The Bloodletter's Daughter (30 page)

B
ELVEDERE’S
S
PELL

The summer palace of Belvedere was adorned in snow and frost, its green-domed copper roof coated in sheets of ice. The singing fountain sang no song, but the cold winds played a shrill whistle of winter against its bronze basins. A sculpted shepherd stood atop the fount, piping silently, glistening with hoarfrost.

Jakub approached the arcades, contemplating the grace of the Italian arches.

Glorious Belvedere was the closest neighbor to his own modest house, a wooden cottage in the far reaches of the
hrad
gardens. His journey from a scullion boy sleeping on the floor in a Jesuit monastery to a resident within the royal palace gardens seemed a miracle, and Jakub said a quiet prayer every morning as he woke, grateful for the beauty of his surroundings.

It was cold and drafty inside the summer palace, but Rudolf was insistent on spending more and more time in his garden refuge, despite the season. Jakub was certain that even with all the hearths and ceramic stoves ablaze, the king with his poor circulation would be chilled and uncomfortable.

And irritable.

Jakub lifted his eyes to the copper dome where a glint of light sparkled, reflecting the sun. Tycho Brahe’s observatory. Not only was Belvedere a royal residence, but the upper floors served as a platform to study the celestial heavens.

A guard stood before the filigreed portico. Jakub pulled down his woolen muffler to show his face. The guard nodded, and they walked to the west door and entered the palace. It was the first time Jakub had been invited to visit this royal retreat.

King Rudolf had moved many of his Kunstkammer treasures here. Jakub observed the collections of bezoar stones, said to have alchemic qualities—their strange mottled colors reflecting the bile of herbivorous animals in whose galls and intestines they had originally formed. Astrolabes, globes, clocks, quadrants, and mathematical instruments made of bronze and tin cluttered the corridors. A sculpture of Boreas, the north wind, abducting Orithyia, goddess of northern mountain winds, stood prominently in the great hall.

Jakub gazed about in wonder, turning slowly as he moved down the hall in a mesmerized waltz. The walls were packed, gilt frame jostling against gilt frame, portraits of naked gods entwined in passionate embrace. Dozens of seductions and ravishments illustrated with a leg slung over a lover’s limb were displayed one after another: Venus and Adonis, Bacchus and Ceres, Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, and many others he could not recognize, despite his classical education at university.

He stared wide-eyed at the god Vulcan pressing a naked goddess to his pelvis, his legs tangled in the bedsheets. His fingers toyed with her nipples, and he watched as her face transformed in ecstasy.

Further on, there was Odysseus and Circe, Eros and Psyche, all who loved and lusted through the passionate brushstrokes.
Here and there, a lascivious Cupid spied on the lovers, grinning mischievously while dogs and other beasts looked on their coupling.

Despite the temptations of court life, Jakub had still remained chaste following the traditions of the Jesuit monastery, and now the sheer violence and passion of the art made his throat thicken and he swallowed hard. The erotica of Rudolf’s art riveted his attention, and the guard let the king’s visitor linger, gazing at the commingling of deities.

“Look at this one,” whispered the guard. He inclined his head to a painting of Hercules and Omphale who were shown in reversed gender. Hercules wore a gauzy woman’s shift and grudgingly twisted a spindle under the watchful eye of a dominant Omphale. The earth goddess bore a heavy club on her shoulder, flaunting her muscular buttocks and dimpled back to the viewer.

Jakub stared wide-eyed at the garish shades of pink, purple, and green and the glowing ivory flesh of the two near-naked lovers.

“’Tis to the king’s taste,” said the guard, raising an eyebrow. “The palace is full of these.”

Jakub felt a quickening in his groin as he stared. He gritted his teeth and prayed fervently, determined to control himself.

A thought of Don Julius as a young boy shot through Jakub’s mind. He had been raised surrounded by this art from the day he was born, the nude lovers looming over him even as a toddler learning to walk, speaking his first words. What influence had these violent seductions had on his childhood dreams and on his formative years?

