The Bloodletter's Daughter (10 page)

She moved closer to him and reached again for him, determined to complete the bath. But her hands merely hovered, paralyzed.

Jakub opened his eyes and saw the girl frozen before him, her face stricken with fear. He reached out gently toward her shaking hands, soapy and wet. He held them in his own and looked up at her terrified eyes.

“You do not have to touch me,
slecna
,” he said quietly. “I’ll wash myself there.”

Marketa’s eyes filled with tears, and she tried to wipe them away, but the man held her hands like trapped birds.

“All right,” she whispered. “But please do not tell my mother. Promise me you won’t.”

“I promise,” he said. Then he realized what had transpired and looked in her blue-gray eyes. “Your mother was looking for a supplement, was she?”

Marketa nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Well, she shall have it,” he said gently. “Bring me water to rinse.”

At last her hands were released, and they flew back to her sides.

“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely. “I will fetch the rinsing bucket.”

As Marketa returned to the bathing stool with a bucketful of water, she saw Jakub’s lips moving, his head bowed. Then he quickly kissed the cross around his neck. As he let it go from his hand, it bounced on his chest and swung like a pendulum, in a little arc.

“Doctor Horcicky, I fetched your rinse water if you are ready.”

“Yes, yes, by all means before the soap dries. Thank you.”

She poured the warm water over his head and back, and he took the bucket from her and finished rinsing the rest of his body.

“Are you preparing to take the orders, sir?” she asked him as he shook the water from his face.

“No, not at all. I am the king’s imperial chemist and physician,” he said. “Do not allow this cross to confuse you. I was raised in a Jesuit monastery. I have had it since I was a boy. But again, I have not the virtues of a priest, I assure you.”

She gave a curt nod and handed him the bath sheet. She did not look up at his eyes or down at his groin. Her eyes were fixed on his chest and the cross.

Jakub wrapped the coarse sheet tight around his waist. He saw Marketa’s eyes were fighting back tears and she bit her lower lip.

Jakub reached his hand out and tilted her chin up, urging her to look into his eyes.

“You have done nothing wrong,
slecna
. I will not tell your mother, I promise.”

Her eyes sought his, begging for confirmation of his promise.

“Come here,” he whispered, looking into her eyes.

Jakub’s lips met hers, warm and moist. It was a kiss as surprising as it was brief. Without thinking, she stepped closer and for a moment their bodies were pressed together and Marketa drank in the smell of his clean skin and hair.

At the sound of Lucie’s booming voice from the next room, Marketa jumped back. She straightened her kerchief, her cheeks aflame.

“Come,
slecna
,” he said, his hand still resting gently on her shoulder. “Show me the barrel.”

As Marketa accompanied the physician to the soaking barrel, all the other bathers’ heads pivoted toward the tall, well-muscled man. He walked with a posture and grace that spoke of his years at the Prague court.

No one recognized him as the poor, awkward boy raised within the walls of the Jesuit monastery, just a quarter mile from the bathhouse.

As was the custom throughout southern Bohemia, bathers at the Pichlerova bathhouse were not segregated by sex; men and women were set in wooden barrels side by side. Instead, they were grouped according to their choice of conversation. The brewers would often prefer to soak next to the tavern-keeper to discuss ale and beer and conduct business. The shopkeepers were placed near the purveyors, the greengrocers alongside the farmers, who enjoyed a nice soak after hour upon hour toiling over their crops.

And on this day, the bloodletter’s daughter and the elegant young man from the royal court formed a group of their own.

Marketa moved the stool over so that he could climb into the barrel and submerge himself.

“Ahhh!” he sighed, closing his eyes as the herbed water lapped over his shoulders.

“Marketa!”

Lucie came bustling toward them, a bucket in her hand.

“How have you bathed our guest with such haste,” she said, her voice cross. “Have you made the gentleman—comfortable?”

Marketa’s lips moved to utter an answer, but a reply came from the gentleman himself.

