The Bloodletter's Daughter (3 page)

The next morning, the king’s best hound was found stabbed to death, its entrails strewn about the bloody straw of the royal kennel.

B
EFORE THE
F
ALL

M
USLE OF
C
ESKY
K
RUMLOV

The bathhouse on the Vltava River was pale yellow, the color of winter sunlight. It had stood in the Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov for nearly three hundred years, wedged tightly among houses built as close together as fingers in a fist. But in all that time, thought Marketa Pichlerova, no one had hated it as fiercely as she did. The young bathmaid disliked many things about that pale-yellow house, but most of all, she hated the profession to which she was born.

Yet Marketa was not one to accept life meekly. Over the years, lecherous men on the streets of Krumlov watched her grow up, licking their lips. She’d felt their greedy eyes run over her body as if she were a fattening calf. But she would brush her wavy hair out of her storm-colored eyes and stare back at the offender, raising her chin. The gesture exposed her heart-shaped face and the ruddy color of her cheeks, which would flame with color if her passion was stirred.

The color of her cheeks contrasted with her wild hair. Just as a person can be born with two different colored eyes, Marketa’s
hair was a blend of shades—russet, gold, and chestnut strands, reflecting the colors of a Bohemian autumn.

But her chin was her most prominent feature—not large, but strong, determined; it was emblematic of her personality. Despite the opinions of others, despite her own fears, she raised her chin and proceeded through life with a directness that startled those who did not know her well.

There was only one person in the world who could best her in passion and determination—and that was her mother, Lucie Pichlerova, who ran the town bathhouse.

Marketa was the daughter of Lucie and her husband, barber-surgeon Zigmund Pichler, the town bloodletter.

A bloodletter inspired respect in Bohemia. Men and women alike drew coins from their purses to purchase a leeching cure. When Marketa was in her father’s company, she held her head high as she assisted him in bleedings, carrying the fine ceramic trays that caught the blood from the patient’s veins. Marketa knew the meandering tracks of bloodways and pulse points as well as her father. And how to harvest and handle the leeches. She could have applied them herself to a patient’s veins if only the barber-surgeon guild would allow women to practice the trade.

But that profession was closed to her—as were, apparently, all others. The daughter of a Bohemian bathmaid, Marketa was fated to be a Bohemian bathmaid herself. She was a slave to the business run by her mother, Lucie—the business of bathing the townspeople and giving men sexual pleasure. Randy men dug even deeper into their purses for bathmaids than they did for a leeching, hunting for silver thalers to purchase a young maid’s attentions and a hand in the right place.

Marketa had dreaded the day when she, too, would be for sale. At age fifteen, she was ripe for a patron and was expected to earn her way in life. For more than two years she had ignored her mother’s pleas that she trade on her young woman’s body to
help the family. She had reached the age when she was expected to begin entertaining men in the bathhouse and accepting their favors.

Since she was twelve years old, men had squeezed her budding breasts and groped under her bath shift as she fought them off, once even scalding an aggressive hand with boiling water. Her mother had pinched her arm and told her she was no longer a child to be protected, but a woman to be admired and handled—for a price, of course.

Marketa had learned that this was part of her life as a bathhouse girl, indulging a grope or two, especially when men were in their cups, drunk on the ale and mead Lucie sold. Marketa knew it was her job to make their visit “pleasurable.”

“Marketa! What harm does it do us to make a weary man’s life more bearable here in the bathhouse?”

What she meant, Marketa thought, was what harm would it do to earn tips and favors that would benefit the Pichler family. Those tips would give Lucie more money to purchase tasty meat in the market. Marketa’s mother had a strict rule that her daughter should never allow boys her own age to touch her, as they were penniless fools and there was nothing to be gained from their affection.

“Of course they will lust for you, but there are no coins in their pockets. Only greedy hands reaching for heaven,” Lucie said, chucking her daughter under her chin. “Now is the time to find a rich patron. A wealthy burgher or a merchant. Two would be better, for they vie for your favor and raise the price.”

Marketa sometimes wondered how her mother had ever settled on her father, a member of a guild, yes, but as a barber-surgeon, hardly a burgher. Both her mother and father worked hard to keep bread and ale on the table and saved their money for scraps of meat when they could—and books for Zigmund
Pichler. And then there were the trips Pichler took to Vienna to further his studies of bloodletting, which were financially ruinous. He left his family at least twice a year to visit the barber-surgeon guild in the old capital.

Pichler, for his part, was very much aware of the demands of the bathhouse on the seven women who worked there. This bathhouse on the Vltava had, in fact, been in his family for generations. He had met Lucie when she came to work for his parents as a very young bathmaid. He had only married her after learning for certain that she accepted that life and would run the family business with authority and even a kind of enthusiasm for its demands. The fact that a neighbor’s hand wandered over her body only made him the more hungry for her at night. Marketa had been awakened many times by their gruntings and squeals, the rustle and snap of the straw under the ticking as her parents rutted.

But Marketa’s father played no part in the bathhouse trade; he left that business to his wife. His profession was cutting hair and veins...and leeching. The bathhouse was his wife’s vocation.

Marketa longed to join him and leave the sordid business, the smell of the dirty bodies and sweat, the lusty thoughts and talk of both men and women. She wished she, too, could dedicate herself to some higher calling.

In time, her mother’s pleas that she must find a patron became more insistent. One day, Lucie waited until her husband had left the house for her brother Radek’s tavern and began her attack in earnest.

“How long are you going to steal food from our mouths and watch contentedly as the twins grow more and more lean? It is your time to help make ends meet.”

Marketa swallowed her groats guiltily, choking a bit on the rough chafe. Her mother never spoke this way to her in front
of her father, but she did not hesitate to scold her in her sisters’ company.