The guard motioned Jakub to follow him from the cold hall to the audience room where a fire blazed in the hearth. The king sat in a high-backed wooden chair, swaddled in furs. Before him was a table laden with food: a fat roasted duck, a stewed pig’s knuckle, pickled red cabbage, nuts, cake, ale, and wine.

“You may approach,” nodded the king. “I asked the cooks to bring you food from our royal kitchens.”

Even though the rich aromas of the roasted meat made his mouth water, Jakub bowed and politely refused.

“I could never eat before the king, Your Majesty. It would be wholly improper. Forgive me.”

“As you wish, Physician,” Rudolf said, moodily. “The servants will have it delivered to your house.”

He motioned for the food to be removed, all but the bowl of assorted nuts.

“Sit, Horcicky, sit. What do you think of my art?” asked the king.

“It is quite impressive, Your Majesty,” said Jakub diplomatically as he settled into a chair opposite the king. “I have never seen the like before.”

“Which means with a strict Jesuit upbringing, you find it vulgar,” said Rudolf, reaching for a nut on the table. He selected a walnut and handed it to his servant, who summarily cracked the shell and held it on a silver tray so that the king could pluck out its meat. “Pity. You probably judge it harshly, seeing only lascivious coupling. A tawdry display of copulation masquerading as art.”

“Your Majesty,” said Jakub, straightening, “I have been several years away from the monastery. I bathe in public baths and of course have seen naked women. I am no priest.”

“Ah, Horcicky. The Jesuits’ beliefs still haunt you. I can sense it. I see it in your rigid posture and the spark of moral judgment in your eyes—damnable Jesuit priggery has left a scar on you.”

“I have left the monastery, Your Majesty. I am free to marry or conduct my life as I see fit, as long as I do so in honorable service to my king,” said Jakub. He plucked at his collar, finding his
neck intolerably hot and in need of airing. “I have no vows to the Church, Your Majesty.”

“Complete and utter twaddle, Doctor! Have you enjoyed the intimate pleasures of a bathmaid or prostitute since you came to Prague?”

Jakub’s face burned.

“I thought as much. You forget that I was raised seven years in the Spanish court and know the Jesuit order well. Their tentacles reach deep into one’s soul and are not easily severed. And you who spent your entire childhood and young manhood with them...”

The king was silent a moment. He picked at his teeth with a fingernail to dislodge a bit of nutshell.

“Would it interest you to know that the art you saw in the great hall embodies a most significant premise of the esteemed Paracelsus?” said the king finally.

“Your Majesty?” said Jakub, genuinely shocked. “Paracelsus?”

“According to Paracelsus, we have the fixed and the volatile: the man and the woman, and, so too, mercury and sulfur. When they combine, it is the alchemical wedding bed and so ignites the process of purification and transformation.”

Jakub thought back to the intensity of the couplings, how difficult it was to tell where Vulcan’s thigh began as he pinned the goddess tight against his groin. The androgynous nature of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis had confused him. Why would the artist paint such an unsavory scene?

At least the amalgamation of the two elements mercury and sulfur provided a theoretical explanation. Still, the painting itself made Jakub pull at his collar, uncomfortable.

“Something to think about as you distill your plants and prepare your infusions,” said the king. “Paracelsus lives in art and alchemy as well as medicine, Doctor Horcicky.”

The king brushed the bits of nut and shell fragments from his hands, rubbing them together briskly.

“Well, enough about art. I have summoned you here to discuss your latest report from Krumlov. You say that your informant suggests a favorable change in my son?”

“Yes, Your Highness. It has been noted that he is now lean and fit from a strict diet and hunting stag in the mountains around Krumlov. He has longer periods of sanity and occasionally even shows courtesies to the bloodletters, Doctor Mingonius and Barber-Surgeon Pichler. He has even taken communion on occasion with the priest who attends him.”

A smile tugged at the king’s heavy lips.

“My boy, Giuglio. Ah, if he were cured, all blessings would be heaped upon the House of Hapsburg. There is nothing I would not do for him. Nothing! His mother cries and begs for his freedom.”

Jakub’s eyes flashed open wide.

“Your Highness, forgive me! I do not mean to insinuate that Don Julius is cured. Only that he does not lash out as he did in the beginning of his imprisonment.”

