The Bloodletter's Daughter (24 page)

T
HE
I
NSULT

Katarina held the mill door open for Marketa, ushering her in from the blustery wind that stung her eyes and played an eerie tune through the paddles of the waterwheel. The enormous millstone groaned and creaked on its scaffolding in the center of the room.

Katarina’s mother, Eliska, and little brother, Jiri, stooped before the open fire and the huge iron cauldron suspended over the flames. They were mulling wine, boiled with honey, for Jiri to take to the castle when he returned to work later that evening. It brought in a few thalers each month for the family, whose fortunes—like those of all Krumlov—had suffered since the departure of the Rozmberks.

Each night the miller’s wife sent a cask of the wine to be peddled to the guards and servants at the castle. Pan Chaloupka, the head guard, rationed the sale of the sweet spiced wine, just enough to fortify his men to brave the watch between midnight and dawn, silent hours when the men’s only company was the hard gleam of the stars in winter’s heartless sky.

“Come, join us,” said the plump Eliska, ladling mulled wine into a clay cup for Marketa. “Sit by the fire and tell us stories of the Hapsburg prince.”

Marketa kissed her cheek and sat next to her on the roughhewn bench.

“Ack! You are chilled to the bone,” Eliska said, pressing the warm cup into Marketa’s hands. “Your cheeks are like the frozen dead!”

“What is Don Julius like?” asked Katarina. “Tell us!”

“Why not ask your brother?” Marketa replied, holding the cup to her cold lips and taking a sip. She was grateful for the warmth of the mug that drew blood back into her fingers. “Jiri works at the castle every day. My father is only summoned a few times a week to bleed the prince.”

“Ah, but Jiri hasn’t the stories you have, Marketa,” said Eliska. “He only fetches food and drink, logs for the fire, and runs errands for the doctor. He never even sees Don Julius. You know that.”

Jiri nodded his head solemnly. “I cannot enter the rooms, nor can any of us. They will not allow me even a glimpse of him. The maids clean his room and change his linen only when he is on the hunt chasing stag and boar, so none of us sees the king’s son.”

Marketa looked at the fire and felt three pairs of eyes staring at her. What could she tell them? They knew Don Julius was mad, but they did not know, they could not imagine that he had declared her an angel out of some strange book. She dared not tell them that Don Julius refused to let the king’s physician lay the leeches on his body, that the task had fallen to her. Were she to tell Eliska, the news would spread through Krumlov like grease on a hot griddle.

“He is strange,” was all she could say.

“Does he speak to you?” pressed Katarina.

“Sometimes. Yes, he addresses me, though I cannot understand what he means. Ravings.” She was unwilling to tell them more.

“Well, Marketa, you are blessed to lay eyes on a Hapsburg and to be allowed to see and handle royal blood. Where do you pour your trays?” asked Eliska, as she moved to refill her guest’s empty cup.

“Doctor Mingonius disposes of it himself. We leave the trays, and it is said that there is a special oak tree on the north side of the castle that receives the blood to its roots, after it has been blessed by the Spanish priest.”

Eliska nodded her head, knowing that the priest’s holy incantations would keep witches or sorcerers from using the blood in spells. And with that blessing, beasts that licked the ground could not carry away the spirit of the young Hapsburg.

“I wish I could stay and hear more,” she said regretfully, “but I must go to the market to buy food. They say that a merchant from Budejovice has brought an oxcart full of cabbages and salt to be sold today. The cabbages have been stored in a cold room under sawdust. The cartwright’s wife has seen them herself. She says the weevils and worms have hardly made a mark on them.”

She pulled her cloak off a peg and wrapped the woolen garment tight around her head and shoulders. “Come, Jiri—bring the wheelbarrow and we will buy what we can. Load up two buckets of the wine and a serving cup. We will fetch a good price with this batch—it is worth a few cabbages and salt to a merchant standing in the frozen muck of Siroka Street, especially when the wind blows from the north.”

When her mother and brother had departed, Katarina took her friend’s hands and pleaded.

“Now tell me more about Don Julius. Is he bound in soft ropes made of silk as they say? Does he fear the leeches and twist
when your father brings them near? We have heard his curses on bleeding days.”

Marketa hesitated and drained her cup. “Can you keep a secret, Katarina? You must swear—”

“I swear, I swear, by all that is holy, only tell me!”

