The Bloodletter's Daughter (35 page)

Kepler smiled. “The king’s confessor, Johannes Pistorius, is among my closest companions. His sharp mind and eloquence exercise my spirit, while Galileo turns his back on me.”

Jakub blinked and stared back at Kepler. Pistorius, the king’s confessor, befriending a heretical Lutheran? The doctor knew the
esteemed confessor, who in addition to theology held a degree in medicine.

“Pistorius finds my theories of harmonious spheres heretical but tantalizing,” said Kepler, his face animated. “The planets travel not in perfect circles of the divine but in elegant elliptical curves, adulterated by the physical force of the sun, God’s own cosmic soul.”

“Your words are dangerous,” Jakub protested. “The confessor does not report your heresy?”

“Of course not. We argue hours on end, as civilized men should do. Besides denigrating my theories, he works on his dissertations of the Kabbalah.”

Jakub gazed out at the stars and the quarter moon rising through the bank of mist into the clear night sky.

Kepler rubbed his arthritic hands together. He watched Jakub’s face as it absorbed his words.

“Harmonious spheres?” said Jakub, his voice soft. He watched the rising slice of moon mingle with the stars.

“Yes,” said Kepler. “If you listen with your heart and pure soul, you will hear the music of the cosmos, in perfect harmony. It is only the sins and arrogance of man that obscure the sound.”

Jakub thought about Krumlov and the king’s son locked in the castle. Pride, greed, power. The distant drumbeat of war and religion already echoed in Eastern Europe, the Reformation clashing with the Counter-Reformation, and one Hapsburg brother against another in a struggle for power.

He thought of the bathmaid living on the banks of the Vltava and thought of her innocence, her thirst for knowledge to cure the sick. He had laughed at her, pinching her cheek, dismissing her ambitions as naïveté.

Yet he had been thoroughly charmed.

Jakub raised his eyes to the stars. He wondered if she could hear the music of the planets, while powerful men heard silence.

Johannes Kepler stirred under his coverlet and threw off the bedclothes.

“You are a good physician. Your visit has purged my bad blood and returned my humors to balance, better than any bloodletter. It is high time I returned to court to see Johannes Pistorius. I am eager to argue again against his theological pretensions. Some lively sparring would do the stubborn old priest good.”

Johannes Kepler stood up and approached Jakub. Putting an arm on his shoulder, he turned his face to the sky and they both looked out at the star-filled heavens.

C
RIES IN THE
N
IGHT

Gradually the word got out to the village that Marketa was living once more in Krumlov. She was not afraid that they would tell Don Julius, because, whether man, woman, or child, they all despised the brutal Hapsburg. It was their Bohemian duty to protect her—one of their own—and Marketa soon became comfortable moving among them in an almost normal life. The seamstress made her a long, hooded cape of black boiled wool that she wore to hide her face and distinctive hair, should Don Julius spy her from the castle.

Barber Pichler came to visit several times a week and begged to study Annabella’s Book of Paracelsus. He had for so many years traveled to Vienna to study, at great financial hardship to the Pichler family. Here was a great treasure of medicine only a few minutes’ walk from the bathhouse.

Marketa refused to go back to the bathhouse, determined never to speak to her mother again. The rumor that her mother had urged her to approach Don Julius on that fateful night enraged the townspeople and they ostracized her, from the
butcher to the soap-maker to the women hissing curses whenever she crossed their paths.

The business in the bathhouse had dwindled until there were barely enough clients to make ends meet. Lucie Pichlerova was sold only the puniest fish, the toughest ends of meat, and moldy bacon when she went to the Wide Street market. The greengrocer refused to sell to her altogether, and she had to procure vegetables and other necessities from the gypsies and Jews beyond the gates of the town.

Marketa refused to see her mother but welcomed the twins to visit her at night, when they would not be seen. She also begged her father to protect them from their mother’s rough hands and not let her barter their “favors” to the bathers. He hung his head in shame and promised he would defend their honor with his life. Marketa was sure if he could have afforded to do so, he would have shut down the bathhouse altogether.

Then, as the patches of snow melted and the ice cracked along the shores of the Vltava, the shrill wails of Don Julius returned to haunt the night.

As the bloodletting had ceased, his strength—and his madness—had returned. Across the little valley they heard his cry from atop Rozmberk Castle.

