The Bloodletter's Daughter

by Linda Lafferty

  That summer night the bathhouse was full to capacity, and the air buzzed with gossip. Marketa’s mother hurried from one barrel to another, testing the water. If a bather was scalded, he would never return. She stood on a little wooden stool and dipped her elbow in the water; her hands were too callused from washing to be sensitive to temperature.

  All anyone wanted to talk about was the Hapsburg prince.

  “Pan Brod said that he is only a few hours’ ride from here, probably staying the night in Budejovice.”

  “And your own husband, Pani Pichlerova, witnessed his filthy acts in the streets of Vienna.”

  “Yes, you are right, Pani Pstruh. The man is a lunatic. But just the same, he is the son of the king.”

  “A Hapsburg at Cesky Krumlov! Who would ever imagine a Hapsburg living amongst us in southern Bohemia?”

  Marketa’s mother smiled at this as she fluffed up the linen bath sheets in her large basket.

  “Yes, and I hear that he is unmarried.”

  Pani Pstruh pulled her lip down into a frown.

  “And what of that?” she muttered. “Look at his father. Sired six children with that Italian whore but cannot bring himself to marry, even to produce a Hapsburg heir. And this son’s the mad bastard. Married or not, what does it matter?”

  “Still,” said Lucie, “Rudolf’s Italian favorite lives like a queen in the hrad. And the young prince will be wanting services, won’t he, same as the Rozmberks?”

  “He is not a prince—he is a bastard son,” growled the mayor from a barrel nearby.

  Lucie ignored him.

  “You, Pani Mylnar, your good breads and cakes made from your husband’s flour. Once the Hapsburg smells the baking on Saturday mornings, he’ll send a servant soon enough to fetch him some sweet rolls and cakes for his royal belly. You will be working in the castle kitchens again, just as you did for Wilhelm Rozmberk when he was alive.”

  Katarina’s mother smiled to herself, her fat cheeks crinkling up so high her eyes were pinched tight under folds of flesh.

  “And you, butcher’s wife. Do you not make the best sausage in southern Bohemia? Did not Petr Vok dine on your meats and wursts and even take them with him to Trebon Palace?”

  The pani nodded so vigorously, the water reciprocated with little splashes all around her stout neck.

  “Ah, but I don’t think the son of a king will be bathing here,” Lucie said sadly. “All of you will profit, but what do I have to trade for royal gold coins?”

  “A bloodletting!” exclaimed Pani Pstruh. “Perhaps Don Julius will employ your husband to cure him of his tempers.”

  At this all the bathers laughed until their barrels shook, to think of young Marketa carrying bowls of Hapsburg blood to pour into the garden and feed the earth.

  When the royal coach crossed the Barber’s Bridge, there were at least a hundred villagers lining the banks of the river. It was not often that a Hapsburg traveled to Cesky Krumlov. Only old Friar Damek remembered a visit by Rudolf’s father fifty years before.

  And now one was about to live above them in Rozmberk Castle.

  Several riders preceded the coach, and a young nobleman with blond hair and Viennese clothing winked at Katarina when he saw her alongside the road. She blushed and lowered her face, almost missing the coach itself.

  “Look up—here he comes!” Marketa whispered to her.

  The red velvet curtains were shut when the coach rattled across the bridge. An old hand, dry and withered, slipped through the curtains and drew them open for just a second.

  Marketa saw the face of a priest in a black cassock. Beside him was a stout youth who looked to be bound and gagged. He stared at her intently, and as the coach moved along, his head suddenly thrust out the window. She could see the gag plainly as he twisted his head to watch her until she was out of sight.

  Marketa was the first person he saw in Cesky Krumlov. She often wondered if that was her moment of destiny.

  That hot summer of 1606, few could sleep soundly in Cesky Krumlov. The howls that pierced the night air disturbed even the most profound slumber, and the oppressive humid heat of the Bohemian plains settled uncomfortably into the little river town.

  The people of Krumlov resembled sleepwalkers in the day, stumbling through their errands on the cobblestoned streets.

