The Bloodletter's Daughter (40 page)

J
AKUB
H
ORCICKY DE
T
ENEPEC AT
R
OZMBERK
C
ASTLE

The carriage clattered up the cobblestones. The short ride up the hill to the castle was punctuated with wailing sobs from Don Julius. Jakub Horcicky, who had known the king’s son almost all his life, was shocked to witness such despair from a young man who had always prided himself on his strength and the cruel power he could wield over any who crossed his path or thwarted his desires.

What humor had seized him with such force as to render him a weeping mockery of a man? Had Marketa opened the veins of the emperor’s son and stolen his soul along with his blood?

In the castle courtyard, Jakub flung open the carriage door and told Don Julius, “Do not worry, my lord. All will be well.” Then he stepped down onto the cobblestones and told the guards, in Czech, “Take Don Julius to his chambers and draw a bath.” They looked at each other in surprise when they heard his distinct Krumlov accent. He had spoken perfect German when addressing Don Julius. Now to hear the royal physician speak to them in their own tongue and dialect left them dumbfounded.

“Yes, I was born on a farm near Krumlov,” he said with a nod. “I am one of you.”

The guards had no time to converse further. They seized the quivering Don Julius and half carried him through the castle doors and up the stairs to the Rozmberk apartments where he now insisted on living in luxury rivaling the king’s. One guard barked an order to a servant for water to be drawn for the bath.

Jakub left orders for Wilhelm the page to await Annabella’s teas and potions, with strict instructions to bring them immediately. He followed the guards up the stairs and watched them deposit their charge on his bed and prop him up against the pillows so he wouldn’t choke on his own saliva.

Don Julius’s eyes rolled in his head. He gulped at the air as if it were something foreign, a maritime creature dredged out of the water, gasping.

Jakub had no pity.

“You attacked her and she fell to her death,” said Jakub in a low voice, his teeth grinding in anger. “You murdered that innocent girl.”

“NO!” shouted Don Julius, his eyes focusing past Jakub. “She lives! They deceive me, these wretched pigs of Krumlov. They hide her. They have hidden her from me all along!”

Jakub looked at the guards and then back at Don Julius. The thought that Don Julius knew she was alive made his blood chill.

“No, Don Julius, she died in the fall,” said Jakub. “No one could survive from such a height!”

“She could if she landed on the rubbish pile,” said a Castilian-accented voice. The Spanish priest stood at the threshold of the door. “A miracle, perhaps, but a miracle that was concealed from us by these deceitful Krumlovians!”

Jakub watched the desiccated priest approach the bed. His cassock was rumpled and mud-splattered. He looked weary, but angry.

“And who are you?” Carlos Felipe asked rudely. “What business do you have conversing with my charge, the king’s son?”

“I am Jakub Horcicky de Tenepec, a physician to the king,” replied Jakub. “I might ask the same of you—you seem to have wandered away from your monastery. The Jesuits are down the road in Old Town.”

“How did you know I was a Jesuit?” snapped Carlos Felipe.

“I spent my childhood scrubbing plates and fetching water for the brotherhood,” replied Jakub. “There is a certain aura about Jesuits one does not soon forget.”

The two men eyed each other warily.

Don Julius struggled to his feet. “I shall imprison her father the barber until she surrenders herself to me!”

Jakub’s eyes narrowed. “Imprison the barber? On what cause?”

Don Julius’s face wrinkled in furrows as he cast about for reasons.

Then the priest committed the greatest of sins. “That he conceals the truth from the Hapsburgs!” he said in a cold harsh voice. “That is clearly treason. This entire wretched town is an accomplice to treason!”

Jakub stared at the priest. How could this old man of the cloth condemn Marketa to certain death?

The priest stared back in defiance, his nostrils pinched and his mouth hard and small. Jakub thought,
This man is no friend of Krumlov or Bohemia.

Don Julius shouted, “Treason! Yes, I am the Lord of Krumlov, by order of the king. I shall do whatever I choose with the miserable village and its people. They are my subjects.” He set his lower jaw forward, grinding his teeth in a maniacal grimace.

“She loves her father. She will come back to me!” he said, twisting his dirty hands together. “I—I shall have a nightgown
made for her. Trimmed in bearskin so I can tear it from her body and ravage her power. I shall ravish her until—”

“I think that is quite enough, Don Julius,” said the priest, a sudden pallor overtaking him. “Have you forgotten your grief, your repentance? God has performed a miracle in—”

“Shut up, you miserable old man!”

To the priest’s horror, the young man who had crawled on the floor of the chapel, proclaiming his sin and profound regret, declaring his love for the girl, now had the hard sheen of mad cruelty in his eyes.

The proud, vicious madman had returned, after months of remorse.

Carlos Felipe had only thought of revenge for the collective deceit of the Krumlovians, who had lied not only to Don Julius, but to him. In his burning spite, he had been blind to the girl’s peril. Gone was the remorse, the tears, the confession and pleading for absolution for killing the girl, the pitiful bleating of a man in grief. Instead the hard glint of bestiality had returned.

