The Bloodletter's Daughter

by Linda Lafferty

  Were they really bleeding again that same night? thought the priest. No wonder he has no wits or color to his face. Pity they hadn’t finished the job and sent him to the devil.

  “It is out of the question,” said the priest. “And if you had any sense in your head, you would realize how dangerous the man is and never permit your daughter near him.”

  “He is a Hapsburg,” sniffed Lucie. “Is he not?”

  The priest closed the door on the indignant woman and ordered the guards to escort her out through the courtyards and beyond the gate. She lingered on the far side of the moat, throwing the fattened bears covetous looks and bitterly begrudging them their supper.

  The end of the second week brought wails and high screeches again. Don Julius had found a small lock of hair near the window, where he had plunged the fleam into Marketa’s scalp. When the priest arrived in response to the racket, he found Don Julius clutching the strands of hair.

  “What have you got there, Don Julius?” asked the priest.

  “None of your God-cursed business, you withered maggot!” the bastard prince snapped, hiding the strands in his clenched fist. The priest could see a few long hairs emerging from his fingers.

  “Did you touch her?” the priest muttered, realizing what he had in his hand. “Is that why she left so precipitously?”

  “No!” roared Julius, leaping to his feet and lunging at the priest. The guards seized him just in time as his outstretched hand reached for the priest’s neck. The priest jumped back, placing his own hands over his throat.

  “No, no, no!” cried Don Julius, struggling against the guards. “I did not mean to kill her! It was the demon that possessed me. I love the Angel of God more than my own life! I shall be damned to hell and never see my Marketa again.”

  The priest’s mouth puckered as if he had bitten into a Malaga lemon, and he flashed a bitter look at the guards.

  “If she is dead, she has at least escaped this godforsaken town,” said the priest, gathering his composure. He narrowed his lizard eyes at the madman. “And that is a blessing.”

  The guards’ faces turned stony, and they considered letting their hands relax their grasp on the royal lunatic. “Do prdele,” they cursed the priest, and spat on the ground. Go fuck yourself! The Spanish priest thought he heard the word “crucifix” uttered in their profane litany of Czech curses, and that offended him more than all the other unknown vocabulary that sputtered out of their outraged Bohemian mouths.

  Barber Zigmund Pichler read and reread the letter Doctor Mingonius had sent him. The looping letters were written in haste, not at all the usual fine penmanship of the great doctor.

  December 5, 1606

  Herr Pichler:

  I am sorry that I cannot say my farewell in person, but we must leave Krumlov in the utmost haste. There has been a terrible situation—accident?—concerning your daughter. She secretly arranged to enter Don Julius’s chamber alone, apparently with the blessings of your wife. Could this be true?

  What followed was a disaster! The results were miraculously not as tragic as they might have been, but still she was stabbed and fell out the window of the castle. God be praised, she landed on the castle rubbish heap and was saved, but she has suffered greatly and will take a good many months to heal.

  I have taken her to a good inn in Cesky Budejovice and will remain with her until I think she can travel back to Krumlov to continue her recuperation. Is there a safe haven for her, someplace other than your home? I fear that Don Julius will learn she has not died and will demand she return to the castle. The first place he would look is the bathhouse.

  In the meantime, I shall treat her as a member of my own family. I have much to atone for and shall be honored to care for her health and help her heal.

  I will send her back to Krumlov at my own expense in a carriage, when she is well enough to travel. Please tell me the address I should give the driver. Obviously it would not do to take her to your residence, as she might be seen from the castle above the bathhouse.

  By My Heart and Truest Confession with the Greatest Apologies,

  Doctor Mingonius

  Pichler fingered the creased parchment. He did not trust himself in his great sorrow and rage to broach the subject with his wife. He knew how much she coveted the wealth and status of the noble class, but had not had an inkling of how far she would push Marketa. Instead he wept alone, quietly, in the dark recesses of his barbershop, staring into the muddy buckets where the leeches slept peacefully in the cold, dark water.