“I do not want to be a bathmaid,” Marketa whispered.

“What did you say, girl?” asked her mother, rising from the bench. She grabbed Marketa’s long braid and twisted it around her hand. “You think you are too good to follow in my footsteps? A bathmaid is a dependable profession that ensures a future—there will always be dirty, aching bodies that need a good scrub and a soak. And a hand in the right place to make a man forget his woes. Or is it beneath you, Your Highness?”

Marketa stared at the millet mush, the rising steam warming her face. Her eyes were stinging with tears.

“I do not want to be touched by old men, Mother! I hate their groping paws and lecherous looks!”

“Then you go out in the fields and dig your fingers to the bone. And eat boiled roots every night and morning, too. And you think the men will not lift your skirts when they choose? And without a cent crossing your palm.”

Lucie let her daughter’s hair slide from her hand. Then she sighed, gathering up her eldest daughter in an embrace.

“Daughter! This is who we are. This is what we do. Why can you not understand this? God has set our course, and he provides the means for us to survive.”

Marketa ducked her head and looked down at her lap. She hated the day the blood had seeped through her skirt for the first time and made her mother smile, so proud her daughter was a woman at last.

Marketa looked up at her mother and held her gaze steady. This battle had gone on long enough. And it was true, her twin sisters looked puny, their eyes sunken and huge in their scrawny faces.

“What do I have to do?”

Her mother smiled so wide Marketa could see the empty space from the tooth that the blacksmith had pulled last year when it
turned dark and rotten. The stench had driven away clients, and she had no choice but to have the smith take his iron pliers to it.

“I have just the right one picked out for you,” Lucie said. “A rich burgher, of course. One who can provide for us.”

“Who?” Marketa said, her eyes clenched tight.

“The brewer.”

Marketa’s eyes flashed open.

“But he is married and older than you!”

“He has pockets jingling with gold coins, and he has lusted for you for years. I watch his prick swell when you walk into the bathhouse carrying buckets of water. No, he is the one. Trust me—he will provide well for us and give us a good price on beer and ale.”

Marketa felt tears sting her eyes, and she wiped them away angrily. She was no more to Lucie Pichlerova than a means to procure a good price on beer, she thought. Yet her mother scorned the prostitutes on Virgin Street, considering herself and her daughters to be “ladies.”

“One thing you must promise me. You will never ever speak of this arrangement with my father,” Marketa said bitterly.

Her mother sniffed. “He will wonder how it is we can afford meat on the table,” she said. “Besides, he knows it will happen one day—you are a bathmaid, Daughter.”

“Think of an excuse or I shall never agree!”

Her mother nodded, chewing the inside of her mouth. This was how she looked when negotiating a price in the market, whether it be for cabbages or a larded piece of meat.

“All right,” Marketa whispered. “For the twins’ sake.”

Marketa’s mother’s mouth split into a gap-toothed smile, and she pulled her daughter close to her, smothering the girl in her ample breast.

“There is no shame in it, Daughter. God means us to fend for ourselves. You will bring happiness to an old man’s heart—and good meat and beer to our table.”

She threw a shawl over her head against the cold. “I will go and see him immediately. He will be at the tavern, no doubt. I will drive a hard bargain, you will see!”

Marketa winced to hear how she was to be bartered and sold like a fattened pig at market.

“And the twins will each put on a half a stone by Christmas, thanks to you, Marketa!”

The brewer came to the baths that Saturday night. Marketa ran out to the bank of the river across from the castle wall that rose above the bathhouse. She crouched in the reeds and cried, muffling her sobs with the damp hem of her shift.

Lucie came out looking for her daughter, her flesh showing pink and white through her wet tunic, steam rising from her body in the cold air of the riverbank.

“What do you think you are doing out here?” she said, staring down at the shivering girl in the reeds. “Pan Brewer is here to be bathed, and he has asked for you.”

She did not wait for Marketa to speak, pulling her daughter to her feet and leading her by the hand toward the bathhouse.

“I won’t let him hurt you, I promise. Just let him have his pleasure, and it will be finished.”

“I cannot do it, Mother! Please, help me. Send him away.”

Lucie narrowed her eyes at her daughter. If Pan Brewer was not satisfied, there would be no meat, no pitchers of ale on the table. Marketa’s mother, even with gray in her hair, still allowed prowling hands to roam her body, if only for a quick grope or cupping of her sagging breasts, although she made it clear to the randy men that she would never make a cuckold of her husband. Old men tipped for the titillation, and what harm did it do?

But her aging body could not bring in the extra money and sustenance the Pichler twins needed. A hard winter or fever could carry them away, they were so puny.

But she also understood the fear that her daughter had. It was her first time.

“It will get easier with time,” she whispered to Marketa. “You will see.”

“No, Mother!”

Marketa began to weep again, violently.

“Shh! Enough of this! There now, enough!”

But Marketa only sobbed louder, her shoulders heaving.

“Hush, Daughter! Patrons will hear! Let me speak to him. Perhaps we can meet his desires without him taking you.”

She left Marketa crying on the wet grass of the yard and returned to the bathhouse.

The twins were already helping Pan Brewer remove his clothes.

“Pan Brewer, we must discuss some business. I have a proposal for you.”

She whispered in his ear, and the brewer at first frowned, shaking his thick head stubbornly. But Lucie was not deterred. She whispered all the more fiercely, her face furrowed in determination.

“Just time to let my little girl become accustomed to you, Pan Brewer. Think of your pleasure when she finally gives herself freely.”

At last he nodded, and Lucie went to find Marketa. She would also have to negotiate with her daughter, she sighed, but Marketa was a good girl and wouldn’t let her sisters starve during these hard times.