“Mar-ket-a!”

It was a beseeching cry, one that would make a mother’s heart wither. He shrieked only at night when the wind was calm and the screams cut through the early spring air. His cries startled flocks of birds from their roosts, sending them to fly blindly into the night.

The men cursed his name and their eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. The women suffered nervous conditions and begged Annabella for calming tonics.

Marketa gulped down mugs of Annabella’s teas and stuffed woolen yarn in her ears, but somehow she heard her name still
reverberating in the air. The high-pitched scream slipped through the cracks of the door and even down into the cellar, like a snake that writhed and slithered into her ears. Her dreams were filled with huge red lips and a cavernous mouth that screamed her name, consuming her as she drew closer and closer and, finally, too close.

When she could stand it no longer, Marketa would leave the house with a lantern and sit in Saint Vitus Cathedral and stare at the altar. Since she had been a young girl, the church had been a peaceful refuge, built of granite at the very edge of the Vltava. The raging roar of the river drowned out every sound, and the priest was forced to shout above its thunderous din.

Those long years ago, Katarina would cry in fear, crawling into her mother’s lap because she thought they would all be swept away by the water and drowned. But Marketa fell asleep under her father’s arm, finding the water’s roar a lullaby.

She smiled sadly, thinking of her old friend Katarina. It seemed decades ago the two had sat peacefully by the river, Katarina braiding Marketa’s hair.

Now, at night, the river’s voice echoing through the vast space of the cathedral gave her solace. Here and only here, Marketa could not hear her name carried through the air from a man she once foolishly considered a lover. She would focus on the painting of the Madonna of Cesky Krumlov and beg her intercession. Could this Hapsburg not return to Prague and cease this torment? Surely, if the Bohemian lords were to pass a single night listening to Don Julius’s mad lament, they would petition the king to remove his son from their lands. The Madonna remained motionless on the canvas. She had nothing to say in return to Marketa’s prayers; she only looked demurely at her holy child.

Katarina cried copiously and often. Too often, worried her mother. But ever since the day her daughter had come home from the market that winter without her basket and without an explanation or excuse and her father had punished her, she could not be persuaded to smile.

Pan Mylnar had forbidden her to ever leave the house without the escort of one of her older brothers, her mother, or himself. And since she had insulted Marketa, Katarina doubted her friend would ever want to speak to her again. So she was alone. And lonely.

The miller noticed that his beautiful daughter, his pride and joy, was losing weight. His wife baked extra breads and sweets for her, but she could not be persuaded to eat more than a nibble. Her cheekbones stabbed through her once plump flesh, and while she was still the most beautiful girl of Cesky Krumlov, she no longer flourished.

Pan Mylnar had always suspected that the disappearance of the basket had something to do with the dirty scamp, the blacksmith’s son. Although there was nothing to prove his suspicion, the miller heard the rumor that the boy was a thief and was caught red-handed in Pan Brewer’s grain shed.

“I told you he was no good,” he declared to his daughter, jutting out his lower lip in justified satisfaction. “The scoundrel is a thief and is not to be trusted.”

Katarina opened her mouth to answer, but quickly shut it again.

“Think what you like, but he is an honorable man,” she said, scowling at her father. She ran to her pallet, throwing herself on the straw mattress to cry.

The days were long and repetitious for Katarina. She sewed and knitted when the family could afford to buy woolen yarns. She cooked and baked alongside her mother, whose spirits
mirrored her daughter’s, for the good woman could not be happy unless she saw her beloved daughter smile.

“Daughter, is there nothing I can do to make your spirits rise? You torture me with your melancholic nature. It is so unlike you.”

Katarina looked toward the thick crystal window, toward the castle. She sighed, her lip quivering.

“There is one thing,” Katarina said at last.

“Do not mention the blacksmith,” said her mother quickly. “You know it is beyond my power to change your father’s mind.”

“No, something else,” she said, staring at the tower of the castle. “Could you send word to Annabella’s house that I want to visit Marketa?”

“Oh, my darling! You know that your father would never let you see her, now that there is so much danger. You must stay as far away from her as you can!”

“But I miss her,” said Katarina in a small voice. “I want to see her again.”

Her mother bit the tip of her tongue, thinking.

“You could write to her,” she suggested, her plump face creasing up in enthusiasm. “Yes, we could pay a scribe to send a letter to her.”

