The Book of Madness and Cures

by Regina O'Melveny

  I remained at the table and Olmina sat down to keep me company. “Sometimes we can’t always say what we hear. Others don’t understand.” She smiled at me and patted my hand. “Eat your soup.”

  “The medicine chest says, Everything is alive and everything has a secret.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “Lift that spoon before the soup gets cold.”

  I obeyed. I overheard my mother from the courtyard, saying, “The girl must be instructed in the ways of the world, not in these fantasies you create for her.”

  “But my dear, it’s only a game.”

  “A serious game, don’t you think? Given that you’re half here and half there.”

  I wondered what she meant. There must have been a gesture too, perhaps her open palm to signify the world, and fingers at the temple to signify the mind.

  In the end my father gentled her. “Recall when we first met and strolled arm in arm along the Zattere? With your mother, who taught me the uses of so many herbs? She encouraged your stories about the ships coming in to anchor, the origins of their cargo, the distant world beyond Venetia. She liked my stories too!”

  “Ah, my poor mother, and look where it got her! But yes, you appeared to me from one of those ships, from Ciprus. How handsome you were, your ink-black hair almost blue, your eyes half-closed as if dreaming.”

  “And you, my dear, were a dazzling species of dove, preening there at the balcony.”

  “Now look what you’ve done—distracted me from Gabriella.”

  I sipped the last of my soup, tilting the bowl to my lips as I would never have been allowed to do if my parents were at the table.

  “Have I? Come back to dinner, then.”

  “Scoundrel!” But there was affection in her voice.

  I also believed, in my child’s heart, that the world truly wanted each one of us in some way. Now I felt how insignificant our little passage was upon this earth.

  We rode late into the evening before coming upon another walled town hooded by thick forest. My head and shoulder ached, numbing my brain to anything other than maintaining an upright position on Fedele. In the sky near Cassiopeia, shooting stars fell like broken lances one after another, piercing the air with stubs of light, repeated on the lake’s surface.

  “Remember the Canto della Stella, when we once sang to the stars, signorina, in the Christmas procession near Lago di Garda?” Olmina asked, full of wonder. “You were only a tiny girl when you asked me about the frozen fires of the stars that burned upon the lake. Was the sky above the same as the sky below? Your father laughed at your curiosity and said, ‘Everything above is reflected below. Even the darkness.’ ” She paused, then added, “An odd thing to say, if you ask me.”

  I nodded to please her but said nothing. My father respected the darkness, even sought it out at times, when he’d sit musing in a dim room or, during summer, in the courtyard lit only by stars. The dark is not evil. Only men make it so. Just as foxglove is not an evil plant but becomes poisonous when misused in too great a dosage. My father sat in the dark to think, because all creation begins in shadow.

  We were alone upon the road.

  We wound our way through the low hills covered with gray orchards, ghostly fields of grain, and vines, the vast lake gleaming like dull metal to our left, the scythe moon having set long ago, and soon arrived at Überlingen.

  Unfortunately the southeast gate was closed to us; the gatekeeper would not open despite our cries. So we turned round and viewed the dim hamlet that spread out from the moat enclosing the town. The faint light that glimmered here and there from houses scattered up the mountain unexpectedly comforted me. They were small, secretive beacons before the sea of black woods where the road led next. We could go no farther this night and would have to rely on one of the houses to take us in.

  When we drew close to the half-timber house near the mill, I could make out a wooden sign painted with a crude bed and a bees’ skep, hanging above the door. Lorenzo knocked, and a widow in all-black garb, bent as a latch, came to the door holding a candle. “What’s your business?” she asked, clutching a thin shawl to her chest.

  “We’d like a room and some food, please, dear madam,” Lorenzo answered, since he spoke the best German. He hastily removed his rough woolen cap and held it in his hands, nodding to her in courtesy.

  She lifted the candle and frowned. “It’s late for travelers to arrive.”

  “Right you are, madam, but our journey’s been slow and muddy. My mistress nearly drowned in the lake not so long ago, so we’re riding with more care.”

  She scrutinized me. “That explains her piebald face.”

