The Stone Dragon and the Stone Frog

Before there was a town here, there was water.

Around the confluence of the Malše and the Vltava stretched marshes and wetlands. Between them lay pools that did not dry even in summer, and beyond them grew forests so dense that day itself was lost in them. On a rise above the marshes, where much later the monastery rose on today’s Piaristické náměstí, stood a small hunting lodge.

Above its gate sat a carved dragon. Whoever passed looked into its jaws and walked a little faster.

A little farther on, on the right bank of the Vltava near the ford, lay an older settlement. It had farmsteads, a smithy and a small chapel. It took its name from Budivoj of Železnice, a royal court judge to whom its founding is ascribed: Budivojovice.

It was November, and that evening the wind drove clouds under a darkening sky as if something were running behind them. In the lodge a fire burned; by it sat a huntsman with a small boy on his lap, and his wife was preparing supper. It was an ordinary evening of the kind there were hundreds. Yet this was the one they would remember.

An old servant came to announce a visitor. That alone was strange: after dark no one came to the lodge. On the threshold stood a man wrapped in a wide cloak. He entered, but did not sit, did not throw back his hood, and did not greet them by name. He only drew aside a fold of the cloak.

In his arms he held a child.

The couple froze.

“I was sent to place this child in your care,” he said. “It is a little girl who has no one and needs a mother’s care. Her name is Markétka. Look after her well. You will not regret it.”

He laid a purse on the table. The huntsman’s wife did not need to open it to know what was inside. Such purses were not seen in these woods; this one was royal.

“Here is your reward,” the man added. “And it will be greater still if you keep everything secret.”

The huntsman reached after him. He wanted to hold him back, to ask at least one of the questions pressing on his tongue. Before he could speak, the man left the hall.

Outside there was complete silence. After a moment hoofbeats sounded from the dark and quickly faded until no direction could be told.

The woman looked at the child and the child looked at her. That decided it.

“You abandoned little bird of mine,” she whispered. “With us you will not be abandoned any more.”

She called the boy to come and see his little sister. The boy stepped up to the wrapped child and smiled.

Time ran like water under the lodge. Ice floes passed many times down both the Vltava and the Malše before Markétka grew into a graceful young woman and Venoušek into a sturdy youth. At home they still called him that, though he was already a head taller than his mother.

They lived contentedly. Their only sorrow was the death of the huntsman’s wife. After she was gone, the father, Václav and Markétka drew still closer. None of them spoke of the girl having come to the house in a stranger’s arms. To Václav she was a sister, and to the old huntsman a daughter.

One day a messenger arrived with a sealed letter.

The huntsman read it twice. Then he summoned the servants and gave orders: open the hall, prepare the inner chambers, set the table and ready food for many guests. He sent Václav and Markétka to nearby Budivojovice.

“Stay there until I send for you,” he ordered. “Whatever happens here tonight, do not come back.”

Markétka heard fear in his voice and wanted to ask whom he expected. But her father kissed her forehead, turned, and went back into the house.

Václav obeyed. He asked nothing.

He came back.

He slipped into the lodge by the back of the courtyard he had known since childhood and hid behind a heavy curtain near the banquet hall. From there he could see part of the long table and the white cloaks of the men who arrived toward evening.

They spoke quietly. At first he caught only single words. The talk was of the king, of his plans, and of roads by which his further advance might be stopped. Then hooves sounded outside. The gate flew open and Lord Budivoj of the Rose burst into the hall. Over his shoulder he carried a dead hare, which he threw into the middle of the table.

“Here is the cause of my delay,” he declared. “I shot him in the royal forest. I bring you a gift from the preserve of proud Přemysl Otakar. His dogs chased me, but they could not match my horse.”

He looked round the company so triumphantly that he did not even notice the silence that followed his words. The eldest of the knights set down his cup and warned him that hunting in the royal wood was a dangerous game. Budivoj waved the warning away with laughter.

The talk soon returned to the king. Václav heard that they must act before he strengthened his position in the region, and that the chance might not last long. No one spoke the whole plan aloud. From scraps, though, he understood enough.

The curtain stirred in a draught. One of the knights raised his head and looked toward the door. Václav stepped deeper into the dark.

