The Book of Madness and Cures (17 page)

These were my mother’s concerns, interrupted only by lute playing and supper. Perhaps she no longer cared for my father, or perhaps she hid herself, a frightened girl, beneath all the frippery and sharp-tongued scorn. I didn’t know.

Still, her letter burned in my mind. I considered, what if my father had truly disavowed us? He was always leaving us. Then this final disappearance was only a continuation of what had come before. No. I couldn’t believe it.

We’d extended our stay in Tübingen with Dr. Fuchs because of the harsh weather. After a week, I rarely ventured out into the streets of the city, for even as a man without voluminous hems to worry about, I hated the stinging cold and foul mud that spattered everything. The wind swept the acrid stenches of tannery, slaughterhouse, and dung from the lower town up toward the university and the castle and drenched us all in its ill vapors. At times I took refuge in the parish church; its steep Protestant arches seemed a vaulted stone forest. The quiet appeased me and I liked the plain sounds of the Protestant bells, distinct from Catholic bells in their ringing.

Once, I was accosted by a rough Swabian student who, not knowing I was a woman but having overheard my Venetian accent at the door, took me for some kind of intruder. “Halt there, foreigner! This is a sacred place for Protestants, not the trough at which Catholics feed!” (Why he’d assume that every stranger was a Catholic, I’ve no idea.) He shoved my shoulder and pushed me beneath an archway near the entrance.

I said nothing. The smell of frozen stone pricked my breath keenly as a blade. Other students gathered behind him, leering.

“Leave him be, he doesn’t understand you,” said another student.

I couldn’t see this new voice well in the dim light but only detected a black hat that spilled yellow curls from beneath its rim.

“He shouldn’t be here,” grumbled the Swabian, his nose flat as a spatula.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to offend,” I blurted in broken German. “This church—very beautiful. Not a Catholic, not a Catholic,” I lied, waving my hands before me in remonstration. Suddenly Olmo burst forth, fresh from the Marketplatz, bread basket in arm, loaves poking out, and pulled me out of the corner so quickly the others were too startled to respond.

“That’s very fine!” shouted the Swabian after us. “You have to be rescued by your manservant, eh?” I shot a glance back over my shoulder. They all laughed—except for the one with yellow curls.

I noticed him later, following us back to Dr. Fuchs’s house. He knocked on the door several minutes after we returned, and Hans opened it, grumbling.

“I’d like to speak to the young man who just returned with his manservant,” said the tall man, his bright hair gathering the dry snow that began to fall heavily and steadily around him. I stood upstairs, watching him through the window. “You remember me—one of Dr. Fuchs’s students, Wilhelm Lochner.”

The breath of his words hung visibly in puffs before the jutting face of Hans.

“Can’t see them, they’re indisposed now,” Hans replied. “You know these foreign ladies—the doctor and her maidservant can’t take much of our cold weather, ha!” he spouted. I nearly gasped. Then, realizing his mistake, Hans thrust the door shut without a word.

The young man, Wilhelm Lochner, looked confused. He stared upward toward the wavy panes of leaded glass and the thick velvet curtain that hid me from view. As I peered down at him, he appeared to be underwater, eyes blue-silver as coin, the snow churning around him like whitewater at the rudder of a ship. I studied his black cloak, black and yellow striped breeches, and yellow hose, which revealed supple calves. Wilhelm stood there for a while, staring at one window and another, and then at the brisk little stream, channeled from the Neckar, that ran at the edge of the street behind him. He waited for so long that when he left, a dark hollow of earth remained where he had stood in the dull broadloom of snow.

After he’d gone, the snowfall filled in the hollow, opening one within me. Here was a man, I realized, who had sensed me through my disguise. I spoke quietly to the closed window and the submerged world beyond the imperfect glass: “Wilhelm Lochner, come in.”

