the Adriatic Sea.

The guards spoke between themselves angrily over the weather. Hercule understood the language. It was the native tongue of the valley he had just left. They were, no doubt, recent converts, families that had gone over to Islam. Under the new established law, the conquered people had to pay a blood tax—the firstborn males had to be sent to Istanbul for training as future soldiers of the Great Muhammed. The Turks were no fools, so why send your own when you can send someone else’s child? It was a system that worked, especially the sons from these mountainous regions that formed the corridor between Sarajevo and the coast. The highlanders of Hercegovina had become the main fighting force that had no equal in skill, loyalty, and courage. Like the rocks that rose from the sea along Dalmatia and into the mountains deep inland, they were sturdy under the pressure of war, extending the realm of the sultan to places even unknown to the emperor himself. The known world was his, and he pressed on to new worlds. Lands of poems and fantasies. Exotic places of unknown existence, cultures stranger than any imagination could fathom. All was his to add to his collections of worlds at his disposal, to know the greatness of his power and his god. No one is greater than Allah. All other Gods are weak, simple imagination of their minds. It was the duty of the sultan to bring the people of his realm, kicking and screaming, into the true faith. It was his destiny.

It was at this particular time that two men controlled the known world. Pope Sixtus V, who administered to the politics and faith of most of the Christian world, remained in Rome. To the east, and the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Siavus Pasha Hrvat, formed the building blocks of an empire at his disposal and to the whims of the sultan. Both pope and vizier controlled their lands, armies, and powers that be; a twitch of a finger on a map sent armies hundreds of miles. Both knew that God was on their side. They were at odds, but they shared an ironic similarity. The two most powerful men in the known world were immigrants to their adopted land. Both were from the old Croatian kingdom. They both had Croatian blood in their veins. They could have been distant cousins from long ago. Who knows?

Though time had seemed endless, the guards began to walk toward the north along the eastern side of the wall, grumbling at the coldness of the air that floated cool pellets of water through the wind and attached to their woolen coats. It was time for a change of guards, but where are the replacements? The guards didn’t want to wait. Who would want to travel in this weather? They slowly made their way toward the road, and the fog consumed them, their voices drowned out by the dampness.

Hercule waited for several minutes until he was sure they had gone. He wiped the sweat from his lips and slowly edged his head over the top of the wall. His muscles ached from the ordeal. He propped his body with the help of the stone wall. There was nobody around. Thanks be to God. He offered a quick prayer to Mary for his deliverance from evil, crossed himself, and picked up his bag. His Bible, silver container of the communion host, and his oils were intact. He also carried a dozen dried walnuts that were given to him by some of the families who lived in the old village of Gabela, along with a hollowed gourd of water. As he began to walk toward the coast to the south, he began to crack the walnuts and enjoyed his gifts; they were even tastier than the nuts from Provence that he was so accustomed to. Maybe it was the weather, the soil, or the type of walnut grown. It didn’t matter because to the hungry man, each morsel was as tasty as a rack of lamb fresh off the spigot. Of course, he did not have lamb in his mouth but walnuts. The old saying rang true: Beggars can’t be choosers.

By the time he had arrived at the Romanesque gate to St. Anthony’s Seminary, the sun had dissipated the clouds, leaving the blue Adriatic Sea to show its beauty. The water was as clear as angel’s tears. Seamen have always been awed by the clarity of the sea, which constantly brought contrast to the white rocky mountains. It was strange how, from the hilltops, one only sees blue crystals that sparkle toward the Italian peninsula, but by the time one comes to the sea, the blue is gone, leaving only clear, see-through water. It was as if one had a magnifying glass to the bottom of the seafloor. If you were to lie along the harbor pier at times when no trading was taking place and look directly down to the bottom, you could swear that you could see the entire life patterns crawling along the bottom—sea urchins slowly making their way through shallow waters, flounders skimming the sandy bottom, and schools of fish that sometimes came up to the surface in the search of some nourishment.

How abundant this sea has been, thought Hercule as he sat down in the terrace outside of the main rectory. His pupil and protégé, Darko, had seen him even before he had passed the massive two-hundred-year-old oak doors that were hinged by Spanish steel. Even after the centuries had passed, it still did not make a sound when Hercule closed the fortresslike door behind him. A plate of four figs, half of a tomato, bread, three thin slices of smoked pork, and a glass of wine from the vineyards of the nearby island of Korčula were waiting for Hercule before he even sat down. He sighed as he lay back against the warm white walls of the building. It felt good against the wall, especially since the warm summer was coming to a close. One could feel the cold air slowly showing its presence every day now, especially at night, but the days were still warm under the gaze of the sun.