The king’s smile dissolved and a scowl etched his brow.

“Do not use the word ‘imprisonment,’ Horcicky. He is the Lord of Krumlov, and the moment he can function with dignity he shall govern accordingly. I mean to make him Lord of Transylvania someday soon.”

Jakub thought of the politics of Hungary and Transylvania, of the rumors of Istvan Bocskai and his revolt against the Hapsburg rule, enlisting the Ottoman armies to fight against the Christian king. He said nothing. He had learned silence was a virtue from his days in the monastery.

Three black flies buzzed noisily overhead. They were flies of winter, crawling out sleepily from windowsill or rotting meat
in the pantry. Turgid and fat, they lighted on the table, rubbing their greedy forelegs together, slowly and rhythmically.

Thud!

Jakub jumped as the king’s hand smashed the insects into three dark smudges.

“Ha!” roared the king, pleased with himself. “You see my three enemies—the pope, my brother Matthias, and the Spanish king!”

“Your Majesty,” said Jakub in wonderment. He was amazed at the king’s disrespect in speaking of the pope. Everyone in Europe knew that Matthias sought to displace his unstable brother, but was there really a plot against Rudolf brewing in the Vatican?

As the king wiped his hands on a white serviette proffered by a servant, Jakub gazed up at the paneled ceilings painted as the celestial heavens with stars, planets, and the signs of the zodiac.

Mesmerized by alchemists, deities, and the celestial bodies, could the king be as mad as his son? Surely this melancholy man held no communion with the Christian God.

D
ECEPTION AND
D
ANGER

Marketa walked with her father to the bathhouse, her face still slightly flushed from Don Julius’s kisses. She was silent, her eyes cast down upon the icy cobblestone road. Fortunately, her father suspected nothing.

“I could not be prouder of you than I am now, Daughter,” said Pichler, putting an arm around her. It was a rare gesture of affection that she normally would have cherished. She could feel the warmth of his body even through the heavy wool coat.

Marketa swallowed and nodded. It was beginning to snow, and she pulled her shawl tight around her head and shoulders.

“You showed Doctor Mingonius, a court physician, that you and you alone could perform the bleeding. No wonder he wants to take you to Prague. What a special girl you are!”

The word “Prague” made her jump. Of course, the day after tomorrow she would be leaving for Prague, leaving the terrible Don Julius and his dangerous green eyes. Never would she be under his power again!

“I shall miss you, Marketa,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You are my favorite, you know.”

Marketa suddenly felt dirty, as filthy as the muddy water that sloshed in the leech bucket. If her father knew what she had done—what she almost had done—he would have cried out in shame. All her dreams of medicine, her noble ambition to be a physician or at least learn the skills of one, were a sham. She had almost allowed her patient to seduce her.

She had lost her head utterly and thoroughly to a lunatic.

“I shall miss you, too, Papa,” she said. “But it is better if I go away.”

“What a curious girl you are!” said Pichler, stopping and staring at her. Then he noticed her finger was bleeding into his hand.

“Oh, yes,” she said, wiping her finger quickly. “I had to prick my finger and encourage the leech. I must have struck more deeply than I should have—it should have stopped bleeding by now.”

The barber-surgeon’s face beamed, so proud was he of his daughter’s wit and skill at bloodletting.

That night, Marketa walked out of the bathhouse and onto the Lazebnicky Bridge, the Barber’s Bridge. Her footsteps made the boards creak softly, nothing like the thunderous boom of the horses.

She looked up at the castle, to Don Julius’s apartments. The chandelier was lit, and she could make out the constellation of candles that burned within. The dark water of the Vltava flowed below her, and the early stars above etched brilliance in the darkening December sky.

In two days, she would leave Cesky Krumlov to see the great capital of Prague. It really was to happen. She wished it would happen immediately and she could forget what had occurred earlier in the day.

She turned and faced north, thinking of Prague and Doctor Horcicky—no, not “Doctor Horcicky,” she thought of “Jakub” who had written to her, who had trusted her, who had kissed her. What would he think when he heard that she was in the city as Doctor Mingonius’s guest? Would she ever be able to confide to him her secret of having been the one who truly treated the king’s son, or would sharing such a confidence be too perilous?

