The Bloodletter's Daughter

by Linda Lafferty

  The king swept his cape around him in an angry gesture and walked quickly toward the street where the royal coach stood waiting.

  A cacophony of raucous laughter chased him out as the great door slammed shut, leaving the director alone holding the single torch in the cold blackness of the stone hall.

  CHAPTER 3

  ANNABELLA AND THE MAGIC PEARL

  The rash began the night after Marketa’s first service to Pan Brewer. A bright red blush appeared around her mouth, and when she undressed, she saw the rash staining her breasts and between her thighs. Wherever he had touched her, her flesh was inflamed and the heat burned her from inside, making her thrash on her straw bed and whimper in pain.

  Marketa’s mother caught her by the chin when she came to eat her soup for breakfast.

  “What is this?”

  Marketa pulled her face away from her mother’s hands.

  “Probably a disease I caught from the brewer.”

  “Nonsense!” Lucie said. “Any sickness you would contract would take days to show through.” She knew of such things quite intimately.

  “No, these are the devil’s marks!” she declared and crossed herself. She looked at Marketa as if she wanted to drown her in the Vltava and save the rest of the family.

  “What do you mean, ‘the devil’s marks’? What dealings do you think I have had with the devil, other than serving my body to a married man?”

  Her mother scowled and said nothing. She ladled some cabbage and barley soup into Marketa’s bowl and went back to cutting onions for another pot of soup. After a few moments she asked, “Have you been touching hair bits from your father’s barbershop?”

  Marketa focused her attention on the soup. When she did not answer, Lucie pursued. “Have you, girl? Have you picked up the hair?”

  “No, he would never allow it. But I think your fear of hair is all foolishness. Science will someday prove it is nothing but superstitious ignorance.”

  Marketa’s mother narrowed her eyes.

  “You think you know the dark world? Say a prayer that your soul is not snatched by the devil for your haughtiness. Spit, Marketa! Spit now on the ground and take back your words before the evil eye sees your confidence and boasting and strikes our hearth and home.”

  Marketa knew better than to argue with her mother, so she gathered up the juices in her mouth and spat copiously on the stone floor.

  “So what am I to do about this map of red on my body, Mother?”

  Now her mother was truly worried. She stopped cutting onions and stared at her.

  “It is beyond your face?”

  “It laces every spot the brewer touched. You can imagine the burn between my legs.”

  Lucie pinched up her face like a mole emerging from its burrow, peering out into daylight.

  “I swear to you I will not let him touch you again. Not yet.”

  “Mother, that may be so, but look at his mark.”

  Lucie looked at her daughter in exasperation, flinging down her knife on the cutting board so that chopped vegetables scattered about the table.

  “You must get rid of this ugliness. How will the brewer ever look upon you again with lust if we do not erase the devil’s touch?”

  Marketa said nothing but broke off some bread and dipped it into her soup. With the promise of more money, her mother had been generous with the marjoram and pork bits.

  “We have to return your fair skin,” she said, wiping up her daughter’s spit from the floor with a rag. She paused. “You must go see the cunning woman Annabella on Dlouha Street. She will concoct something to cure you and ease your pain. So that you can go back—to work.”

  Marketa winced. Work. What she was expected to do with her body from now on. But she made herself focus on her mother’s other words—she must go to see the witch.

  She had heard of the cunning woman Annabella and her mother, also Annabella, the old crone who had died last winter. Every woman who lived in the house on Dlouha Street was named Annabella, and they passed on their spells—and their home—from mother to daughter. The current Annabella was only a few years older than Marketa and lived alone in the house. No one ever knew what happened to Annabella’s father or grandfather or any of the men of that family; it was only women who lived in the old house.

  The house was near the home of the alchemist who used to keep his laboratory in the first courtyard of Rozmberk Castle that towered above the town. He was rumored to have been close to producing gold from lead and brewing the Elixir of Life. But then Wilhelm Rozmberk died and his brother Petr Vok spent his money on women and drink and the war against the Ottomans, not alchemists’ secrets.

  “You must go to Annabella and see if there is an herb or potion she can give you. Wear a scarf around your face and walk straight there. You do not want people to see you until you are cured. Finish your soup and go!”

  Marketa pulled her cloak from the peg and wrapped a wool scarf around her blistering face.

  “If she is not at home, try the cemetery. She may be there.”

  Marketa shuddered. She did not like to visit the cemetery. Sometimes she had to go that way, by the crook of the Vltava, to look for mussels when the Pichler family was short of food for the day. Her father would give her a basket and a dull iron knife, though she would still cut her hands on the sharp-lipped shells.

  Too often as the girl searched for mussels she felt a cool draft from the graves thread its way around her legs like a cat. She looked over her shoulder at the tombstones, her eyes scanning the crowded Franciscan field. She never saw anything, but she thought she heard whispers as she scraped her knife against the river rocks. When she cut her hands on the shells, the blood dispersed in wispy red clouds, carried slowly downstream by the current.

  Today, Marketa walked through town, her head lowered and her face covered by the scarf. Because it was cold, no one asked her why the wool was pulled up around her mouth, and she greeted them one by one.

  “Dobre den, slecna.”

  “Dobre den,” Marketa answered, nodding her head.

  When she reached the house on Dlouha Street, she banged at Annabella’s door, stamping on the cobblestones to warm her feet. She had pulled her shoes out of the wooden trunk, although her mother had frowned, knowing the more she wore the shoes, the sooner they would wear out. But it was cold and the cobblestones made her feet ache. She bent over and tightened the rawhide straps that lashed the worn wooden soles to her feet. Three cats appeared out of nowhere, threading their soft-furred bodies around her legs, purring as they examined her.

  “She is not there,” said a voice.

  Marketa turned around and saw a wizened old man making his way down the street.

