The Bloodletter's Daughter (46 page)

A
N
E
NCHANTED
E
VENING

Marketa refused to speak to Jakub as he escorted her back to Don Julius’s apartments.

Before he opened the door, he cleared his throat and hesitated. Marketa pressed her hands at her temples, adjusting the snood, her fingertips touching the smooth ropes of pearls.

“Marketa—” he began.

“No!” she snapped. “There is nothing to say. I will not be fooled. It is too late for hope.”

“Is it even too late for love?” he whispered, fighting to control his voice. His eyes were blurred with tears.

Marketa felt her lip quiver. “Don’t say that! What choice do I have?” she whispered furiously. “My father beheaded, my friend raped again and again until she is murdered? Leave me in peace!”

Jakub put his hand on her cheek.

“Let me protect you,” he said, his voice urgent. “Come this minute and I will hide you where he will never find you. I will teach you to become a real physician. I will—”

Marketa never heard what Jakub proposed, for the great door swung open and Don Julius stood before them. He had heard their voices in the hall, passionate voices. His eyes narrowed and his cheek began to twitch as it did in the days when Marketa first met him.

“What are you doing alone with my Marketa?” Don Julius growled. “You traitor!”

“I was only escorting her from her fitting—”

“You damnable swine! You think I cannot smell your coupling, your seed on her leg?”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he seized her arm and pulled her into the room so violently, she could say nothing.

“She is mine, Jakub. Mine. And tonight she shall tell me the secrets of the Coded Book. She shall teach me to decipher the text that no mortal has read before! She is mine!”

The Coded Book!
thought Marketa. The touchstone of his lunacy. He had lapsed into choler.

He slammed the door on Jakub and pushed Marketa roughly onto the divan.

“What is this that covers your hair?” he said. “You know how your locks bewitch me.” He reached to pull the snood away.

“No!” she said, turning away and mustering the courage to be coquettish. “I want to save my hair for you tonight, when I am dressed in my new night robe. Do not spoil the pleasure I have planned for you, my sweet surprise.” And even as she said this, she realized she was still hoping that somehow she could be saved, that somehow Annabella’s mysterious plan would work.

He contemplated her and slowly smiled.

“Is it not the most beautiful headdress you have ever seen?” Marketa said, turning her head this way and that, but keeping one hand clamped tight over her head. “Look how it glitters in pure gold and the perfect luster of the pearls.”

“It is fetching,” he said, fingering the gold. “But when it covers your hair, it offends me—take it off.”

“How could I do such a thing to spoil tonight’s tender moment?”

Suddenly his eyes glinted, like a hungry wolf.

“We do not have to wait until tonight. I will take you now!” he said, his voice hoarse and low.

Cold sweat pulsed down Marketa’s spine, and she fought to compose herself.

“But, my beloved, no, we must wait. We have waited all these months. I want it to be right. Wait until my robe is finished. It should be the way you planned it.”

Please, oh God
, she prayed,
do not let him remove my hair covering! If he does, I am done for.

Don Julius stared at Marketa now, his eyes cold, the warmth of love extinguished.

“Where did you get such a costly adornment?” he said. “I have never seen anything like it, even in my father’s court. How does a poor bathmaid possess such a treasure? And where did you acquire this silk scarf?”

“It was a gift,” she answered quickly.

“A gift from whom?” he snarled through his clenched teeth. “From Jakub Horcicky?”

“A gift from a dear friend, Don Julius—”

He raised his hand to strike her.

“You lying whore! You open your legs for an old brewer, and you open your legs for my father’s physician. Do you think I do not know your nickname?
Musle!
Musle, they call you, the bathmaid whore.”

“No, Don Julius. Do not call me that name!”

“Musle!” he roared. “Yes, and they laughed that my heart broke for you when I thought you dead. All the while, you lived among them, the fornicating swine!”

“I was frightened, my lord. I was frightened of you and your temper! Have mercy!”

“Why can you not understand how I love you! You betray me at every turn, you harlot!” cried Don Julius. He held his hands over his ears, driven mad by voices that Marketa could not hear.

“Look at me, Don Julius. Look at me—do not listen to the voices, my darling. I beg of you!”

He turned his eyes, red with tears, toward Marketa. His face was a map of anguish. The shadows of the tormented boy washed over his countenance, like a moonbeam through a web of midnight clouds.

She pulled his hands away from his ears and whispered, “Stay with me, Don Julius. Do not listen to them!”

But Marketa could see that the voices had won. The demons had seized his soul.

“Get away from me, whore!” said a strange, cold voice.

Marketa covered her face and waited for a blow to hit her.

Instead, she heard a key rattle and the grinding of a lock. She looked up. She was alone. He had locked her in his chambers.

Marketa ran to the window where she could see the banners of the Masopust procession waving over the bright costumed revelers. Throughout the late afternoon, the town had carried out the traditional celebration of Bacchus, which would end with his burial. The fat brewer was this year’s Bacchus, and his wife and a child stood at his side. In one hand, he held a mug of beer; the other clutched a huge greasy drumstick from a goose. Bacchus ate and drank in excess, singing bawdy songs while the crowd cheered. A sexton and a grave digger, a priest and mourners followed him, for tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, he would be buried, according to the tradition, and the hard days of fasting would begin.

