The Bloodletter's Daughter (6 page)

“My beauties,” she purred to them as she opened the door.

The great room was cluttered with clay pots on shelves, full of ointments and rendered fats. An open fire pit stood in the center of the room, though the fireplace on one wall was clearly where she did her cooking.

This must be where she performs her spells and witchcraft
, Marketa thought. She said a quick prayer but did not want to leave. One of the cats, a bright orange tomcat with green eyes, lingered at Marketa’s side, watching her.

The ceiling was hung with dried herbs, an upside-down garden, the flowers and leaves blossoming from the rafters down.

Marketa sneezed and sneezed again.

“That is normal until you get used to it,” said Annabella. “There are half a hundred different herbs and flowers drying overhead. I will brew us some chamomile tea, and we will get started curing your rash.”

She pulled a clay pot with a wire handle from a shelf and filled it with water from a jug. She fed the embers in the hearth with twigs and blew on them until they burst into flame. She added a birch log and wiped her hands on her apron. With tongs, she hung the little pot from the hook in the hearth.

Marketa could smell the smoked hams, redolent with fat, tied in the chimney above the fire. Amid the strangeness of the herbs, it was a familiar scent; Krumlov families stored meat and sausages in strings from the chimney so the smoke would cure the meats.

Annabella took her knife and reached up into the chimney. She smiled as her hand emerged with a fat sausage. The three cats came meowing, and Annabella squeezed some fat on the floor for them to lick.

“Here, we will have this with some bread and ale. We must celebrate the pearl!” she said, bringing out a big jug of ale and two clay mugs. The two young women sat on the bench by the fire and shared the bread and sausage while the tea water boiled.

“How did you find me?” Annabella asked.

“Your neighbor, the alchemist, told me where you might be,” Marketa said.

“Ah, Pan Alchemist. Yes, he is an observant one. Do you know he is an astrologer as well? A wise man, though he failed as an alchemist.”

“He told me my rash is a result of my body and spirit rebelling.”

Annabella chewed thoughtfully on her sausage. At last she smacked her lips and asked, “Do you think he is right?”

“I do not know. I thought you would know.”

“I am not inside your body and mind. It was not I who found the pearl.”

Marketa sighed, confused, and looked at the leaping flames.

“There are some moments in my life I am ashamed of,” Marketa said. “Things I would like to change.”

“Dare to speak them aloud, Marketa. Tell me.”

Marketa swallowed hard. “I hate being a bathmaid.” She said the words as if she were spitting out a bitter herb. “I hate showing my body to a man for his lust and pleasure, especially an old married man. I despise his smell and touch.”

Marketa gasped as the big orange cat leapt into her lap.

Annabella looked at the fire as she leaned over to stroke the cat, who purred at her touch.

“It seems your body despises his touch as well. You must seek a way to escape. Is there a dream you wish to pursue?”

Marketa ducked her head and looked down into the cat’s orange fur.

“Tell me,” Annabella said. “Tell me what future you want, no matter how unlikely. Declare not what you are, not what you have to be, but what you want to be.”

Marketa could smell the healer’s breath, fragrant with herbs as if she were part of the dried garden hanging overhead.

Marketa spoke the words she had never said to anyone before, words she had hardly had the courage to think, much less speak. “I want to be a physician. I want to be a bloodletter,
ne
, a full physician, one who can heal with the teachings of Paracelsus as well as Galen.”

“Ah, Paracelsus,” Annabella said. “Do you know that many of his methods and medicines are ones we cunning women have used for hundreds of years? His bible of herbal remedies came from our mothers and grandmothers, handed down woman to woman for generations.”

Marketa ducked her head in disbelief. Paracelsus was a scientist, not a sorcerer. Annabella’s words were blasphemy.

“I can see that you do not believe me,” Annabella said, shrugging. “Well...” She left the word hanging in the air as she rose and opened an oak chest that groaned in protest. Bending and straightening, she carefully lifted out a book, the Book of Paracelsus.

“What is this?” Marketa was astonished. “You could afford to have this? It is a treasure!”

“Yes, well. It was a gift. Let us just say that I did a very rich and powerful man a very great favor.” Annabella smiled. “Shoo, Prophet!” she said, waving her hand at the cat on Marketa’s lap. She laid the tome on Marketa’s lap. “Open it.”

Never did Marketa think she would see the writings of Paracelsus, let alone in a witch’s house in Krumlov. She handled the book carefully, savoring the animal smell of the vellum, the finely inked writing scratched on the pages.

It suddenly occurred to Marketa that Annabella could read.

