The Bloodletter's Daughter (27 page)

T
AMING A
H
APSBURG

Two days after she demanded—and received—an apology from Don Julius, Marketa returned to the castle with her father. The young Hapsburg treated her with the utmost respect. He pulled out a chair for her, beckoned the servants to wait on her exclusively, and sat quietly with his hands folded in front of him.

She is remarkable
, thought Mingonius.
As ordinary as peasant toast, except for that wild hair. But quick.

A servant knocked, bringing a message for the doctor. He read it and nodded, following the servant out. Within a few minutes, he returned with three men, dressed in the satin finery of the court. They lingered in the doorway, watching Don Julius pass the time with Marketa, his face animated with good humor.

“Who is the maiden?” asked one.

“She is the bloodletter’s daughter. She amuses him, nothing more,” replied Mingonius.

The three court councilors whispered to each other, nodding. The girl did hold Don Julius’s rapt attention.

Marketa listened carefully as Don Julius spoke of manners at the Prague court. He told her about the courtesies that were expected of both men and women. He explained how to curtsy before the king, how to remain that way until after he had passed or to retreat backward while still in a curtsy.

He laughed as he curtsied, playing the role of a woman of the Hapsburg court, an invisible fan in his hand. He fluttered his eyelashes and pretended to flirt with Mingonius, who had now returned to his chair.

Mingonius roared with laughter, and Pichler joined in warily. He could not quite believe that his daughter had brought out this frolicking nature in the young bastard prince.

“Then,” Don Julius said, rushing to his bed and rooting around beneath it, “then you must bow, yes bow, in all sincerity to this.”

With great ceremony, Don Julius paraded around the room with his clean chamber pot.

“Oh yes, you must bow to the king’s own shit!” he proclaimed.

Pichler gasped, but Mingonius laid a hand on his arm. He then inclined his head forward to wink at the ministers, who chuckled at Don Julius’s choice of court courtesies.

“So it is,” said Doctor Mingonius. “I have bowed many a time to King Rudolf’s discharge. After all, it has traveled through his royal person and is honorable in that account. Though our Marketa scarcely needs to know all of this.”

Don Julius frowned at him.

“I am teaching Marketa what to expect when she accompanies me to Prague,” he said. “She must know the ways of the court so as not to embarrass herself. A fairy from the Coded Book does not know the customs of European royalty.”

“Ah yes. Well, I see. I did not know that she was to accompany you to Prague,” said Mingonius, wary of what the ministers might think of this. “Of course, you cannot return until you have proved to your father that you can behave in a proper manner.”

“Yes, I shall obey,” he answered. “I will do anything the world asks of me now, to win the trust and love of my angel Marketa. Anything.”

Mingonius stared at him, incredulous. Under the doctor’s scrutiny, Don Julius covered his face with his hands and massaged his temples with his thumbs.

“I am suddenly very tired. I wish to go to my bed and rest,” he said.

The guards helped him from the table.

He gestured toward Marketa.

“I wish her to accompany me to my bed.”

“Certainly not!” said Pichler.

“I shall not accompany you to your bed, dear prince,” said Marketa. “But I shall return to receive your tutelage. And may I say, your comportment today has made me most happy.”

She approached the bed where he lay, his eyes unfocused and confused. She bent over him and kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

“Sleep now, my lord. I shall return in a few days, once you have recovered your strength.”

Don Julius closed his eyes as Pichler and Marketa headed for the door. Mingonius bent over to look at Don Julius one more time.

“She is an angel,” murmured the patient.

“Indeed,” confessed the doctor, in a low voice. “I am only beginning to understand the extent of her charms.”

With this Doctor Mingonius retreated to the door, to be greeted with profuse congratulations from the court visitors for curing the son of Rudolf II of his vicious humors.

But every courtier wanted to know more about the strange charm of the bloodletter’s daughter.

A
N
O
MINOUS
R
EWARD

Mingonius knocked on the door of Don Julius’s apartments. In his left hand he carried a package in fine calfskin wrappings.

Don Julius, still weak from bloodletting, feebly raised his hand in greeting.

“Good morning, Don Julius,” said Doctor Mingonius, bowing slightly to the king’s son.

“Good morning, Doctor,” whispered the pale-faced Julius. Before him was a hearty breakfast of herring, breads, cheeses, and ale. The plates were untouched. “What is this you bring?”

