The Bloodletter's Daughter (38 page)

Jakub walked to the window and stared out at the stars and the moonlight on the budding apple trees through the thick, warped glass. Spring was so late this year, bestowing little comfort for the earth’s tender shoots and bulbs.

“I should have protected her from that monster,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “She wrote of her compassion for him. I should have responded more strongly. I should have forbidden her. I will never forgive myself!”

“She lives, Jakub, she lives.”

“Yes, but how she has suffered. And now...”

Annabella put down her knife and wiped her hands on her apron. “And now
what
, Jakub?”

Jakub could not face her. He stared again out the window.

“I meant to make her my wife. But now it is impossible.”

Annabella rose and walked toward the window. She seized Jakub by the shoulders and turned him around.

“And why would that be? Why could you not marry her?”

Jakub hesitated. “Because she has been raped by the king’s son.”

Annabella’s face buckled with scorn. “What difference does that make?”

“You don’t understand, Annabella. I cannot help it. It is my upbringing. And what if the king discovers my wife’s past with his son. That she was raped—”

Annabella turned on him in fury, her hands clenched in fists.

“Does her virginity matter? You confuse the bitter teachings of priests with God and goodness. Do you really believe bloody sheets are the banner of purity and innocence?”

“Annabella! You cannot understand. Those ‘bitter priests’ were my life, my childhood. I can’t just forget everything I ever believed. I would have to begin my life, my beliefs again from nothing.” He blushed and tried to steer away from the black abyss of life without belief. “And the king—”

Annabella slammed her hand on the table, the noise like a sudden explosion. “Don’t talk to me about the king! We are talking about love. Love risks all, fears nothing! Do not be a fool, Jakub.”

She thudded her fist on the table and narrowed her eyes. “Would I have the power in my spells, as potent and blinding as religion!” Annabella narrowed her eyes. “And do not pretend that your own virginity does not play a part in your fears. You are too proud, Jakub.”

Jakub turned on her, furious. “You have no right to say that, Annabella.”

“Aha! I have touched upon the truth. It is indeed your own ‘virtue’ that stands in the way of your heart. I know you, Jakub.
You are a good man, a forgiving man. Release yourself from the tyranny of cloistered men. What a dark shadow these vicious men in robes of sackcloth have cast upon your soul.”

“But it is my faith, Annabella!”

“Faith? Ah, see how the Church has blinded you, crippling your own true spirit? You must throw off these fetters, find your own courage.”

Jakub turned away and looked out at the darkness. He was so absorbed in his despair that he did not notice the Krumlov witch reach quickly into her cloth bundle and draw out a tiny, blue glass vial. She removed the stopper with her teeth and sprinkled the contents of the liquid into the jug of dark ale.

She gave the jug a quick swirl, watching Jakub’s back as he stared out into the night.

Jakub drew his finger across the condensation on the windowpane. Spring was still as fragile as a newborn, here in the north of Bohemia, fragile to the point of sacrifice to the lingering winter cold.

Annabella sighed. “Come away from the window, Jakub. You worry too much about Marketa and the past. Come drink to her health, for she is in the safety of my own home. Besides, I have a plan, a way to save not only Marketa, but all of the innocents of Krumlov, should the spirits help me.”

Annabella poured Jakub ale from the pitcher. When he asked if she would join him in a drink, she refused.

“I have sated my thirst. But there is a favor I will ask tonight, though not quite yet. Drink, Jakub, drink. Let the good ale rinse away your worries.”

Outside the cottage, an owl hooted in the moonlight. Annabella smiled as Jakub downed his mug of brown ale and poured himself another draught.

A D
ARK
W
INTER

By early winter of 1607, the Jesuit priests of Krumlov had learned the story of Marketa’s rape and the near miracle of her survival. Abbot Bedrich Prochazka prayed fervently for God’s advice, begging for wisdom. He spent days on his knees, his old bones soaking up the chill of the ancient stone floor of the monastery.

The abbot ultimately decided it was God’s will to protect the innocent, and he said nothing to the Spanish priest. Though the Jesuit order was a staunch supporter of the crown and the Catholic Hapsburgs, the Krumlov priests could not bring themselves to betray one of their own and give comfort to Don Julius.

The Jesuits knew how to guard secrets.

Abbot Prochazka felt he owed his allegiance above all to God, then to Bohemia, not Rudolf II. The king’s obsession with the occult had left a sour taste in the abbot’s mouth. Better to protect an innocent girl than please a Hapsburg and bring about her certain death. Abbot Prochazka believed there was a higher reckoning in heaven than the judgment of the Hapsburg dynasty
here on earth. If God had spared the girl’s life, He must have another plan for her.

