He squinted and looked closer. Below him swam maidens, their bellies swollen with child, their breasts heavy. They laughed and frolicked in the waters, spilling down chutes and slides, splashing into the never-ending, overflowing pools.
He floated on his back, along with them, drifting to some magical tide. He felt love, the love of the water angels next to him, drifting with the slow current. Above him he saw the face of Jan Jesenius looming, his hand reaching out.
Rest in peace.
He felt a pain, sharp but brief. Then the doctor faded. A paleskinned woman took his place, dressed in a white gown from a century before. She beckoned to him and slowly smiled.
The last thing Don Julius saw was the water suddenly flowing red. Finally it ceased flowing at all.
CHAPTER 51
THE FUNERAL FOR THE SAVIOR OF KRUMLOV
The people buried the pieces of the body in the Franciscan cemetery, next to the Vltava River. Marketa’s father was inconsolable, and his big shoulders heaved as he wept over the grave. Lucie Pichlerova’s hair had seemed to turn white overnight, and it was whispered she was not right in her head. When the barber died a few years later, the people of Krumlov tried to drive his widow from the village. Finally they relented, for she had become a pathetic old crone, devoid of reason. Lucie was left to live out her remaining years in the bathhouse adjacent to Barber’s Bridge, and her twin daughters cared for their deranged mother.
The Poor Clares mourned the death of Mother Superior Ludmilla Pichlerova, on the same day of Marketa’s interment. The nuns clasped their hands white-knuckled in prayer for her eternally damned soul. It was said she had died in the bed of a witch and was buried below the witch’s house in the ancient catacombs like a pagan. They could never accept how their abbess had so betrayed the Lord with her heresy.
It was announced sixteen months later that Don Julius had died of an abscess in his throat, which explained why he ceased his wailing, never to be heard again, after the night of the murder. It was rumored that he had been locked in barred rooms of the castle, seen by no one but his attending doctors, because he was deemed too dangerous. A privy was built out from the wall of the castle, so that no one would have to enter the bedroom to remove the chamber pots, and only the old guard Chaloupka and his wife, an assistant cook, were able to enter the apartments, to clear the trays of food and clean Don Julius’s chambers.
Don Julius’s body still lies in an unmarked grave in Krumlov’s cemetery.
SUMMER 1608
CHAPTER 52
THE CORONATION OF MATTHIAS
The Hapsburgs called it Pressburger Schloss, but in Royal Hungary it was known as Bratislavsky Hrad, Bratislava Castle. Either way it was the capital of what remained of Hapsburg-ruled Hungary, after the Ottomans had torn away three-quarters of the kingdom in war.
“Hah!” gasped Archduke Ferdinand, Matthias’s younger brother, as he pulled up his sweating horse on the grassy road flanking the Danube. His horse danced under his tight rein, swinging its rump against his son’s mare.
“Heh, stand now,” said the archduke, calming his mount. “Look, son, it rivals the hrad in Prague. Here in the wilds of Hungary!”
The massive castle commanded a view of the Hungarian lands and beyond to the green hills of Austria, regions that would now both be governed by the new king, Matthias of Hapsburg.
Arriving guests—those who were brave enough to show their support publicly for Matthias in hope of future favors—stared up at the imposing castle. First built by the Celts and then sacked and restored by the Romans and subsequent Hungarian, Polish, and Austrian kings, the ancient stone fortress had stood for more than a millennium on its hill overlooking the Danube. It had served as the seat of the Holy Roman Empire under King Sigismund in 1433. And the Hungarians boasted the hrad would rule an empire again, Prague and Vienna be damned.
And on this day, a coronation—that of Matthias II, king of Hungary—would be celebrated here at the Cathedral of Saint Martin. Many swore it was the beginning of a new era when Matthias would justly wear the crown of Rudolf II and the Holy Roman Empire, once and for all.
Down below the castle, on the banks of the Danube, carts loaded high with mounds of soil from all regions of Royal Hungary were arriving. Together the piles of earth would form the “Coronation Hill,” where the new king would swear to protect all Hungarian lands.
