Free The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty

did she know that another discovery—a chance encounter in the streets of Vienna with a Hapsburg—was about to change her father’s life forever.
    He would be the first to bring the unspeakable news to Cesky Krumlov.

 

CHAPTER 6
     
    R UDOLF II AND THE C ODED B OOK OF W ONDER
     
    King Rudolf scratched peevishly inside one nostril with his manicured fingernail. It wasn’t a particularly elegant act to perform in the Viennese court, but then what did it matter? He was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the king of Hungary, king of Moravia and Bohemia and Croatia. And the Eastern kingdoms paid him tribute and asked for his mighty protection, so he could include these in his possession.
    And given the daily news of the outrageous behavior of his bastard son Giuglio—now known to everyone but the royal family as Don Julius—what condemnation could a little nosescratching merit? He had divine right, he was...
    One of his many dwarfs, the pimply one, giggled and whispered something behind his pudgy hand.
    “Do you mock me, you ugly sprite?” snapped the king. The finger so recently engaged in scratching now pointed ominously at the little man. “Approach me, you warty little toad!”
    The dwarf widened his eyes in horror and tried to swallow his fear. The king was known for sudden fits of rage, and a courtdwarf was disposable, just one among the many given to Rudolf for his amusement. The man trembled at the thought of being plunged into the darkness of a Viennese prison.
    “Of course not, my lord! I’d sooner cut off my right arm than to insult my king!” he said.
    “Of what do you speak, then, so full of mirth?”
    The dwarf hesitated, his eyes darting like scared minnows as he conjured his lie. “I—I was wondering if life in Prague and the
hrad
is as marvelously amusing as I’ve heard. The music, the feasts, the Vltava River that sparkles green—”
    Everyone in the Viennese court knew of His Majesty’s preference for Prague, where he could escape the pressures and royal duties of Vienna and indulge his melancholy, his love for art, astronomy, exotic animals, beautiful women, and clocks.
    The king’s minister, Wolfgang Rumpf, stepped in, perhaps saving the dwarf’s life.
    “Yes, indeed. This little man does praise well the charms of the capital city Prague for one who has never laid eyes on her eternal beauty,” he said, casting a sardonic look at the trembling dwarf. “What an astute observation from someone so humble.”
    “My holy city of enchantment,” murmured the king, momentarily forgetting his wrath. “Bah! Vienna sickens me with her air—the Danube cannot compare with the Vltava. Did I not proclaim Prague as City Eternal of the Holy Roman Empire? Why do state affairs continue to draw me back to this old whore of a city and the nagging voice of my mother? We shall prepare for Prague immediately. You, Rumpf, shall address these tedious councilors who suck my very marrow with their questions and pleas. They tire me with their wheedling.”
    Minister Rumpf, who was long accustomed to taking charge of the reins of the empire, especially when His Majesty suffered a bout of melancholy, consented with a low bow.
    “However, before your imminent departure, my lord,” said Wolfgang Rumpf, addressing the king’s polished boot, “if you please, we must discuss the fate of your son, Don Julius Caesar d’Austria.”
    “Giuglio has the corrupt blood of his Italian mother in his veins. This is my punishment for coupling with the foreign wench.”
    Minister Rumpf’s eyebrow twitched. It had long been assumed by the European royal courts that Emperor Rudolf’s own mental failings—bouts of melancholy and fits of temper—were a direct inheritance from his great-grandmother, Juana La Loca of Spain, the maddest perhaps of all the Hapsburgs. And now Don Julius, in turn, manifested undeniable signs of the Hapsburg lunacy. The bastard son did not share the dark, brooding melancholy of his father, but