  CHAPTER 34

  RETURN TO KRUMLOV

  When Marketa’s father wrote to her, she was relieved. After two weeks at the Gray Goose, her contusions had faded to a sickening yellow-green, the color of daffodil shoots that stupidly push their tips through the snow and ice in early spring. Her body no longer ached to the hollow beat that had seized her bones and muscles. It was true that her stitches had festered and puckered for a week, but the innkeeper’s wife had a magic touch with her herbs, and the throbbing pain subsided and the inflammation diminished. Marketa’s body began to heal.

  The innkeeper’s wife reminded Marketa of Annabella, with her knowledge of herbs and flowers, though her work maintaining a lodge and tavern had left her little time to study and collect medicines. There were sausages to broil on the hearth, soups to simmer, ducks and geese to turn on the spit and baste. Her hands were crimson and rough. Vinegar from the sauerkraut had etched its way into the red cracks in her skin.

  Still, Marketa sensed her ability to heal with her potions and rough hands. It was those same chapped hands that had initiated Marketa’s own healing, along with Doctor Mingonius and Viera’s caring touch.

  Dearest Daughter,

  I was greatly grieved to hear of the news of your injuries and what transpired in the castle. Grace be to God that you are still alive, for it is nothing short of a miracle!

  Doctor Mingonius wrote to me asking where we could find you a safe haven here in Krumlov, since returning to the bathhouse is out of the question. I thought of course of the Poor Clares. I asked your aunt for permission to hide you there. But she worries that a nun would confide to a priest that you were there and the Jesuits would come hunting for you.

  Is there anywhere else you can take refuge?

  Your Loving Father

  Marketa left smears on the parchment as her fingertips dragged over each letter, making out the sounds. It was a struggle to decipher the words in her still wounded state.

  She asked the innkeeper for a quill, ink, and parchment, asking him to charge Doctor Mingonius for the costs, as Marketa had not a coin in her pocket.

  Dear Father,

  Please forgive my foolishness. I have lost your trust, I am sure, and almost lost my life.

  There is one person who might agree to let me take shelter with her, where no one would look for me. Could you please approach Annabella, the witch, and see if she would take me in?

  Your Loving Daughter,

  Marketa

  Within the week, Marketa was whisked away in a carriage back to Krumlov to live with the witch.

  Annabella opened her door to Marketa, taking her by the arm and sweeping her in as fast as possible. Marketa heard the clatter of the horse-drawn coach turn the tight corner toward the marketplace and the drawbridge beyond.

  “Marketa!” Annabella pressed her close in an embrace. Marketa could smell the smoke from the open fire in her hair and bitter, strange herbs on her skin. She must have been performing a spell just moments before. Marketa wondered with a shudder if it had to do with her.

  “You know it is a miracle that you still breathe on earth, and you must give thanks and praise for the rest of your life!”

  Marketa had started to be accustomed to this miracle, for she had fought hard to survive, but she nodded her head.

  “Yes, a miracle,” she mumbled, her eyes beginning to tear. “Don Julius tried to kill me.”

  “Oh, and he will finish the job if he has the chan
ce! He is a wicked one—the demons possess his very soul.”

  Marketa said nothing, but gazed at the fire ring in the center of the room. If demons indeed possessed his soul, perhaps she had seen—and been led astray by—the last remaining shreds of his true, untainted spirit. Perhaps she had been battling the demons for the prince’s soul. The thought made her feel a tiny bit less ashamed. She had done battle—and paid a terrible price.

  Annabella lifted Marketa’s chin, and they gazed into each other’s eyes—Marketa’s blue-gray eyes, the witch’s hazel eyes, the sprinkling of brown proportioned differently in the background of green, from left eye to right, like the random speckles on a trout.

  “Yes,” Marketa murmured. “Annabella, I know I was unspeakably foolish, and my folly nearly cost me my life. But... there was something there. I felt something, some trace of love, some hint of tenderness in him. I only—”

  Annabella’s eyes blazed and she seized Marketa’s arm, dragging her to the looking glass, warped and dusty. She polished it with her sleeve, watching Marketa fiercely in the glass as she burnished the reflection. She pulled the girl’s hair back and made her look at the swollen scars where the fleam had sliced her flesh.

