The Bloodletter's Daughter (31 page)

Suddenly his face tightened in distress. He had said too much.

“You will not tell anyone, will you, Slecna Marketa? They will whip me and the other boys if they find out! I will lose my position!”

Marketa smiled at the thought of the young boys of Cesky Krumlov playing games in Rozmberk Castle.

“Of course not, Wilhelm. We will keep each other’s secrets.”

Marketa insisted that she wanted to deliver the sugar cakes properly, to Don Julius’s door, flanked by the guards. It was part of the trust she was building with him.

Wilhelm showed her through the servants’ door and pointed to the wooden staircase that led up to second floor. His face was smeared white in sugar, and he licked his fingers in happiness, accepting a kiss on his cheek from Marketa.

The guards, alert to even her quiet steps on the stairs, met her at the top of the staircase.

“Slecna Marketa! Are you looking for your father? He is not here.”

“No, no. I am to finish a treatment on Don Julius. It is part of the trust Mingonius speaks about. You are to bind him and I will feed him cakes, to show friendship and goodwill.”

The guard looked at her, astonished.

“Doctor Mingonius said nothing to me about this. I—”

“It must have slipped his mind. He said to make sure I told you to tie the patient tightly, so there is no chance of him leaping for me or hurting me in any way. Just in the manner you did earlier today.”

The guard rubbed his hand over his face and then gestured with his torch for her to follow. He spoke to the second guard. Then they both bowed to Marketa and entered the room. She waited in the hall.

She could hear a laugh beyond the great oak door, and then a murmur of pleasant words. She smiled, thinking of the change that had slowly come about in Don Julius in the past few weeks, the—

Down the hall she saw a sweep of white. It was her!

The ghost looked down the corridor at Marketa, beckoning to her with black gloves. What did she want?

The guards emerged from the door suddenly, before Marketa could respond to the specter’s demanding gesture.

“He was amenable,” they said, looking puzzled at Marketa’s wild-eyed stare. “Perhaps today’s bleeding has calmed him. He held his arms out to be bound, as meekly as a child.”

“Thank you,” Marketa said, and she held her hand up to warn them not to follow.

“I will cry out if I need any help,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

She breathed deeply to steady herself. The room smelled of beeswax and polish. The aroma of roast mutton and the tannic smell of red wine laced the air. The room danced in the flickering light of the tapers. Don Julius sat tied in the bleeding chair as he had just hours before. His face was illuminated in the candlelight.

“Welcome, Marketa. To what do I owe the honor of this evening visit?”

Suddenly Marketa was speechless. She wondered if she really knew why she was here. Because her mother wanted her to take a Hapsburg as a lover? Because she wanted to tell him that she was leaving for Prague in two days? Because she wanted to apologize for what had happened this morning? Because—she remembered the taste of his kisses?

“I—I have brought you some cakes my mother made this morning.”

Don Julius laughed again.

“Cakes? Ah country cakes, fresh and moist, like a certain young woman of Cesky Krumlov. Did I tell you I thought I tasted sugar on your lips this morning?”

“Shhh!” said Marketa, looking at the door.

“Oh, your secret is safe. They cannot hear unless you shout. But come closer. Then we can whisper.”

Marketa settled in a chair close, but not too close.

“Come now, Marketa. How can you feed me those cakes if you sit so far away? Look, I am bound. I cannot harm you.”

Marketa pulled her chair closer, causing it to screech across the floor. The sound unnerved her. She could smell the wine on his breath. He must have been drinking heavily.

“Now be a good girl and feed me a cake,” he said, his eyes glittering in the candlelight. They were the color of the Vltava on a cloudy day, dark green and forbidding, but mysteriously beautiful.

She reached into the basket and pulled out a cake. She leaned over and suspended it in the air.

“I do not want you to choke,” she said. She broke off a small piece of the cake and reached it out toward his mouth. He snapped at it, and she pulled back in horror.

He laughed at her. “You still do not trust me, do you, my angel? Come, feed me again and I will be good. I swear to you.”