  I cringed, embarrassed.

  “I thought you’d been set upon by robbers. Or maybe you’re vagabonds setting a trap.” She inspected our faces once more. “Well, come in, then. I’m Widow Gudrun. Mind you, I can only offer a plain repast. Bread, cheese, onions, and beer.”

  Lorenzo perked up at this.

  “We’re most grateful,” I said.

  “And how many days will you stay, then?”

  “Perhaps a week. I need to rest in a peaceful place.”

  “Apart from the bees in the orchard and the boatbuilders hammering all day down the lane, you should be fine.”

  “Ah, I should feel right at home with that,” I answered, thinking of the boatyard not far from our home. “We come from Venetia.”

  “Ah, hmm.” She stopped and looked me up and down once more. Then she muttered, “Sea people, then. Well, come in. Lake people aren’t so different. We both share the flux of the water, though we lake dwellers keep more to ourselves, I think. It’s the knowing of a place bound by mountains. While your water seems without end.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Widow Gudrun

  We slept well that night, Olmina and I sharing a bed, fragrant with mint, that wasn’t infested with fleas and lice for once. Lorenzo slept outside with the mules, insisting that fresh hay would make the finest bed for him.

  After our morning meal the next day, the widow squinted her hazel eyes at the bruises on my face, shoulder, and chest, then beckoned me into the adjoining room. By means of a half-frayed rope, she pulled down a ladder to the attic. She pressed a knobby finger to her lips to signal quiet as she disappeared up through the narrow opening. When she returned, she brought down dried ivy leaves (the same faint green color of my own lost supply) and let up the ladder. Then she pounded the leaves and added them to a bowl of hot water. She applied poultices to my bruises. “Signorina, tell no one about this, not even your servants,” she cautioned. “The priest doesn’t approve my medicines.”

  “No one will know,” I reassured her, and then I hesitated before saying, “I’m a doctor myself, though I’ve lost my medicine chest.” And with that small confession, I felt suddenly hollow and insubstantial.

  “Keep quiet about that, if you know what’s good for you,” she said.

  I spoke to her about the chest, its contents, and the theriacs of my father, but her eyes roamed and she fidgeted, so I kept the details about my notes for The Book of Diseases to myself. Instead, I told her that I hoped to visit Überlingen’s famous hospital, Der Spital, where curative sulfur waters eased the heart and stomach. “My father and I are writing about cures and diseases—perhaps you can help me by sharing some of your remedies? I’d also like to observe their manner of treatment at the hospital.”

  The widow straightened up as much as her poor curved spine would allow and put her hand on my shoulder. “They don’t take kindly to women doctors around here, no matter where you’re from and who your father is. And you can’t visit Der Spital. The well-heeled doctors there are afraid of us. We know things. And women who know things are dangerous.”

  “Women can be afraid of women too,” I said wryly.

  When my father presented me with the medicine chest at the dining table upon my sixteenth birthday, how my mother paled in dismay. But she already knew that her dream of a daughter as companion would be unf
ulfilled. I held the chest as if it were a newborn and hurried up to my room to be alone with the contents. Every jar, every bottle, shone more precious than any gem.

  At sixteen I was unafraid of the future, and certain of my father’s trust in me. Asclepius and Hygieia both greeted me from the inner lid of the chest every time I opened it. Sometimes I felt a small heat in each palm when I tended the sick alongside my father. When we were present at the bedsides of the incurable, he wisely refused to attempt a cure, though I often remained beside the dying after my father took his leave, for the warmth in my hands hadn’t subsided. I could still give comfort, though I never spoke to him of this. Perhaps he thought I lingered with the patient out of womanly compassion. I did mention it once to Olmina in our small garden, when we were deadheading the basil to bring it back to leaf. She nodded, saying, “The mountain healers who sell barks and roots in the marketplace kindle these small flames in their palms too.”

  My mother had overheard us from her window. “Come up here, Gabriella!” she called.

  Olmina glanced at me knowingly, raised her eyebrows, then bent her head and knelt closer to the basil.