“Who taught you to read?” she asked.

“That same good neighbor you met earlier, Pan Alchemist. Now, look, see what it says about skin inflammations. I have a potion for you—Saint-John’s-wort tempered with soaked oats.”

Marketa carefully lifted the pages one by one, to find cures for skin inflammations.

“Yes,” she said, as a smile broke over her face. “Yes, Paracelsus calls it ‘red oil.’”

And as Marketa said this, Annabella reached her hands toward a jar, shining red as a sunset.

“I have infused these oils since I gathered the flowers on Saint John’s Day. They have a special power when plucked on that date. You must take this home and pour enough oil to cover just the bottom of a cup, fill the cup halfway with cooked oats, and make a poultice to cover wherever the rash afflicts you.”

Marketa nodded.

“But that is not all. I want you to take three drops of the tincture three times a day and concentrate on your dream. You must do this or the tincture will do no good for you.”

Marketa hung her head. “What good will that do? My mother has contracted me to the brewer, and we need the money. I am a woman, and if I practice bloodletting or other medicine I will be accused of being a...”

She broke off.

“A witch? Is that what you are afraid of?” Annabella said. “Well, my sister, have some courage and heed your dreams, not your mother’s demands or what the gossips may say or expect you to be.”

Marketa nodded.

“If you have hope, the medicine will work for you. If you settle for despair, there is nothing I or anyone else can do to help you. Now let us have some of the chamomile tea with honey. It is also good for your nerves.”

Then she reached over and caressed Marketa’s hair.

“Such special hair,” she said. “I have never seen so many colors at once. It is like mottled amber.”

Then she stared into Marketa’s eyes, holding her gaze.

“There may be a day when you again need my help, sister. Do not forget that I am here to serve the innocent and deserving. And remember this: Do not fear the good spirits who come to aid you in your life.”

Prophet the cat began to purr at Marketa’s feet as she settled down to examine the book again.

When Marketa left Annabella’s house two hours later, she felt a new sense of determination, like a young colt galloping and bucking in the tall grass of summer. The cold wind that curled around her chin seemed gentler than she remembered it, and she dropped her scarf, not worrying whether anyone saw the red blisters on her face.

A
RCHDUKE
M
ATTHIAS,
Y
OUNGER
B
ROTHER OF
R
UDOLF
II

A tall, bearded rider raced along the spine of low hills flanking the Danube. The wind blew the white mane of the Andalusian stallion into the rider’s eyes as he crouched low on the horse’s withers, its pounding hoofs churning up loam at breakneck speed.

Matthias, Archduke of Upper and Lower Austria, glanced back to see his entourage far behind him; no one could keep up with Royal Ducat, his gray stallion.

Trained to ride in his father Emperor Maximillian II’s Spanish Riding School at the age of five, Matthias had grown up on the back of Lipizzaners. These Andaluz horses were brought from Spain to Austria by his father and uncle and bred exclusively for the Hapsburg monarchy. Matthias felt his father’s passion for horses in his blood. And although his elder brother Rudolf—stocky and short—shared his enthusiasm for the Andaluz breed, it was Matthias’s long leg on a horse and fearlessness in the saddle that made his father proud.

Emperor Maximillian knew this young son was the warrior Hapsburg.

Matthias reined in his horse along the rocky ridge, trampling the carpet of red poppies under hoof. He had ridden several miles beyond the walls of the great city of Esztergom—the “jewel of the Danube bend” and ancient capital of Hungary. King Rudolf’s younger brother was determined to defend the city that his armies had fought so hard to take back from the Ottomans scarcely more than a decade before.

The archduke scanned the low green hills of the Hungarian countryside. There were rumors of an Ottoman incursion in the southeast beyond Buda, but so far he had seen no smoke from campfires where the Janissaries would have been cooking their rations in enormous copper kettles.

More than any other army, thought Matthias, an Ottoman’s heart for war was determined by the rations in their dinner bowl. The sign of honor and high rank was a soup ladle, distinguishing the officers from the soldiers.

Not a star. Not a crescent moon or gold stripe. A soup ladle signified the
corbaci
, the captain of a unit.

Matthias had learned much about the Turks in the past years, mostly from one of his chief commanders, the wealthy Transylvanian Ferenc Nadasdy, whose gold had financed a large portion of the Hapsburg defense against the marauding Ottomans.