She heard a whistle above her and looked up.

Don Julius was standing at his window, looking down at her. He pointed up to the emerging stars.

Then he opened his arms wide, beckoning to her to come.

A shiver ran down her spine. She remembered another time that she had seen someone—a white apparition that had beckoned her.

“Marketa!” rang out a voice. It was the voice of her mother. “Marketa! Do not stand in the cold like a fool! I’ve been looking for you.” Then she too looked up, squinting, and saw him.

“Is he calling to you?” she whispered eagerly. “Your young eyes can see better than mine. Is that the Hapsburg prince?”

A wild laugh echoed across the river, and Don Julius retreated within the castle.

“He was! He was calling to my Marketa.”

“Mother,
please
!”

“No. Listen!” Lucie said, pulling Marketa’s arm so the girl swung around and faced her. “Do not be selfish! Do you know what a liaison with the king’s son could do for our family? Think of the twins growing old hauling water for the baths. Think of your reluctance to marry any of the town’s boys. Do you really
think, Marketa Pichlerova, that you could do better than a Hapsburg?”

Marketa dropped her eyes to the cobblestones.

“Has he made any amorous gesture to you?”

Marketa blushed and turned away.

“He has, hasn’t he! Well, missy, you cannot always think of yourself. If the prince has given you any indication of interest, you must reciprocate.”

“He is mad, Mother,” she whispered. “He is a madman!”

“He is a Hapsburg!” she said, shaking Marketa hard. “A Hapsburg who could change the very course of our lives forever. Who are you to deny us that!”

Her mother’s strong fingers dug into her arms.

“Do not disappoint us, Marketa. We have been good to you! I have indulged your time away from the bathhouse to work with your father. My back cannot take many more years of lifting buckets.”

Marketa’s face crumpled in anguish. She knew that her mother’s hard work and sweat in the bathhouse offset her father’s excesses in buying books and making trips to Vienna. It was she who made sure the family was fed and clothed.

“Can you not find a woman’s heart to give a man the love he craves?” whispered her mother. “Maybe your love and trust would provide the cure he needs. Surely God would punish you for not giving him that chance.”

Marketa looked back toward the castle. She remembered his lips and the rich pleasure of his smell and taste. A quick shiver shook her body. From somewhere, the thought of Jakub Horcicky arose again. She saw his face—was he warning her or welcoming her? She forced his image out of her mind. Don Julius wanted her. That she knew for certain.

And Jakub’s letters were mostly filled with news of Prague and science. Not one single personal word. Not even a hint. Was
the imperial chemist only using her as an informant to the king? She thought of his gentle kiss, his touch on her throat as he tied the scarf. It had been so long ago.

Her mother watched her carefully, and a slow smile rose to her lips.

“The prince is a far better catch than the brewer, is he not?”

Marketa sought out her mother’s eyes in the darkness. There would always be the brewer and his groping hands, waiting for her.

“Come, Daughter, make us proud. I have a plan,” said her mother. “You shall capture a Hapsburg’s heart.”

An hour later, Marketa emerged from her hot bath, smelling of lavender and rosemary. Her mother had dressed her in the new white blouse the seamstress had made for her trip to Prague. She wore a new blue skirt and a pretty red vest, and her mother tucked lemon verbena in her camisole.

“There. Now go up and deliver these cakes to him,” she said, handing her a basket lined in a checked cloth.

“But—Mother! I am not allowed alone with him unless Doctor Mingonius is just outside the door.”

Pani Pichlerova hurried Marketa out the door. “Your Doctor Mingonius is at Uncle Radek’s tavern, drinking his fill. I just saw him there when I delivered Radek’s dinner.”

“The guards will not let me past them unaccompanied. It is impossible!”

“You are a shrewd girl. Find a way. Do not disappoint me,” Lucie said, her eyes taking a hard edge. “And if you do not come back tonight, I will understand. Think of our family. I shall dream of you and the king’s son.”