  I trudged up the stairs. “What is it, Mamma?”

  “You must never discuss such foolishness with the servants, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mamma.”

  “And you could never possess such a talent. Only the saints embody such gifts. The mountain people are heretics!”

  “Yes, Mamma. I’ll never speak of it again.”

  She looked me over. “See that you don’t,” she said, plucking at loose threads on her lacy white cuff.

  I returned to the garden and worked in silence next to Olmina, content just to be listening, for the green world spoke to me—the garrulous herbs, dense-throated trees, and fluted waterweeds, even the humming lichens and mosses that chinked our walls. Mushrooms breathed like small sleeping children. The whole landscape, then, sustained me in my art.

  I suspected now that the Widow Gudrun also shared this green talent. As she tended to my bruises, I studied her hands. Her fingernails were stained brown from digging the earth.

  I grew stronger in Widow Gudrun’s care, and as the days passed, I went out riding with Lorenzo and Olmina. We went to the marketplace to collect new pouches and jars of medicinals to replace my lost stores.

  Once, we encountered other travelers and a splendid black horse that had lost its footing, badly gashing its foreleg on a rock near the moat that slanted sharply away from the road. The rider, a Bavarian nobleman, appeared uninjured. He knelt, patting his horse, soothing it in the mysterious guttural syllables of his language, while his servants looked on. Though I’m not accustomed to working with animals, I paused—incautiously—and spoke. “Forgive my intrusion, sir, but I’d recommend wrapping a cold-water bandage with yarrow round that wound to stanch the bleeding. There’s much growing freely in the nearby field.”

  Startled, he stood. “Dear lady, I greatly appreciate your advice,” he said. “I’m fearful of the proudflesh that might form beneath the knee. If not tended well, the scar will mar his beauty. Since you appear to know about these things, won’t you help?”

  “My lord!” remonstrated one of his men, a rough, square-jawed fellow. “You don’t know what sort of woman this is and you’re asking her to look after your horse?” His own bay snorted and pranced restlessly to and fro.

  Before I could stop him, Lorenzo retorted: “Don’t you question this renowned doctor from Venetia!”

  “Ah! Signora,” the Bavarian nobleman said, bowing, “please forgive the discourtesy of my man there—he only intends to protect me. Lord Christof von Altenhaus at your service.”

  “Olmina—will you cut some yarrow for us?” I asked as I swung from my mule’s back. “Let’s not waste any more time. The poor animal is suffering.” For while we were going through our niceties, the horse moaned where he lay, pawing the air as if to get up. I turned to the gentleman and asked, “Do you have any cotton or linen cloth?”

  He shook his head. I bent over, lifted my damask skirt, and tore a large strip from my underskirt. The lord, his three manservants, and the gathering passersby watched in astonishment. I sidestepped carefully down the bank and dipped it in the cold water of the moat.

  “Calm your animal!” I ordered when I returned and rinsed the horse’s wound. Lord Altenhaus knelt and slowly stroked the horse’s head and neck. Lorenzo jumped down next to him, placing one hand on the horse’s head, speaking that monotone of soft words that no one understood but the animals.

  I borrowed thread and needle from a laundrywoman in the small crowd and ran it carefully through the ferny yarrow leaf that Olmina brought me, attaching it to the horse’s flesh as I sutured the wound. It was a hand’s length long but fortunately not too deep. No tendons were harmed. We macerated the rest of the yarrow on a flat stone and placed it against the closed gash, then bound the cloth snugly around it.

  “This will do until you find a proper horse doctor,” I reassured Lord Altenhaus.

  His pale green slippers, stockings, and striped doublet were soiled with horse blood and the filth of the road. His soft-brimmed hat was the only article of clothing left untouched. The horse whinnied, struggled to rise again, and at last succeeded. With a rowdy mix of hurrahs from a few youths, the crowd dispersed. Lord Altenhaus offered to pay me, but I refused. I owed a debt to another horse that I’d never be able to repay.

