The Bloodletter's Daughter (49 page)

The other doctors crowded forward, murmuring at the spectacle of the bloody room.

“Giuglio,” said Doctor Jesenius. “Come. Come away from here.”

“Draw a hot bath immediately!” cried Doctor Mingonius to the guards. He covered his eyes and felt his knees buckling.

“Oh, Marketa!” he wept. “I have failed you!”

Mingonius felt a hand on his shoulder and a gentle tugging. He opened his eyes to see the old priest, who nodded solemnly.

“We must talk,” he whispered.

“How could you let her enter his chamber?” Mingonius cried, wiping back tears in anger. “In the name of God, how could you?”

“Was he not Lord of Krumlov by the king’s command? Would you have me beheaded? How could I betray the king himself? I, too, have been frightened by this monster.”

Mingonius could not answer. Tears had not wet his eyes since he was boy, and now they would not stop. It was not befitting a doctor, he knew, a personal physician to the king, but he could not control the flow of tears any more than he could stop breathing.

The priest watched him, and his shoulders sagged.

“Come, Doctor. There are some things that must be explained to you.”

Doctor Mingonius looked into the priest’s face and saw a serenity he had never seen before.

“You must trust faith,” whispered the priest.

“Let me take him,” said Jan Jesenius, laying a comforting hand on Doctor Mingonius’s shoulder. “You are not well, my friend.”

Mingonius nodded, wiping the tears from his face.

Jan Jesenius took over, guiding Don Julius by the hand. The madman’s eyes were vacant and his gestures wooden. He walked stiff-legged beside the physician, docile as a child’s pony.

“I am going to bathe Giuglio myself,” pronounced Doctor Jesenius. “I will take care of this, gentlemen,” he added slowly and clearly, his voice taking an ominous tone.

“Of course,” they murmured together. “So it should be, by the king’s own command.”

“By God’s own grace,” mumbled Doctor Mingonius.

Then Jan Jesenius and Don Julius descended the stairs, following the guard Chaloupka, who led them to the bathing room, the deep marble tub already filled to the brim with water, warm and fragrant with rosemary, the herb of remembrance.

Don Julius dreamed he was floating. Above him entwined all the strange plants and flowers he had seen in his childhood, their roots tangled in a squirming mass.

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.

T
HE
F
UNERAL FOR THE
S
AVIOR OF
K
RUMLOV

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.

T
HE
C
ORONATION OF
M
ATTHIAS

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
hrad
, 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.