The coast had rocks, too many in fact. Everywhere you went, you could not escape it. Even the Romans had utilized the ever-present rocks in their roads that coursed throughout the region along the eastern Mediterranean coast. But the supply of rocks came from the top of the mountains. Down below, along the sea, there weren’t any, until now. Rocks that were not there for years had appeared quietly, leaving very little vegetation along the shore. And yet the surrounding populace could not understand what was going on because they were unaware of it. But it wasn’t the fault of the people that they did not notice. Every year that passes and every generation that lives out its destiny at the mercy of Providence could not notice the subtleties that occurred by the appearance of the rocks.

Hercule knew over a thousand rocky islands that once bore trees. Forests that were filled with trees of all sorts—oak, walnut, poplars, and evergreens. It was unimaginable, the diversity of the thickets that breathed with all kinds of life. It was even said that at one time, bears used to catch fish from the shores. Abundant life, abundant food. But to the ancient Greeks and Romans, Spanish, Genoese, Venetians, Austrians, and now the Turks, they saw lumber. For their ships, furniture, buildings, and whatnots, they came and uprooted the life of the forest from the ground. Nothing could hold the ground from the annual winter showers, and the soil, which was the soul of the animals and the trees, slowly disappeared, leaving behind the rocks, the ugly reminder of the cost of the beauty of Venice, ships of the armada and imperial Rome, and the houses of the Imperial Turkish Army.

Darko brought onto the table a pitcher of cool, refreshing well water. Hercule gulped down a cup; it stung at first the back of his throat, but it went down smoothly. The water was sweet, and the wine that followed was sweeter. Then he began the meal, first starting with a large bite of the bread before digging into the meat and tomato with his knife. Hercule loved the texture of the tomato, the way it squeezed its juices inside of his mouth. It added flavor to his pork and salad. Just think, over two years ago, he was given seeds to this remarkable plant. Now he could not imagine life without it. It was truly a fruit from paradise. So much so that the people along the eastern Adriatic coast called it by its well-deserved name, paradajs. Its variety was mind-boggling. It came from the Americas, and the Bible was right. There was a paradise, away from feculent Europe, hidden somewhere in the midst of the lost continent to the west. Hercule raised his head and looked at the boy. Darko stood in front of him, watching him. He must be tired, he thought, but I hope he’s not that tired. Hercule continued to stare up at him, still chewing the leather-hard slice of pork, said nothing, but he expected Darko to speak.

When you are finished, you are to report to Fra Petar. There is someone here to see you to deliver some sort of message…from France. Darko quickly noticed Hercule’s jaw stopped chewing for an instant, and he began to slowly resume the grinding movements of his teeth, looking out to the sea. He appeared as if he was contemplating something important, but Darko didn’t know what it was that made Hercule’s countenance change. He was good at reading other people’s faces for signs of emotions, but this Frenchman was a difficult one to comprehend. A Frenchman, here, of all places!

Where are they now? was his only reply.

In his office.

The meal was finished, and Hercule took another cup of the water, still cold but without the sting. He rose and began to walk past Darko. Thank you for the meal. Hercule quietly and quickly walked in the direction of Petar’s office.

He did not knock at the door as he entered. He never did. It was a habit he never broke, and it drove the head of the seminary mad every time he entered. Seated below the wooden crucifix that hung on the stone wall, Fra Petar was writing, finishing up a sentence. He did not look up; he knew who it was, but entering in his office without knocking was not a reason to stop his daily correspondence to the nearby parishes.

Arnaud sat across from him. Next to him on the floor was a leather bag and a satchel. No doubt for his belongings, thought Hercule.

Petar finished his letter and set it aside to dry. He looked up at Hercule. Well, you finally made it. How’s everything in Hercegovina?

Hercule was still looking at Arnaud when he replied sarcastically, No change. Life is harsh, God is tough, and Allah still won’t leave the valley. Several more families were killed for refusing to get off the side of the road when one of the Turkish governors was passing through, inspecting the agricultural potential of the region. There’s talk of using the land for export of wheat, sheep, and wine to the emperor’s palace, in addition to everybody’s firstborn son, gold, honey, and the horses from Lipica.

It left a bad taste when it came out of his mouth, but the Turks were not stupid. They needed good fighting men and the best horses in their quest to conquer Europe. Both came from the region. It was these pathetic peasants that managed to prevent the great Genghis Khan himself and his hordes from ever tasting the salty waters of the Mediterranean on his lips. These were the men—no, soldiers—that the sultan wanted—no, needed. These Croatian men came from the South, and the white