“Your daughter has greatly pleased me,
pani
. Far greater than the bathmaids in Prague—she has the hands of a goddess. The only thing that would please me more would be for her to sup with me. Bring cheese, bread, and ale for us both. I should like to finish my conversation with Marketa.”

Lucie bobbed her head, staring openmouthed and gaptoothed at the stranger.

“Yes, my lord,” she stammered. “And cake, I will bring you cake.”

Marketa stared at the man in the barrel.

“I cannot take food and drink with you,” she whispered. “I am working.”

“I will pay for your daughter’s time,” called Jakub from his bath. “I will pay you well,
pani
.”

“Just to talk?” said Lucie, her hands on her stout hips.

“My bath is losing heat. Fetch a warm stone,
pani
. And then bring the refreshments for the two of us.”

Marketa sat down on the stool, not knowing what else to do. She studied the old tarred wood of the barrels, splintered on the outside from decades of use. The wet wood smelled of fresh lavender and river water.

“You must know Annabella,” said the voice from the barrel.

“Yes, my lord,” said Marketa. “Do you know her as well?”

“Ah, yes, the good healer of Krumlov,” he chuckled. “She has a superior knowledge of herbs and medicines. I have known her most of my life.”

“She has the Book of Paracelsus,” said Marketa.

“I know,” he said, and his voice was obscured by the splashing of his arm adjusting to more comfortable position.

Marketa looked up as her sisters, Dana and Kate, brought a plank to place across the barrel. Lucie followed carrying heavy platters of food and two steins of ale, her sweaty cheeks puffing with effort.

“And that hot stone,
pani
,” said Jakub as the plank creaked with the weight of the food.

Lucie motioned to Marketa, out of habit.

“No,” said Jakub. “She is my guest. She shall remain at my side. And do not worry,
pani
. I shall pay you handsomely for her—services.”

Marketa smiled into her hand. She looked around the bathhouse where every face was staring at her.

For the next hour, no one spoke a word in the bathhouse but the physician and the bathmaid, who chatted on about medicines, herbs, bloodletting, and other cures. They spoke of the
impending public dissection of a human body to be performed in Prague by Jan Jesenius himself.

Marketa argued the virtues of balancing the humors through bloodletting, while Jakub dismissed it as fraud.

“You do not believe in Galen’s humors?” said Marketa, rising to her feet to peek over the rim of the tub. She stared at the bathing physician, forgetting altogether her earlier shyness.

“Charlatanism,” he pronounced, raising the stein of beer to his lips. “Chemistry is the secret to medicine. I am a scientist, not a sorcerer. In my laboratory I distill medicines from herbs, roots, and flowers. I isolate healing minerals from stone, water, and soil.
Slecna
, I cure my patients without stealing their blood.”

Marketa scowled at the bather, not knowing what to think about this doctor who mocked her father’s profession.

“Do not frown, Marketa,” said Jakub, wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. “It is unbecoming and mars your natural beauty.”

Marketa didn’t know if she was being complimented or insulted. She started to frown again, then paused, confused between anger and a new emotion—could it be vanity? She sneaked a look at the handsome court physician and saw that he was smiling widely.

In an instant, she realized he had been teasing her. It was a revelation. In the king’s court, men teased women just as boys teased girls in the streets of Cesky Krumlov.

She smiled back at him for an instant, then deepened her frown and said, “Better frowning and plain than to distract your lordship from his important study of science, and his colossal self-importance.”

Now it was Jakub’s turned to begin to scowl, before realizing that he was being teased in turn.

He broke into a broad smile and splashed her from the barrel. She sputtered, shaking the water off her face and hair and
growled a curse in Czech—a particular Krumlov curse that she knew he would understand.

The other bathers roared in laughter for they had been watching intently. Jakub raised his beer mug at her, smiling.

Marketa smiled in return. She could not remember when she had been so entertained by one of her mother’s clients.

When Jakub finally rose to leave, the water in the barrel was stone-cold, and black fleas floated among the sprigs of lavender. He dried himself with a bath sheet and called for his clothes.