  “Who can sleep at all with that bellowing?” they complained in conspiratorial whispers. Every resident knew that it was treason to speak ill of a Hapsburg, but going night after night without sound sleep made their nerves raw.

  “The priest who cares for him is trying to drive the demons from his flesh. He lives on black bread and water.”

  “Imagine a Hapsburg eating like one of us. Worse!”

  Don Julius himself could not imagine it. He cursed the priest, throwing any object he could find. His apartments were stripped of anything that could be hurled at those who attended him.

  “I want cake!” he sobbed, holding the loose folds of skin that gathered around his shrunken belly. “I want sausage! I can smell the meats frying in that wretched town. What torture! Barbaric fiend!”

  Carlos Felipe looked coldly on his charge. His kissed the crucifix he held in his hand and stowed it again under his woolen robe.

  “You are just beginning to realize life’s pleasures,” he said. “Have you ever savored smell so keenly?”

  Don Julius spat back at him. “You sack of Spanish bones! What do you know of pleasure, you spineless, ball-less demon? You wouldn’t know how to enjoy a sausage pie or a whore between your legs!”

  “It is only with an empty belly, dry lips, and purged heart that you can receive the grace of God,” said the priest.

  Don Julius lunged at him. The two guards retrained him easily; the lack of food had made him weak. Still his curses condemned the priest to a painful death and a damned afterlife, threats wrapped in a host of references to his mother.

  Carlos Felipe, in fact, suffered in his own way. He keenly appreciated food and wine, but the fare of the Bohemians bordered on cattle feed to his Castilian tastes. He could not abide the smells of Cesky Krumlov, where the river valley retained the local cooking’s pungent aromas like a hovering cloud over the land. The air was laced with vinegar from pickles and hops from the brewery. The breath of the men in the streets was heavy with yeasty ales and pickled cabbage. But above all was the caraway! The priest lay awake at night on his cot, his nostrils yearning to breathe fresh air, uncontaminated by caraway. Even the skin of the people exuded this vile spice; they feasted on foods stewed in the wretched seeds, even bathed with it in the vast barrels where they submerged their white flesh, their heads bobbing above the waters, draining great tankards of beer.

  Miserable spore! Carlos Felipe believed the Bohemian fondness for the strong essence of the caraway seed bordered on sin, just as the Andalusians took such delight in smothering the good, simple taste of God’s bounty with heathen saffron, the spice of the infidels. Harvesting the stamen of the crocus and infusing their rice with the yellow-orange seed struck him as vulgar and worse...Moorish.

  All such strong tastes of foreign spice smacked of the devil.

  The Spanish priest longed for the succulent roast pork of Avila in the clean plains of Spain, simple foods, unspiced except for salt—the grain of God.

  AUTUMN 1606

  CHAPTER 12

  ROZMBERK CASTLE

  Two months after Don Julius’s arrival at Cesky Krumlov another visitor came to the town.

  It was Doctor Thomas Mingonius, renowned across Austria and the empire for his bloodletting techniques. When a letter announcing the visit came from Herr Weiss to Barber Pichler, the news left him astonished.

  “This doctor is one of the finest in Europe, second only to Jan Jesenius!”

  Marketa said, “Ah, but the physician Horcicky who stopped here for the baths when you were in Prague...I think he must be a remarkable doctor, Father.”

  Her father dismissed her remark with a wave of his hand. “Doctor Horc
icky works with insipid plants and pretty flowers, not with the raw blood of humankind. The weak medicine he practices is nothing more than old wives’ cures for the sick. Now Mingonius, he is a true surgeon—a renowned bloodletter! To have a few moments in his company to ask him questions, I would give my eyeteeth on a silver tray.”

  And, as if the offering had been heard across the hills and plains, Pichler’s prayer was answered. It wasn’t two days after the new visitor’s arrival that a groom brought a message to the barber from Doctor Mingonius himself—written in a steady hand on fine parchment.

  “I find myself here in the service of Don Julius and wonder if you might attend me. I will require some assistance in the near future, and Herr Weiss in Vienna has informed me of your skill as a barber-surgeon.”

