The Bloodletter's Daughter
Page 31
For the first time since she had run away from the grain shed, Katarina smiled. “Yes, I could write her! And she can read my words. She would think that fine and learned. I will ask for her forgiveness in a letter.”
“Oh, Daughter,” said her mother, drawing Katarina’s head to her breast, caressing her. She squeezed her hard in an embrace. “Daughter! When a girl suffers as much as Marketa, she learns to forgive.”
The next day Katarina accompanied her mother to the market where the scribe stood behind a little bench that served as a desk, with furls of cheap parchment too dark and flimsy for official documents, but appropriate for more perfunctory bookkeeping and correspondence.
“My daughter wants to send a letter,” said Pani Mylnar. “How much would you charge?”
“It depends how many words.”
“Words?” worried her mother. “How many words make a proper letter?”
The scribe saw his advantage. “One hundred make a noble epistle. Anything less than that would offend the recipient. I charge a half thaler for a good letter.”
“A half thaler?” gasped Pani Mylnar in astonishment. She turned to Katarina and whispered, “We cannot afford that—your father would notice that the food we bring home is too scarce and of poor quality if we spend a half thaler on a letter.”
“Of course, Mother,” said Katarina, disappointed. She narrowed her eyes at the scribe, who pared his quill nonchalantly as the women suffered the shock of the price of his services.
“Surely there is something we can barter for your services, sir,” said Katarina. “We cannot afford to spend a half thaler on some ink and animal skin.”
“Ah, that is the price of literacy,” replied the scribe, admiring the fire in the pretty girl’s eyes. “In literate eyes, these squiggles are transformed into meaning and convey essential information—or, I might guess, the depths of the heart.”
Pani Mylnar realized what the scribe was saying.
“No, you rude young man! My daughter is not writing a love letter. She wants to write a simple communication to her friend. Her best friend—another girl.”
“Oh,” said the scribe, chewing at the rough nib of his quill. He seemed pleased. “Well, in that case, perhaps we can strike a bargain. You bring me fresh bread for a month, and I will pen the letter.”
“A month!”
“Or...what if you bring me a loaf of bread for two weeks and I receive a kiss from your lovely daughter.”
“You gypsy of a swindler!” cried Pani Mylnar, turning on her heel to leave. “I shall send my sons back to pummel you for your impertinence!”
Katarina caught her mother by the arm and whispered in her ear. “Only a kiss, Mother. I want to write to Marketa so badly.”
“You will not kiss that despicable man.”
“We could afford to bring him a loaf of bread for a fortnight. You know we could.”
Her mother looked at the sad face of her daughter, her imploring eyes fixed on her own.
Pani Mylnar squinted hard at the scribe, setting her teeth together as she bit off her words.
“A kiss? What kind of kiss?”
“A kiss. A lovely kiss on the lips.”
“Impossible!” said Pani Mylnar, the fat of her cheeks jiggling with indignation.
The scribe shrugged his shoulders in indifference. Then he took another look at Katarina and her long blonde hair.
“All right. For her, a kiss on the cheek. Slowly so I can smell her breath on me. And a loaf of bread for a fortnight.”
“Done!” exclaimed Katarina, who was used to bartering and knew when to seal a deal.
And so the unlikely threesome disappeared just behind Uncle Radek’s tavern, and once it was assured that no one could witness the transaction, Katarina kissed the young man slowly on his cheek, making sure her breath wafted toward his nose.
She was secretly satisfied when the young scribe blushed redder than the greengrocer’s beets, promising her he would write a letter that would melt her friend’s heart. But, he said, it could not exceed a hundred words or he would demand another kiss, this time on the lips for certain.
Two days later a letter was delivered to Annabella’s house. It read:
Dear Marketa,
I am sure you have not forgiven me for my foolish words. I have suffered in your absence for there is no friend truer to me or more beloved than you.
My father forbids me to see you. It is too dangerous, he says. The two Austrian companions of Don Julius watch me in the streets and insult me, even when my older brothers are present. I could easily lead them to your door and your death. Please know I love you still.
I have no more words left, the scribe says.
My love and friendship forever,
Katarina
Tears welled in Marketa’s eyes to see her friend’s words inked on parchment, and she wondered how the baker’s daughter had been able to pay the scribe. She missed Katarina’s friendship and often thought of her raucous laugh, late at night in the depths of the catacombs.
She would send word to her friend, the first chance possible.
Annabella was behaving strangely. The young healer seemed restless as a cat and paced the earthen floor of the house on Dlouha Street. She would begin a spell and forget her words, wandering off into the cellar calling to the spirits, her voice echoing through the depths.
“What is the matter, Annabella?” Marketa asked one night when she found her friend conversing intensely with her cats.
The witch sighed.
“It is time for a new Annabella to come into this world.”
Marketa stifled a laugh, knowing that Annabella had never shown the remotest interest in men. Except her father, Pichler, who came to visit and read the great Book of Paracelsus, no man had ever crossed the threshold.
The house smelled of women—generations of women. Women’s presence infused the sheets, and the packed earth floor preserved their sweat and tears. The sweet breath of girls and the rattling coughs of old crones lingered in the close air of the ancient house.