Marketa licked the last drops of honeyed wine from her lips.

“It is I who treats Don Julius. He will not let Doctor Mingonius, let alone my father, near to him.”

Katarina gasped. “You—a woman! You treat a Hapsburg!”

“You have sworn to me—”

“No, no, by my honor I shall not whisper a word. But—but how is it that you can touch Don Julius and His Majesty’s physician cannot?”

“Don Julius must agree to undergo the treatment, as ordered by the king. And he will not let Doctor Mingonius near him. Hate burns in his eyes. It is only with me that he...finds peace.”

Katarina’s eyes were as round as Shrovetide pancakes. She stuck her fingers in her mouth as she always did when she was perplexed or astonished.

“Does he—does he find you attractive?” she asked at last.

Marketa scowled at her.

“What does it matter? Katarina, I have my own
patient
! Don’t you see! My father was wrong. Not only do I have a patient who responds to me and me only, but he is a Hapsburg!”

Katarina nodded warily.

“But he is not right in his head,” she said. “And would not the king himself object were he to find out that a woman is treating his son?”

“No one will ever know. What the doctor says is that King Rudolf is overjoyed with the progress in his son’s health. He would not care whether it was Satan himself who cured him as long as his sanity returns and the Hapsburg name is unblemished.”

Katarina moved a step away from her best friend, closer to the fire. She said nothing for a moment. Marketa could tell that she was deep in thought and digesting the story. But when the silence began to drag on, Marketa touched Katarina’s shoulder.

“It is all right, Katarina. He is my patient, no more. No harm will come of it.”

Katarina turned to face her friend.

“What does it feel like to treat royalty, Marketa, to see a prince lashed to a chair? Do you ever wonder what it would be like to...”

“To what?”

“To make love to him,” she said, turning her head away to the fire so Marketa could not see her blush.

She was thinking of her own love, the blacksmith’s son Damek, whom she was forbidden to see.

“Don’t be foolish, Katarina! Don Julius is a Hapsburg and is besieged by malicious humors.”

“He is still a man, Marketa—and you a woman. You are in control, are you not? Sometimes I like to think of my blacksmith lashed to a chair, with only the two of us in the room. My father would have no say in the matter—”

“Your father will never let you see Damek; you know he won’t.” Marketa had to turn the talk away from Don Julius, even if it meant hurting Katarina. “Why torment yourself with such silly ideas? Forget him—he is just a lovesick pup with a sooty face.”

Katarina swallowed hard, her hand flying to her breast as if she had been wounded. She turned to Marketa in fury. “Can I not dream the same as you, Marketa? What is so impossible about a miller’s daughter marrying a blacksmith? Who would think a bathmaid named Musle would lay healing hands on a Hapsburg?”

Her words were a hard slap across Marketa’s face. She tasted the tangy bite of bile in the back of her mouth. Katarina had never before uttered the name Musle in her presence.

“Forgive me, Marketa!” Katarina said, desperate to take the word back almost in the same instant she said it, her hand trying to clasp her friend’s, seeking a pardon for the insult.

Marketa snatched her hand away from Katarina and pulled her woolen cloak tight against the wind as she opened the oaken door and left, slamming it closed behind her.

A H
APSBURG’S
A
DDICTION

Marketa’s mother made sure her daughter had an extra portion of pork that night. Dipping the wooden ladle deep into the pot, she drowned the meat and dumplings in thick brown gravy. It was a gesture of such forced exuberance that Marketa knew it was penitence for her mother’s blunt insistence that she court the favor of the Hapsburg prince at all costs. Lucie realized she had pushed too hard—and Marketa knew her mother would try another tack, once she thought she had been forgiven.

Lucie always apologized—and persuaded—with food. She believed anyone who disagreed with her would be more easily convinced to come around to her way of thinking on a full stomach.

“Eat, Marketa. It will not do for Don Julius to see you so pale. The pig’s meat will return the color to your cheeks. Is that not right, Husband?” she said, waiting for his approval.

Pichler said nothing, but continued chewing his dumpling, washing it down with beer.

Marketa bit her lower lip but nodded, yes, please, she would like some more meat. She was voraciously hungry. Still her mother’s reference to her cheeks irritated her.