  “Does this look like love and tenderness to you?”

  Marketa’s fingers traced the red, puffy flesh. She felt the ridges left by the doctor’s stitches and the healing flesh that was developing a hard, raised scar. In the glass she watched her eyes grow red and wet as the tears spilled down her cheeks.

  Annabella nodded in the reflection, her hands relaxing their grip on Marketa’s temples. The two young women exchanged looks in the mirror, and their eyes spoke silent words.

  Marketa placed her hands upon Annabella’s and slowly pulled them off her face, all the while watching her in the mirror. She turned and kissed the witch’s fingers.

  “You are a true friend,” Marketa said. “I could not think of who would risk taking me in.”

  Annabella’s face melted, and she pulled the girl to her in an embrace.

  “I am pleased to give you shelter. My fate is to help those who ask for succor, as it has been for all the women in my family before me. That is the requirement of a good witch, to protect the innocent from evil. Come, let me make you some chamomile tea.”

  And so began Marketa’s life with Annabella.

  Under the house was a strange stone cellar, ancient catacombs filled with dried plants, bottles of potions, and shriveled animal parts—vital organs, desiccated paws, and gnarled talons. The floor was made of bones, pounded into the dirt, so tightly packed they resembled a whitish-gray cobblestone. Marketa shivered as she looked down the dark tunnel, having been told that the remains of ancient Celts—her Bohemian ancestors—lay in the rocky earth beyond.

  Annabella had made her a bed stuffed with fresh sweetsmelling straw and given her a coverlet filled with soft goose feathers to keep her warm in the dampness of the cavernous cellar.

  The only entrance to the cellar was a trapdoor, hidden under an oak chest in the kitchen. Sometimes Marketa wondered whether anyone would ever find her if anything happened to Annabella or if she would just be lost—until her bones had worked their way into the floor among all the others.

  That first night, as she drifted off to sleep after a good supper of carp fried in suet, Marketa thought she saw a flash of light in the far end of the cave.

  Just a few months earlier, the curious girl would have set out to investigate, plumbing the depths of the catacombs with her smoking tallow candle. She would have scrutinized the light with scientific eyes, determined to find its origin. She would certainly never be afraid.

  But that night, Marketa blew out the candle with a puff and pulled the coverlet over her head, refusing to open her eyes again until she heard Annabella drag the heavy chest away at dawn.

  CHAPTER 35

  KEPLER AND THE HEAVENS

  Jakub Horcicky should have had no trouble finding 5 Karlova Street.

  Only a hundred paces from the Charles Bridge on the Old Town riverbank of Prague, the home of Johannes Kepler would have been easy to find on a clear day. But the evening fog rolled off the Vltava, stretching its back like a cat above the winding streets and settling down cold and raw on the cobblestones. Jakub walked past Kepler’s home twice, doubling back and casting a furtive look over his shoulder to see whether any petty thieves had followed him, a stranger lost in the serpentine streets of the city.

  In this mystic world cloaked in gray fog, Jakub heard the tolling bells of the astronomical clock in the town square. He listened to the mournful clang and thought of the animated specter of death, a skeleton with a bell in one hand and an hourglass in the other, standing guard at the right of the clock tower. Twelve pious disciples appeared and disappeared in the two windows above, marking the hour.

  Below the holy path of the disciples, Death kept company with a turbaned Turk, a hook-nosed Jew with his sacks of gold, and Vanity who studied his own fair countenance in a looking glass. But it was Death who tolled the hour.

  Jakub finally stopped and asked for help at the Jesuit residence and university, the Clementinum. He yanked the bell cord hanging outside the great wooden doors.

  “Pax vobiscum,” Jakub said as the great door creaked open on its ancient hinges.

  “Pax tecum,” responded the monk, bowing his head, his hands forming a temple of blessing.

  “Brother, could you tell me where I can find 5 Karlova, the home of Johannes Kepler?”

