The Remedy
The
Remedy
A novel of
London & Venice
Michelle Lovric
An Imprint of
HarperCollins
Publishers
Love lends its name to countless dealings which are attributed to it but of which it knows no more than the Doge knows what goes on in Venice.
FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1613–80),
Maxims
As far as I am concerned, no sweet thing is evil.
AVICENNA (973–1037)
Table of Contents
Part One
1 - An Anodyne Epithem
2 - An Emmenagogue Decoction
3 - Emmenagogue Pills
4 - Balsamic Lozenges
5 - A Refrigerating Expression
6 - A Consolating Mixture
7 - A Julep for Child-Bed Women
8 - A Camphorate Electuary
9 - A Draught for a Bruise
Part Two
1 - A Traumatic Infusion
2 - Spleen Ale
3 - Horse-Dung Water
4 - Antiphthisic Decoction
5 - Consummate Broth
6 - An Electuary of Satyrion
7 - The Decoction Called Sacrum
8 - Analeptic Electuary
9 - An Antiloimick Decoction
10 - A Cataplasm in a Quinsy Sore Throat
11 - A Traumatic Decoction
12 - Wafers of Tamarinds
13 - An Alexipharmac Draught
14 - Diuretic Ale
Part Three
1 - A Warm Cardiac Electuary
2 - A Golden Julep
3 - A Gargle with Myrrh
4 - An Hysteric Electuary
5 - A Cordial Epithem
6 - A Cephalic Julep
7 - A Litus for the Face
Part Four
1 - A Cephalic Electuary
2 - An Icteric Decoction
3 - An Electuary of Mustard
4 - A Cataplasm of Herrings
5 - A Consolatory Draught
Part Five
1 - A Solid Errhine
2 - A Cordial Julep
3 - Pectoral Snail Water
4 - A Quilt for a Cap
5 - An Expression of Millipedes
6 - A Paste for Aphthae
7 - A Sweetening Scorbutick Ale
8 - A Decoction of the Woods
9 - A Temperate Pearl Cordial Julep
10 - A Pacific Mixture
11 - A Cataplasm of Bitters
12 - A Comforting Glyster
13 - A Cordial Caudle
14 - An Hysteric Nodule
Part Six
1 - An Hemoptoic Draught
2 - A Balsam called Mirabile
3 - A Foment for the Pain of Haemorrhoids
4 - A Draught for a Catarrh
5 - A Balsamic Bolus
6 - Peruvian Antihectic Lozenges
7 - A Peruvian Epileptic Electuary
8 - Splanchnic Powder
9 - Sternutatory Powder
Part Seven
1 - Chalybeate Syrup
2 - A Cataplasm of Webs
3 - Unguent for Shrinking of the Sinews
4 - Restorative Caudle
5 - A Pacific Foment
6 - An Alexiterial Julep
Epilogue: Venice, March 1787
Powder of Crabs Eyes Compound
Historical Notes: London and Venice, Winter 1785/6
Acknowledgments
Other Books by This Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
So at fifteen, spread belly-down upon the floor, a black sheet hunched over me and candles at my foot and head, my lips pressed on stone, litanies in my ears, as the priest broke and entered my shocked fist to slide the ring on my finger, I promised to take no other husband than Christ. I almost meant it. In that heady moment the vow itself seemed no great sacrifice: I’d never known a man, but I had tasted chocolate.
Venice, 1768
Take Brandy 4 ounces; Camphire half a dram; Opium 2 drams, dissolve.
It comforts the Nervous parts, by its warmth appeaseth the raging Spirits, penetrates deep, sets open the Pores, attenuates, dissipates, obtunds the dolorific Matter, and drives it off by Diaphoresis.
I was an unwilling nun, bundled into the convent by a family that had briefly lost its head over a trivial adolescent melodrama. My ultimate crime was such a negligible one that it’s not worth the recounting. One day I was the pride and idol of my parents, roaming freely around the family palazzo with my tribe of high-bred she-dogs, having my hair dressed, clowning adorably at my dancing lessons, having my portrait painted. I believe I was a little willful with the artist. That’s all. Yet the next day I was in San Zaccaria, which was by way of being our family convent, as at least six unmarriageable aunts had been deposited there and a number of my plainer cousins. At first I thought it just a brief punishment, a warning, some time to cool my heels. There was no problem of conjuring a dowry for me, and I was far from ugly, being a piquant blonde of the kind that precociously detained male attention. But after a few weeks I began to suspect the dreadful truth: that my parents meant to keep me there.
And I realized that it had been in the planning for some time.
I already knew the inside of San Zaccaria all too well. And my parents had every excuse to feel satisfied in their consciences, despite my protests, with this destiny they had thrust on me.
For the nuns had caught me early by my sweet tooth, hanging sugared almonds, balsamic lozenges, and candied fruit in the humid swoop of the orchard branches whenever we went, in my infant days, to visit two or three aunts Catarina, our family’s Christian name for girls. No one remarked upon the lovely crop or stopped me snatching jellies from their strings or cracking pink-nubbed nuts against my milk-teeth. So I was free to think that in convents such things grew on trees, whereas at home they must be prayed for. A happy mouth does not forget what once befriended it.
In Venice, the noble dynasties were recorded in our so-called “Golden Book.” And each Golden Book family stored its female shadow, like its conscience, in a nunnery: seventeen Contarini at Santa Catarina, a score of Moresini at Spirito Santo, the Balbi at Sant’ Andrea de Zirada. And the unwanted Foscarini and Querini women were interred in our own living crypt at San Zaccaria.
At ten, I’d joined the boat when my cousin Paola made her bridal tour of convents, to salute her sisters sealed in chastity. This archaic ritual was long out of fashion, yet my uncle persisted with it, for the sake of the family nuns who loved company and whose isolation was a constant source of inadmissible guilt.
They’d
been given to God, who asked the merest thousand-ducat dowry, this so my Uncle Paolo could spend thirty thousand on a Gradenigo bridegroom for Paola and a new infusion of old Golden Book blood into his grandchildren.
Her confined cousins blessed Paola with dead eyes, forked almond crescents through the grille into her violable mouth, for while they might feed her, they were not allowed to touch the bride’s naked hand. Meanwhile, for me, there were buckwheat wafers thin as hosts but interleaved with honeyed whipped cream, still-smoking fritters brisk with powdered musk and spiced
panpepato
such as I was not allowed at home.
When I was twelve, the nuns asked me would I like to see the kitchens? A noble girl, I’d never seen one, so why not? Down I went, and there I found such red-cheeked happiness pulling such trays of sweet warmth from gnashing ovens, such lucent
bottles of Seville syrups staining the glass of the windows, such a hot and blissful hub of softening, folding, melting, lubricating, rising, turning, glazing, and stacking in painted boxes destined for fine tables that I cried when they made me go home. I wasn’t bred for such low labor myself, but I was partial to watching it.
And so I continued to visit San Zaccaria regularly and felt myself at home there. I even boarded at times as a schoolgirl, sleeping in the rooms of my aunts while my desultory education continued in a classroom next to the refectory.
I called on the convent kitchens as a sparrow calls on a bird-table, taking what I wanted and flitting off. No one could bake marzipan cakes like those nuns at San Zaccaria, except perhaps those at Sant’ Alvise. Most certainly no one made such frothing chocolate or served it in such elegant caudle cups. I came so often to drink it that a special cup was reserved for me.