This time he took the morsel of sweet cake and rolled it over in his mouth, his tongue flicking out to sweep the bits of sugar and flour from his lips. His eyelids flickered and he seemed to be in a trance, all but the gentle smacking and savoring of the cake.

“She is a good cook, my mother,” stammered Marketa. “My uncle Radek says she is the best cook in Cesky Krumlov.”

“I do not care about your mother’s cooking,” he said, opening his eyes at last. The deep pools of green glittered up at her, urging her. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

“I do not care about any other woman on this earth but you.”

Marketa found herself staring into his eyes. She blinked and looked away.

“Why do you say I am the woman from your book?” she asked. “You must know I am flesh and bone, a common Bohemian bathmaid.”

“A bathmaid, yes. And you are certainly that in the book. But common—no, never! You are the angel sent to save me.”

“No, my lord, there is no magic in me,” she said, looking down at the crimson rug. “I am a poor girl from Krumlov. You want too much of me, to be some fantastic creature who can cure you, protect you. I can do none of this.”

“You think you cannot, but what do you know of my mind, Marketa? You have always been with me since I was a child, whether you know it or not. There are some things we cannot know. You asked me if I believed in God and I said no. But I do believe in a spiritual world that is far beyond our comprehension; I believe that what you call ‘coincidences’ are reminders from the other world.”

Marketa grasped the edge of the table, slightly dizzy. She was not used to this kind of talk. He spoke almost like a priest of an invisible world, one she could not see or touch.

“Do you not think that these are fantasies of a diseased mind?” she said.

Don Julius did not answer her right away. He stared beyond her. Finally he said, “Fantasies? Call them dreams, if you like. But the coincidence, Marketa, this is what we must seize upon! You are a bathmaid. The bathmaid in the book comforted me as a child. Now you are here and you are the only one who can comfort me. There is a message here from the spiritual world. Events that arrive cloaked in mystery—we as mortals can only wonder, ‘What is this?’ What a strange coincidence, a bathmaid in a magic book, a bathmaid in Krumlov. A simple twist of fate, nothing more than happenstance, we laugh. We are fools—no!—we are
cowards
not to recognize the presence of the Other World. We ignore the divine message in our mundane lives, paying no heed to the heaven-sent tidings, worrying instead whether we shall have a boiled turnip with our midday meal.”

His eyes gleamed with fervor. She noticed beads of sweat on his upper lip.

“I choose to recognize the message,” he said. “You are my savior—the only being on earth who can help me.”

She approached him cautiously, hardly daring to breathe. She could barely follow his words, but he spoke to her of God and the meaning of life. She thought of her fate with the brewer in the months to come, how he would brutally take her virginity, his sour breath in her face, his old stubby fingers prowling her body.

And here was a Hapsburg who talked of the sublime.

“Do you truly believe I am a messenger from the heavens?” she whispered. “That I am something other than a bathmaid from Krumlov?”

“Come here to me, my angel.”

Marketa lost herself in his eyes. She leaned down and met his lips with hers. All the sensations she had felt that morning came flooding back to her, and she cradled his aristocratic face in her hands. It was so finely chiseled, as if she were holding a classical sculpture.

His body surged toward her, straining at the ropes.

“Release me, Marketa,” he whispered, his lips still wet against hers. “Did you bring your bloodletting knife to cut the ropes?

She nodded, pulling her lips away from his mouth.

“I knew you would. I knew you loved me,” he said, his eyes shining. “I have never doubted you.”

Marketa reached in the pocket of her apron and flicked open her fleam. She severed the ropes that restrained his hands—and those hands suddenly, fiercely pulled her down on top of him, pressing her face, her throat, her breast against him with such force, it took her breath away.

“Cut me loose, all of me!” he whispered to her, his words urgent and hot in her ear.

She quickly cut through the ropes, and while she was still trying to finish the last strand on his ankle, he tore free and placed his hand over her mouth. The fleam dropped to the floor with a clatter.

In a second, he had sprung to his feet, and his arms enveloped her, pressing her body tight to his.

“You! Yes, you are my angel. Should any man touch you or offend you, I will kill him. I swear I shall!”

