The Book of Madness and Cures (13 page)

A thin wind brushed the uppermost branches above us, like skirts trailing across an immense Persian carpet. At the top of a hill we paused before a small wooden shrine, a box with canted shingles of bark on top that had been nailed to a stout pine trunk. Moss surrounded the crudely carved and painted
madonnina
within, clad in a faded blue robe with stars. One hand held a lily, and the other palm was open, upturned, whether in supplication or solace I couldn’t tell. Small tapers had been lit and burnt down. “Who would light a candle here?” I mused. “There’s no one for miles around.”

“Pilgrims or thieves, one never knows,” Lorenzo said. “Even curmudgeons pray in these out-of-the-way places.”

I dismounted and opened my saddlebag, removed a small bottle of rose water from my silk bag of powders and scents, and sprinkled some at the feet of the little Virgin. I prayed that we might find my father safe in Tübingen (where one of his letters originated) or that some sign of his whereabouts might come to us. Her face was streaked with a yellow-green fungus, the same luminous growth that mottled the bark and limbs of the trees.

She offered a plainer intercession with God in this remote place, if he happened to be listening. Or perhaps wood was wood, and nobody was listening but the devil in the shadows.
Il diavolo si nasconde dietro la croce,
they say.

Olmina prayed, while Lorenzo observed the rooks that gathered on the ridge above us.

We met no other fellow travelers in the forest, so when late in the day we saw an elderly peasant couple approach, bent under loads of wood, we were alert.

They looked upon us with equal alarm. I wanted to avoid the suspicions we encountered in the lake villages with Dr. Wassler and the servants of Lord Altenhaus, so I offered them bread and Friuli wine.

“Oh, many thanks, my lady, we’ll take a small sip,” said the portly old man, who appeared hollow, but not sunken eyed, as if only recently deprived of food. His wife, a hunchbacked old woman possessed of a jaundiced complexion, drew Olmina aside and whispered something in an urgent voice.

“Signorina Gabriella,” Olmina began in an anxious tone, “these good people say that we won’t reach the nearest town, Offenburg, before nightfall. They’ve respectfully offered us their own shelter so that we don’t have to sleep out in the wood.”

I stared up the road, enfolded now in a brooding gray haze. In truth, I’d wished to be in Tübingen by now.

I considered the peasants. Did they mean to rob us? I could almost hear my father’s voice:
Be shrewd, my girl, no matter what you do. In an unknown place, trust no one.

I called Olmina over out of earshot of the old ones. “What makes you think we can believe them?”

“They’re straightforward, signorina, and very frightened. I can smell the fear in them. I don’t think thieves would be so afraid. We’re alone, unarmed.”

“And pray tell, what does fear smell like?”

“It’s pungent, like animal musk, and sets me on edge too.”

“All right,” I answered reluctantly. “But we must be wary.”

“Lorenzo and I could take turns keeping awake.”

“Well, we’ll see.” I urged my mule back toward the couple and asked, “How far to your shelter?”

“Close by.” The old man waved a hairy, freckled hand.

“All right, then, thank you for the kind offer.”

They brightened and picked up their step. As we turned off the road onto an invisible track, Olmina and Lorenzo walked ahead with the peasants and struck up friendly conversations just out of my hearing. I didn’t mind, for I knew they’d inform me of anything important. It was better this way, for the peasants would feel more comfortable speaking away from my presence.

The old ones, Gerta and Josef, lived deep in the black wood (not so close as Josef first suggested), their dwelling hidden by hawthorn thickets. I was uneasy until we entered the hut and the dry scent of rosemary, mint, and caraway filled our senses. The woman, despite her sallow skin (which should’ve signaled a slow temperament), grew energetic and lit a fire, putting on an iron pot of wild leek soup. The man cut a sausage down from the three that hung from the ceiling. We added our raveled bread, the last of the pickled Venetian sardines, goat cheese, and wine to their rough table and began to eat with great savor.

Afterward we drew near the fire, all sitting together contentedly on a single thick bench. But when they heard we were going to Tübingen, Josef proclaimed, “You won’t be able to travel there looking like that, in skirts!”

Seeing my puzzled face, Gerta spoke up. “The women are
gone.
They’ve been taken for witches, the little daughters too.”

