The Bloodletter's Daughter

by Linda Lafferty

  “The king only mentioned his concern for your health...and his hope that continued work on the Rudolphine Tables might not be suspended for too long a time.”

  “That is most kind, Doctor Horcicky. Of course, my assistants chart the position of the planets each night, even when I am absent. Their eyes are sharper than my own. I make the calculations based on their clear-eyed observations.”

  Jakub shifted his weight, making the old floorboards creak. The king would not tolerate an absence from court from his imperial mathematician and astrologer for much longer.

  “Your symptoms, please?”

  Johannes Kepler looked beyond Jakub’s shoulder to the window. He waved away the question.

  “Please be so kind as to draw open the shutters and open the window.”

  Jakub pulled open the wooden shutters, latching them back. Kepler had designed the window so that it could be opened to observe the night skies.

  The fog rose to the windowsill, its gray back climbing no higher. Jakub looked out to the clear sky, the stars glittering sharp against the black night. The damp fog formed a horizon for the starry heavens.

  “My symptoms, you say?” said Kepler, rustling under the bedclothes. “Ah, Doctor Horcicky, I was born a sickly child and my hands are crippled. My eyesight has always been poor, and without the help of lenses, I see little of the world others take for granted. The night sky, which is clear to your naked eye, is a haze to me without my lenses.”

  Jakub drew a breath. This patient would be difficult.

  The doctor’s gaze fell to the optical instruments on the table by the window. He bent down to admire the spyglass. “Ah, but Herr Kepler, what eyes you now possess! You must see the very heart of the universe through this glass! May I?”

  Kepler gave a curt nod, and Jakub pressed the scope to his eye.

  The stars leapt into sharp focus.

  “What wonder!” said Jakub. Then, as he removed the spyglass from his eye, he froze. His eyes scanned the conical shapes, the painted adornment. He turned the spyglass around and around in his hand.

  “What is it?” asked Kepler.

  Horcicky lowered the eyeglass and turned it over in his hand. “Is this an antique?”

  Kepler laughed. “I should say not. The Dutchman Jansen has only invented it. I am lucky to be in possession of it. It was a gift to the king.”

  “I have seen it before,” said Horcicky quietly.

  “What?” said Kepler. “Nonsense!”

  “No. I swear I have seen it. And something similar, but even more complex,” he said, looking into Kepler’s skeptical face. “May I use your ink pot and parchment?”

  “Of course.”

  Jakub sat at Kepler’s desk and drew a series of tubes that were recessed one into another. He shaped the top of the tube in a curve to denote a convex lens. He brought the rough sketch to Kepler’s bedside without stopping to blot the ink.

  Kepler rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, staring at the crude drawing.

  “Where have you seen this?” he demanded, his face pallid and strained. “Where?”

  “In the Coded Book of Wonder, a manuscript in His Majesty’s Kunstkammer. There are many sketches similar to this in its pages.”

  “It possesses the same design as Galileo’s telescope,” said Kepler.

  “It is baffling,” said Horcicky. “How could the author of this ancient book know of the instrument that one day a great astronomer would make?”

  Kepler looked at the drawing with hunger in his eyes.

  “I need an advanced telescope, Herr Doctor. I cannot make proper observations without the Italian instrument of Galileo. I must see this book!”

  “It is currently in possession of Don Julius, the king’s son, incarcerated in Cesky Krumlov. But surely Galileo would furnish King Rudolf’s astronomer such an instrument.”

  Kepler shifted uncomfortably, situating the pillow to better support himself.

  “No. Galileo does not want competition. Especially from a Lutheran. Despite my letters to confirm the accuracy of his observations and to prevent his imprisonment, he refuses to share his great stargazing glass with me, even as he begs me to confirm his theories.”

  “I am astonished that another scientist would willfully retard scientific progress.”

  “Greed, Jakub. Greed, politics, religion, and vanity. They all forsake science to protect power.” Kepler’s rheumatic fingers balled in a fist. “Even the most brilliant scientist is not immune to the allure of power.”