  “I saw her leave early this morning with a basket,” he said. “She may be gathering mushrooms, though it is not the season. More likely roots or mussels. At the cemetery, most likely.”

  “You are the alchemist,” Marketa said, through her scarf. Warm air puffed through the fabric, vapor clouds rising in the cold air. “I am Marketa Pichlerova.”

  “Ah, the bloodletter’s daughter!” said the old alchemist. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said, offering a hand.

  She shifted her left hand to hold her shawl and shook hands with him. He kept his milky, scarred eyes focused on hers.

  “Why are you hiding behind that scarf, slecna?”

  She sighed and dropped the shawl. “A rash. I came to visit Annabella to see if she could give me a potion to cure it.”

  “It looks like a transmutation to me,” he murmured, his icy fingers touching her face. There was a professional kindness in this act, not a judgment of character or repugnance at her condition.

  “Is there a change in your life or something you want changed? Your body is struggling to throw off a poisonous state.”

  She gulped and strained to compose herself. This was a stranger. What did he know about her struggles?

  “How do you know such things, sir?”

  “I have
studied transmutation and the Kabbalah all my life. Rashes like these are often a sign of the body and soul rebelling.” He looked deep into the girl’s eyes. “Is there something troubling you, slecna?”

  Marketa looked down at the cobblestones, icy and slick.

  He coughed. “Yes, well, I have overstepped the bounds, I fear. Seek Annabella, she may have something to help you. She is a wise woman, like her mother, and shows signs of having strong powers at such a young age.”

  She thanked him for his trouble. He nodded his head and turned to walk around the corner, to his house on Siroka, or “Wide,” Street, where the market stalls hummed with haggling and bartering.

  Marketa hurried back down Dlouha Street toward the river, avoiding the town square and distancing herself from the busy market.

  Annabella was at the edge of the cemetery, digging for roots among the graves. The red-haired witch was on her knees, her fingers searching through the dirt. Marketa recognized the fresh mound of the grave of a drowned boy Krumlov had buried just a few weeks ago.

  “These roots have special powers, given up by the departing spirit,” the witch said, without looking up. “You are the girl the bathers now call Musle, are you not?”

  Her words startled Marketa, for Annabella had not looked up. Marketa’s eyes were uncommonly keen, and she had seen the sorceress’s young body huddled under the dark cloak from a distance, but she did not know it was Annabella for sure until she saw the tangled red hair. Not once did the cunning woman look up.

  “How do you know me? How do you know that name?”

  “Oh, now, do not blush,” Annabella said, turning at last to look at Marketa with her hazel eyes. “There is no need to ever worry what people think.”

  “It hurts me,” Marketa said, choking.

  “Do not let it. Gossip is only meant to weaken your powers because people are afraid of anything but the most common and familiar. Your name has great power, did you know that?”

  Annabella brushed her hands clean of the dirt and rose from the grave site.

  “Now take your shawl away from your face and let me look at what you hide behind it,” she said, stretching her back like a cat.

  Marketa swallowed and let the shawl fall.

  “A nasty one. Does it affect your womanly parts?”

  Again Marketa blushed. “Yes. Even more severely than my face.”

  Annabella made a clucking sound with her tongue. “We must do something about it.”

  “How much will you charge me? I do not have much to give you.”

  “Oh, that is where you are wrong, Marketa. You have much to give me. I will prove it to you.”

  Annabella took Marketa by the hand and walked to the edge of the river. She pointed down to a bed of mussels under the ripples of water.

  “I will rid you of the rash if you will help me. Show me which one of the mussels has the great pearl.”

  Marketa looked at her as if she were mad. “I know nothing of pearls. Even the old shellman at the market does not know which mussel might contain a pearl. If he did, he would be a wealthy man.”

  “Musle,” Annabella said. “You were given this name in a moment of passion. The spirit speaks truth in these seconds, even when spoken by the most fetid and base human beings. But most are fools who cannot comprehend their message. It is like the mussel. A piece of sand irritates it, and the shell wishes to expel it as rubbish. But what occurs is a miracle of beauty, a pearl.

  “Point to the mussel, Marketa. But promise I will have what is contained within.”

  Marketa touched the rash that was burning her left breast and sighed. She knelt above the rocky ledge of mussels just below the water’s surface. Under the ripples, the shells seemed to be moving, growing, retreating. River grasses and mosses grew fuzzy beards on the shells, making them look like the Jews who huddled together as they stood every morning, waiting for the town gates to open and let them enter.

  How would she find a pearl among the dozens and dozens of mussels here?

  She reached down and her left hand broke the surface of the water. There was one mussel, no different from the rest, neither smaller nor larger, shinier nor more covered with moss. She touched its lip and it closed, tight.

  “This one,” Marketa said.

  Annabella nodded and bent down beside her with her knife. It was crooked and better suited for loosening mussels than the one Marketa had.

  Annabella worked the edge of the knife back and forth behind the shell and severed its hold on the rocks. She smiled as she looked into Marketa’s eyes, and, quick as the shellman in the market, the witch slipped her knife around the mouth of the shell and pried it open with a twist of her wrist.

  Inside was an enormous white pearl, the largest Marketa had ever seen. It lay glistening in the spit of the mussel.

  “Here, quick—put it in your mouth for good luck. Then spit it into my hand,” said Annabella.

  Marketa did as she was told. The mineral taste of the mussel was fresh on her tongue and she smiled.

  She spat the pearl into Annabella’s open palm. The red-haired woman took out a little leather purse and popped the pearl into it and drew the purse strings tight. She tucked the buckskin bag into her bodice.

  “Now,” she said, “let us do something about that rash.”

  Marketa accompanied her back to her house. Again, the three cats appeared, meowing this time in chorus. Annabella bent over to stroke their chins.

  “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.