He held her close to his breast, to his thumping heart, and stroked her brindled hair. “I knew I could trust you,” he whispered in her ear. “You have proved to be who I always knew you were. My angel!”

He knelt now at her feet, clasping her knees.

“You defeat the demons who assail me. They cannot approach when they hear the sound of your voice.”

Marketa stood motionless with the young prince at her feet. Then she dropped to her knees.

“You ask too much of me, Don Julius. I will stand with you against your demons, but I fear I have not the power you see in me.”

Don Julius lifted his hand to her cheek and pushed back a strand of her hair. “You cannot know what power you wield, for you are in mortal form. You must remain humble, modest as you are. Your innocence of the dark world is your force.”

His words made little sense to her, but she heard this Hapsburg prince say that he worshipped her, he believed in her strength. She thought of the stinking bodies in the bathhouse. She thought of the brewer. A shiver of repugnance shook her spine.

He took her hand and drew a picture with his fingertip into her palm. Marketa found it curious that he should cease his adoration and lovemaking so abruptly and play such a childish game. His touch on the flat of her hand began as a tickling light
pressure, a series of squiggles. Then she winced as the point of his finger drove harder into skin.

“What is that, my lord?”

“It is an illustration from the Coded Book,” he laughed, his eyes wide in excitement. “Tell me which one.”

“How could I know when I have never seen this strange book?”

“Do not mock me,” said Don Julius, his voice terse. “Tell me!”

“I have not the knowledge, my lord. Is it a squirrel?”

“A squirrel! You do mock me, you imp. Tell me! You know!”

Marketa felt him squeeze her hand harder now, bending it closed like a clamshell. A pulsing vein grew prominent, throbbing in the center of his forehead.

“You know what it is!”

“I do not!”

“It is the Turkish bathhouse, the tiled arched roof of a harem. You are there, among the others.”

He stopped abruptly, his eyes widening as if he had seen some horror. Then his eyes narrowed to angry slits in his face.

“You—you whore! You are standing among them in the green water—waiting your turn for the sultan to take you!”

“Of what do you speak! What sultan? What green water?” Marketa cried. He was hurting her. “Let go of my hand—I pray of you!”

He seized her by her shoulders and shook her until her head rocked.

“You betray me!”

He dragged her to his bed, his voice a hoarse whisper. “You whore! You shall not be his or anyone else’s but mine!”

He threw her down on the bed and buried his face in her throat and bosom. He was everywhere on her body at once. His kisses licked her and then he began to bite, and bite hard at her breasts.

“Ouch! You are hurting me! Don Julius!” she said, stifling a scream.

He flattened his hand over her mouth.

“Silence!” he said, cold anger in his voice. “You will spoil everything.”

He pulled her skirt and petticoat up over her head and tore at her undergarment.

“Don Julius! No! No!”

This was not the lovemaking she had envisioned.

She felt a hard thrust between her thighs.

“No!” she cried. There was no response but a panting, the panting of an animal.

There was a rough, searing pain between her legs. She felt her tender flesh being torn.

She twisted and rolled her hips to the side, pulled at his shoulders and arms to loosen his grip. He only bore down more violently, making a growling sound deep in his throat.

“Give me the secret to the Coded Book!” he gasped in her ear. “You bitch of the Netherworld, give me the answers!”

“I do not know!” she cried.

“I swear it.” “You
shall
give me the code!” he said, driving himself into her harder and deeper. “How do you quiet the voices? Tell me!”

Marketa whimpered in pain, and she stared up into his eyes glinting in madness and fury. He bit her neck hard, pulled her back close to him. All she could hear were his gasps, rough and surging in her ears.

She shut her eyes tight, refusing to look at the beast who raped her.

Within minutes he shuddered above her. Was this was what her mother had wanted for her? Now she had had a Hapsburg between her legs. She felt nothing but pain and emptiness. And terror.

Don Julius rolled off her, breathing hard. She smelled something rancid on his breath.

She felt hot tears streaming down her face. She watched his eyes lose their mad gaze, the muscles in his forehead relax, the throbbing vein in his temple retreat until it was only a faint green-blue line.

He lifted himself up and looked into her face, studying it with bewildered eyes.