“It is your reward,” said Mingonius, smiling at his docile patient. “The king has given me permission to let you study the book in exchange for your compliance in being bled.”

Don Julius did not answer but held out his hands to receive the package, like a mother might open her arms for a long-lost child. The doctor noticed how his hands shook, as if he were ancient and infirm. The loss of blood had made him weak. Too weak, perhaps.

Don Julius set the book on a table and ordered fresh linen to be brought to clean his hands. He wiped his fingers meticulously before opening the leather coverings.

He opened the book with the utmost care and drew a breath that seemed to almost suck the air from the room. Then he sighed explosively, a man reunited with a lover.

The doctor stood beside his patient and looked at the pages. He too gasped, for Don Julius had turned immediately to the pages of naked women swimming in pools of green water. The bright colors, bizarre images, and strange text startled him.

“What is this, may I ask?”

Don Julius answered slowly. “It is the mystery of mysteries. I have not gazed upon it since I was thirteen years old. It was my first true love.”

His eyes grew cold and distant. “I wonder if I have outgrown it now. It cast its spell on me a long time ago, a power that protected me as a child.”

He turned to pages that depicted colorful plants, leaves, seeds, and root systems. Then to the pages of the zodiac, circles segmented by the months of the year and punctuated with still more naked women in elaborate barrels.

“What language is that?” asked Doctor Mingonius. “Is it Egyptian? What are those symbols?”

Don Julius bit his lip. “That is the mystery, good doctor. No one knows, not even I. There was one time that I was convinced that the bath maidens knew the answer but refused to share it. I asked them if it was part of the Kabbalah. Or a master alchemist’s journal. Or was it the coded writing of Leonardo da Vinci, born 1452 on a Saturday night? They would not reveal the secret, no matter how I pleaded. I was so angry with the maidens when they wouldn’t answer me. How peculiar that all seems now, thinking they were real.”

Doctor Mingonius smiled for his patient seemed finally to be considering his own past behavior as bizarre, outrageous. What progress!

Then his smile faded.

“Bath maidens?” he said. “Why do you call them bath maidens?”

Don Julius flicked to a page where the women sat in cylinders. “Are they not all bath maidens? It is obvious. Look at the barrels, Mingonius. And this one, this one who has an impish child in the soaking tub with her, looking around her back. Does the child not look too young to be enjoying the body of such a mature woman?”

“Perhaps he is a cupid, or her own child in the tub with her?”

“No,” snapped Don Julius bitterly. “He is a patron, enjoying a woman for the first time. He is smiling because he is foolish and thinks he has learned the secrets and earned favor with the king, with his prowess. But the bathmaid still holds all the secrets, and the book is forever coded. She will not whisper its secrets and laughs at his folly. But, you see, she protects him, shielding him from harm.”

The prince brooded over the pages, studying the bath maidens.
He is thinking of Marketa again
, thought Mingonius. Instead of rinsing the bathmaid’s memory from his patient’s mind, he had only reinforced it.
Can I never rid his mind of her?

It was at that moment Doctor Mingonius wondered if the king had made a serious error in giving Don Julius the Coded Book of Wonder, even temporarily.

A
N
I
NVITATION TO
P
RAGUE

The next day, Doctor Mingonius sent word that Pichler and his daughter should not return to Rozmberk Castle before two weeks’ time.

“A fortnight?” said Pichler, shaking his head. “Just when the patient has made so much progress. What could Doctor Mingonius be thinking?”

A special envelope with a red wax seal, addressed to Marketa, accompanied the brief letter to the bloodletter. Pichler was astonished to see the sealed envelope and handed it to his daughter in wonderment.

Marketa eagerly broke the seal and read the inked words on heavy parchment. Mingonius had written in Czech to make his message easier for her to read.

Make your arrangements to leave with me the day following the next bloodletting. We will travel in my coach, and I will make arrangements for a woman chaperone to be seen accompanying you as far as Prague. In exchange for this, I will expect you to keep your silence about the matters discussed.

Marketa beamed as she read the words.

“What is it, Daughter? Why does the doctor write to you?”

She clutched the letter to her breast and stood on her tiptoes to kiss her father.

“Let us walk along the river, Papa. I have some news to share with you.”