Marketa did not help him dress, but waited patiently at the door. When he emerged from the bathing rooms, he had his magnificent green scarf in his hand.

“Here, Slecna Marketa,” he said, lifting her chin gently with his fingers. He tied the scarf around her neck as if she were a child.

His touch raised the downy hairs on her neck as his fingers fussed with the knot. He stepped back to admire her in his garment. There was a propriety gleam in his eye.

“Something to remind you of Prague,” Jakub said. “A magical city lies waiting for you, Marketa Pichlerova.”

He bowed to her, mounted his horse, and rode away.

N
EWS OF
D
ON
J
ULIUS IN
K
RUMLOV

Pichler arrived home the following day, a week earlier than planned. Marketa heard the hollow clip-clop of his mare’s hooves on Barber’s Bridge as she was hanging out bath sheets in the afternoon sun. She looked up to see him waving to her. She ran out with her arms open wide.

“Easy there,” cooed her father to his mount, who had shied as Marketa ran from the house. “You are home to rest and eat hay. No reason to bolt.”

He slapped his horse on the neck and dismounted. Marketa could tell by the hitch in his leg that he was saddle-sore and had not stopped long to rest along the way. He was more than thirty years old now and could not manage such a hard ride as if he were still a young man. The mare’s coat was lathered white and her flanks were drawn up tight in thirst.

“Father! What is the matter? Why have you come home so early and run your horse so hard?”

He smiled at Marketa’s observation; above all he had taught her that a good physician was alert to symptoms and discrepancies.

He gave his horse to the servant boy who slept in the small shed at the side of the bathhouse.

“Let her have her fill of water,” he said. “Do not feed her until sundown. She has run hard and will colic.”

As the boy started to lead the horse away to the grassy bank of the river, the barber-surgeon stopped him.

“Wait, let me untie my saddlebag. I have something there, Daughter, I want to show you.”

He untied the canvas bag and delicately withdrew a rolled parchment.

Marketa stopped breathing as she gazed at the sight.

The parchment displayed the human body and the courseways of blood, penned with exquisite precision. Marketa had long tried to learn what she could by tracing her white skin and blue veins with her index finger, referring to her father’s notes, but here was a wealth of new knowledge.

The human body lay unveiled before her in all its mysterious glory.

“This comes from England, where they have charted the veins from humans themselves,” said her father.

“But look at the detail—and there are interior veins here that would kill a man if he were cut so deep!”

“Not if that man were already dead.” Her father smiled. “In England and France, bodies can be procured legally for science’s sake. It is the law, Daughter. Science is the law!”

She dropped her jaw in awe.

“The law?”

“Ah, they say there are still grave robbers, but in a country as wild and ruthless as England, it is no surprise.”

He paused a moment as Marketa’s eyes drank in the tracings, then murmured, “How is your mother?”

Marketa lifted her eyes slowly. “She complains every day about my ineptness in the bathhouse and my clumsy manners
with the customers. I caught Pani Schmidt’s curls in the lid of the barrel and made them limp. She howled like a cat in heat.”

She gave him a glance. If only he would intervene and save her from her work in the bathhouse.

“I could not wait for you to return!” Marketa said, taking his arm. “And we have at least five patients who desperately require your services—they were almost prepared to let me bleed them myself.”

She meant this as a joke, but her father gave her a stern look.

“You would never do that, would you, Marketa?” he said. “Not that you do not have the knowledge—even the gift, I believe.”

“No never, Father,” she said. “I do not belong to the guild.”

He took her chin in his hand. He squeezed it tight, almost as tightly as her mother did in anger.

“And that is the only reason?”

“I do not belong to the guild,” she said stubbornly. “It would not be right.”

He released her chin, and she dropped her eyes to the ground and made a quick excuse to leave to fetch water for the bathhouse.

But instead Marketa ran to her straw pallet and retrieved the green silk scarf from under the feather pillow. She stroked the scarf and then brought it near her face. She could still smell the scent of Jakub Horcicky deep in the fibers.