Suddenly, as she watched, a horseman charged into the scene. The women screamed and clutched their children to their sides.
The rider, Don Julius, headed directly for Bacchus, trampling him. The brewer shielded his head with his arms as the horse trod his legs and torso, but within seconds the livid rider reined the horse toward the town square, the clang of iron horseshoes competing with the screams of the injured brewer.

Marketa knew it would be hours before Don Julius returned, drunk and murderous. And those hours were all that she had left to live.

Doctor Mingonius’s coach arrived at the castle when the sun was a bloody streak on the horizon and the first stars had begun to emerge. The doctor shared the coach with two other physicians, one being the great Jan Jesenius.

Jakub walked swiftly out to greet them. He sympathized with the older men for the grueling journey at such a relentless pace. But there was no time to waste.

Doctor Mingonius embraced the younger man.

“Where is he?” he said without any other word of greeting.

“He locked Marketa in his bedchamber and took off at a gallop down the hill into Krumlov. Trampling a townsman—”

“Marketa?” Doctor Mingonius broke in. “Marketa is held prisoner?”

Before Jakub could answer, Jan Jesenius, a stately man at forty, cleared his throat, interrupting them.

“May I present myself, Doctor Jan Jesenius, and my assistant, Doctor Jelinek. I believe, Doctor Horcicky, we have had the pleasure of meeting at Court, but you may not remember me.”

Jakub nearly smiled despite the dire circumstances to hear the self-deprecating charm of the illustrious physician, known throughout Europe and beyond. Of course any learned man of medicine knew Jesenius.

“Of course, Doctor Jesenius. It is an honor to have you here. And I believe we have met, Doctor Jelinek.”

Doctor Mingonius nodded anxiously at the pleasantries, but his face was a wrinkled map of worry.

“We must get her out of the room at once, before he returns! Has he harmed her in any way?”

“After a cloying display of affection, he struck her across the face and called her a whore. He has returned to his maniacal rage about the Coded Book—”

Doctor Mingonius was already charging up the stairs.

Don Julius left his horse in the square. The townspeople had returned to their festivities, drunk and stumbling, after the injured brewer had been carried away in a litter.

Bacchus had been lost to them a day early. He would not be buried tomorrow after all. Bad luck, they grumbled, and staggered back to the tavern to ease their disappointment with strong drink.

Last year’s Bacchus, a merry tanner, had died of the cold when the townsfolk buried him in the wet snowbanks of the Vltava. And what a year they had endured, a Hapsburg raping their women, their grievances ignored by the king. Could the coming year be worse? Was a wounded Bacchus more of a dire omen than a dead one?

Enough! The most important part of Masopust was to gorge oneself with meat and drink. Appetites must be sated, and the rest of the world could take care of itself. The oblivion of strong spirits washed over them, carrying away their fears and woes, making them stupid and happy for the remaining hours of the feast.

Under the mind-numbing effects of mead, medovina, and ale, they barely noticed the lord of Rozmberk Castle sitting
among them. It wasn’t until he pounded his fist on a wooden barrel, demanding mead, that the surly tavern-keeper even threw a look at him.

Don Julius drowned his thirst with mugfuls of the honey wine, one after another, as if he were parched. The strong spirits rose from the wine and burned his eyes. He blinked back the tears and tipped up the clay vessel, downing it in one draught.

The women, not as drunk as the men, hurried from the streets to hide in their homes, for they had seen Don Julius’s horse in the square. But the men of Krumlov were not going to leave their tavern on the most festive night of the year—Hapsburg be damned—and they drank all the more.

Don Julius felt his face grow numb and spirit rise in his veins. The fermented honey smelled of flowers and he thought of Marketa, of burying his face in her thick hair. He gave a lopsided smile to the beaked rooster who served him, and pounded his fist for more.

“Bring a goodly pitcher!” he shouted.

A spool of spittle fell from his mouth, and he wiped it with the back of his hand.

Around him the other drinkers spoke Czech, a language he could understand but could not speak fluently. Don Julius considered it a barbaric tongue, fit only for peasants, a language to be extinguished and replaced with German, the language of God and intellectuals. His nose and lips wrinkled up in a sneer as the Czech words grew louder and louder. The repetitive buzzing of syllables annoyed him, and his mood grew dark again.

A huge bear slammed his massive human hand on a barrel, hissing violently to a horned devil. Both men uttered curses, their tempers flaring as their tankards emptied.

Would a bear defeat a devil?
Don Julius wondered, the wine buzzing in his head.
What of that bearskin—it would be the trimming for—ah, the night garment of Marketa. Marketa, my angel—

No! The whore!

He would teach her tonight who is master! How could he touch her when she had sat naked before the piggish brewer, the stinking fat brute. She would give her maiden favors to a commoner, a man not worthy of a Prague whore. And then she had seduced a Hapsburg.

She deserved to die.

How could his true love have betrayed him?

And had he not seen lust in the eyes of Jakub Horcicky? His hand on her cheek when the door swung open. Coupling. There in the dark hall, right outside his own door.

He would teach her not to make a fool of him again!

And the Coded Book. Had she whispered its secrets to her new lover? With his magic potions, his dedication to herbs and flowers, a sorcerer.

Would the two of them poison him now? Was that the secret of the Coded Book, a recipe for his death? His father and Jakub and Marketa—all of them plotting his death.