He waited until talk flowed again in the hall. Then he slipped down the passage, ran to the stables and saddled the first horse that did not refuse the bridle. He swung into the saddle without a cloak. His jerkin was soaked with sweat and outside it was already freezing, but he barely felt the cold.

As soon as the castle gate vanished behind him, he urged the horse into a gallop.

Only a narrow path led through the forest. Branches whipped his face, roots slipped under the hooves, and in the dark he missed a turning more than once. He could not spare the horse. In his head rang the words he had overheard behind the curtain, and with every mile he grew surer that he must warn the king before the conspirators dispersed.

Toward morning the first fires of the royal camp appeared among the trees. The guards lowered their spears against him, but Václav forced out that he brought news of treason and must speak to the king at once.

The sun was still low when Budivoj woke and found that the huntsman’s son had ridden out in the night. He seized the first page who crossed his path by the shoulder and ordered him to saddle a horse. When the youth hesitated, Budivoj flushed and roared so that he was heard across the whole courtyard.

Within moments the lodge was awake. Men shouted over one another, servants brought horses, and the unfinished feast stayed in the hall. Before the sun rose above the forest, not a single white cloak remained in the yard.

The old huntsman stood at the gate and watched them go. He closed it slowly, as if for the last time.

Markétka was to return from Budivojovice after the guests left. The huntsman found Václav’s horse missing from the stable and understood what had happened in the night. He ordered the old servant to wait for the girl and not let her leave the house. He himself saddled a horse and set out on his son’s trail.

He found Václav in the royal camp. The youth was kneeling before Přemysl Otakar II, and around them stood men who had just heard his report.

The king stepped up to the young man and asked him to rise. He thanked him for his loyalty and declared that from that moment he belonged among his people. Then he turned to the old huntsman and asked what reward he desired.

“I ask for nothing,” the old man answered. “You have already rewarded me by believing my son. Only never doubt my loyalty.”

The king nodded. “I see well that both your children do you honour.”

The huntsman lowered his eyes. “My king, only Václav is my son.”

He said no more, and the king did not ask.

Then the huntsman took leave of his son. Václav begged him to stay under royal protection until the danger passed, but the father refused. Markétka and the servants remained at the lodge without protection. He could not leave them there alone.

“I will ride with you,” Václav insisted.

“You stay here. You have done what was needed. Now finish your duty to the end.”

The huntsman laid a hand on his son’s shoulder, mounted, and rode home.

Before sunset a punitive expedition set out. The king rode at its head, beside him the seasoned knight Heřman of Rychnov, and behind them men-at-arms. All night they marched through the forest. Heřman, who knew the country well, proposed to bypass Krumlov from the other side so that no one would see them coming.

Early in the morning Přemysl Otakar turned back toward the lodge with part of his men. Václav rode with them.

After a while he noticed a narrow red streak on the northern horizon. At first it looked like dawn. As soon as they rode higher, dark smoke began to rise above the trees.

Václav spurred his horse. On the rise by Kamenný Újezd the country opened before them. The red glow came from a single place.

“God!” Václav cried. His voice broke before it could finish. “Our lodge is burning!”

The king spurred hard.

When they arrived, there was nothing left to save. The roof had collapsed, beams were burning out, and smoke rose from shattered windows. In the charred walls no one remained alive.

Above the gate, amid blackened stone, one thing alone had survived the fire intact: the ugly face of the stone dragon. It looked down exactly as before.

Václav leapt from his horse and ran among the ruins. He called for his father, Markétka and the old servant. No one answered.

They found the huntsman’s body near the gate, a little way from his sword. The old servant had died inside the house. Of Markétka they found nothing — not a jewel, not a scrap of clothing, not remains that might have been hers.

Václav clung to a charred wall until his knees gave way. He could ask only one thing: where was his sister.

The king came to him. He told him that Markétka had not been his own sister. His parents had taken her into their care years before and thereby saved her life.

“Whose daughter is she, then?” Václav asked.

Přemysl Otakar was silent a long time. Then he promised that if Markétka lived, he would look after her. He owed it to those who had given her life and to those who had raised her.