“Good riddance to the recluse king who hides in Prague while we fight the Turks,” muttered a laborer from Esztergom, shoveling his load of dirt onto the growing hill.
“The senseless fool cowers in his bed if an astrologist foretells an ominous shadow,” rejoined another man, raking his dirt smooth on the mound.
“A coward who does nothing as his own son butchers an innocent girl,” said a matron, selling cups of mead to the thirsty men.
Word of the tragedy at Cesky Krumlov had traveled along the salt routes, traders carrying the gruesome story of an innocent girl’s murder at the hands of a Hapsburg to any land that salted its meat. The story had so shocked Europe that there was little support left for the eccentric Rudolf II, among the nobles or the commoners. Matthias had marched on Prague four months after the murder at Cesky Krumlov, Rudolf yielding the Hungarian throne only when Matthias’s troops were five miles from Prague’s gates. Matthias had accepted that and turned back. But that was only the beginning of his ambitions.
The pile of soil grew to the size of a hillock, cresting over the Danube’s shore. Hungarians from throughout the kingdom stood back to admire it, pointing out their region’s soil by the color and location.
Meanwhile, above the town, the entourage of guests had arrived at the gates of the stone castle, pleased to find a fortress befitting a king at the European crossroads of the mighty Carpathian Mountains and the snowy Alps.
Hapsburg brothers, cousins, and powerful Protestant lords who had chosen to cast their lot with Matthias craned their heads to look at the towers above them, the yellow-and-black silk banners of the Hapsburg Empire flapping over the Hungarian kingdom.
“Look at the courtyard,” marveled Archduke Maximillian, another Hapsburg, brother to both Rudolf and Matthias, who had thrown his support behind Matthias. He gestured at the view with a wide sweep of his arm.
Archduke Ferdinand’s young son threw a stone in the courtyard well.
“Is it bottomless?” asked the boy as he let the stone slip from his hand.
There was a faint splash.
“Almost,” smiled the Slovak-Hungarian escort. “It is over eighty forearms deep to reach the sweet waters.”
The archduke pulled his young son aside. “Do not go near the well again, do you hear me?”
He wanted his eldest son to remember the day of this coronation and for Matthias to remember his son’s presence, but a cold shock touched his spine when he thought of the depth of such an abyss.
First he threw her from a window. But she returned. The tale of the bloodletter’s daughter had already taken on the ring of legend.
As the nobles gathered in the cobbled courtyard, the conversation flew. Times as important as these were moments for alliances to be forged and affirmed, and for gossip to flourish.
“Is it true he slashed her face and threw her from the window?”
“I have heard worse. He took the girl by force and then stabbed her. Cut her into scraps and then cried over the pieces, like a child with a broken toy.”
“A curse upon his wretched soul! And Rudolf has taken no action?”
“Against his bastard son? Not sufficient. He keeps him in Rozmberk Palace. No one sees him but the caretakers and physicians.”
“Perhaps the king means to make him monarch one day—Rudolf is mad.”
“The sordid deed must weigh heavy in a father’s heart. The king must be mad with grief.”
“His huntsmen swear the king tried to kill himself with a shard of glass, slashing his own wrists.”
Much of the vicious gossip was true. Rudolf had shut himself up in the hr
ad, turning out Minister Rumpf and putting his valet, Philip Lang, in charge of external affairs. His closest confidant was a stable boy, who, some gossiped, had taken Anna Maria Strada’s place in his bed. And an old toothless lion prowled the darkened halls of the hrad.
In contrast, Matthias had led the campaigns against the Turks for fifteen long years. Today he would wear the crown he had earned.
Matthias and his entourage descended in a procession from the castle to Saint Martin’s Cathedral. The Hungarians cheered and bowed their heads to the man who had negotiated peace with the Turks and who would now be their king.
