Free The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny Page B

happened. But since they couldn’t write (unless they enlisted the help of a scribe), they might’ve been unable to dispatch any news. And besides, messages are easily lost…
    There were so many ways to disappear in this world, I mused: by land, in the sea, kidnapped by thieves, set upon by vagabonds, forced into battles or chained to galleys, vanquished by gambling. And of course, the one possibility I pushed furthest from my mind: disease of all sorts. For what good was a doctor who couldn’t cure himself ?
     
    As we continued on our way to Bregnicz, a week’s ride or so from Val di Fassa, Venetian spice merchants headed to Piamonte warned us, “You can’t go by the Costentz, its waters have swallowed the road!” In my determination (what Olmina calls my obstinacy), I refused to listen to them. Venetians are accustomed to the acqua alta. Indeed, my father, Dr. Cardano, and I had passed this way easily over a decade ago to visit an old friend. We were forewarned of submerged roads then too, but we waded through without mishap (other than muddied clothes) as the shallow waters receded.
    Also, I was fighting a desire to return to my former patients, the women I’d only been able to notify of my absence by message. Who knew what course a new doctor would follow. Would he be undoing my cures?
    My father had often noted the complement of a woman doctor in the room. “They speak to you more readily, Gabriella, and give you advantage in seeking a cure.”
    “I’m able to listen too, Papà. This art, not taught at university, is my greatest teacher.”
    “Not your father, then?” He smiled as he sat at the desk in his study.
    “Ah, the one must precede the other. How could I learn from you without listening?”
    “Though we all jump in too soon sometimes, don’t you think?”
    “I know, I know,” I said, feeling a hot twinge of embarrassment. “At the beginning I was far too eager to give my opinion. It’s not easy when I have to prove myself tenfold to be taken seriously as a young woman. Two faults in one. Yet every day now I remind myself to bow to the unknown cause.”
    “We worship at the same altar, my dear. Malady and death, the greatest teachers.”
    “And the patient herself,” I couldn’t resist adding.
    Now, as we rode, I sometimes grew annoyed with my horse (though the hot weather also pricked my impatience). We’d entered the sullen dog days of August, month of fevers. Dog Star and sun together in the sky generated more heat (or so the ancients believed). My restless animal balked at the slightest crackle in the dry leaves or even at a thin rivulet threading the road. Lorenzo grumbled at me for my ill temper with Orfeo, but Olmina defended me. “Don’t be harsh on the signorina. Horses aren’t the only ones that catch a burr in the hoof !”
    “But one must be kind to beasts,” he muttered.
    “I’ll try,” I promised him, and I sincerely meant it, though not long after, Orfeo halted and dug in his hooves, stricken by the mystifying vision of a curved stick in the middle of the road. “Boiled-Eggs-for-Brains!” I flung the words under my breath. The pack mules took advantage of the delay to wander off and enthusiastically crop grasses and blue gentian among the stones.
    Lorenzo dismounted and kicked the offending stick aside. He wryly warned, “Don’t forget that trouble rides a fast horse!”
    A fast horse would have gotten us to Lake Costentz by now, I thought.
     
    The high fields smelled of scythed barley and threshing, old apples, and Rhenish. Sheep stood unmoved in the middle of mountain paths when we rode up, and they turned their implacable dun faces toward us, bleating loudly and sticking their tongues out. Lorenzo sat up in the saddle, leaned forward, and commanded them in a quick, low tone to move their woolly rumps. The flocks miraculously parted. Sometimes, as we moved along, I noticed that the three rear pack mules abruptly picked up the pace, setting off a panicky