  Pichler could not believe his good luck.

  “I am to assist Doctor Mingonius!” he said, his hand trembling as he read the letter. “One of the king’s own physicians!”

  “You are to attend royalty! You will see Hapsburg blood stain your bowls!” said his wife, clasping her hands.

  He frowned at her, opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

  “Marketa!” he said. “Gather my things for a bloodletting. Only the best implements, and sharpen the fleam’s blade. The crystal cupping glass, yes, the best one. And bring the ceramic bowl that is not chipped.”

  “I will give you a fresh shirt,” said his wife. “The white one you use for church baptisms.”

  And so, within the hour, Pan Pichler climbed the steep road from the bathhouse to the castle.

  The smell of decaying meat greeted Doctor Mingonius as he entered the hall leading to Don Julius’s chambers. He covered his nose and mouth.

  “My God! What is that stench?”

  The priest nodded. “Look into the antechamber and you will see.”

  The guards opened the door. Strewn about the room were uncured animal skins, stag heads, and carcasses. A great bearskin writhed with the workings of maggots.

  “Don Julius insists on keeping his trophies from hunting in his room. He is quite adamant about it.”

  “As his physician, I order them to be removed immediately and burned!” shouted Doctor Mingonius. “What vile unhealthy scene is this? Remove these putrid carcasses and have the servants scrub the floors and walls with lye!”

  At the doctor’s words, Don Julius looked up and turned his head. “Ah, the good Doctor Mingonius,” he said, rising from his writing desk, where he was composing his daily letter to his father, imploring for his release. “Has my father sent you here to inquire about my health?”

  Doctor Mingonius studied the boy he had known from childhood, now a young man twenty years of age. While still heavy, his weight had decreased several stones on his peasant diet, and the brilliant green eyes of his beautiful Italian mother gleamed against his skin, brown now from weeks of exercise on horseback in the Bohemian hills. He could see, more clearly than in many years, the traces of the young boy who had studied his books with such ferocity.

  “Your father is eternally concerned about your health, Don Julius. He sends his affectionate greetings and wishes you well.”

  “The swine!” roared Don Julius, lunging at the doctor. The guards quickly restrained him.

  “I see that you are physically fit, but your bile is as rank as ever,” said Doctor Mingonius, composing himself and pulling down his coat where it had bunched in his hasty retreat. “Well, perhaps we will continue our discussion after our midday meal. And after these disgusting bits of carcass and vermin have been removed from your chamber.”

  “But these pets are my only companions,” Don Julius whimpered, his personality changing in an instant from raging attacker to lost soul. He reached past the guards’ strong arms to stroke the bear’s head, moving with maggots. “Am I to have no friend to keep me company in this damnable prison!” His forehead creased and trembled, his eyes pinched tight. His fingertips stroked the fur like a child with a puppy.

  “Remove every one of them immediately—and burn them,” Doctor Mingonius repeated to the guards.

  As he closed the door behind him, he could hear the rants and screams of Don Julius, struggling against the guards.

  “My beauties!” he wailed. “My beauties!”

  The priest and the doctor consulted in an antechamber where their conversation could not be heard.

  “He looks remarkably better. Physically, that is.”

  The priest bowed at the compliment.

  “I am trying to purge him of the demons that haunt him. He has had strong discipline, and I kneel and pray for his soul each morning and night. May God deliver him from the demon that resides in his heart.”

  Doctor Mingonius rubbed his chin.

  “This is where you and I differ, sir.”

  “How is that, Herr Doctor?”

  “I believe that there is a scientific reason for his rage and savage behavior, while you insist it is a spiritual one.”

  “We are all sons and daughters of the Creator, Herr Doctor.”

  “I do not deny that, but I wonder if your strict regimen of water, bread, and broths is the cure. Has he called for any...” The doctor hesitated, studying the priest’s face.

  “Whores?” supplied the priest, his lips curved downward. “Not in the past fortnight. At first he did, studying most often one particular girl who passed by below. He said the most sordid things.”

  “Who is the girl?”

