“It was a man, and I knew no one else out at that hour.”
“I can’t believe such a thing,” I said, even as my doubts grew.
“I once mistook a goat for a woman from afar, when it stood up against an olive trunk to pull at the olives,” declared Olmina.
Dr. Baldino frowned at her.
“The oddest thing, to return to your father,” said Dr. Urquhart, “was that after a brief stay, only six weeks in Edenburg, he’d . . . gone without even a leave-taking. May have suffered from severe nostalgia, a desire to go back to Venetia and . . .”
My head began to ache. “But I received letters from my father after that time,” I said, trying to remember all the letters, “from France and the Kingdom of Spain, and he never expressed such an intention.”
Dr. Baldino placed his hand on mine across the table. “It may be that I’m mistaken. Nothing is certain. But it’s true that your father wandered the land at night, wrestling with something unknown in himself.”
Isabella served our pottage. There was much silence over mushy colewort, parsnips, cabbage, beans, and dreadful oatcakes. We also had stringy pullets, which were oversalted and overcooked. I realized with embarrassment that the meal was prepared for the nearly toothless Dr. Baldino, and I had no cause for complaint, having all but four of my teeth still in my mouth.
As I chewed, a sentence I didn’t speak aloud came to my mind. Not My father has disappeared, or My father is lost, but I’ve lost my father. As if he were a fallen coin I could find by dropping to all fours and patting the floor with my hands. I’ve lost my father.
Owing to harsh weather, we decided to remain the winter in Edenburg. Finally, Olmina proclaimed, I’d come to my senses.
One afternoon before Christmas I observed Hamish in the square in front of the church when he didn’t know that anyone was watching, for there was a considerable crowd milling about. A few merrymakers flouted the recent Presbyterian rules that banned the old celebrations, electing a lord of misrule and parading him through the square on their shoulders with a pot upside down on his head (and ample ale in his belly, no doubt). Some lively carol singers (also at their peril from the church, whose special officers were luckily nowhere to be seen at this moment) imitated the joyous sounds of the animals at the birth of the Holy Child—the ox lowing, the ass braying, the calf bellowing, the cock crowing, and the goat bleating (the latter so pitiful that everyone began to laugh).
Hamish stood alone to one side of the western doors of High Kirk, just below the line of sunlight as Olmina and I strolled by. He was absorbed in a book, and his reddish hair stood about his head as if he’d run his fingers through it many times. He chewed on his nails thoughtfully, seeming to taste words that were impossible to place upon the tongue, as he leaned back against the wall, with one knee bent, oblivious to the revelry around him. I managed to discern the title—Aristotle’s De divinatione per somnum—and recalled one intriguing passage:
The most skilful interpreter of dreams is he who has the faculty of observing resemblances. Any one may interpret dreams which are vivid and plain. But, speaking of “resemblances,” I mean that dream presentations are analogous to the forms reflected in water . . . In the latter case, if the motion in the water be great, the reflexion has no resemblance to its original, nor do the forms resemble the real objects. Skilful, indeed, would he be in interpreting such reflexions who could rapidly discern, and at a glance comprehend, the scattered and distorted fragments of such forms, so as to perceive that one of them represents a man, or a horse, or anything whatever.
So Hamish mulled upon the nature of dreams. I wanted to steer us away quickly, before he noticed me, but he peered up from his book—“Gabriella!”—and I was caught. I flushed like an aching girl.
Olmina tugged at my arm and said, “We must return to the house. The signorina is not well.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, and I disengaged my arm from hers. Without any preface I asked, “So do you believe in divination by dreams as foretelling, simply tokens, or coincidences?”
He stared at me with curiosity. “It depends on what manner of dream we’re interpreting. A night dream, a daydream. A consequence of tough pullets,” he said smiling, “or some nocturnal form of Nature’s sacred design. Or even the grace of a lovely woman.”
It was the first time I’d heard him speak in complete, uninterrupted sentences. The narrow white gathers of the tight linen collar at his neck flickered ever so slightly with his pulse and breath.