Abbot Prochazka sighed, remembering his boyhood. Marketa’s aunt, Ludmilla of the Poor Clares, had been his childhood sweetheart, before she renounced him one night and took her vows. There was a special aura about Ludmilla that had passed to her niece. Marketa had been spared by divine intervention, of this the abbot was certain.

Abbot Prochazka was not convinced that Carlos Felipe would feel the same way. He thought the priest worked a bit too hard to cultivate favor with royalty, and the fact that he had once been confessor to the Spanish court of Felipe II made the abbot doubt his commitment to God’s work among the poor and innocent. Abbot Prochazka doubted that the Spanish priest would protect a simple Krumlovian girl, a bathmaid. Her fate would seem inconsequential to him in the great chess game of European politics and religion.

On the next occasion when the two priests met to discuss Don Julius’s soul, Abbot Prochazka mentioned nothing about Marketa’s plummet from Rozmberk Castle.

Under the leaking roof of the Poor Clares convent, Mother Superior Ludmilla Pichlerova was confined to bed. The old nuns whispered this disease had been long in coming, for her rattling coughs had echoed ominously through the convent for months.

As the summer days shortened toward autumn, the nuns knew she had little time left on this earth. They were certain she would not make it through these last hard winter months before God called her to Him.

Ludmilla coughed continuously, spitting up bright blood. She was so weak she could barely sit up for the nuns to spoon-feed
her broth brewed of pork bones and marjoram. She invited her brother to visit her often, even though the rules of the convent prohibited men. As she was the mother superior and the other nuns, the Jesuit abbot, and the church priests made no trouble about her requests, her brother, Zigmund Pichler, spent many an hour by her sickbed.

“And how goes the healing process with Marketa?” she asked, as her own health diminished day by day.

“Splendidly, dear Ludmilla.”

“Ah, that is good.”

Ludmilla’s brother twisted his beard between his fingers.

“You know I only wanted the best for her. To protect her from the raging lunatic—that is why I brought her here.”

Ludmilla nodded weakly, a slow rocking of her head in rhythm to her ragged breath.

“Of course, Brother. You did what a good father should. You tried to protect and defend your daughter.”

Ludmilla struggled to focus her fever-glazed eyes on her brother, for she thought she heard a sob cracking his voice. When she reached her hand for his face, she touched his cheek, hot and wet with tears.

“Oh, Sister! I was a bad father, a selfish fiend! I let my wife sell her to a patron to procure gold and feed the twins better cuts of meat! I used the money earned by her body to purchase books!”

“I know,” said Ludmilla, turning her eyes toward her statue of the Holy Virgin on a shelf on the wall. She considered the saint’s forgiving smile, a woman who mourned her son but nevertheless faithfully protected wretched humanity and heard their prayers. Christ’s mother lived her entire life among the sinners, but she spends eternity forgiving them, her kind love intervening in their despair.

Sinners—humanity. Ludmilla heaved a sigh from the depths of her lungs, striking a sharp pain in her chest. She winced,
clutching her breast. After a few shallow breaths, she composed herself to speak again.

“The nuns told me that the brewer was her patron,” she said. “They said she would lose her virtue to him if we did not intervene. I, too, wanted to protect her and bring her into our flock.” She looked toward the faint light that strayed through the leaded window, playing on the gray stones. This time of year, the sun offered only the weakest rays of sunlight to the Bohemian lands.

“You know my time is near, Zigmund,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I am called to meet Jesus and his Father, our God.”

Her brother sniffed back his tears, realizing what she was saying and wanting to be stronger for his sister, as strong as she was at this moment.

“Let Annabella brew a cure for you, Sister. She has cured even the sickest among us!”

“No,” said Ludmilla, coughing. She dabbed a white linen cloth to her white lips. “Annabella would look at me and ask me if I wanted to be cured, if I had a dream to pursue. I have heard of her ways. My dream is to meet Jesus our Lord and Savior. I am on that path.”

Pichler grasped his sister’s frail hand across the coarse woolen blanket. He was amazed how fine and white her skin remained, even after so many years. There were no wrinkles on the creamy skin that had rarely seen the sun or wind and snow, sheltered for a lifetime within the walls of the convent.

“We will not dwell on my future in the other world,” she said, “but in this world we live in, you and I. There is something I wish. It will shock you, I am sure. But hear me, I am adamant about this.”

“What, dear Sister? I promise you, I swear to you. Anything you wish,” said Pichler.

Ludmilla lifted her free hand to her eyebrow and scratched it, her arm trembling.

“Truly. You would swear?”

“I swear it.”

She let her hand fall, exhausted from lifting it to her face. She cleared her throat as she reached for the handkerchief on the coverlet. Pichler winced as crimson drops stained the linen.

“I want to give my body to your science, to Marketa and to you to further your investigation of anatomy.”

“Never!” said Pichler, his spine stiffening in revulsion at the thought. “I could never consent to that!” He squeezed her hand so hard, he could feel the fragile bones crush together.