  Jakub found himself thinking of the astronomical clock. He thought of Vanity staring at himself in a looking glass.

  Then he remembered the reason for his visit.

  “Your symptoms, if you will, Herr Kepler.”

  “Extreme melancholy. I cannot bear to leave my bed or venture beyond the threshold of my house. I do not care whether I live or die.”

  “Herr Kepler?” said Horcicky, genuinely astonished. “You, who are esteemed throughout Europe, who have so quickly filled the shoes of the great Tycho Brahe.”

  “Brahe? I stole his observations. From the moment of his death, I hid myself in our observatory and copied his star journals. I am no better than a petty thief, according to his heirs.”

  “Brahe was your master and you his collaborator. I am surprised he did not share all his findings with you.”

  “No. He wanted my mathematics, my calculations—but he denounced my theories. Tycho Brahe was not immune to the disease that shrinks the human heart and impedes science. A fellow Lutheran and my collaborator, but he did not believe in the Copernican universe. He clung to the notion that the planets revolved around the earth. Still a brilliant mind, however warped by convention.”

  Kepler sighed and his crippled finger reached clawlike for the earthen flask of water by his cot. He swallowed, quenching his thirst.

  “And now, I live penniless. The emperor has not paid me in a year. I have debts I cannot pay and no savings. My wife bickers with me over money while I peddle personal horoscopes to courtiers and rich merchants to pay the bills. It barely suffices while I try to discover the key to the universe.”

  “The key?”

  “The sun and planets have a soul. A force, if you will. Not only is the sun the center of our universe, but the sun compels the planets to follow in their individual orbits—spinning elliptically around the great force, as a pagan would dance around a bonfire, mesmerized.”

  Jakub felt a sudden emptiness in his chest. Planets with a soul? What force is there in the universe but God himself, who by his hand alone set the orbits of planets and fixed the stars in the sky?

  “But that is heresy,” he protested. “Completely contrary to scripture.”

  “Ah, but I believe it is the truth,” said Kepler. “And I shall prove it one day. There is a force in our sun, a force in our planets. Each follows its own course, but each is inextricably bound to every other.”

  Kepler studied Jakub standing before the open window.

  “Come closer, Horcicky,” he said. “I want to see your face.”

  Horcicky approached the bed and reluctantly bent close to the imperial mathematician.

  “Ah, as I suspected. I see the reproach of the Jesuit in your eyes. You are torn. Jesuits, of all orders, seek learning and enlightenment, yet the traditions of the Catholic Church hold them back. Such a pity in an otherwise bright mind.”

  Jakub drew back and straightened. He swallowed his anger at the insult.

  “Jesuits respect the scriptures, Herr Kepler,” he said. But even as he spoke his protest, his mind was seizing on Kepler’s theories as a hungry man wolfs down a loaf of bread.

  “Respect scriptures? Pah!” said Kepler, his sharp beard flicking out to punctuate his remark. “Would it surprise you to know that I have had several Jesuit friendships in my life? They cannot help themselves. Their search for knowledge, for truth, often triumphs over their damnable souls. They are attracted to the light of science, like moths in the night.”

&
nbsp; Kepler smiled. “The king’s confessor, Johannes Pistorius, is among my closest companions. His sharp mind and eloquence exercise my spirit, while Galileo turns his back on me.”

  Jakub blinked and stared back at Kepler. Pistorius, the king’s confessor, befriending a heretical Lutheran? The doctor knew the esteemed confessor, who in addition to theology held a degree in medicine.

  “Pistorius finds my theories of harmonious spheres heretical but tantalizing,” said Kepler, his face animated. “The planets travel not in perfect circles of the divine but in elegant elliptical curves, adulterated by the physical force of the sun, God’s own cosmic soul.”

  “Your words are dangerous,” Jakub protested. “The confessor does not report your heresy?”

  “Of course not. We argue hours on end, as civilized men should do. Besides denigrating my theories, he works on his dissertations of the Kabbalah.”

