Read Online The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Linda Lafferty
Ads: Link
“But as always you have given me cheer, dear friend. Let me teach you to read, Katarina. Then you too can decipher those squiggly lines!”
Katarina looked at her friend, stunned.
“Me? Read?”
“Of course. Why not? It is not magic. Reading only takes instruction and practice.”
Katarina reached for her friend’s hands, kissing them.
“Oh, Katarina,” said Marketa, snatching her hands away. “Don’t make such a fuss!”
Marketa waved good-bye as she hurried to the Barber’s Bridge.
It was true. Reading was a rare gift that Pichler had given his daughter, and Marketa had the opportunity to practice with tutors who were too poor to pay for bloodletting and traded their bookish skills for her father’s services. Books were mainly in Latin, and she struggled with her father’s help todecipher them. But she could understand Czech and German well enough to read and write simple correspondence, her mouth working over the sounds and threading them together into a word.
Her skinny twin sisters, Dana and Kate, age ten, could neither read nor write. Like most of the children in Krumlov who did not attend the Jesuit Latin school, they did not seem to mind in the slightest. The girls shook their heads as they saw their sister sitting with a book in her lap, her finger tracing the words to sound out their meaning. They never resented Marketa for having the education they did not, for neither of them had any desire to spend precious minutes of free time bent over a book.
Lucie would stomp over to the table in the evening where Marketa leaned over a precious book, poring over the words. With a wet pinch of her finger and thumb, she would snuff out the sputtering tallow candle, leaving Marketa in the dark, with only the glow of the embers in the hearth to illuminate the room.
“Do not waste candles,” her mother scolded. “We are not Hapsburgs! Go to sleep. Your reading will do you no good in the baths and is useless for a woman. It can only ruin your eyes!”
Marketa would sit in the sudden darkness as the rancid, smoking fat of the candle spread its last greasy fumes across the room. She breathed in the thick air, touching the parchment with her fingers.
Her father thought it was important for her to read, especially as she had taken an early interest in his profession. There was no such thing—there could be no such thing—as a woman barber-surgeon, but Marketa quickly excelled as an assistant. She knew how to keep his scissors and blades sharp, and when he performed surgery, she held the bowl to catch the splashing course of blood in a modest manner that reassured the patients. She learned the bleeding points, the system of veins, and how to stanch bleeding.
And Marketa knew she was never ever to touch hair that was cut with her father’s barber’s scissors. The spirit left in the strands could be malevolent and strike her dead. At the very least it might invade her soul, make cows’ milk curdle, or leave her infertile.
Marketa also took a keen interest in the humors and the diseases they created when out of balance. Marketa felt that her father’s profession was akin to the divine working of miracles. It was said that she was much more like her father than her mother, but some of the older folk in Krumlov whispered she was much like her revered aunt, the mother superior of the convent of Poor Clares. They nodded their white heads in silent agreement when they saw her in the street. Indeed, the girl possessed the same mysterious air the holy Mother Ludmilla had when she was the same age.
Marketa’s father whispered to her when she was a mere toddler that he was sure she had the gift of healing. He thought his daughter too young to understand and remember his words.
But she did.
As Marketa walked over Barber’s Bridge to the bathhouse, she thought wistfully of her father in Vienna. How she wished she could be at his side, listening to the latest discoveries in human anatomy and phlebotomy.
Little
Katarina looked at her friend, stunned.
“Me? Read?”
“Of course. Why not? It is not magic. Reading only takes instruction and practice.”
Katarina reached for her friend’s hands, kissing them.
“Oh, Katarina,” said Marketa, snatching her hands away. “Don’t make such a fuss!”
Marketa waved good-bye as she hurried to the Barber’s Bridge.
It was true. Reading was a rare gift that Pichler had given his daughter, and Marketa had the opportunity to practice with tutors who were too poor to pay for bloodletting and traded their bookish skills for her father’s services. Books were mainly in Latin, and she struggled with her father’s help todecipher them. But she could understand Czech and German well enough to read and write simple correspondence, her mouth working over the sounds and threading them together into a word.
Her skinny twin sisters, Dana and Kate, age ten, could neither read nor write. Like most of the children in Krumlov who did not attend the Jesuit Latin school, they did not seem to mind in the slightest. The girls shook their heads as they saw their sister sitting with a book in her lap, her finger tracing the words to sound out their meaning. They never resented Marketa for having the education they did not, for neither of them had any desire to spend precious minutes of free time bent over a book.
Lucie would stomp over to the table in the evening where Marketa leaned over a precious book, poring over the words. With a wet pinch of her finger and thumb, she would snuff out the sputtering tallow candle, leaving Marketa in the dark, with only the glow of the embers in the hearth to illuminate the room.
“Do not waste candles,” her mother scolded. “We are not Hapsburgs! Go to sleep. Your reading will do you no good in the baths and is useless for a woman. It can only ruin your eyes!”
Marketa would sit in the sudden darkness as the rancid, smoking fat of the candle spread its last greasy fumes across the room. She breathed in the thick air, touching the parchment with her fingers.
Her father thought it was important for her to read, especially as she had taken an early interest in his profession. There was no such thing—there could be no such thing—as a woman barber-surgeon, but Marketa quickly excelled as an assistant. She knew how to keep his scissors and blades sharp, and when he performed surgery, she held the bowl to catch the splashing course of blood in a modest manner that reassured the patients. She learned the bleeding points, the system of veins, and how to stanch bleeding.
And Marketa knew she was never ever to touch hair that was cut with her father’s barber’s scissors. The spirit left in the strands could be malevolent and strike her dead. At the very least it might invade her soul, make cows’ milk curdle, or leave her infertile.
Marketa also took a keen interest in the humors and the diseases they created when out of balance. Marketa felt that her father’s profession was akin to the divine working of miracles. It was said that she was much more like her father than her mother, but some of the older folk in Krumlov whispered she was much like her revered aunt, the mother superior of the convent of Poor Clares. They nodded their white heads in silent agreement when they saw her in the street. Indeed, the girl possessed the same mysterious air the holy Mother Ludmilla had when she was the same age.
Marketa’s father whispered to her when she was a mere toddler that he was sure she had the gift of healing. He thought his daughter too young to understand and remember his words.
But she did.
As Marketa walked over Barber’s Bridge to the bathhouse, she thought wistfully of her father in Vienna. How she wished she could be at his side, listening to the latest discoveries in human anatomy and phlebotomy.
Little
Similar Books