“I believe,” I said, “there may be resemblances to events in the future, or even anticipations of malady or healing. For once I dreamt that all the remedies and instruments from my medicine chest were scattered in the Venetian Lagoon, and I did lose that chest in Lake Costentz. Yet even after the chest was recovered, I found the medicines mislaid. Maybe the dream points to the cures written in my father’s Book of Diseases, lost when he disappeared.”
“Ah”—his eyebrows rose in keen interest—“I’d like to know more about it.” He closed his book and slipped a slender finger from the page he’d been holding.
“Perhaps we can speak further the next time we meet,” I murmured, not really sure how much I wanted to tell him. A damp breeze kicked up the air. I put my hand near my face to protect myself from the cold.
He clasped my upraised hand and pressed it between both of his warm palms, brushing my face with the back of his hand, and then he bowed. “Farewell, then. I look forward to our renewed conversation.”
“Yes, soon.”
I pulled my hand away, then turned, hooking my arm through Olmina’s soft, heavy arm once more, and strode away at a rapid pace, pulling her along with me, until she tugged back to slow me down.
“He’s a handsome one, that man,” she commented, “a bit rash, but the face of a seraph.”
Ah, I thought, smiling, so even Olmina has been moved by him.
After that meeting, I found his tall, lank frame a singular source of disruption whenever he appeared. He differed greatly from my father, who entered a room and immediately established a presence with others. I knew where I stood in a room with my father, even with his sporadic ill tempers, for he was, at least at one time, an almost predictable class of planet.
But whenever Hamish advanced, I was unsure of my ground. I found myself leaning too close to him at times. I remembered the pavana venetiana, the pavana ferrarese, the exquisite dances of my youth, accompanied by the lute, an instrument considered too sensual for women to play. The evenings at the Villa Barberini, lit by long rectangles of late sun falling from the windows as we passed in and out of the circles of honey-scented candles. Back then, my mother looked expectantly upon my unflagging joy in the music. She thought of suitors; I thought of gestures. She’d never savored that kind of freedom, for she’d married my father at fifteen and hadn’t known another before him. Sometimes when I danced, I imagined a homunculus, a little man dancing within at the center of me. (Is this what it felt like to be full with child?) I never tired of the saltarellos, the pivas, the spingardi. Until the death of Maurizio.
My notes for The Book of Diseases occupied me well as Edenburg’s dark days of winter progressed, but I began to cherish the occasions when I would meet Hamish, and fret when I did not.
Christmas in Edenburg was a solemn affair. The inhabitants were forbidden by the Presbyterian elders to bake yuletide bread in their homes, and even the poor bakers themselves were interrogated about those who might order any such cake or bun. To cheer me, Hamish had agreed to escort me on another walk along the Water of Leyth the following day. Lorenzo joined us.
After we passed through the town gates, we followed the footpath that ran along the banks of the water, southward this time, toward its source in the Pentland Hills. Dark red coppices of willow stood dripping in the fog. Gorse and withered grasses lay sodden beyond the trees. “I warned you that you won’t see much of the countryside today,” said Hamish, amused that I’d insisted on going out anyway.
“Yes, but we can sense the fields and hills, the scent of winter earth. Maybe we’ll even hear a few birds,” I answered, pulling my red Hollant cloak about me. Naturally I couldn’t admit to Hamish that I had just wanted to see him.
Lorenzo piped up from behind us. “This cold could split a stone! Still, it’s better than coal smoke and gloomy houses.”
“You’re right, this is just the thing for a dry temperament, though I suppose we could do without the bilious cold,” I agreed.
“And so, do you organize your book by the humors, then?” asked Hamish.
“I’m not sure thus far of the classes of malady and cure. My father hadn’t yet suggested categories, so I lack his guidance.” We walked briskly as we spoke, to warm ourselves, and Lorenzo dropped behind.
“Wouldn’t it be more useful to gather them under the elements of place rather than humors? For those of us who live in wet regions would be able to turn to ‘Diseases Engendered by Rivers and Lakes,’ ‘Diseases Wrought by Swamps,’ and so on.”