  Jakub gazed out at the stars and the quarter moon rising through the bank of mist into the clear night sky.

  Kepler rubbed his arthritic hands together. He watched Jakub’s face as it absorbed his words.

  “Harmonious spheres?” said Jakub, his voice soft. He watched the rising slice of moon mingle with the stars.

  “Yes,” said Kepler. “If you listen with your heart and pure soul, you will hear the music of the cosmos, in perfect harmony. It is only the sins and arrogance of man that obscure the sound.”

  Jakub thought about Krumlov and the king’s son locked in the castle. Pride, greed, power. The distant drumbeat of war and religion already echoed in Eastern Europe, the Reformation clashing with the Counter-Reformation, and one Hapsburg brother against another in a struggle for power.

  He thought of the bathmaid living on the banks of the Vltava and thought of her innocence, her thirst for knowledge to cure the sick. He had laughed at her, pinching her cheek, dismissing her ambitions as naïveté.

  Yet he had been thoroughly charmed.

  Jakub raised his eyes to the stars. He wondered if she could hear the music of the planets, while powerful men heard silence.

  Johannes Kepler stirred under his coverlet and threw off the bedclothes.

  “You are a good physician. Your visit has purged my bad blood and returned my humors to balance, better than any bloodletter. It is high time I returned to court to see Johannes Pistorius. I am eager to argue again against his theological pretensions. Some lively sparring would do the stubborn old priest good.”

  Johannes Kepler stood up and approached Jakub. Putting an arm on his shoulder, he turned his face to the sky and they both looked out at the star-filled heavens.

  SPRING 1607

  CHAPTER 36

  CRIES IN THE NIGHT

  Gradually the word got out to the village that Marketa was living once more in Krumlov. She was not afraid that they would tell Don Julius, because, whether man, woman, or child, they all despised the brutal Hapsburg. It was their Bohemian duty to protect her—one of their own—and Marketa soon became comfortable moving among them in an almost normal life. The seamstress made her a long, hooded cape of black boiled wool that she wore to hide her face and distinctive hair, should Don Julius spy her from the castle.

  Barber Pichler came to visit several times a week and begged to study Annabella’s Book of Paracelsus. He had for so many years traveled to Vienna to study, at great financial hardship to the Pichler family. Here was a great treasure of medicine only a few minutes’ walk from the bathhouse.

  Marketa refused to go back to the bathhouse, determined never to speak to her mother again. The rumor that her mother had urged her to approach Don Julius on that fateful night enraged the townspeople and they ostracized her, from the butcher to the soap-maker to the women hissing curses whenever she crossed their paths.

  The business in the bathhouse had dwindled until there were barely enough clients to make ends meet. Lucie Pichlerova was sold only the puniest fish, the toughest ends of meat, and moldy bacon when she went to the Wide Street market. The greengrocer refused to sell to her altogether, and she had to procure vegetables and other necessities from the gypsies and Jews beyond the gates of the town.

  Marketa refused to see her mother but welcomed the twins to visit her at night, when they would not be seen. She also begged her father to protect them from their mother’s rough hands and not let her barter their “favors” to the bathers. He hung his head in shame and promised he would defend their honor with his life. Marketa was sure if he could have afforded to do so, he would have shut down the bathhouse altogether.

  Then, as the patches of snow melted and the ice cracked along the shores of the Vltava, the shrill wails of Don Julius returned to haunt the night.

  As the bloodletting had ceased, his strength—and his madness—had returned. Across the little valley they heard his cry from atop Rozmberk Castle.

  “Mar-ket-a!”

  It was a beseeching cry, one that would make a mother’s heart wither. He shrieked only at night when the wind was calm and the screams cut through the early spring air. His cries startled flocks of birds from their roosts, sending them to fly blindly into the night.

  The men cursed his name and their eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. The women suffered nervous conditions and begged Annabella for calming tonics.