Josef hunched forward, coarse gray hair poking like hog bristles from his wrinkled neck. “The bishop of Wirtenberg…,” he mumbled. “His men took them all away from Durlingen, our town. We hid in an old root cellar, or my Gerta would have been taken.”

The old woman laid a knotted hand on his shoulder.

I stared into the cinders that flaked apart on the hearth. “What happened to them?”

“Don’t know, exactly. They never came back. There are towns around here with no women at all.”

So that was why the old ones were living alone here, hidden in the forest.

There had been witch trials in Venetia too for many decades. It was worst during the plagues. Widows suspected of consorting with the devil were buried with bricks thrust into their mouths. They were tossed into the trenches dug for the thousands of plague dead on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio. This was said to prevent them from returning to feed upon living children.

My mother had cried, “What witchcraft? What a scandal! To throw a poor old woman into the common grave, silenced by a brick.” Then, in a low voice, she said to Olmina as I listened nearby, “The inquisitor needs a brick to the head—that’s what I think.” And for once I agreed with her.

Her own mother had been a widow, condemned during the panic of 1575 but luckily absolved by the influence of family friends. And now I thought,
Oh, my mother is a kind of widow.
There were the straw widows, those discarded mistresses. But what could I say of a wife who didn’t know where her husband was? Married to want. A lack widow.

Most of the time a woman accused of witchery in Venetia was a midwife who would be imprisoned, but children were never blamed.
The little daughters,
Gerta had said. Olmina slipped her arm through mine as we huddled there before the sputtering flames.

“How could this happen?” I asked, greatly troubled.

Josef explained: “At first the bishop sent his inquisition to Durlingen and got the help of the village priest, for there was rumor in town of a widow at the edge of the village being a witch. She’d always acted sullen and was ill treated by her husband. But after he died, she said whatever she wanted to, even if it meant that she cursed the landowner who raised her rent, or refused the priest entry to her hovel. I understood her anger, but a woman must bite her tongue, especially a woman alone.”

“All her children had died or gone somewhere else, like ours.” Gerta spoke more faintly and looked down at her hands as if silently counting her offspring—the dead, the ones gone to sea, the ones gone to other lands for a better life, whom she would never see again.

“I’m glad, you know”—her voice grew hoarse, as if she were about to weep—“that our daughters have left and been spared the fate of others in our village.”

Josef put his arm around her.

She continued, “The widow. When a neighbor wouldn’t allow her goat to graze in his pasture, as he’d always done for her husband, she told him he’d shrivel up. Well, as it turned out, he did, and he never fathered any more children. She also grew an amazing garden of herbs and medicinals that some say came from cuttings she stole from the rectory plot. I wouldn’t begrudge her that, even if she did. Some said that she called down the moon. Sometimes she’d stand by her gate and fling abuse at the passersby…”

“We didn’t mind—she was amusing,” added Josef. “She once called the burgher a sausage head, meaning his sausage was displaced, if you take my meaning.”

The two of them laughed at that, as did Lorenzo. Olmina just shook her head.

“But then they took her away. Later they took more women away. We thought it was for questioning. The husbands and sons didn’t interfere,” said Gerta.

“Maybe they thought that the more they went along with it,” Josef continued ruefully, “the sooner they’d get their women back.”

“But only the bishop and his men came back,” Gerta said, “and the bishop announced he would make an example of village women who consorted with demons. Especially the weather witches, who’d brought severe cold to the land and ruined the crops. He would purge the village of all the whore witches. That’s what he said.”

“That’s when we left,” Josef declared. “We know this forest well. I’m a woodcutter. But we have to keep moving, keep hiding. Don’t know when it will end.” He sighed. “A few days ago there was a lot of smoke coming from the village.”

“And that’s why you must stay away from Durlingen!” warned Gerta.

“We’ll go by another way to Tübingen,” I agreed.

“Can’t,” Lorenzo said brusquely. “We need stores.”

“There’s no other way, then,” Josef spoke flatly. “Go in men’s clothing.”

I protested. “I don’t have any men’s clothing. And if we get caught? How can we do this?”

“I think we must,” Olmina admitted.