Two hours later, Marketa and her father returned, exhausted from a heated argument. In the end, Marketa had gotten her way; they would present the news together to her mother. It would not be described as an opportunity to watch the scientific method and learn medicine, but as an invitation to visit Prague and see the court of Rudolf II.

“Mother! I am to go to Prague, chaperoned of course, and stay with Pani Mingonius in her household. And Doctor Mingonius has promised I shall accompany him to the palace, where I may even catch a glimpse of the king.”

Lucie clutched her daughter to her breast and began to kiss her fingers, one by one, as if they were made of sugar.

“My daughter, presented to the king of Bohemia, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire!” she gasped. “What blessings you have brought forth for our family, Marketa.”

Marketa accepted her mother’s praise with grace, while her father looked on uncomfortably.

“From now on, you are not to touch the buckets,” Lucie said, wringing her hands in pleasure. “No, I shall bathe you and massage your skin with tallow and herbs. Let me look at your hands. They shall know you as a simple country girl with skin and nails like this. Look at the wrinkles and creases, the redness from hot water. You must rest, you must eat more—I shall order meat every day of the week until you leave—”

“I leave in fifteen days, Mother. Not a lot of time for fattening!”

“Oh, I must pack a trunk for you immediately!” her mother said, hands flying to her face. “What clothes do I have that you could travel in? We must make arrangements with the seamstress for whatever our pennies will buy.”

“Doctor Mingonius said that he will see to it that I have proper clothing once I arrive in Prague. His wife will see to it.”

“And this chaperone? Who is she?”

“One of Mingonius’s retinue from Prague. She is one of his wife’s servants, but she came here to supervise the cooking and housekeeping at the castle during the doctor’s stay.”

“Oh then, a proper chaperone. Splendid!”

Marketa bit the inside of her cheek. She thought it hypocritical of her mother to worry so about a chaperone. After all, she had been left alone often enough in the bathhouse with naked men who pinched her bottom through her light shift. They spoke bawdily about their sexual prowess as she silently fetched water and dropped hot stones in their barrels to keep the water temperature warm. Drunken men—traveling merchants, horse traders, thieves—had leered at her while she served them ale, tipping the tankards up to their open mouths while their hands fiddled busily below the water. Merciful it was when the barrel lids were tapped down tight over their submerged shoulders and she could not see anything below their sweating necks and their lecherous looks.

Now her mother fussed about a chaperone to accompany her to Prague.

It was arranged that Pani Pichlerova would meet with the chaperone at the castle to be sure all arrangements were made and proper conduct was agreed upon before the journey to Prague.

Soon the marketplace buzzed with the news that one of their own would attend the court of King Rudolf. The butcher sent
slabs of bacon and hams to the bathhouse, and the greengrocer sent willow baskets full of cabbages and onions. The cobbler sent a new pair of slippers to Marketa with his compliments, and the dressmaker sent an embroidered blouse of great needle skill and a matching black vest, delighted that the king himself might see her work as he glanced at the pretty Marketa. As an afterthought, she sent a petticoat, trimmed with lace and her initials embroidered into the hem.

“Show it to Doctor Mingonius’s wife. Maybe she’ll want something made for her here in Krumlov,” she said eagerly, pressing the bundle into Marketa’s hands and hugging her tight.

Neighbors loaned Marketa their finery, thinking how blessed their clothes and accessories would be once the king himself saw them.

“You must promise to wear this in sight of the king,” they said.

The priest insisted that Marketa attend a special mass, to bless her departure. All the citizens of Krumlov would prepare food for a feast in her honor. The girls of the town looked at her with astonishment and admiration, and some with keen jealousy, to think that Musle would see the great city of Prague.

Only Katarina looked at her with the love of friendship, blinking away tears. The miller’s daughter fumbled miserably with her hands, wishing nothing more than to hug her best friend good-bye.

Despite all the giddy preparations, all Marketa could think of was the bleeding of Don Julius she must perform, one last time before she left.

The new chair, made of sturdy mahogany, was delivered to the castle in time for the next bleeding. Pan Carpenter bowed to Doctor Mingonius as his two sons carried it into the castle.

“I have done just as Slecna Marketa instructed. If I had more time, I would apply another coat of oil to its finish, but I do not want to soil the prince’s fine clothes.”