Matthias climbed the long stairs, his robes trailing behind him. He approached the dais and stood before the Bishop of Esztergom, dressed in an ermine-collared cloak. The Hungarian palatine, the Lutheran Stephen Illésházy, stood by uneasily, his velvet tunic reeking of sweat.
He probably thinks I will execute him as my first order, thought Matthias as he considered the miserable Illésházy. He stains his fine clothes with the reek of sweat and garlic, red wine oozing from his skin. A nervous constitution for such a rich and powerful man.
The Catholic bishop placed the heavy gold crown on the head of the new king of Hungary. Matthias stood tall as the throngs cried, “Long live the king!” He mounted the waiting chestnut stallion, tacked in royal livery, and rode through the gates of Saint Michael to the front of the city wall and approached the soil of Coronation Hill.
Astride his prancing horse, Matthias swore the coronation oath and laid the tip of his sword north, south, east, and west to indicate his resolve to protect all of Hungary and its people.
The soft earth clung to the tip of the glinting sword, and Matthias smiled. Rudolf had dug his own grave. The Hungarian crown was only the first of many Matthias would wear. Others would come soon enough, as he marched with his new allies into Prague to seize the throne of the Holy Roman emperor.
EPILOGUE
The sun warmed the scalp of the young doctor, her shortcropped hair glistening in the brilliant light of a late summer morning. A thick book lay across her lap, open to a wildly colorful page of medicinal herbs and potions. She looked up every now and then at His Majesty’s botanical gardens as her fingertips moved gracefully just above the words on the pages, a ghostly caress of the strange text.
Her fingers were stained all the colors of the rainbow from herbal potions and distillations to cure the sick. Though she never personally attended the king, one of her potions this year had cured him of a disease of the liver, and in gratitude he never inquired from whence she had come. It was simply understood that she was the loving wife of Jakub Horcicky de Tenepec, and worked at his side creating potent medicines that cured the ill, both rich and poor.
The young woman contemplated her tinted hands, hands that could at last heal the sick. She felt the warmth of the sun on her skin and looked with gratitude at her surroundings.
In the August sunshine, the drone of bees in the wisteria competed with the call of the nightingale and the chirping songbirds in the garden. The butterflies flitted from one exotic flower to another in an explosion of color no painter could capture. In the coolness of the deep pond, multicolored carp swam slowly under the lavender and white blossoms of the lily pads, making gentle ripples on the surface of the water.
The doctor stretched her arms, breathing in the fragrant air. When she lowered her arms again, she brushed the scar on her cheek that disappeared into the thicket of her short hair. The fingers of her hand lingered there, tracing the raised flesh of the old wound. She closed her eyes, her mouth twitching with a memory.
A throaty call from the gates made the woman’s eyes fly open, and her mouth broadened in a smile. She set the book down on the bench and ran toward a woman with flame-red hair, accompanying a child perhaps two years of age, an exquisite pale-skinned girl with dark auburn hair and glowing green eyes.
The women greeted each other with kisses and an embrace that lasted far longer than any casual greeting. They stared into each other’s eyes and wept. Then together they looked down at the book on the bench and the tears dried, their mouths drawing up once more into smiles.
The red-haired child begged to see the book, and the doctor spread its pages wide so the toddler could examine it.
The little girl stared open-mouthed at the women sliding down chutes of green water, splashing into the deep pools below. Then she suddenly laughed, the sun gleaming off the white of her baby teeth.
A tall man came out of the garden house with a flowering plant in his hands. Seeing the visitors, he set the plant down carefully and strode slowly but urgently across the tall grass, one hip swinging broadly in a limp. He embraced the red-haired woman and kissed her wrist. Then he bent down and swept the toddler up in his arms.
The little girl whispered “Papa” to him shyly, and he kissed her twice on her pale cheeks.
The short-haired woman carefully closed the book and took a deep sigh as she tipped her chin toward the blue sky, her lips moving in a silent prayer. The red-haired mother nodded and clasped her friend’s hand.