The priest’s old eyes grew large. He left the room genuflecting, his dry lips whispering a fervent prayer as Don Julius declared, atrocity by atrocity, exactly what acts he would commit on Marketa. Jakub’s mind rocked with the diatribe, and he rushed for the door when the scullery boy arrived with the bag of teas and potions that Annabella had brought to the castle.

Jakub was able to keep Don Julius sedated for eight days, but he knew that he could not prolong the treatment any longer without running the risk of killing his patient. He did not wish King Rudolf’s hooded executioner to dull the royal ax on his neck bones.

Jakub pleaded with Annabella to send Marketa away, and he warned of the certain arrest of her father, Zigmund Pichler. When Marketa refused to leave, he hurried to Annabella’s house.

“He told me exactly what he would do to you, Marketa,” said Jakub. His body was tense with emotion and his stomach churned with concern for the bloodletter’s daughter. “He has ordered a night robe to be made for you out of the finest silk, trimmed in bear fur from the hunt. Then he will approach the bed and...”

“And what?”

“He shall cut you for your deceit to punish you. He shall rape you as you scream for mercy, bleeding from your wounds. I think he intends to kill you for not coming back to him at once,” said Jakub, staring down at the worn planks of the table. He looked up again at Marketa. “He has always been brutal, and when the humors seize him, his bestiality knows no boundaries.”

Jakub pulled Marketa toward him, his hands grasping her shoulders. “I beg of you, do not return to him. Let me hide you—I will take you to Prague under my protection.”

Annabella watched the two from her stool. She said nothing.

Marketa looked back at Jakub, holding his gaze. There was tenderness mixed with terror in his eyes.

“I thank you for your offer of protection, Jakub. It is charitable, given your station at court, to risk intervention,” said Marketa.

“Marketa! It is not charity. I could not bear to see harm come to you.”

Marketa held his gaze as long as she could bear. But then she broke away from him.

“He will imprison my father? Does he mean to execute him?”

Jakub’s silence was all the answer she got. Or needed. Marketa frowned, savagely twisting her hair around her finger.

“How can I let my father rot in the dungeon? How can I abandon him to face death for my foolish deed?” she said finally.

“I have already sent word for him to flee. Your mother must accompany him. There is no telling what Don Julius might do to her.”

Marketa said nothing. Annabella reached for her hand and gently pressed it. She had been silent all evening.

“Annabella, help me. What should I do?”

The witch looked at the fire in the hearth.

“It is nearing Masopust, when we prepare to fast and the bad spirits run riot. They will be purged as spring finally comes, but now is a dangerous time as they rebel and walk among us. No good comes of this time. It is the bad month of February.”

Marketa looked at her friend, her eyes welling with fear and disappointment. She had come to trust Annabella’s prognostications, and now there was nothing but a bleak omen.

“But what of the plan? What did your coven of spirits tell you?”

“They told me to await your decision. First you must determine the course of destiny, and I must not intervene until you have chosen the path.”

“But—I—what can I do? I am powerless!”

Annabella lifted her hand to Marketa’s fear-stricken face. “You will lead us, Marketa. Somehow—the spirits have disclosed as much.”

Marketa closed her eyes in despair. She had no idea what her friend was saying.

“In the meantime, bring me a lock of his hair,” said Annabella to Jakub, her eyes turning back to stare at the fire. “I shall do what I can.”

Jakub knew better than to argue with Annabella, for he had witnessed her cures and strange spells. Yet he still felt exasperation with her turn to witchcraft at such a dangerous crossing point, when reason and logic were clearly in demand.

“I doubt I can collect his hair, Annabella. The man will not let anyone touch him, save Marketa.”

“Find a way. I must have his hair,” she said, staring hard into his eyes. “The hair that grows from his crown and obscures his vision.”

Jakub was certain he saw the leaping flames of the hearth still reflected in her gaze, even though she had turned away from the fire.

The warning came too late to save Barber Pichler. It was not a Krumlov guard who arrested Marketa’s father, but the two Austrian companions of Don Julius, Heinrich and Franz, eager to put an end to the spell the Bohemian bathmaid had cast on their lord. They longed for their old friend, the king’s son, to accompany them as he once did, sparking fights, drinking to excess, and whoring in the streets.

The Austrians seized Barber Pichler roughly and dragged him to the carriage. The coach driver cried out his remorse in Czech in the darkness as he watched his old friend pulled from his home. The Austrians shouted at him to stop his incomprehensible prattle or they would whip him and throw his old bones in the dungeon to keep his friend company among the rats.

Lucie Pichlerova’s screams brought the neighbors running from both banks to the bridge. Heinrich shoved the barber’s wife to the ground and spat on her.

“Mother of a whorish witch!” he shouted, running a hand through his greasy blond hair. “Surrender your daughter to Don Julius or you will never see your husband again!”

The carriage pulled away, leaving Lucie sobbing on the ground.

No one in Krumlov came to comfort her. They turned silently back to their affairs.