  Marketa gulped down mugs of Annabella’s teas and stuffed woolen yarn in her ears, but somehow she heard her name still reverberating in the air. The high-pitched scream slipped through the cracks of the door and even down into the cellar, like a snake that writhed and slithered into her ears. Her dreams were filled with huge red lips and a cavernous mouth that screamed her name, consuming her as she drew closer and closer and, finally, too close.

  When she could stand it no longer, Marketa would leave the house with a lantern and sit in Saint Vitus Cathedral and stare at the altar. Since she had been a young girl, the church had been a peaceful refuge, built of granite at the very edge of the Vltava. The raging roar of the river drowned out every sound, and the priest was forced to shout above its thunderous din.

  Those long years ago, Katarina would cry in fear, crawling into her mother’s lap because she thought they would all be swept away by the water and drowned. But Marketa fell asleep under her father’s arm, finding the water’s roar a lullaby.

  She smiled sadly, thinking of her old friend Katarina. It seemed decades ago the two had sat peacefully by the river, Katarina braiding Marketa’s hair.

  Now, at night, the river’s voice echoing through the vast space of the cathedral gave her solace. Here and only here, Marketa could not hear her name carried through the air from a man she once foolishly considered a lover. She would focus on the painting of the Madonna of Cesky Krumlov and beg her intercession. Could this Hapsburg not return to Prague and cease this torment? Surely, if the Bohemian lords were to pass a single night listening to Don Julius’s mad lament, they would petition the king to remove his son from their lands. The Madonna remained motionless on the canvas. She had nothing to say in return to Marketa’s prayers; she only looked demurely at her holy child.

  Katarina cried copiously and often. Too often, worried her mother. But ever since the day her daughter had come home from the market that winter without her basket and without an explanation or excuse and her father had punished her, she could not be persuaded to smile.

  Pan Mylnar had forbidden her to ever leave the house without the escort of one of her older brothers, her mother, or himself. And since she had insulted Marketa, Katarina doubted her friend would ever want to speak to her again. So she was alone. And lonely.

  The miller noticed that his beautiful daughter, his pride and joy, was losing weight. His wife baked extra breads and sweets for her, but she could not be persuaded to eat more than a nibble. Her cheekbones stabbed through her once plump flesh, and while she was still the most beautiful girl of Cesky Krumlov, she no longer flourished.

  Pan Mylnar had always suspected that the disappearance of the basket had something to do with the dirty scamp
, the blacksmith’s son. Although there was nothing to prove his suspicion, the miller heard the rumor that the boy was a thief and was caught red-handed in Pan Brewer’s grain shed.

  “I told you he was no good,” he declared to his daughter, jutting out his lower lip in justified satisfaction. “The scoundrel is a thief and is not to be trusted.”

  Katarina opened her mouth to answer, but quickly shut it again.

  “Think what you like, but he is an honorable man,” she said, scowling at her father. She ran to her pallet, throwing herself on the straw mattress to cry.

  The days were long and repetitious for Katarina. She sewed and knitted when the family could afford to buy woolen yarns. She cooked and baked alongside her mother, whose spirits mirrored her daughter’s, for the good woman could not be happy unless she saw her beloved daughter smile.

  “Daughter, is there nothing I can do to make your spirits rise? You torture me with your melancholic nature. It is so unlike you.”

  Katarina looked toward the thick crystal window, toward the castle. She sighed, her lip quivering.

  “There is one thing,” Katarina said at last.

  “Do not mention the blacksmith,” said her mother quickly. “You know it is beyond my power to change your father’s mind.”

  “No, something else,” she said, staring at the tower of the castle. “Could you send word to Annabella’s house that I want to visit Marketa?”

  “Oh, my darling! You know that your father would never let you see her, now that there is so much danger. You must stay as far away from her as you can!”

  “But I miss her,” said Katarina in a small voice. “I want to see her again.”

  Her mother bit the tip of her tongue, thinking.

  “You could write to her,” she suggested, her plump face creasing up in enthusiasm. “Yes, we could pay a scribe to send a letter to her.”