The Bloodletter's Daughter (7 page)

T
HE
W
HITE
L
ADY

The first time Marketa saw the White Lady of Cesky Krumlov, the girl was kneeling by the banks of the Vltava, rinsing a ring of blood from a white ceramic bowl. Her father had performed a bloodletting that morning, and his finest dish was crusted brown with a stain that clung to the ceramic after she had fed the garden soil with what remained of the patient’s bad humors.

Her fingernails scratched at the crusted blood, and the sparkling cold water of the river flooded over the rim of the bowl, clearing the stain at last. Suddenly, she had the uneasy feeling that someone was watching her from above. She lifted her eyes from the water, up the stone walls that rose directly from the riverbank to the castle.

The woman who stood there, far above the racing waters, was as fair as snow, dressed in white satin, her pale arms encased in transparent gauze. A gray sash draped to one side, looping down to a long train of white folds. Her hair was fashioned in ringlets, hay-colored and long against her neck, in the old style of a century ago.

She smiled sadly down at Marketa from the heights of the palace wall. Marketa dropped the bowl in the mud of the river and heard it chip on a rock. She bent her dirty knees under her homespun dress and wet apron in a curtsy. She supposed the lady to be a Rozmberk of the Five-Petal Rose, the noble family of the castle and the same as kings to those of the village. Even as she curtsied, Marketa stared down at the chipped ceramic and thought of what her mother would say when the surgery bowl came back damaged. Her father’s patients noticed such things, especially the rich ones.

When Marketa lifted her eyes, the woman in white had vanished. Marketa collected the crockery in the wet folds of her apron and turned back to the bathhouse, her heart thudding within her chest.

Viennese peddlers often lodged in Marketa’s uncle’s tavern, and he would tell the family their tales at Sunday dinner. Uncle Radek had never married and grew up eating his sister’s Bohemian cooking. He felt it was his birthright to have a place at the Pichler table, whether or not they could afford to feed another mouth.

The evening following the appearance of the lady in white, Radek invited himself to dinner. Marketa saw him leering at the meal on the table when she peeked as they said grace. He lusted after her mother’s cooking like a dog chasing a bitch in heat. The way he eyed the dumplings made Marketa blush, which did not come easy. Working in her mother’s bathhouse, Marketa had seen all manner of lechery.

After the Pichlers had thanked God for his bounty, Zigmund Pichler nodded his head and pronounced, “
Dobrou chut
” before the family broke bread.

As Lucie ladled out cabbage and lentil soup and
jatrove knedlicky
—liver dumplings—into his bowl, her brother Radek stuffed his mouth with fresh bread that the twins had baked that afternoon. He rolled his fat tongue over his food and addressed the table with an open mouth, his words making their way through a brown wad of buttered bread.

“Another rich trader came bringing fine cloth and bright jewels for the Rozmberks,” he said, taking a long draught of pilsner and filling his mouth with a dumpling. “He says it was a waste of a hard journey—they no longer have the gold to buy his goods.”

“As if the Rozmberks cannot buy anything their heart desires!” Lucie scoffed. “They drive coaches of gold, and the lady wears loops of pearls around her neck! The old bears in the moat dine on fattened calves—I have seen the carcasses with my own eyes! How could they not afford to buy pretty things?”

“I am only telling you what I hear from my customers, and they have no reason to lie,” said Uncle Radek, digging with his thumb at a plug of dumpling between his molars. He sucked at his thumbnail and the dislodged food, smacking his lips in satisfaction. “The Rozmberks have come onto hard times and may even sell the castle.”

“Sell the castle!” Marketa echoed. “Maybe that’s why the fair lady in white is walking the walls. I should like to look upon her again!”

Suddenly the clatter of dishes and lip-smacking stopped.

Marketa’s mother stared, her dark eyes bulging.

“When have you seen a lady in white, girl?”

“Leave her alone now, Lucie,” said her father, setting down his knife, a chunk of dumpling still speared on its end. “Let her finish her dinner.”

“You heard me, Daughter!” her mother insisted. “When did you see a woman in white?”

“Today, as I was washing the surgery tray,” Marketa said. “She startled me so that I dropped it and took a chip out of the rim. I am sorry. She was looking at me, and I’ve never seen her like before. Fair-haired and bejeweled, with skin whiter than bleached bedsheets in summer.”

“It is the White Lady,” murmured Uncle Radek, swallowing at last, his hairy nostrils flaring. “She’s seen her. One of my own family! Musle, you have the gift—”

“Do not dare call her that vulgar name in this house!” roared Pichler, his dining knife raised and pointing at his brother-in-law’s face. “This is not the tavern, and you will keep a civil tongue!”

Marketa felt the blood drain from her face, and her cheeks went cold and numb. No one had ever dared to use that lecherous nickname in her father’s presence before. She wanted to seep into the cracks of the stone floor and hide under its darkness forever.

She had hoped her father did not know what the townspeople now called her.

Her mother jumped up from the bench. She knelt by her daughter’s side and grasped her hand so hard, Marketa thought she would cry out.

“What color gloves was she wearing, Marketa?”

“Gloves?”

“Were they white or were they black?”

Marketa could feel her mother’s hand trembling. She could smell her sweat and the onions from her cooking clinging to her skin.

“I—I did not see any gloves. No—she did not wear gloves. She was bare-handed and fair-skinned as a marble statue.”

“Liar!” said her mother, suddenly smacking Marketa with an open palm. “You chipped our good bowl and made up a lie about the White Lady just to frighten us!”