  When we left them at the side of the road, I looked back. What a strange and consoling sight, I thought, to see an elegant man kneeling in the mud over his frightened beast. For some reason he entered my mind for days afterward, the green plume in his hat a valiant pennant fluttering from the tower of a besieged city. He reminded me of a young Venetian nobleman my father once treated, Signor Valdaccio, ornately handsome but haughty with his paramours. Lavinia had once succumbed to his tangy beauty, though she too had been scorned. He could be kind, but only at his own whim when it pleased him to play the radiant benefactor. Yet Signor Valdaccio weathered a terrible fever that left him stripped of frivolity, for in sickbed isolation he’d grasped that his influence, like Venetia, was illusion, but disease unites us all. Le malattie ci dicono quel che siamo.

  I spent many days at the inn reading over maladies my father and I had struggled to comprehend. As I continued to heal, I wanted to know cause and cure more fully.

  HORN OF THE UNICORN:

  For Loss of Desire

  The pulverized horn, very rare and unstable in the light, must be retained in a dark bottle and used sparingly. While I question the origins of the so-called horn of the unicorn (who has ever seen such a creature?), I do not question its efficacy.

  When preparing to administer the powder, you must avoid disturbing the contents with any sound such as speech or with any motion such as jiggling the bottle, for it will alter the pitch of the desires considerably. Remove the fine grains with a small spoon and sprinkle over the scalp or the palms of the hands and gently massage into the skin, taking care to wear gloves or else the physician may become inflamed. The patient must choose an object such as a small portrait of the once beloved, or even an emblem of work, such as a chisel, if the person wishes to rekindle a passion for a vocation.

  One caution: If too much powder is given, the patient may dwell upon the very thing itself rather than what it signifies, like that king who fell in love with the ring rather than the woman and couldn’t release her even after she died (for the ring lay under her tongue). At last the bishop withdrew it from her cold mouth, but then the king fell in love with the bishop. The cleric wisely tossed the ring into Lake Costentz, and the king, poor man, sat in a small boat for the rest of his days, lovesick over the water.

  The powder should be given in the evening, for sleep is advisable thereafter. The course of the dreams will indicate success or failure. The object of desire will appear along with those hidden imperatives that dreams offer us. Hunting scenes and cardoons promise success. The appearance of scissors gr
inders and women with black teeth warn against intemperance.

  My wounds knitted and my bruises faded to a pale mold green. Days flared orange and yellow with autumn trees forewarning winter, rousing me again. I didn’t want to be delayed by an early snow, when Tübingen, a city promising news of my father, lay but a few days’ ride ahead of us. But before we departed, I decided to stroll the rocky northern edge of Lake Costentz, for though I’d nearly drowned in its waters, I liked to safely lean close to its lisp and whisper, cupping my ear. Here was a wordless language, good counsel for the journey.

  Picking up a dead willow branch, I idly struck the thickets along the shore as I walked. Lorenzo, following along behind, laughed a little. This irritated me until I saw myself as he did—an unruly woman whipping the wind, while unbeknownst to her she dragged the flotsam her skirts collected: broken minnow jaws that caught the hem, a scraggly bit of rope stuck with thistle heads, a dark scrap of paper.

  “Now all I need is a saucepot on my head to be Mad Meg,” I said, laughing with him.

  I sat upon a log to disentangle my unintended spoils. When I plucked up the bit of paper, I saw that it came from a crude tarocchi woodcut: L’Amore. But the usual image—a pair of lovers beneath a round green wedding canopy with a little lapdog at their feet—was gone. Instead my hem had snagged the piece with the blindfolded Cupid, a quiver in one hand and an arrow in the other. Such an innocent little god as destroyer. What would Olmina make of this?

  The afternoon light faltered. There was nothing I liked so much as this late harvest season, when shadows lengthened and the world began to retreat from itself. I left Lorenzo to rest on a large, flat rock, glad to be walking alone for a bit. The lake lapped at its shore, a sound like the tides sloshing in the canals back home, but the smell here was tamer. Suddenly I wanted brine. I wanted that large view of sea too, scattered with islands. This curious nostalgia for home did not include people or even buildings, but smells, stones, the way sounds tunneled through Venetian passageways.