CHAPTER 10

Where the Root Is in the House, the Devil Can Do No Harm

The next morning,
Olmina shook my shoulders abruptly to wake me. “You have a visitor. Or shall I say a patient?”

“Olmina?” I stared at her, for now she wore women’s clothing for the first time in many days.

“Ah, well, I suspect that all of Tübingen knows now who is staying at the house of Dr. Fuchs, thanks to Hans. For one servant speaks to another, and one student speaks to many! That one with the yellow hair, who knows what he’s said. Anyway, I’m weary of men’s garments. I like the feel of more cloth around me.”

“But what’s this you say about a patient?”

“It’s that fellow who stood at the door yesterday. And mind you, signorina, I don’t like this. Be careful.”

Wilhelm Lochner had returned and requested a consultation with the foreign doctor. Dr. Fuchs thought it odd, and then he considered that it might be rather edifying, or so he told me later. Hence, to my frustration, he agreed without asking my consent.

After a short while (I didn’t take long to dress, for unlike Olmina, I liked the ease of dressing as a man, even if everyone knew I was a woman now), I descended the stairs and entered the study, where the two men were seated before a boisterous fire. “Have you ever visited a woman doctor, then, Mr. Lochner?” I asked, skipping the usual courtesies and coming straight to the point.

Both men gaped at me rather foolishly, though both had already seen me in male garb. No doubt my legs were provocative in chestnut breeches. Men rarely perceived even an ankle, unless it belonged to a mistress or wife.

Wilhelm Lochner stood and bowed. “No, I’ve never had the distinct privilege of meeting a lady of this profession before you.” He was brilliant as an equatorial bird, with stockings striped in three kinds of blue, indigo velvet breeches, a purple doublet, and red gloves that matched his deep red boots. “But how did you come by my name, dear lady?”

“I overheard you yesterday at the door.” I paused, then continued rather coolly, “So what is troubling you?” I didn’t want Mr. Lochner to know that his concern at the church had attracted me.

“Gabriella,” Dr. Fuchs broke in, “Wilhelm was acquainted with your father.”

“Ah.” I now regarded him more carefully. That was sly of Dr. Fuchs.

“What do you recall of my father?” I asked, not feeling so hasty now, sitting down in a chair opposite the two men. I felt a little distracted myself by my exposed legs, stretched out before me, flickering with firelight.

“Your father,” replied Mr. Lochner, “was a very intelligent doctor who soothed an ulcer upon my leg, though Dr. Fuchs did not approve of his cure.” He cast a mock-challenging glance at his professor and then returned to me. “Now I’m suffering this skin ulcer again and wish to hear your recommendation.”

“I’ll have to view the offending ulcer first, if you’ll permit me.”

He appeared surprised at my request. Perhaps he expected me to either confirm my father’s cure or inquire after Dr. Fuchs’s suggestion, like those philosophical doctors who pay little heed to what is before their own eyes when prescribing a cure. Either way, he didn’t tell me what was used. He was testing me, then.

“I’ll step out of the room and return when you’re ready,” I proposed, and I left him to partly undress.

A few minutes later I was summoned to view Mr. Lochner, who stood with his back to me, his breeches scrunched up, his left stocking rolled down to reveal the back of his taut thigh, where a small, round ulcer wept. I examined it carefully, touching the skin around it, at which Mr. Lochner winced in pain. “I no longer have my medicines at hand, Mr. Lochner,” I said, breaking the disconcerting silence in the room. “But I’d recommend a poultice of hemlock for this kind of stubborn lesion.”

He glanced over his shoulder at me with a slightly bemused smile, while Dr. Fuchs shook his head and said, “Your father suggested comfrey, which frankly I find to be ineffective in these sores.”

“Ah, he did,” I mused. “I’d say that would be an excellent thing for a fresh suppuration in the skin. But since you told me you’ve had the ulcer a long while, albeit of recurring habit, something more potent is needed.”

Dr. Fuchs spoke up: “But hemlock, my dear! It’s dangerous and the devil’s herb besides!”