The doctor stepped around the piece of furniture, his finger fidgeting on his upper lip.

“Remarkably designed,” he said at last. “And a fine execution, Herr Carpenter.”

“Yes, I copied the design exactly as sketched. I splayed open the armrests so that you can more easily direct the leeches to the patient’s sides. There is plenty of room here now to approach his body from all angles, including slats of the back to expose his spine.”

“And the long leg rest,” Mingonius noted. “Yes, I can apply the leeches to his inner thighs now, without fear of him kicking me when we loosen the ropes.”

“It is as you commissioned, Doctor. I only followed your designs, as Slecna Musle instructed.”

“My designs,” repeated the doctor, realizing that Marketa had passed them off as his. “Yes, well. Your execution is commendable—you are a fine craftsman. If you would be so kind as to return my drawings to me, I may replicate this at court.”

As the carpenter bowed, preparing to leave, Doctor Mingonius laid a finger to his lips, smiling.

“Herr Carpenter—you referred to Fräulein Marketa as ‘Musle.’”

The carpenter swallowed, his eyes widening.

“I meant no disrespect in your presence, Herr Doctor. She is known to Krumlov by that name.”

Doctor Mingonius’s broad smile confused the man, and he looked down at his boots, realizing how vile the name must
sound to a member of Rudolf’s court, if he indeed understood its meaning.

“Yes, well it will be our secret, then. But a fine name for a bathmaid,” chuckled the doctor. He winked at the furniture maker, dismissing him.

The carpenter nodded and hurried out the door of the castle, wondering when he could dare to collect payment.

Mingonius met Pichler several times during the next fortnight, as the doctor frequented Uncle Radek’s tavern on a regular basis. The doctor assured Pichler that he would take good care of Marketa in Prague, but also expressed his fear that Don Julius had become too listless and that their patient needed to build up his reserve of blood before any further treatments.

But that was not the only reason. Doctor Mingonius hoped that a respite from seeing Marketa might rid the king’s son of his obsession with the bathmaid. Then, if Marketa left Cesky Krumlov, Don Julius would forget about her.

A fortnight of rest and food had indeed strengthened the prince’s blood and stamina. When Marketa finally returned to Rozmberk Castle, she could hear his curses lashing the air long before she reached the guarded door.

“You must restrain him,” said Doctor Mingonius to the three guards. “Do not let him free under any circumstances. I will not bleed him without his consent, but we can restrain him if he is going to harm himself or anyone else.”

The doctor took a deep breath. “Marketa, wait here,” he said. “Do not enter until I call for you.”

She noticed the creases in his face and the dark rings under his eyes from too little sleep and too much worry.
He must be struggling with the notion of my presence
, she thought.
Having a
woman intervene goes counter to everything he considers professional, especially after receiving the compliments and congratulations of the king’s ministers.

Over an hour went by and Marketa could hear the scrape of boots on the wooden floor, the crash of heavy furniture, and the roar of curses. She heard the pleading of Doctor Mingonius, the curses, yelps, and wails. It sounded as if a wild beast was in the room, not a human being. Perhaps they had waited too long between bleedings, she thought, for the cure seemed to have vanished. Tonight, she thought, was the full moon—yes, they had waited too long.

Then finally—after far too much time, she thought—Marketa heard her name called.

“Marketa! My angel!”

Immediately there was a hush, an ominous silence. Then the creak and groan of the heavy door being opened.

“You may come in now, fräulein,” said Doctor Mingonius, his hair tousled and his green velvet clothing torn in several places. “Be careful not to get within his reach.”

“How can I apply the leeches if I am not close to him?” she said.

She strode past the doctor with feigned confidence, then stopped as she crossed the threshold: the chair!

The prince was lashed to the new bleeding chair, his body supported by crimson velvet cushions. She noticed how her patient was reclined, his body, though lashed with ropes, readily exposed for treatment, his back supported by the horizontal slats. Marketa smiled, seeing that the furniture maker had followed her designs exactly.

“Yes, your invention is quite comfortable, my darling,” said Don Julius, noticing her smile. “I feel as if I am reclining on a throne befitting a king.”

Doctor Mingonius stared slack-jawed at Don Julius. The doctor was still breathing hard from his struggle with the patient just minutes before. Now Don Julius had become calm and courteous, the moment Marketa walked in the door.