Pichler wasted no time in talking to the town council. They met at Radek’s tavern. Marketa helped serve pitchers of beer and spiced mead.

“No Hapsburg bastard will rule us!” shouted the mayor, pounding his fist so hard that the creamy foam on his ale quivered. “We shall send a delegation at once to Prague and take up this matter with the king.”

“But what of the Rozmberks? Should we not approach them and challenge their right to sell the castle to a madman?”

“Gold is gold to them,” muttered the municipal judge. “We will not have a legal right to challenge them.”

“But if they leave, so will the courtiers go—over three hundred! Who will buy our goods? How will Krumlov survive?”

“I would like to throw them in the moat with their own bears,” sputtered a member of the council. “What right do they have to seat a Hapsburg idiot above our town? What if he takes a liking to one of our women, or worse yet, one of our boys as his father is rumored to fancy? No one will be safe.”

At this, Pichler told them the stories of debauchery he had heard in Vienna, ending with his own experience with Don Julius. The men muttered in anger, and the mayor himself declared that the Hapsburgs had copulated so frequently with their own family members, they were no better than pink blind mice at ruling an empire.

Marketa stood silently in the shadows and listened. Her father had never kept sex a secret from her. It was a normal function of the human body, and Marketa knew both men’s and women’s anatomy as thoroughly as the four humors. Her father had a theory that the yellow bile, the murderous and most dangerous, caused excesses of sexual acts and was a symptom of imbalance in either a man or woman.

Marketa’s father said that Don Julius would be accompanied by a Jesuit priest, a Spaniard from the court of Felipe II.

“That is all we need, a Spanish Jesuit!” grumbled the mayor, a staunch Protestant. “A Papist, mumbling the pope’s bidding in a foreign tongue. Plotting against our church.”

The meeting dispersed well after midnight, the men not having settled on any plan. As they drank more and more beer, they grew hoarse from uttering threats, but there was no way of counteracting the king’s will.

As Marketa walked home alongside her father under the black sky, she heard him puzzling aloud.

“Who knows if I could cure him with regular bleedings? It could be the miracle he needs.”

She whispered a prayer and looked up at the few twinkling stars that were etched in the night sky. Her thoughts wandered to Jakub Horcicky, and she wondered if he gazed up at the stars tonight, just as she did.

The Vltava roared in the blackness, winding its way through their town like a serpent.

Within a week, the town council had drawn up a petition and selected a rider to carry it to the king in Vienna.

They did not know that the king was already in Prague and Rumpf had invited the Rozmberks to Vienna to discuss the sale of the castle. By the time the messenger came back, the affair was settled. He brought news of the sale and the impending arrival of Rudolf’s notorious bastard in Cesky Krumlov.

The church bells tolled, and people left their bakeries, taverns, shops, and fields to come hear the news in the town square. The mayor stood by the well on a sturdy wooden box.

“The king’s minister promises that Don Julius will be kept under lock and key until he is controllable,” announced the mayor. “We have begged the Bohemian lords, especially Petr Vok, to intercede on our behalf at the Prague court. This is their response.”

“What if he gets out? Who will he stick with his dagger, and what will become of our women?”

“No, I have the king’s word—Rumpf’s word—that he will be confined to the palace and will never cross the moat. Until he is cured.”

The men in the crowd began to grumble and spit on the cobblestones.

“There has never been a Hapsburg who did not have his way. The bastard will descend upon our village and defile our women.”

“This is what a Hapsburg does to his subjects? Send a lunatic to dwell amongst us?”

The mayor furrowed his brow. “You had best learn to control your tongue before the Hapsburgs arrive. If a guard from Prague heard your slander against the king’s son, you would be searching for your head.”

Again the people hissed. The cobblestones glistened with their spit.

Marketa’s father always said it was right for men—and women—to spit and cough up any phlegm that might poison them. The phlegm that welled up from an excess of the phlegmatic humor was easily concentrated into disease. So the glistening cobblestones of Cesky Krumlov that day should have pleased him, but Marketa saw no smile on his face.