“Yet didn’t I spy the poison parsley in your medicine chest in the herbarium? I’ve heard it said, ‘Where the root is in the house, the devil can do no harm,’ and further, ‘If anyone should carry the plant about on his person, no venomous beast can harm him.’ A bit of the devil repels the devil, then!”

Dr. Fuchs reddened, whether from embarrassment or irritation I wasn’t sure.

“You may roll up the stocking, Lochner,” he said brusquely. “And as for your interpretation, Gabriella, those adages come from ignorant midwives, not doctors.”

So it was irritation, then. Since I trusted the experience of midwives, my own anger rose in their defense, though I said evenly, “There is more than one path to healing, Dr. Fuchs.”

“And we’ve seen that here today in this very room, have we not?” interjected his student, still standing with one stocking up, one stocking down. He smiled at me.

I began to laugh a little, in spite of myself, and even Dr. Fuchs smiled now at the gaudy young man who stumbled toward me with a sort of bow. “Thank you, Dr. Mondini,” Wilhelm said. “I see that the daughter is just as wise as the father.”

My neck tingled pleasantly when he called me Dr. Mondini. Perhaps I was not just a novelty to him, a “dear lady” doctor.

Then he turned to Dr. Fuchs. “Could you have your man prepare the hemlock for me? I’ll pay you well, master.”

Dr. Fuchs grumbled as he left the room, and I followed him to help assemble the cure. A short time later, after having soaked a strip of linen in the hemlock decoction, I returned and wound the compress around the leg (which I noted was quite firm), covering the ulcer.

Mr. Lochner flinched and wobbled, at one point inadvertently resting his hand on my head while regaining his balance. Then he stroked my hair once furtively before facing away to draw up his stocking and fasten his garter. In that moment the firm back of his thigh, those muscular lineaments, usually unseen, possessed a crude power to move me.

I rose and observed him struggling with the garter. When he turned to thank me, his clear blue eyes were chagrined by his fumbling.

I looked away. “Mr. Lochner, if this doesn’t prove to be efficacious, you must consider the maggot cure. For they will debride the flesh that clings and doesn’t heal.”

“I’d rather not take that cure till the grave!”

“But surely you’ve studied its great benefits? The worms consume only dead flesh, so you should have no qualms about it.”

He bent close and murmured, “I would gladly be debrided if it afforded me more time in your company.”

I stepped back (though some yearning in me invisibly sprang forward) and extended my hand. “Good day, then, Mr. Lochner. We must meet again here in a week so that I can reexamine the ulcer. Remember to have your servant change the dressing at least twice a day.”

He smiled secretively and pressed my hand. “Thank you, Dr. Mondini. I’ll send word regarding a time we may meet and speak of your father. I’d like to hear more about the Paduan philosophy of medicine. I know a quiet inn that women may attend for refreshment, though you must dress as a woman then. If you were found out to be masquerading as a man, you’d be severely punished. Surely Dr. Fuchs has warned you that women may be put to death in Germania for such an offense?”

Dr. Fuchs spoke in a low voice. “I didn’t wish to frighten her. And besides”—he smirked—“the lady is very obstinate.”

“You’re right, of course.” I nodded. “Though it doesn’t seem fair, does it, that men wear the more generous clothing, and we the more constrained.”

“What would the world come to if women wore the same garb as men!” cried Dr. Fuchs, throwing up his knobby hands.

“Then men would have to seek something other than a cunning sleeve or elaborate bodice,” said Mr. Lochner, and I laughed aloud. Then he said, “Good day, Dr. Mondini,” as he donned a broad ocher hat and longcoat and departed with a kind of foolish strut, whether intended self-mockery or simply good spirits I couldn’t tell.

I hadn’t laughed so easily in months.

Olmina watched all this from the doorway with narrowed eyes, arms crossed upon her chest.

CHAPTER 11