Despite the financial backing and Nadasdy’s appetite for war, Matthias had not been sorry when he heard last year of the warrior lord’s death in battle. The brutal Transylvanian had made his skin crawl. Matthias dreaded the nights of the Ottoman campaign when he was quartered in Nadasdy’s ancestral castle of Cachtice, a drafty stone fortress at the foot of the Little Carpathians. The frightened eyes of the castle servants and the
cowering peasants in the village made Matthias wonder which the people feared more—the Turks or the Nadasdy family.

Nadasdy was a man who loved war—and was especially fond of torture. Even the Turks feared him, calling him the Black Knight of Transylvania. It was rumored his wife, Elizabeth Bathory, niece of the king of Poland, was as sadistic as her husband.

Still, distasteful though they might be, these alliances with the rich and powerful families of Europe were critical to the Hapsburg dynasty.

Nadasdy taught Matthias the savage customs of the Ottomans and their beliefs.
Know your enemy, Matthias
, he had instructed him.
Know your enemy better than he knows you.

Matthias learned how the Ottomans dyed their horses for battle, how their Janissary troops were kidnapped Christian boys, circumcised and raised as Islamic warriors. He learned that the bloody heathens, who impaled their enemies’ heads upon stakes as trophies, stopped to pray five times a day. Before they prostrated themselves before God, they washed themselves. He learned that on the battlefield, where there was no water, they rubbed themselves with sandy dirt, cleaning behind their ears and rubbing their hands from the forehead to the nape of their necks, as a cat would lick itself clean with the crook of its paw.

Heathens
, thought Matthias, leaning to spit over his boot in the stirrup. Yet the barbarians were banging a mighty fist on the front gates of Europe, once again threatening Vienna itself, as they moved ever closer to the heart of civilized Christendom.

It was Matthias and his Holy Roman armies—led by men like Nadasdy—on the wild Hungarian front that held back the infidels’ armies. His brother, King and Emperor Rudolf II, had given him a perilous honor: commander-in-chief of the Ottoman War.

Rudolf would like to see my head stuck on the tip of an Ottoman spear, the crows pecking at my eyes
, thought Matthias.
At last he would be rid of me.

Rudolf feared Matthias, for the king had no legitimate children. He put every obstacle in his younger brother’s way to keep him away from Prague and the throne.

Matthias looked down at the crushed poppies on the ground and thought of his lovely cousin, Anne of Austria. He swallowed hard, knowing that as long as King Rudolf was alive, Matthias could never ask for her hand, or any other woman’s for that matter.

It was not enough that the king had begrudged Matthias permission to marry; the warrior archduke was called away from his home in Linz to plan and fight battles, both offensive and defensive, against the encroaching Ottoman armies. He had no life but war, year after year.

How he wished he could shift this burden to his older brother’s shoulders! But Prague did not concern itself with Hungary and its scorched lands, the wounded, the dead. King Rudolf spent his gold on alchemists, astrologists, and the occult. He washed his hands of Hungary, leaving its defense to Matthias and his allies.

The king’s only concern with Royal Hungary was taxing the Protestant majority into poverty and ruin as they fought to save their ancient kingdom. If it weren’t for the money that Petr Vok Rozmberk now poured into the Turkish campaign, the Ottomans would have long since taken Moravia, Bohemia, and Vienna.

Matthias saw a thin wisp of smoke snake up over a hill in the distance. His stallion nickered, no doubt calling to the mares in the Ottoman camp.

We will attack at dawn
, he thought.
If we circle the encampment and cut off escape into Buda, we stand a chance of halting their progress into Royal Hungary.
The scouts to the north and east would no doubt report other incursions that evening, for the Ottomans were always on the march.

Matthias reined his horse back toward camp, where he and the commanders would plan their attack.

But before he spurred his horse, he took a second look at the flower-strewn countryside and the rolling green hills. Someday all this would be part of his kingdom. Someday he would rule as Holy Roman emperor.

His numerous spies in Prague kept him informed. They came to the Hungarian front to find him, all with the same report, eager for the silver their sharp ears and wagging tongues earned them.

The king’s son Don Julius is mad! The people of Prague spit and whistle at the rogue when he walks the streets, yet the king does nothing to contain him.

The Achilles’ heel of his brother Rudolf was his favorite son. Matthias’s informers told sordid tales of scandals in the streets of Prague and Vienna, and in the brothels of both cities, dark stories of the lunatic bastard, who even prostitutes feared.

Now there were whispers that Rudolf considered incarcerating Don Julius—his own son.

Know your enemy, Nadasdy had said. And find his weakness.

One day my young nephew will help me claim the throne
, Matthias thought, and he smiled as his entourage finally caught up to him on the ridge.