“Don Julius does not care if my cheeks are red or pale as snow,” she said. “He is a madman, and his visions of beauty are colored by the bad humors in his blood. He could just as gladly make love to the meat of this pig as me.”

Lucie froze, her hands suspended in air. Her face turned red, as if she were over a steaming barrel in the bathhouse.

“The prince finds you attractive,” she said, her voice sharp. She shifted on the bench, making it groan under her weight. “What talk is this, love of pigs? And who are you to question a Hapsburg,
slecna
?”

The Czech word for “miss” was intended as an arrow to Marketa’s heart. Her mother was afraid that with her daughter’s strange obsession with medicine, she would never find a husband.

Marketa did not answer. Better to let her mother indulge herself in the illusion of a daughter who had charmed royalty. It was to her advantage to have her mother happy with the time spent in Don Julius’s company; it could only help further her plans to study medicine in Prague.

“The pork is delicious and will surely make my cheeks as red as apples,” Marketa said, keeping her voice sweet. “I can feel the blood rising to my face this minute, coloring my humors sanguine.”

Her mother smiled, cautiously. She didn’t like it when her daughter spoke of blood.

At dawn, Doctor Mingonius met Marketa and her father at the door of Rozmberk Castle.

“He has rested comfortably all night,” the doctor said. “I dispatched a letter to the king reporting the progress. I persuaded Don Julius to write a short letter in his own hand, to bear testimony to the change in humor. His Majesty will be overjoyed!”

At this Doctor Mingonius thrust his hand out to grasp Pichler’s. He pumped it vigorously and then turned to Marketa.

“I did not report anything, of course, of your intervention, Fräulein Pichlerova. You understand, of course.”

“Yes, of course,” Marketa said. “It would seem odd to mention a woman’s intervention in a medical matter.”

“Precisely,” answered the doctor with satisfaction, though his eyes studied her carefully. Was there impertinence in her answer?

There was a spark in her blue eyes that worried him.

Mingonius led them to a room near the enormous porcelain boiler, where water bubbled into the great pipes that warmed the castle. A fire roared, and the kitchen staff had laid out a rich breakfast. Sausages and bacon on fine porcelain plates. Fresh cheeses—none of them edged in mold or riddled with worms, Marketa noted—were sliced beside brown and white breads from Katarina’s mother’s bakery. There were crocks of creamery butter and fresh soured cream, and two great pitchers of dark ale.

“Eat,” said Doctor Mingonius. “Eat and then we will discuss our medical procedures for the day.”

But Marketa could not finish even half a sausage. She looked nervously at Doctor Mingonius, his face flushed and throbbing from the warm air and strong ale. His voice boomed, filling the room with cheer and good spirits. He was obviously very pleased with his letter to the king and the fact that he had been able to induce Don Julius to write to his father.

“The bleedings have restored balance to his psyche,” he said. “The bad blood that tormented him has been released.”

“He has asked blessings from God,” said an accented voice. “Praise be our most merciful Lord.”

Once again, the Spanish priest had entered a room unannounced and unnoticed. What a knack for secrecy and stealth, thought Marketa. Was it Jesuit training or his Spanish blood that allowed him to blend into the shadows and move invisibly? If he were not a priest, she would guess him a sorcerer or a thief.

The warm atmosphere in the room cooled as the priest approached. The fire did not warm their backs now, and the ale did not heat their blood as it had a moment earlier.

Marketa shivered and pulled her woolen cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“He knelt by my side and asked forgiveness,” said the priest. “I have written my own missive to our king. He shall be pleased with this spiritual progress.”

“Come, sit and partake in breakfast, Priest,” said Doctor Mingonius. “We are planning our medical intervention now.”

“I have already eaten my brown bread,” said the priest. “I broke my fast after prayers an hour ago. I have my own spiritual intervention to plan. Much work is to be done.”

Mingonius eyed the Spaniard suspiciously.

“You must not push him to a limit that will break his mental peace,” he said. “Don Julius despises the Catholic Church, and too much time with God will make him rebel and impede his cure.”

“What blasphemy!” snapped the priest. “The more time he spends on his knees to ask our Lord’s forgiveness, the more chance he will be forgiven for his sins and enter heaven.”

Mingonius took a long draught of ale. He stared at the little priest whose face was a map of angry wrinkles, like creases on parchment that had traveled hand to hand for months.