For the first time since she had run away from the grain shed, Katarina smiled. “Yes, I could write her! And she can read my words. She would think that fine and learned. I will ask for her forgiveness in a letter.”

“Oh, Daughter,” said her mother, drawing Katarina’s head to her breast, caressing her. She squeezed her hard in an embrace. “Daughter! When a girl suffers as much as Marketa, she learns to forgive.”

The next day Katarina accompanied her mother to the market where the scribe stood behind a little bench that served as a desk, with furls of cheap parchment too dark and flimsy for
official documents, but appropriate for more perfunctory bookkeeping and correspondence.

“My daughter wants to send a letter,” said Pani Mylnar. “How much would you charge?”

“It depends how many words.”

“Words?” worried her mother. “How many words make a proper letter?”

The scribe saw his advantage. “One hundred make a noble epistle. Anything less than that would offend the recipient. I charge a half thaler for a good letter.”

“A half thaler?” gasped Pani Mylnar in astonishment. She turned to Katarina and whispered, “We cannot afford that—your father would notice that the food we bring home is too scarce and of poor quality if we spend a half thaler on a letter.”

“Of course, Mother,” said Katarina, disappointed. She narrowed her eyes at the scribe, who pared his quill nonchalantly as the women suffered the shock of the price of his services.

“Surely there is something we can barter for your services, sir,” said Katarina. “We cannot afford to spend a half thaler on some ink and animal skin.”

“Ah, that is the price of literacy,” replied the scribe, admiring the fire in the pretty girl’s eyes. “In literate eyes, these squiggles are transformed into meaning and convey essential information—or, I might guess, the depths of the heart.”

Pani Mylnar realized what the scribe was saying.

“No, you rude young man! My daughter is not writing a love letter. She wants to write a simple communication to her friend. Her best friend—another girl.”

“Oh,” said the scribe, chewing at the rough nib of his quill. He seemed pleased. “Well, in that case, perhaps we can strike a bargain. You bring me fresh bread for a month, and I will pen the letter.”

“A month!”

“Or...what if you bring me a loaf of bread for two weeks and I receive a kiss from your lovely daughter.”

“You gypsy of a swindler!” cried Pani Mylnar, turning on her heel to leave. “I shall send my sons back to pummel you for your impertinence!”

Katarina caught her mother by the arm and whispered in her ear. “Only a kiss, Mother. I want to write to Marketa so badly.”

“You will not kiss that despicable man.”

“We could afford to bring him a loaf of bread for a fortnight. You know we could.”

Her mother looked at the sad face of her daughter, her imploring eyes fixed on her own.

Pani Mylnar squinted hard at the scribe, setting her teeth together as she bit off her words.

“A kiss? What kind of kiss?”

“A kiss. A lovely kiss on the lips.”

“Impossible!” said Pani Mylnar, the fat of her cheeks jiggling with indignation.

The scribe shrugged his shoulders in indifference. Then he took another look at Katarina and her long blonde hair.

“All right. For her, a kiss on the cheek. Slowly so I can smell her breath on me. And a loaf of bread for a fortnight.”

“Done!” exclaimed Katarina, who was used to bartering and knew when to seal a deal.

And so the unlikely threesome disappeared just behind Uncle Radek’s tavern, and once it was assured that no one could witness the transaction, Katarina kissed the young man slowly on his cheek, making sure her breath wafted toward his nose.

She was secretly satisfied when the young scribe blushed redder than the greengrocer’s beets, promising her he would write a letter that would melt her friend’s heart. But, he said, it could not exceed a hundred words or he would demand another kiss, this time on the lips for certain.

Two days later a letter was delivered to Annabella’s house. It read:

Dear Marketa,

I am sure you have not forgiven me for my foolish words. I have suffered in your absence for there is no friend truer to me or more beloved than you.

My father forbids me to see you. It is too dangerous, he says. The two Austrian companions of Don Julius watch me in the streets and insult me, even when my older brothers are present. I could easily lead them to your door and your death. Please know I love you still.

I have no more words left, the scribe says.

My love and friendship forever,

Katarina

Tears welled in Marketa’s eyes to see her friend’s words inked on parchment, and she wondered how the baker’s daughter had been able to pay the scribe. She missed Katarina’s friendship and often thought of her raucous laugh, late at night in the depths of the catacombs.