Lorenzo didn’t say a word but stared uneasily at us.

“We must say that we come from Luciafuccina, not Venetia.” (I avoided saying “that glittering whore of the Adriatic,” but I knew it was what foreigners liked to call her.) I smiled at Olmina to reassure her. “From now on, we’re countryfolk.”

“I never was a Venetian,” objected Lorenzo. “Let me do all the talking.”

“Oh, now we’re done for!” Olmina said. “Why don’t we pass Tübingen?”

“No!” I said sharply. Then I softened my tone. “What if my father is there? I have to be sure.”

“Sure! And sure as the grave!” She stood up and paced the small dirt floor.

“Oh, little wife,” Lorenzo said softly, “we could just as soon find death here as in the city.”

“You won’t find your grave here, I can tell you that,” said Gerta in a hurt tone, crossing herself.

“I meant no offense,” mumbled Lorenzo. Olmina rolled her eyes.

“We’ll go as men, we’ll travel quickly.” I set down the plan as if I were confident, though my stomach clenched. Olmina moaned and sat back down next to me on the end of the bench. Owls started up in hushed hoot and echo, the sentinels of night, and we huddled in silence for a long while until it was time to sleep.

Later I awoke, unable to fall back asleep.

I sat up (I was closest to the wall and so could do this without disturbing anyone) and withdrew quill, ink, and paper from my bag. Still disturbed by the story of the bishop-protector turned tyrant, I began to write in the dim light. The others snored in dreadful discord.

The Malady of Mirrors:

A Rare Disease about Whose Origins Little Is Known

The sickness is cast in two forms. In the first, a person intends a movement, a look, or a word and carries out its opposite. A woman extends her right hand to caress the hard stubble on her lover’s down-turned chin and pummels his forehead with her left fist. Or a man dealing in pears switches from a plain chant, “Pears, ripe pears!” to a smothered whisper: “Don’t expect to get any pears from me, you villains!”

In the second form, the person sees the true expression of his movements, desires, and thoughts only within a mirror. A priest (or even a bishop), for instance, intends a pious smile and sees instead the vulgar frown of sanctimony.

Father Arcibaldo, a clergyman of noble origins, was afflicted with this peculiarity, and he carried a small oval mirror with him everywhere. Set in onyx and bound to his wrist with a silken cord and tassel, the mirror dangled and flashed from the folds of his robes. He could often be seen walking in the Citadella, gazing obliquely at the mirror he held in the palm of his hand, at his face, grotesque and angry, or twisted into a strange smile. Those who wished to divine his true mind often tried to steal a glance in the mirror. He then took to the habit of carrying a heavy stick in his other hand, for smacking those who weren’t swift or subtle enough in their purpose. Some called for him to be defrocked, while others called his disease a hoax embellished by the nobility and clergy alike to excuse his cruel actions and words. Father Arcibaldo himself simply said, “A priest is a different kind of man and therefore must be respected absolutely! No commoner may question him!”

In the first case, a cure is worked by arming those around the sufferer with mirrors to be fastened upon vests, bodices, hats, and gloves and even upon the brow with a silver ribbon. In the second, the victim must relinquish all his mirrors, thus defeating his singularity. He must look to others for his reflection, the thing perhaps most abhorrent to him.

As I settled into sleep, I also thought of my mother, who had always wanted me to be the mirror tied to her wrist.

Early the next morning, Olmina became Goodman Olmo (in Lorenzo’s clothes), and I reluctantly became Gabriele Silvano Mondini (in the woodcutter’s clothes). Gerta cut Olmo’s stiff gray hair to just below her ears with a sharp pair of scissors. My dear companion sat motionless as a wooden saint on the bench, her eyes closed, hands clasped in her lap. Then Gerta turned to me. She stroked my long auburn hair with hands that resembled roots unearthed from an old furrow. “I should cut this, signorina. I don’t think you can hide it.”

“Let me try,” I insisted, and I stepped outside. I sat on an old stump near the hut and worked the comb through my hair. So many knots! And my neck tense as a rope. But little by little I worked it loose. I brought my hair forward over my shoulder, parted it in three, and plaited it snugly. Pine limbs lifted and fell above me in an uncertain wind.