Who her true parents were, he never revealed. The secret of Markétka’s origin he never uncovered again.

Horns sounded from afar. Men-at-arms reached for weapons, thinking the attackers were returning. Among the trees, however, appeared a royal embassy from Prague.

The first rider dismounted before the sovereign.

“My lord, a daughter has been born to you.”

The king looked at the burned site, then at the country below. A moment earlier a house had stood there. Now only charred walls, the dead, and the stone dragon above the gate remained.

“Destruction has raged on this spot,” he said. “Yet it is here that I have received news dearer than any other. A monastery shall rise here, and beside it a town. It will be a support of royal power against those who believe this country belongs only to them.”

The year was 1265.

The king charged Hirzo, burgrave of Zvíkov, with preparing the new town. His men were to lay out streets, ready building sites and tame the wetlands that spread around the confluence.

To Václav the sovereign handed the reins of a black horse from his own train.

“I cannot restore your home,” he said. “But the place where it stood will not vanish.”

Soon the surroundings filled with craftsmen. They felled trees, drove stakes into waterlogged ground and hauled stone. Where only paths among the marshes had led, the first streets began to form.

Beside older Budivojovice, royal Budějovice was rising.

While clearing the burned site, the labourers long left part of the old gate untouched. The dragon looked down on them from blackened stone, and none of the men cared to set a lever beneath it.

At last Václav stepped up to it. The stone resisted, but after several blows it shifted. From the dragon’s open jaws fell a great iron key wrapped in a scrap of parchment.

Václav unrolled it. Five words stood there:

The frog hides the huntsman’s precious treasure.

He read the inscription once more, then carefully hid the key and told no one of it.

In further clearing the labourers struck trapdoors under the lodge foundations. They lay under ash and rubble. When they freed and lifted them, a low opening appeared, from which a chill blew.

Several men lowered themselves in. Václav went first. The passage ran under the ruins to where the lodge interior had been. In torchlight he saw something pale caught between the stones. He knelt and carefully drew the cloth out.

It was Markétka’s veil.

He knew it at once. He clenched it in his hand and stared into the darkness where the passage continued. That was how the enemies had entered the lodge. By the same way they had taken Markétka away.

Part of the ceiling had collapsed and blocked the way. The labourers were exhausted after a full day. They promised Václav they would clear the path in the morning.

He agreed. When night fell, he took a torch and returned alone.

The passage was long and low. Water dripped from the ceiling, and after a few dozen steps he was cold to the bone. He had to push through rubble, roll stones aside and at times crawl on his knees. The torch flame shortened.

When it was almost burned out, he reached heavy iron gates. Beyond them he could hear the roar of water.

Václav leaned into the fittings. The gates would not yield. He felt for the lock and in that moment remembered the key.

The torch crackled and went out. In the dark he drew the key from under his jerkin. His fingers ran over the cold iron until he found the hole. He slid it into the lock and turned, trembling.

There was a metallic click.

The gates opened onto grey dawn. Václav stepped out onto a steep rock high above the Vltava bank. Around him stood massive trees; between them lay boulders thick with moss. Across the valley rose a high rock with a cross on its summit. Václav memorised it well.

Time passed. The monastery and church grew, and with them new houses and streets, but of Markétka it was as if the earth had closed. Václav rode from farmstead to stronghold to monastery. He asked merchants, travellers and ferrymen. No one had seen her. He also returned to the rock with the cross he had seen at the secret passage’s exit, searching the surrounding woods and crags. Even there he found not a single trace.

Still he did not give up. One day he set out there again.

Toward evening the sky darkened and a storm broke over the country. The horse shied, branches cracked in the wind, and in moments the paths became torrents of muddy water.

In a flash of lightning Václav saw the cross. He left the path and made for it, but dense thorns soon forced him to dismount. He went on on foot and at times had to cut his way with his sword.

At the next flash he saw something that should not have been there: an unknown old castle pressed against the rock like a dark stain. Above its gate sat a stone frog with a grinning mouth.

Václav struck the gate several times with his sword hilt. Only then did something move in the little window above the gate, and a wrinkled old woman’s face appeared.

“What are you looking for in such weather?”

