The Bloodletter's Daughter (48 page)

A
N
A
CT OF
C
ONTRITION

“Marketa!” Annabella called. The icy-cold air of the shaft stung her face. Her voice echoed up through the dark to the apartments above.

The witch heard the scamper of light feet as Marketa approached the vertical shaft. Then a voice: “Annabella! I saw him leave the town, galloping this way!”

“We have no time to waste,” the witch said from below. “Pull the rope on the pulley and help me lift the platform.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trust me. Pull!”

“Perhaps you need a man’s help,” said a voice beside Annabella. She turned to see the Spanish priest.

“I need no help from you,” snapped Annabella. “Why do you not attend your master?”

“My master is God.”

“Then your God is a murderer,” she snapped. The priest said nothing, but watched her frenzied efforts.

“Pull! Marketa, pull!”

But the box on the platform was wedged against the wall of the shaft, jammed against an outcrop of stone.

“He’s coming! I can see his horse running back to the stable!”

Annabella clenched her teeth.

“Pull!” she screamed. “Pull!”

The crate only wedged more tightly against the rock.

“Let me help,” said the priest. “I will pull. You get on the platform to guide it through the shaft.”

Annabella looked at the priest, uncertain. Her eyes studied him, not knowing whether she should trust him, or whether he would let go of the rope at the last minute and send her plunging to her death.

He met her eyes, and she read his intentions. With a nod, Annabella handed him the end of the rope and climbed onto the platform.

“Pull, Priest! Pull as if your soul depended on it!”

And this time, with the strength of an old priest who had one last chance to seek God’s salvation and a witch guiding the way through the dark stone shaft, the box made its way to the light, carrying its burden, light as a sparrow, within.

M
ALEVOLENCE

The flaming sconces illuminated the madman’s face as he galloped his horse through the courtyards of the castle. He saw the black seal of the double-faced eagles on the lacquered coach standing empty in the first courtyard.

He rode his horse into the second courtyard, screaming obscenities at the guards. Horseshoes echoed through the arched gates and the horse shied at the guards’ warming fire in the corridor leading to the main entrance of the castle.

“Have you been enjoying Masopust, Don Julius?” said Jakub, standing in the doorway, blocking his way. “What is the wound you have on your face? A souvenir of Krumlov’s respect for you?”

“Out of my way!”

The tall physician stood solidly in front of the bleeding man.

“You have earned that wound and more!”

Don Julius raised his dagger and lunged.

Drunk and frenzied, he was handled easily. Jakub blocked him and grabbed his right arm. He twisted it savagely. Don
Julius howled in pain and the dagger dropped to the stones with a clatter.

“You are a disgrace!” Jakub shouted. “You will not harm her—do you hear me?”

“Release him, Physician!” shouted a Viennese voice behind him. Jakub whirled, trying to keep Don Julius between him and his enemy, but the two men jumped behind him again.

“Let him go or we kill you and the girl right now!”

Jakub felt the iron of their blades against his back.

“I swear we will. Where is the key to the chambers, Don Julius?”

“In my—my pocket.”

“Give it to me and I will kill the girl now!” said Franz.

“No!” cried Jakub, pushing Don Julius away, whirling around and drawing his sword. Don Julius ran through the door and up the stairs.

Jakub lunged for Franz, his sword seeking flesh. The clang of metal rang out over the courtyard.

Jakub was late to fencing, for it was not a skill the Jesuits taught. Still, he had trained with the same instructor who had tutored Don Julius, and his ability had been honed quickly.

Franz lunged and feinted, then lunged again. Jakub heard a noise behind him and turned his head slightly, his eyes searching for Heinrich.

Franz saw his opening and thrust his rapier into Jakub’s shoulder.

As Jakub recoiled, Heinrich thrust his blade into the doctor’s back.

Jakub crumpled to the ground on his stomach, the hilt of the rapier waving out of his back, a futile banner of surrender.

“You have killed him!” cried Franz. “Quick, get our horses! We must escape Bohemia. The king will hang us for murdering his physician.”

“Don Julius will protect us,” protested Heinrich.

Franz spat. “That mad fool can’t even save himself.” They ran for their horses.

The key lay heavy in Don Julius’s pocket. He ran bleeding, gasping for breath. As he bounded up the stairs, he heard the sounds of men at his doorway.

Then he heard the sound of splintering wood.

“What is the meaning of this!” he roared.

The big guard Chaloupka grunted as he pulled the ax from the heavy oak door. It had bit deep into the wood.

“Drop that ax at once!” cried Don Julius. “By order of the king’s son!”

The ax clanged to the floor, striking sparks on the hard stone.

Don Julius stooped to pick it up.

“Back!” he ordered, fishing in his pocket for the key with one hand, the other hand holding the ax. His sudden appearance had startled the men, and for a second they stood speechless.

It was enough time for Don Julius to find the key. He fitted it into the lock and heaved the door open.

“Julius!” cried Doctor Mingonius, leaping toward the door. “Leave her alone! She has done no harm!”

Don Julius slashed at him with the ax, and the doctor jumped away from the swinging blade.

“She is a murderous whore who couples with devils in my absence! She plots my death in her green blood!” he screamed as he slammed the door shut, the froth from his mouth mixing with the blood from his wound.

The clang of the heavy bolt from within echoed through the dim hall.

“Marketa!” Don Julius shouted, his body shaking with rage. “Where are you?”

His voice echoed in the stone depths of the apartments.

The hall was lit with blazing sconces, and the fine chandelier with its thirty-six candles flickered overhead. The floor was scattered with rosemary and other sweet-smelling herbs.

Fireplaces in the entry and the inner chamber had been lit. The flames crackled in the silence. As he looked around the room, the light from the fires splintered, dancing in front of him.