I was delighted by this suggestion. “There is a great appeal to the Hippocratic Corpus,” I admitted, “the three environs of Airs, Waters, and Places. But the places aren’t entirely fitting for this work, though I’m drawn to the category of waters. When a person is porous, he is healthy. We may judge disease by the motions of water, how the urine flows, its color and quality, likewise the sweat, saliva, and tears. But the humors are more compelling for me. A melancholic can turn to her inclination and immediately find ways to restore balance.” As I spoke, I warmed to his presence beside me. No man had talked so freely with me about medicine since my father.
The path curved with the water, which grew narrower in its channel. Hamish turned intently toward me. “Why don’t you complete The Book of Diseases here in Edenburg? I’ll gain permission for you to use the library. We have an abundance of medical volumes here!”
I was astonished by his offer. I stood mulling it over, rather guiltily. For shouldn’t I want to continue the search for my father? “Are you sure that your peers will allow a woman in their sanctum?”
“They will if I insist.”
All at once a flock of screeching jackdaws approached invisibly and then miraculously appeared one after another out of the white vapor with their wet black bodies, gray necks, and pale blue eyes, moving in uneven synchrony. Their haunting caws increased, and though we couldn’t see them all, there must have been hundreds circling and creating the din. Hamish touched my woolen-gloved fingers. I didn’t withdraw my hand but lowered my head and observed the sodden pointed toes of my shoes. As he moved nearer, I noticed a smell of binding glue, the sort that emanates from books. I looked behind to where Lorenzo should have been, but couldn’t see him beyond the vanishing bend in the path. Hamish pulled me close while the raucous birds spun around us.
Then Lorenzo’s loud voice cut through the fog. “Have you ever heard such an uproar?” We quickly separated, as yearning and shame flared through me.
We continued to walk, holding our separate silences like live coals. I involuntarily brought my hands to rest below my chest, as if to contain it, the way a pregnant woman will place her hands upon her swollen belly. Incongruously I thought of a strange tale my father had related to me about a seed bone. I mentioned this to break the silence.
“Tell me,” said Hamish immediately, “what is a seed bone?”
“It re-creates the whole body. When my father first told me the story when I was a child, I wanted to plant every bone I could find in the sandy earth of our courtyard to see if it would make the magic. If the chicken knuckle would generate the chicken, the prickly ribs reconstitute the fish. Or if the tiny sacral bone I secretly obtained would grow into a skeleton or even a man. I’d stolen it from the charnel house on the island of San Michele, when we buried my great-aunt Tiziana. I wandered in the green cemetery, tapping gravestones with a long stick I found, while the rest of the families gathered beneath a black cypress, the tree of sudden death, Olmina once told me. That is why they are planted in cemeteries. Since then, I refuse to stand anywhere near one.”
Close behind me, Lorenzo scoffed. “The only reason cypress mark the fields of the dead is that their roots are long and deep. They won’t upend the coffins.”
“And just how did you steal that bone?” asked Hamish incredulously.
“When I came to the charnel house, I reached through the grate on impulse, grabbed the little vertebra, and pocketed it. Two Capuchins, their gray hoods covering their faces, strode nearby but didn’t observe me. Later, on the gondola returning to Venetia, I felt the bone jump in my skirt and I clutched it in my fist to keep it quiet. That night I secretly planted it beneath the pine in our small courtyard, but nothing ever sprouted. Even the vertebra disappeared, for when I tried to dig it up I couldn’t find it.”
“What a daring thing to do!”
I smiled. “I don’t know. It seems I’ve always wanted to make fragments whole, whether it involves a bone, a book, or a patient.”
He regarded me seriously with sharp blue eyes.
I stopped to catch my breath. The fog had turned to a wan rain. “I guess we should turn around.”
“I’ll agree to that, signorina. You don’t want to come down with the ague,” Lorenzo said, slapping his arms to warm up. I noticed both pockets of his woolen breeches bulging with small, thick branches, so that he resembled a sort of walking pollard.