Marketa pressed her hand against her stinging cheek. She was too stunned to cry, for her mother had never struck her before. She looked at her twin sisters, whose faces blanched, and they clutched each other in fear.

Pichler pushed his wife away and sent her tumbling on the floor. Marketa gasped. Her father had always been a gentle soul, and now he was shouting at Uncle Radek and shoving her mother to the ground.

“Our Marketa does not lie! If she saw a woman in white, it could have been a Rozmberk relation or guest. If she says she had bare arms, it is the truth. Do not dare to strike her again, lest you feel my own hand on your face!”

He hugged his daughter close, sheltering her in his arms. Marketa could smell her mother’s meaty cooking in his beard and ale on his breath.

She whispered to him, “Who is this woman and why is Mother so angry?”

“Finish your dinner, Marketa. You are looking pale and thin. It will not do for my patients to see my assistant, my own daughter, ailing when you carry away the trays of blood.”

“But the White Lady?”

“Never mind now. Eat, Daughter.”

He scraped a gravy-covered dumpling off his plate onto Marketa’s with his knife. The scratching of the blade against the pewter plate filled the room, otherwise silent in obedience to her father’s rage.

Her mother struggled to her knees and hoisted herself back onto the bench, gathering her skirt under her. She held her head erect, her back rigid with resentment.

For the rest of dinner, Lucie glared at her daughter across the table and seemed to have no appetite. Still, every now and again Marketa noticed a shiver catch her and shake its way up her spine.

The next day, Pichler set out for Vienna and the barber-surgeon guildhouse, where he kept abreast of the latest phlebotomy studies. He kissed his daughter good-bye and warned her to behave and keep peace with her mother while he was away.

Marketa sighed and promised to make herself useful in the bathhouse. She worked hard that morning washing a mountain of linen bath sheets and hanging them out to dry by the banks of the Vltava. When her mother nodded approvingly at the rows of flapping white laundry strung between the trees, Marketa smiled.

“Daughter, you deserve time away from the bathhouse. Dana and Kate can help me this afternoon.”

Marketa kissed her mother’s cheek, knowing she was trying to make amends for striking her the night before. Her mother embraced her quickly and shooed her away, encouraging her to enjoy a few hours of free time in the sunshine.

Marketa sought out her best friend, Katarina Mylnar, the miller’s daughter. They sat side by side on the riverbank, their feet dangling in the water, looking at the great walls of Rozmberk Palace looming above them. The Mylnar family’s waterwheel groaned behind them as the girls took pleasure in a few rare moments of leisure, basking in the afternoon sun.

Marketa found her friend’s company comforting, especially after her mother’s strange outburst the night before.

Katarina smelled of flour and sugar, especially on Saturdays. That was the day her mother did the most baking and provided cakes for the town and the Rozmberk family.

Katarina was plump, and the flour and fine sugar would find their way deep into the folds of her damp skin, nestling in her neck and cleavage, elbow crooks and fingers. She was fair-haired
and laughed at everything as if she were pleasantly drunk at a holiday feast.

The millers’s daughter had many admirers, for who would not love a woman who loved life with such passion—and whose family baked buttery cakes for nobility? As they exchanged secrets, their feet splashing in the cool water, Katarina whispered to Marketa that she wished one day the blacksmith’s son would taste her skin all night long, his tongue savoring every sugared crevice.

Marketa laughed in conspiracy at her friend’s confession, but she knew Katarina’s desire would never come to pass. Katarina’s father was not keen on the match and scowled at the sweaty-faced lad with sooty fingers. He felt his daughter could attract a better suitor, perhaps a butcher or even a wealthy merchant.

In fact, Katarina’s father forbade her to spend time with any man. His daughter was to be surrounded by women and girls until he found her a suitable husband. Katarina chose to spend most of her time with the bathmaid, although Marketa could not understand why the town’s beauty would want to spend time with the bloodletter’s daughter.

But Katarina loved Marketa’s strong character and admired her fierce interest in science. Her stories fascinated the miller’s daughter, for Marketa could read, a skill that was rare among women.

In the winter, the two girls loved to skate down the icy cobblestones on hilly Meat Street in their wood-soled shoes, slipping and falling to the hooting of the butchers. The meat cutters would cheer them on with muffled claps of their fingerless gloves, their bodies wrapped tight in woolen cloaks while they stamped their feet against the cold. Marketa’s cheeks flushed red and hot from the contrast of the steaming barrels of the bathhouse and the damp, frosty air. Katarina’s pale skin would glow warm pink, sticky with sugar, like a frosted cake.

The two were inseparable, and Katarina spent many an afternoon combing and braiding Marketa’s long hair, particularly on lazy warm days such as this one.

“The most peculiar and enchanting hair in the world,” she sighed in wonder. “It has every color of every girl’s hair. Amber, chestnut. Look! Here is a strand of blonde the same hue as mine, and here is one the raven black of the gypsy girl, Ruby!”

“Oh and this!” she said, plucking a hair from her friend’s head.

“Ow!”

“This one is the flaming red of the witch Annabella!” Katarina teased, twisting the orange strand in the sunlight. “Your hair must be bewitched!”

“Do not call her a witch!” Marketa snapped, twisting her head around to admonish Katarina. “The Church burns witches! Annabella is a cunning woman, capable of great cures.”

“Calm down! I am neither the Church nor the king. I do not wish to harm our village healer,” said Katarina. “Now relax for goodness’ sake. Let me finish your hair.”