“You forget the weeks of hell and torment you endured before we began the bleedings, the rotting carcasses of animals and the screams that haunted this castle and all Krumlov,” said the doctor. “If you push him too far, he will fight back. You know this as well as you know the scriptures. If we let a week go by without a bleeding to purge his choleric humors, you will be shaken from your prayers by his raving screams. Priest, he will not kneel beside you like a lamb without the suck of the leech. And it will be you and you alone responsible for his lunacy.”

“How dare you accuse me of anything, Mingonius! I have the backing of the Jesuits, of the pope, and of the king.”

“You forgot to mention the backing of God himself. And I doubt the king will back you if his son begins raving again. Everyone knows that King Rudolf is not particularly fond of the Catholic Church. His melancholy nature was born in the dark days at the court of his uncle, King Felipe. The Spanish corrupted his sanguine nature, something that even the great physician Jan Jesenius himself cannot correct. A happy boy in the Viennese court returned as a melancholy prince after too many years in El Escorial and Madrid.”

“King Felipe taught him discipline and God’s word,” hissed the priest.

“It does not matter what you think, Priest,” said Mingonius, nibbling on a piece of cheese. “If you and I do battle for Don Julius’s well-being, I am certain our good king will come down on my side and not that of a Spaniard who wears his son’s knees to bone, praying on cold granite.”

“Let me know when you have finished with him,” the priest said acidly. “Send a page to the chapel. I shall be praying for his soul. I have written that the bleedings must cease, and the king will hear my word from the archbishop of Prague himself. It shall not be long before you are called back to Prague, Herr Doctor Mingonius.”

As the priest slammed the heavy wooden door, Mingonius smiled and helped himself to another tankard of ale.

“I believe he forgot to mention that he would be praying for my eternal salvation, as well as the bastard’s,” said the doctor, smiling. “An oversight, I am sure.”

Mingonius planned to spend as much time as possible with Don Julius without applying a leech or blade. He hoped that the prince would become convinced that he and Pichler were to be trusted, and so wean the bastard from Marketa’s care. The girl would be used as a bribe to buy time with the afflicted man.

For now, Don Julius seemed addicted to Marketa as if she were opium.

“Good morning, Don Julius,” boomed Doctor Mingonius, his voice scaring the pigeons off the thick stone windowsill. The room filled with the sound of beating wings as the birds took flight over Krumlov.

Don Julius turned languidly from the window, and seeing only the two men, turned his back on them. His movements were slow and uneven, and his hand trembled slightly.

“What are you doing?” asked Mingonius as he approached.

“I am feeding the birds,” the prince said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I like to watch them eat and then fly to freedom.”

Mingonius noticed the utter lack of color in the young man’s face.

“Have you eaten today, Don Julius?”

“No,” he said, slowly lowering himself into a cushioned chair. “I have no appetite.”

Mingonius considered this. No appetite in a man who once demanded twelve or more meals a day was certainly a significant change, but not one that was necessarily beneficial.
Balance
, he
thought.
We must balance the humors in his body and foster new vital blood.

“I must prescribe that you eat a hearty breakfast and two more meals this day. You will have to consume a full bottle of red wine as well to bolster the new blood in your veins.”

“I am not hungry,” said the prince. “I want nothing but to be allowed my privacy.”

“Nonsense,” said the doctor. “What if I were to permit Marketa to enter and to feed you with her own hand?”

Julius sat up from his slouch, and his left eye began to blink.

“She is with you? Am I to be bled once more?”

“No, no. You aren’t to be bled for at least another day. The new blood must course strong within your veins before we attempt to purge you again. And by that time, the new bleeding chair will be delivered by the carpenter. I have a mind to copy its design and introduce it at court. Ingenious!”

“That was Marketa’s idea,” said Don Julius. “You should name it after her.”

Mingonius frowned.

“Send for her, Doctor. I should like to gaze upon her again.” Don Julius laid a finger on the doctor’s sleeve. Then he wrapped his finger around the silk fabric of the doublet, like a child pleading. “She is the only one who understands my torment. I can see it in her eyes, I can feel it in her hands. Pray, good physician, send for her.”

“She is here, my lord,” the doctor said, “and I could arrange for her to sit by you as you eat and drink as I prescribe. But only if you promise to be an absolute gentleman to her and permit us to remain in the room.”

“She will dine with me?”