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

pawing the air as if to get up. I turned to the gentleman and asked, “Do you have any cotton or linen cloth?”
    He shook his head. I bent over, lifted my damask skirt, and tore a large strip from my underskirt. The lord, his three manservants, and the gathering passersby watched in astonishment. I sidestepped carefully down the bank and dipped it in the cold water of the moat.
    “Calm your animal!” I ordered when I returned and rinsed the horse’s wound. Lord Altenhaus knelt and slowly stroked the horse’s head and neck. Lorenzo jumped down next to him, placing one hand on the horse’s head, speaking that monotone of soft words that no one understood but the animals.
    I borrowed thread and needle from a laundrywoman in the small crowd and ran it carefully through the ferny yarrow leaf that Olmina brought me, attaching it to the horse’s flesh as I sutured the wound. It was a hand’s length long but fortunately not too deep. No tendons were harmed. We macerated the rest of the yarrow on a flat stone and placed it against the closed gash, then bound the cloth snugly around it.
    “This will do until you find a proper horse doctor,” I reassured Lord Altenhaus.
    His pale green slippers, stockings, and striped doublet were soiled with horse blood and the filth of the road. His soft-brimmed hat was the only article of clothing left untouched. The horse whinnied, struggled to rise again, and at last succeeded. With a rowdy mix of hurrahs from a few youths, the crowd dispersed. Lord Altenhaus offered to pay me, but I refused. I owed a debt to another horse that I’d never be able to repay.
    When we left them at the side of the road, I looked back. What a strange and consoling sight, I thought, to see an elegant man kneeling in the mud over his frightened beast. For some reason he entered my mind for days afterward, the green plume in his hat a valiant pennant fluttering from the tower of a besieged city. He reminded me of a young Venetian nobleman my father once treated, Signor Valdaccio, ornately handsome but haughty with his paramours. Lavinia had once succumbed to his tangy beauty, though she too had been scorned. He could be kind, but only at his own whim when it pleased him to play the radiant benefactor. Yet Signor Valdaccio weathered a terrible fever that left him stripped of frivolity, for in sickbed isolation he’d grasped that his influence, like Venetia, was illusion, but disease unites us all. Le malattie ci dicono quel che siamo.
     
    I spent many days at the inn reading over maladies my father and I had struggled to comprehend. As I continued to heal, I wanted to know cause and cure more fully.
     
Horn of the Unicorn:
For Loss of Desire
The pulverized horn, very rare and unstable in the light, must be retained in a dark bottle and used sparingly. While I question the origins of the so-called horn of the unicorn (who has ever seen such a creature?), I do not question its efficacy.
When preparing to administer the powder, you must avoid disturbing the contents with any sound such as speech or with any motion such as jiggling the bottle, for it will alter the pitch of the desires considerably. Remove the fine grains with a small spoon and sprinkle over the scalp or the palms of the hands and gently massage into the skin, taking care to wear gloves or else the physician may become inflamed. The patient must choose an object such as a small portrait of the once beloved, or even an emblem of work, such as a chisel, if the person wishes to rekindle a passion for a vocation.
One caution: If too much powder is given, the patient may dwell upon the very thing itself rather than what it signifies, like that king who fell in love with the ring rather than the woman and couldn’t release her even after she died (for the ring lay under her tongue). At last the bishop withdrew it from her cold mouth, but then the king fell in love with the bishop. The cleric wisely tossed the ring into Lake Costentz, and the king, poor