“You do know how children are begotten, do you not?” teased Marketa.
Annabella looked exasperated. “Yes, yes. I know a man must be involved.” She twisted a strand of her flame-red hair around her finger, her eyes distant.
Marketa sat next to her on the wooden bench and stroked her friend’s long hair. Annabella’s fingers fidgeted now in her lap.
“I cannot picture you with a man, Annabella. Any more than I can picture Aunt Ludmilla with a suitor.”
Annabella’s voice was distant.
“It must be just the right man. The future Annabella must be conceived in a perfect union. He must be a man of great virtue, a man of learning and of compassion. Alas, I see no mortal who could father such a brilliant child.”
Marketa almost laughed but thought better of it. Annabella had begun to lose weight and color; she bore a frightening look of distraction. It was obvious that this dilemma weighed heavy in her heart.
“You will find the father one day, Annabella. You will know when you have found the right match. Why the rush?”
“She must be conceived this spring, as the earth awakens from its sleep,” said Annabella, a shiver rocking her body. “The spirits demand it.”
Marketa fetched a warm blanket and threw it over her friend’s shoulders. She stoked the fire and put the iron kettle on to boil.
It was clear that the good healer of Cesky Krumlov was delirious.
Jakub Horcicky looked down from the royal gardens at a pair of newborn fawns in the deer moat. They were no bigger than large foxes, matching four steps to their mother’s one. The spotted fawns accompanied the graceful doe through the young spring grass, the pale green blades parting as the mother deer foraged.
Jakub loved spring. His carefully tended bulbs shook off the winter mulch, poking their tender tips up through the wet soil. He smiled at a tulip that wore a ridiculous cap of dead leaves and bark, so intent on blooming that it push
ed its way through winter debris weighing more than the bulb and stem combined.
Fighting to be born. He pressed his thumb to his lips, smiling. He could smell the earthy scent of loam on his fingers.
Spring came weeks earlier in Krumlov than in Prague, he mused, and he thought of the long, solitary walks he had taken when he was a boy. Often the Jesuit brothers would send him to gather mushrooms and ramps in the hills, and he would look down from the forest’s edge at the town, the Vltava meandering on the valley floor. He could make out the market on Wide Street, the carts and salt wagons, the pigs and fowl herded into makeshift pens. The street was usually crowded with eager vendors and haggling customers, and the multitude spilled out into the side streets, the taverns, and the main square where there was a steady line of villagers, filling their buckets with water from the town well.
Jakub’s mind wandered. Why had he not heard from Marketa in the past few months?
A deep, doglike growl followed by a sucking sound filled the air and broke his reverie. The king’s camels complaining. It was feeding time in the royal zoo, which stood within the botanical gardens. The roar of the lions and leopards soon drowned out the camels. Out of the corner of his eye, Jakub watched as the doe lifted her head, alert to the danger, and stealthily led her fawns back into the grass and sheltering trees.
“Beautiful, are they not?” said a voice.
Jakub turned, and standing next to him under a pomegranate tree was the king himself.
Jakub bowed low.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The king nodded toward them.
“See how she does not run, but simply fades into the forest. True grace. I wish I could do as much.”
“Your Majesty?”
The king turned and caressed a low branch of the pomegranate tree. It had only been recently exposed from its winter wraps, and small lime-green buds had emerged on its limbs.
“I have recently gotten word of a tragedy that happened four months ago in Krumlov. You are from that town, are you not, Physician Horcicky?”
“Yes,” said Jakub, his eyes riveted on the king. “Pray, Your Highness, would you tell me what transpired?”
The king hesitated.
“It seems a girl fell to her death from the window of Rozmberk Castle. My son’s window, in his apartments. The news only reached me now, months after the wretched event transpired. My ministers did not wish to raise my ire when they heard the rumor—and my son now howls day and night for the dead girl, they say.
“If this were not enough, my brother Matthias has spread the news throughout Europe, hoping to gain sympathy to challenge my throne.”
“Your Majesty!” Jakub ceased breathing. “If you please, who was the girl?”
The king worked his lips together in consternation. “A girl who assisted her father in bloodletting. Mingonius contracted him in Krumlov. What the devil a girl was doing in a chamber with my lunatic son, I do not know. I have summoned Doctor Mingonius to court when he returns from Poland, accompanying Jan Jesenius. It seems it happened a day or so after the last bleeding. Doctor Mingonius had already departed for Prague. The girl was alone with my son, and he raped her. She plunged to her death from the castle window.”
Jakub could feel the blood drain from his face, and he shifted his weight on his feet to keep from losing consciousness. He willed himself to breathe.
As soon as he could politely disengage himself from the king, Jakub ran to his cottage. He wrote to Annabella, asking if it was indeed Marketa who had fallen to her death and how she had ever been left unguarded with Don Julius. He hurried to the castle and paid an exorbitant fee for a rider to carry the missive directly to Krumlov.
A few days later, a response arrived, scribbled in beet juice on the same parchment of his letter. One word. In Latin:
VIVIT.
She lives.