With that she gave her eldest daughter a kiss on the forehead and a hasty shove out the door.

Was it fierce loyalty to her family that urged Marketa to do her mother’s bidding? Or was it the full moon over Krumlov, the memory of Don Julius’s soft lips and playful bites, the smell of fine Italian perfume mixed with sweat, the taste of good wine and sweet cakes on his breath? There was not anyone in Cesky Krumlov who could ever smell like that, taste like that...touch or kiss like that. Ever.

Without knowing how it had happened, she realized that she longed to be out of control with him, to feel the surging tide of pleasure carry her away, like a twig pulled out to sea.

She knew it was wrong. She knew it was impossible. And yet she knew she wanted it to happen.

And she knew that her mother did too.

When she knocked at the castle gates, the sentry Chaloupka was surprised to see her.

“You are working late,” he said. “Doctor Mingonius is not in.”

“No matter. I am just bringing some cakes to Don Julius that my mother baked.”

The sentry’s face revealed his hatred of the son of the king. He sniffed crookedly as if there were a foul smell in the air.

“He is the devil,
slecna
. I know you assist your good father in bloodletting, but if you know what is good for you, Marketa, you will stay away from that monster.”

He opened the gates and called to a page.

“Escort Slecna Marketa within and see that she is greeted by the housekeeper, Slecna Viera.”

The boy bowed to her. He was the greengrocer’s youngest son. His shoes were too big for him and his tunic was too small. His skinny white forearms dangled far below the sleeve cuffs.

“Hello, Wilhelm,” she said. She reached in her basket and pulled out a cake.

“Thank you, Marketa,” he said, his eager hands reaching for the treat. He stuffed a piece of cake in his mouth, chewing as they walked. His tongue rolled around his mouth in pleasure, for Lucie Pichlerova’s baking was as fine as anyone’s in Krumlov.

They walked together to the courtyard, and Marketa looked up.

She froze stock-still, and Wilhelm had taken three paces before he realized she was left behind.

“Are you all right, Slecna Marketa?” he said, wiping the crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve. “What is it?”

Marketa’s eyes opened wide, and the moonlight played upon them.

“Do you see her?” she asked the boy.

“See what?”

“Look—”

Marketa turned the boy around with her hands and pointed to the second story of the castle. There in front of them Marketa saw a woman dressed in white, her hands and arms obscured by long black gloves. She was lit by a faint light that seemed to emanate from her flowing gown and followed her like a shadow.

“I—I do not see anything, Slecna Marketa. Nothing!”

The woman disappeared down the hall, and the light faded away.

A shiver overtook Marketa. What was happening to her? She was desperate to see a madman and feel his kisses. She had just seen a spirit.

What of her dreams of Prague and the great reason of science?

“Wilhelm, would you do me a great favor? And I will give you another cake.”

“Anything, Slecna Marketa.”

“Do not announce my presence to anyone. I want to deliver these cakes to Don Julius’s door myself. I do not want anyone to spoil the surprise.”

“But Pan Chaloupka said—”

“I know. But he does not know it is Don Julius’s birthday. I do not want anyone to know but you. And no one to spoil the surprise, all right?”

“Well, all right,” he said, his toe digging at a loose cobblestone.

“I will not tell anyone, so do not worry that you will get into any trouble, Wilhelm. It’s a surprise, you see.”

Wilhelm’s face brightened a bit. Marketa was sharing a secret with him and no one else. He had always had a crush on the pretty girl of the bathhouse.

“Here, we will go in the servants’ entrance,” he told her. “You can go up the stairs, or if you really want to surprise him, you could use the pulley platform.”

“The what?”

“There is a platform to haul up food from the kitchen. The guards upstairs take the trays directly to Don Julius’s table so the food remains hot.”

“How ingenious.”

“They say it was built for Wilhelm von Rozmberk so he could eat in his apartments. He hated cold food and would punish the cook and servants if his meal wasn’t hot from the oven.”

He looked over his shoulder to check again if anyone was listening.

“The other boys and I have played there when Don Julius is out in the courtyard for air or on a hunt. We pull each other up and down, riding on the platform.”