  “Ah, Herr Stargazer,” mused the monk, his hood pulled up against the damp night. “He lives just across the street. But you will not find the answers in the stars, my son. Only in God.”

  A dank odor rose from the monk’s wet woolen robe, and his eyes sought Jakub’s.

  “Of course. It is the king’s business that brings me here,” said Jakub. “Thank you for your assistance, and good night to you and the brothers.”

  “Good night, my son. And may God bless you and the king’s errand.”

  What did the Jesuits think of a staunch Protestant living a stone’s throw from their center of learning? Jakub wondered if Johannes Kepler looked over his shoulder every night as he unlocked his front door.

  But perhaps he had no fear, given his high standing in King Rudolf’s court. This was the privilege of being the king’s chief astronomer—religious protection. No one trifled with a member of the court.

  But in the heavy fog of night without witness, a heretical Protestant ran a risk, as religious factions became more and more polarized.

  A thief had pried off the knocker from the door of 5 Karlova Street. Jakub rapped his knuckles against the small brown door, noticing the chipped paint and splintered wood.

  Frau Kepler answered the door, a scowl on her face. Her hair was pinned under a white linen kerchief. The smell of food clung to her and beads of sweat lined her upper lip.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice full of impatience. “What is it?”

  “Is Herr Kepler at home, please?”

  “He is not well,” she said, pushing the door closed. “If you want your astrological chart done, come back in a week or so.”

  “No, you misunderstand, Frau Kepler,” said Jakub, putting his hand on the door to keep it from shutting in his face. “I am sent by our king to prepare an elixir of plants and herbs to ease your husband’s condition. He is missed in court.”

  Frau Kepler pulled the door wide open.

  “Forgive me,” she said, covering her mouth. “Please come in, Herr—”

  “Horcicky. Jakub Horcicky de Tenepec.”

  “Ah, the imperial chemist,” she said, clapping her hands against her temples in recognition and straightening her kerchief. “We are honored to have you visit our house.”

  “May I see your husband?”

  “Of course,” she said, stepping back to allow him to enter.

  Jakub ducked low to keep from knocking his head against the lintel. The stone floor was still wet from Frau Kepler’s scrubbing a
nd a reed brush lay against a bucket of dirty water. Jakub wondered why a courtier’s wife would be washing her own floors.

  “Would you be so kind as to wait here, Herr Doctor, while I announce your visit?” asked Kepler’s wife.

  “Certainly, thank you.”

  Frau Kepler walked up a staircase barely wide enough for her big hips. Kepler must have been in the attic, where he could best observe the stars. Jakub could hear a hushed discussion and then footsteps across the groaning floorboards two stories above, as Frau Kepler tidied the room for the visitor.

  “Please. Come upstairs. You must excuse the condition of the house. We were not expecting visitors. Our servant is off today,” she said, her face reddening as if she were caught committing a heinous sin.

  Jakub followed Frau Kepler’s ample hips up to the attic. She knocked softly on the little door and ushered her visitor in.

  Johannes Kepler lay on a cot, his room littered with drawings of circles and ellipses, diagrams of orbits of the planets, and a wooden replica of the solar system.

  The astronomer was not elderly—in fact, Jakub estimated the scientist to be his contemporary—but Kepler’s prodigious forehead was furrowed with stern lines and his sharp beard jutted out in a stubborn, righteous manner that spoke of a Protestant cleric.

  “Welcome, Herr Chemist,” said Kepler despondently from his bed. His tunic was rumpled as if he had slept in his clothes for several days. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  Jakub bowed and produced a letter from the king.

  “Tell me its contents, Horcicky,” said Kepler, propping himself up on the pillows. “I will open it later when I can locate my letter opener.”

  “The king sends me to gather information to cure your illness,” said Jakub. “He expressed great consternation at your absence at court.”

  “Ah, yes. Does His Majesty wish me to send his astrological chart for next month?”

  Jakub noticed Kepler’s mouth puckering in distaste. He had heard that Kepler despised using his precise mathematical observations of the stars to produce the gibberish of a horoscope. The astronomer considered it a bastardization of true science.