  “A daughter of the bathhouse keeper. They live beside the river, just below the palace. Don Julius’s window gives on the river where he can spy on her and the others who cross the bridge below. They are all fodder for his filthy thoughts, and he shouts insults at them. But I shall weaken him further with fasting,” said the priest, a ghost of a smile haunting his face. Just as suddenly it disappeared. “These are God’s ways. God’s work.”

  “So the regimen has weakened him, at least temporarily,” said Mingonius, considering the Jesuit’s words.

  “I mean to keep him this way until he has made his soul clean. He harbors a devil in his soul.”

  The priest pulled his thin lips together in a brittle smile, folding his bony fingers as if in prayer. Mingonius noted his skin, dry parchment pulled tight over blue veins, blotched with spots from years under the blazing Spanish sun.

  “I want to bleed him,” pronounced the doctor, drumming the wooden table with his fingers.

  Carlos Felipe pressed his thin lips together. “Minister Rumpf has said that the king will not allow him to be bled. He told me that before our departure from Vienna. Surely you must know that.”

  “Yes, but he has sent me here to examine him and to hear the treatment I prescribe. Apparently the burghers below have sent word of his wails and salacious conduct as he rides through the town, to and from the hunt. The king does not want to alienate the southern Bohemian estates. Petr Vok, the Rozmberk lord, is intervening on their behalf. I was given the responsibility to calm him and restore peace to the town.”

  “No bleeding. It is an insult to God.”

  Mingonius shook his head. “You live in the world of God. I tread in the world of science, and Don Julius is insane. We cannot ignore his present state of mind, for the king wants him to have full liberty to wander free in Cesky Krumlov. He cannot abide the idea of his son held prisoner here.”

  “No!” the priest protested. “You have seen him. He cannot be permitted to leave the palace walls, except under close guard on his way to the hunt—the people will not be safe from his violence and lechery. He must remain under my control.”

  Doctor Mingonius considered this—it was highly unlikely that the emperor would leave a Jesuit in charge of his son for very long. He suspected this was a temporary situation, more of a punishment for Don Julius and an appeasement for the king’s Spanish mother.

  “I will need express permission from our king for a bloodletting, of course,” said the doctor. “But once I have obtained that right, I shall proc
eed immediately. I have sent for the local barber-surgeon to assist me. It may be that Don Julius will need regular leeching until the next time I can visit. I cannot leave my family and the court permanently.”

  Carlos Felipe looked toward the window.

  “Do you think it wise to involve any of the local people?”

  “I have known this boy since the day he was born. I want an unbiased eye to give an observation and aid me in his bleeding—the task will not be an easy one with such a patient! The barber must build up a familiarity with Don Julius so he can continue to administer to his health once I depart.”

  The priest nodded, grim-faced. “I have considered having a priest from the Jesuit monastery pay me a visit as well.”

  Doctor Mingonius’s mouth pinched in consternation.

  “What use is a local priest in this case?”

  “The same excuse you use. An unbiased eye.”

  Knowing that a Spanish Jesuit was attending the son of Rudolf II, Abbot Bedrich Prochazka of Cesky Krumlov’s Jesuit monastery was pleased when the Castilian priest Carlos Felipe finally invited him to visit the castle. The pleasure was diminished only by his acute consciousness of the many weeks that had passed while he waited for the invitation to come.

  “It is fitting that the nephew of Felipe II should be in the care of the Jesuits,” said Abbot Prochazka, accepting a cup of tea with his pudgy hands. “It is the same kind of spiritual care and guidance the queen gave her two sons, His Majesty, Rudolf II, and his brother Ernst.”

  Carlos Felipe nodded his head in agreement. He settled into his chair with his teacup perched on a little saucer. He stirred sugar into his tea with a tiny silver spoon and watched the whirlpool of dissolving sweetness.

  “Yes, it is fitting and part of the Hapsburg tradition. I personally accompanied both His Majesty and his brother to Madrid when they were but small boys,” said Carlos Felipe. “It was quite difficult for them the first year, although both were quite adept at learning Castilian. The monastery life at Montserrat was a shock to them, however, after the life in the degenerate streets of Vienna.”