His sister mewed in pain and drew back her hand, pressing it protectively against her concave chest. Then she gathered her strength and drew herself up, shaking with effort. She looked at her brother, her blue eyes deep in their sockets, wild animals in a cave.

“Marketa is right. What have I ever accomplished by not setting foot outside this convent? My last act should be to help humanity in the search for cures for the body’s disease. I have always attended scrupulously to my soul and that of others in my prayers. If I were to donate my body once the soul has departed, then I serve one last time, in a way I never could in life.”

It was all too much for Pichler. He convulsed with sobs, his big shoulders shaking as he wept for his sister.

Ultimately, it was neither a Jesuit nor a Krumlov citizen who told Don Julius that Marketa still walked the earth. He learned that news in a small tavern—a hunting lodge and salt traders’ rest stop—nestled in the dark pine mountains of Sumava, a long, cold day’s ride from Cesky Krumlov.

It was there on a cold February day that Don Julius overheard a drunken conversation between two salt traders.

Don Julius had become darkly morose, more melancholy than choleric. The Spanish priest, at wit’s end with his wailing, finally acquiesced to his companions’ pleas to take their swolleneyed friend on a week’s hunt in the wilds of southern Bohemia, where bears roamed the pine-studded mountains and wild cats prowled the steep embankments.

“He must be persuaded to forget this common girl! Her memory haunts him like a phantom!” they pleaded. “What good is it to watch the man cry like a woman for the loss of a simple bathmaid? Let us take him away on the hunt. His soul will be recharged with the excitement of chasing prey where good winds blow with the scent of pine. The chase and bloodlust will restore his health so that he sleeps once more at night. As shall we!”

Finally Carlos Felipe agreed. He was to accompany them in a coach and lodge in the tavern in a room close to Don Julius.

The inn at Smrcina was large enough to host a dozen men, many of whom were salt traders from Austria who wended their way with mule trains to Prague or Cesky Budejovice. The food was simple, game roasted over an open fire, eaten with a knife, something all travelers carried with them, often around their necks. The Spanish priest found the fare simple and agreeable, reminiscent of the spit-roasted meats of Spain: fire-licked and unseasoned, except for salt.

Still the days of hunting in the cold mountain air had no effect on Don Julius, thought the priest. Carlos Felipe watched his morose charge brood, hunched over his ale, examining the tankard as the froth lost its vigor, receding slowly below the rim. He refused to converse with his companions or the priest and snapped that he was to be left alone.

But Don Julius and his party were not the only customers in the tavern, and those who shared the room were drunk and loose-tongued.

The two brawny salt merchants had swallowed jar after jar of ale and were slurring their words in loud voices as they exchanged gossip.

“He pitched her from the castle, screaming for mercy!” said one, his powerful hands clenched in a fist. “The bloody Hapsburgs think nothing of tossing a Bohemian out a window! To them, we are expendable as apple peelings and kitchen scraps!”

“He cut her, that’s what I hear,” answered his friend, a dirty scrap of leather worn as a patch over his eye. “My friend says he saw her enter the Gray Goose, her face stitched up with black thread. Eyes swollen—puffed up like she had been pummeled. Couldn’t walk on her own, the innkeeper had to carry her back to her room like a sack of salt. It was a miracle she was alive.”

He paused, taking a long gulp of beer and rubbing at his greasy eye patch with his knuckle.

The priest squinted hard at Don Julius to see how these words registered. At first, the melancholy eyes seemed to blink, as if struggling with a bad memory. Then Don Julius jumped up, snarling like mad dog, knocking over his ale.

The crash of broken crockery alerted the two traders. Suddenly a disheveled man with wild eyes stood before them with his rapier drawn.

“Where is she?” Don Julius demanded. “If you value your life’s blood, you will tell me this moment!”

The men jumped up from their table and unsheathed their own weapons, crouching, ready to spring at their attacker.

“Stop!” shouted the priest standing beside Don Julius, along with his two companions.

“This is the son of His Majesty King Rudolf II. To harm him will bring you to the dungeons of the
hrad
!”

The traders kept their swords unsheathed and at the ready, but lowered them several degrees.

“Tell him to drop his weapon and we will do the same,” shouted the man with the eye patch. “We have not done him harm. By God, why does he menace us?”

“Where is she?” roared Don Julius, slicing the air with his rapier.

The priest drew close to his charge and whispered in his ear, “If you drop your sword, we can discover the secret. Dead men cannot talk, Don Julius. Secrets die with them.”

At this Don Julius moved his head, more of a sequence of trembles than a nod. He lowered his rapier, his movements as wooden as a marionette. The priest slowly and cautiously removed his hand from the hilt.

“Now,” said the priest, panting, “would you allow us to sit with you, and we can discuss the matter of the bathmaid.”