Together the four walked into the house.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
History records that the scandalous butchery of the bathmaid Marketa Pichlerova rocked the European royal courts in 1608. Rudolf II fell into a deep melancholy and dismissed his advisers and ministers, leaving his valet, Philip Lang, in charge of state affairs. In June 1608, Matthias and his allies marched toward Prague and forced Rudolf II to yield the kingdoms of Moravia, Hungary, and Austria. In 1611, Matthias seized Bohemia and left Rudolf with only the titular crown of Holy Roman emperor.
Rudolf II lived out the remainder of his life in seclusion surrounded by his personal servants. He became a recluse who puttered about his botanical gardens and his beloved Belvedere. His heart broke at the death of his beloved lion, Mohammed, and the king himself died two days later, on January 20, 1612.
The subsequent Thirty Years’ War, involving most of Europe in the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, devastated Bohemia. In the course of the battles of religion, Doctor Jakub Horcicky de Tenepec, a Catholic prisoner, was exchanged for a Protestant prisoner, Doctor Jan Jesenius. Jan Jesenius was later shot along with twenty-six other Protestants in Prague’s Old Town Square in 1621 after the Battle of White Mountain.
Doctor Horcicky, taking the Catholic side of the war, wrote a pamphlet entitled “Catholic Confession, or Description of the Right Common Christian Confession, about Hope, Credence and Love.” He was quite successful professionally, creating a medicine from the distillation of plants called “aqua sinapii” that proved quite profitable. He held the title of imperial chemist both under Rudolf II and Emperor Matthias.
A curious discovery was made in Rozmberk Castle, in the year following Don Julius’s death. Among his possessions was a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, a two-tome book explaining sorcery and witchcraft. This is explained in H.C. Erik Midelfort’s Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany:
“Surely this was the well-known Malleus Maleficarum which we can surmise was purchased not to amuse Don Julius, but on the suspicion that he, like his father, was bewitched and perhaps some further steps toward locating the witch needed to be taken.”
The Coded Book, which plays an important role in this novel, is known as the Voynich manuscript and is housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The mysterious tome, written in an indecipherable text, somehow passed into the hands of King Rudolf’s personal physician and director of his exquisite botanical gardens after the Hapsburg’s death.
The name Jakub Horcicky de Tenepec, botanist and personal physician to Rudolf II, was inscribed on the first page of the manuscript.
A CONVERSATION WITH LINDA LAFFERTY
1. What inspired you to write The Bloodletter’s Daughter?
My husband and I hiked through the Czech Republic on a self-guided tour with Greenways Travel Club in 2005. We spent a couple days at Cesky Krumlov, a picture-perfect villa
ge in Bohemia. Rozmberk Castle, rising from the Vltava River, looked like an illustration from Grimms’ Fairy Tales. We took a tour and learned the legend of the Lady in White, a Rozmberk ghost who walks the halls at night.
Another tale, which was absolutely true and quite disturbing, was the story of Don Julius, bastard son of Rudolf II. He was imprisoned for his unsavory conduct and for stabbing his servant. This mad prince became obsessed with Marketa, a Bohemian bathmaid and the daughter of the local barber-bloodletter.
I couldn’t wait to get home to write!
I subsequently learned that King Rudolf II, Holy Roman emperor, had among his treasures an illuminated manuscript in a secret code. It is called today the Voynich manuscript.
Now I really had a novel.
2. How long did it take you to write?
About three years total. This was including many rewrites. The initial draft took about a year.
3. What’s your writing process like (Do you dive in? Do you carefully plot? Do you need music or silence? Do you write at night or in the morning?
I always look for an intriguing story, a fascinating character. Once I have that character (or characters) I start out with a conflict, and see how the person reveals his or her character through thoughts or actions. For example, with Marketa—I knew she was a bathmaid. How would my Marketa react to bathing stinking bodies and performing sexual favors?
I tend to write in the morning, but when I really get going, that stretches into the afternoon and even editing in the evening. When I work on a book, I try for one thousand words a day, but sometimes it is more. A good day is four to five hours of solid writing, and then a few hours of research and editing.
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