“Well, I see you’ve found something to carve, then.”
“Ah yes, signorina. I like alderwood for the sweet, smoky smell. Easy to work and doesn’t feather.”
“What will you carve?” asked Hamish.
“Hmm, maybe a little crèche for Epiphany.”
“Careful, then,” Hamish said. “Don’t forget you’re in Protestant country now, and Nativities are forbidden. Best to keep it in the house.”
“How sad!” I exclaimed. I certainly wasn’t a devout Catholic, but as a child I’d always enjoyed playing with the little figures Lorenzo had whittled.
Lorenzo shook his head and trundled ahead of us.
Then Hamish opened his great green coat and put his arm out toward me. “Cold?”
I moved closer so he could put it around my shoulder.
Lorenzo looked back and caught my eye as if to ask, Are you all right with this man?
And cautiously, I smiled.
We walked back down the path, gathering warmth from each other. Before he left us at our rooms, I said quietly, “Hamish, I’d like to come to the library, then.”
The beauty of the countryside, and of Hamish, loosened my thoughts and my orderly plans. I began to consider that maybe I could settle in Edenburg, a city crowded upon three hills above an estuary. Wouldn’t I find comfort in the penetrating damp, the salt fog out of the east like an old childhood friend? A sea like beaten tin. Tall ships ticking across the horizon like the ornate hands of a wondrous clock. For like Venetia, Edenburg conversed with a sea to the east and withstood mountain winds from the Highlands in the north. This correspondence of geography pleased me—the familiar and the foreign in lively accord.
I began to consider more deeply my desire to find my father. How well did I really know him? Perhaps that was why I carried the letters and read them with all the devoted habit a woman might apply to reading the hours. More often than not, he was my Compline, the last of the hours, when one contemplates the small death of sleep. My night prayer. There, my father, you do exist. I have your words, even though you’re not here. I’d read them in different orders through the years, following chronology or place and now, on this journey, his nature. For it seemed another organizing principle cycled through his correspondence, like lunar phases, wheels of mysterious mood and reflection that weren’t entirely clear to me, though I could feel their inner workings. There was that unusual letter from Montpellier in 1586—unusual because he employed a rare tone of contentment.
My dear Gabriella,
I spend my days walking this strange half-abando
ned city because I can no longer sit indoors. The season is spring, though the weather is still cool. A very fine fellow here, an old papermaker from Alby, has proved to be my best companion. He doesn’t ask me questions about my profession. He doesn’t spar with my theories. And he couldn’t care less about the Book of Diseases, except that he’s delighted that I’ve promised to request his paper through the Aldine Press in Venetia. He’s shown himself to be a marvelous artisan even as he works here at the mill of a friend who’s lent him a pulping hammer, vat, and screen. You would enjoy watching him, as you were always so engaged by how things are made, the beautiful mechanics. The other afternoon I sat for a while observing him working the hempen rags into paper. After previously soaking and boiling the fibers, he gently sieved them evenly onto a copper screen and pulled a sheet of paper out of the vat on that very screen. Then he couched it onto felt, where he pressed out the excess water. The old papermaker patted it all over (testing for uneven dampness) with unimaginable tenderness, as if he loved the paper. Then he left it to dry on a rack. I actually envied him his craft, the feel of it. The consequence of good work that he could hold in his hands. While our vocation may yield a healthy man, woman, or child, surely a happy outcome, it may just as well yield suffering or death. I wonder sometimes if that fires my passion to finish this book. To create something that I may hold in my hand, the very thing of it making me content. I know how it pleases you too, my daughter. May we one day find ourselves together at the Aldine Press, holding the book that offers help and knowledge to others, after it sustained us well in the making.
Would a book satisfy my passion? Or was there something—or someone—else I should hold?
True to his promise, Hamish obtained permission for me to study in the library. He appeared there almost every day at the hour I arrived, no matter when I rose or went out. He must have set someone on watch—or perhaps he’d agreed to be my escort there, unbeknownst to me.
The Book of Madness and Cures Page 19