He rubbed his eyes hard. Then he smelled something foul and sharp, like the smell of singed hair. His eyes blurred with tears so that he could barely see.

He whirled around, looking for the source of the smell. It was so close it smelled as if his own hair was aflame.

Don Julius saw a small caldron bubbling away on the hearth.

“Marketa!” he shouted again.

Don Julius heard his own ragged breath, the only reply. As he entered the bedchamber, he saw the robe—blue silk trimmed with the black fur of the bear he had killed—lying across the bed.

Then he saw her, lying beneath the covers.

He saw the smoothness of her hair spread across the coverlet, its brindled colors shining in the firelight. She was turned away from him, the white nape of her delicate neck the color of fine ivory.

His eyes welled.

He heard her shallow breathing in rhythm to the slight rise and fall of the bedcovering. She sipped less air than a sparrow, he thought. Should he wake her before he took her into his arms, before he—

The voices whispered in his head, urgent and brutal. He fought them, clapping his hands over his ears. They would not scorch his love for his Marketa, not this time.

His face crumpled in agony, like dry parchment in a tight fist. He reached for her, his fingers spread wide like a blind man, hot tears blurring his vision. He reached for her as a drowning man reaches for the shore.

His outstretched arms breeched a decade, reaching to a past where his beautiful mother had loved him and his father had doted on him—a child lingering in the royal Kunstkammer, the prodigy who reassembled clocks and intricate mechanical toys, astonishing his tutors with his prodigious intelligence.

Don Julius smiled, his blinking eyes staring across the years—again for an instant, a lonely adolescent whose fingers traced the colorful pages of a mysterious manuscript. A tormented boy, cursed with the blood of a mad grandmother.

Don Julius’s hand hovered over the shining hair, spread over the coverlet. His fingers touched the strands with the lightest caress, as a mother would stroke a baby in sleep. He longed for her to turn toward him and show her face, tear-streaked and contrite for her sins against him. All would be forgiven, for he had loved her with shy, boyish passion since the day he had first seen her on the page, so many years ago.

She would smile, knowing—certain—of his love for her.

And her smile would silence the voices, echoing in the dark, twisting corridors of his mind. He waited for her to turn to him.

He waited.

The smile slowly faded from his lips as he felt his heartbeat in the veins of his temples, drumming out the seconds in the stillness of the room.

Still she did not turn toward him. The coverlet rose with the shallow draw of her breath.
Why doesn’t she turn? Why? I need her!

He heard a murmur.

He held his breath and listened. A chorus of voices, an impossible army of demons, their chant growing louder and louder, unchallenged.

Why won’t she turn to me?

He shivered uncontrollably. He was defenseless without her. There was no one to keep the voices at bay.

“Marketa!” he screamed. “Marketa, help me! Awaken!”

The hellish screams roared full-throated now in his ears. He could not fight them alone. Don Julius clutched at his temples, his nails scratching at the blue-green veins throbbing under the thinnest veil of skin.

The whore! Ignoring a Hapsburg. The insolence of her refusal to wake and greet her lord.

Rape her! Before she can open her eyes, mash her face to the pillow and take her from behind like the beast she is.

He began to pant. His lips were slick with saliva.

He tasted the bile in the back of his throat as he had that night long ago when he wrestled his father’s hound in the bloody straw, knife in his hand.

He staggered and fought for his balance, reaching down blindly.

The ax. Its blackened blade called to him, ominous in the wavering light of the wall sconces. His face contorted, his teeth tight in a grimace. The angry voices roared in his ears above the quiet sobbing of a boy whose father had struck him.

He raised the ax high in the air and brought it down across her exposed neck, white and creamy in the dim light.

“You whore!” he screamed. “Witch!”

She uttered a moan, and he thought he heard her call out a name—her own name and then the name of the Holy Virgin. He saw a glow of moonlight on the moonless night, a sweep of white silk, a lingering scent, a waft of perfume.

“Receive me!” cried the muffled voice from the bed.

Then there was no sound at all. The sheets stained red, blood creeping silently across the bed, a rising tide.

Don Julius stared at the blood, his pulse throbbing against his temples. He felt leeches sucking at his flesh. He pulled madly at them, plucking them from his skin, from his scalp. He squinted at the mad devil of the tavern, the one who had cursed him and cut him, his sour breath in Don Julius’s face. He saw the bear, the bear that spoke Czech, and he slashed at the beast’s shoulders, hacking at him with all his might. The stag who danced with the torch in his hoof. Bacchus who returned from the grave to haunt him. They screamed together, in wailing chorus to revenge Krumlov.

He murdered them all. He chopped them into pieces, each time smaller, the ax biting into skull and flesh and bone. He cut at the leeches and gouged out their hideous eyes, eyes that had lusted for his blood. He cut his mother’s breast, the Italian whore who had coupled with his lecherous father, leaving him the legacy of bastard to haunt his life.

He murdered his father, the fiend who possessed the Coded Book. Oh yes. He butchered his father most of all, again and again.

When the guards and doctors managed to break down the door, there were no pieces left of the body larger than the butcher’s scraps that were tossed to the dogs of Krumlov.

It was Doctor Mingonius who led the muttering Don Julius away from the gore. He had gazed around the blood-splattered room in horror, to Don Julius crouched in a corner, fondling a scrap of matted hair.

The physician closed his eyes and uttered a prayer for the strength to face the scene in front of him.

“Come,” he said. “Take my hand, Giuglio. I will fix a tea for you and a warm bath.”

Don Julius would not answer but continued to stroke the hank of hair as if it were a beloved pet.

“She is gone,” he said in a hollow voice. “And with her goes the code. No one will ever decipher the book. No one will ever quiet the voices. Ever.”