Václav begged her to let him in, or he would perish in the storm. The old woman eyed him a while, then snapped that she had no place for him and shut the window.

Lightning struck above the rock and for a moment lit the whole castle wall. In an upper window stood a girl. She was pale and exhausted. She held the bars with both hands, and when she saw Václav she clasped them as if pleading for help.

“Markétka!” he cried. The girl trembled. Her answer nearly vanished in the thunder, but Václav knew her voice.

He ran to the gate and drove his shoulder into it. It did not move. Markétka called from the window that she was locked in and could not get out alone.

The old witch appeared again in the tower. She screamed at Václav and threatened him with a raised hand. Then another bolt split the sky.

It struck the tower directly.

It hit the witch and killed her on the spot. The whole castle shook with the blow. For a moment it seemed the rock itself had cracked beneath it.

Then the gate opened of its own accord.

Václav ran inside, found a narrow stair and raced upward. On the top floor he burst the door of a small chamber.

Markétka stood by the window. She was so weak that when she tried to step toward him her knees gave way.

Václav caught her.

For a long time neither spoke. Outside the storm roared, but it reached the chamber only faintly. Markétka touched his face as if she needed to be sure he was not a phantom.

“You came.”

“I was looking for you.”

She curled into his arms. She shook with cold and exhaustion.

Václav led her down, wrapped her in his cloak and sat her by a dying fire in the empty hall. Only there did Markétka dare ask whether their father was safe.

Václav did not answer at once. From his silence she understood what had happened.

“No,” she whispered.

He told her that their father had returned because he would not leave her alone. Markétka bowed her head. Václav let her weep and held her hand until she grew calm.

Then she told him what had happened. Budivoj’s mercenaries had entered the lodge by the underground passage. They killed the old huntsman, set the house on fire and took her the same way they had come. They were to bring her to Krumlov, but on the road they grew afraid of falling into royal hands. So they hid her in the abandoned castle and entrusted her to the old witch, who locked her in the tower and tormented her with hunger.

At dawn they left the castle. Markétka was weak and they had to rest several times on the way. They spoke little.

When they reached the town under construction, the king was just walking the building site with Hirzo. As soon as he saw them, he sent the others aside.

Václav knelt before him.

“My lord and king. I have found Markétka.”

Přemysl Otakar looked at the girl a long time. Then he quietly welcomed her back and had her taken to safety for food and rest.

Václav stayed nearby. They did not ask at once what would come next. First it was enough that Markétka rested in safety and Václav sat close by. Only in the following months, as life around them settled again, did both understand that the bond between them had changed and that they wished to stay together differently than before.

Then they came before the king together.

“You are as loyal and brave as your father,” Přemysl Otakar said to Václav. “Ask how I am to reward you.”

Václav asked neither gold nor land. He asked only that he might stay with Markétka forever. The king turned to the girl and asked whether that was her wish too. Markétka found Václav’s hand and nodded.

The sovereign granted it. Then he asked whether there was anything else with which he might please them.

Václav asked that the stone dragon from their destroyed home and the frog from Markétka’s prison be set into the outer wall of the new monastery church. Both creatures had stood at the beginning of their misfortune and of their rescue. They were to remain outside, while inside the church there would be room for what is good, true and noble.

The king agreed.

The dragon lay near the building site. The frog was harder. Václav had to return with several men to the distant castle and again find the way among rocks and woods. When they finally arrived, they found part of the tower collapsed after the lightning strike. The gate still stood, though, and the stone frog above it looked out over the country.

The men cut the masonry around it in small pieces. The work took a long time. When the stone finally gave way, the frog tipped forward and Václav saw dark metal in the hollow behind it.

He stopped the others and reached into the cavity. His fingers found an iron rim. Together they drew out a heavy vessel someone had long ago hidden there. The lid held firm, but after several blows it yielded.

Gold gleamed inside.

Václav drew out the saved parchment. The words he had read so often were fulfilled:

The frog hides the huntsman’s precious treasure.

He handed the treasure to the king as a contribution to the building of the monastery and church. The dragon and the frog were then set into the outer wall of the monastery church.

According to the legend, they remain there to this day.