Mingonius appeared in court, dressed in a fur cape and carrying an ivory staff. He had not even had time to wash after the long, cold ride from Poland when the royal guards appeared with a summons to appear before King Rudolf at once.
As he approached the king he looked up at the vaulted ceilings of the cavernous Vladislav Hall. This was the moment he had dreaded for months.
Mingonius feigned surprise when King Rudolf told him of Don Julius’s apparent murder of the Bohemian bathmaid.
“Your Majesty! I am shocked beyond all reason. When I left him, he was as docile as a lamb, as witnessed and recorded by your ministers who visited. It was only then that I took my leave to return to Prague.”
The king’s mouth tightened. Mingonius could see the workings of the muscles, tight around his jaw.
“My son slashed the girl, the guards said, and threw her from the window. They swear she said it was by your order that she visit him.”
Mingonius gasped. He worked hard to show utter surprise.
“She lied! Would I send an innocent maid into such danger?”
The king’s eyes scoured his face for betrayal. Mingonius revealed only dismay at the terrible news.
No, it was ludicrous for the king to think that this prestigious doctor would allow an unchaperoned midnight visit by a female. And, after all, by the guards’ own reports, the doctor had already departed for Prague.
There was no one to blame but the maiden herself. But now there was suddenly strong cause for the king’s brother Matthias to instigate more trouble.
“No, I cannot hold you responsible, Doctor. You were already on your way back here. The guards have been lashed for their incompetence. But how did my son know this maiden? And why did the guards believe her, unless she was quite familiar with Don Julius?”
Doctor Mingonius had prayed he would not be asked this question. But he had prepared himself as best he could.
“She was the virgin whose blood attracted the leeches. And—forgive me, sire, but she was useful. Don Julius believed she was a maiden from the Coded Book of Wonder. Only when she was present would he allow bloodletting.”
King Rudolf stared at his physician.
“He believed she was an illustration from the book?”
“An angel, my lord. And Don Julius believed himself deeply in love with her.”
The king looked out the window toward the gardens. “Why was I not informed of this strange maiden? Who was she?”
“Marketa Pichlerova, the bloodletter’s daughter.”
The king stood and turned his back on his physician. He paced the floor.
“To imagine a common bathmaid may be my undoing! Matthias is biting at my heels, howling for my crown. And now he may have his way. All for the death of a simple commoner, a foolish maiden who does not recognize a madman when she sees one!”
Doctor Mingonius lifted his chin, standing rigid before the king. He had practiced this over and over. Let the king do the talking. Let him decide for himself what had transpired.
But suddenly the doctor found himself saying, “She was a good girl, sire, kind and benevolent. I think that is why your son was so at ease with her.”
“Kind? Benevolent? What words are these to use in the presence of your king, when his empire is at risk! The girl was a simpleton, damn her soul!”
The king slammed his fist hard on the stone windowsill, impervious to the pain.
“You are dismissed, Physician!”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
As Mingonius walked backward, bowing to King Rudolf, the guards opened the door to the hallway.
A pair of hands grasped him as the doors closed in front of him. Mingonius turned and saw Jakub holding him fast.
“We must talk, Doctor Mingonius,” he said, hurrying him down the hall and out into the gardens.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” raged Jakub. His anger overwhelmed his deep respect for the older man. “How dare you keep this secret from me?”
“If you had heard of her fate before the king, you would have been in grave danger. I kept it from you because I knew you might do something rash.”
“Exactly. And do you think the merchants who travel the route from Budejovice to Prague would not have wagged their tongues to the king? Two of the king’s doctors lodging at the Gray Goose with a mysterious injured girl.”
“She needed my help! I should have been there all along!”
“You do not understand, even now. What would you have done but bring her back here to Prague, where she would surely be noticed? Her face is battered, and the sutured slashes still scar her. You think the court would not put two and two together? Doctor Horcicky nursing an injured girl with a Krumlov accent! How odd.”
Jakub drew a breath. He knew Mingonius was right. But his anger still raged. He took another deep breath. He had not realized how deeply he had come to care for that simple Bohemian bathmaid until he had feared she was dead.
He felt the doctor’s hand grasp his shoulder and realized Mingonius was shaking him to get his attention. “Here,” said the doctor, holding a folded piece of parchment up for Horcicky to see. “Read this.”
He recognized Marketa’s awkward writing immediately.
My Dearest Jakub:
Forgive me. You offered me wisdom. I chose to ignore it and have paid dearly.
You warned me to beware of Don Julius, that he was a dangerous—deadly—man. I thought I saw more to him than just a madman. I thought I had glimpsed his soul. What a fool I was, and how I have suffered for it.
Doctor Mingonius and I have decided you will read these words only if the news reaches the ears of the king, and thus you. Fool that I still am, I hope that comes to pass. I know it will mean more danger lies ahead, but I would rather face the wrath of the king than have you think I have disappeared from your life as if I did not care about you.
It is for your own protection that we have left you in ignorance. I owed you that much for your warnings and concern for my life. But now that you are reading this, you know the truth. You know of my foolishness. You know of my suffering. And you know that I do care.