by S. W. Perry
The clerk is not an uncaring man. The names he writes on the mortuary rolls are more to him than just a meaningless assembly of letters. His voice softens. ‘Have you passed by the Aldgate or Bishopsgate recently, Dr Shelby? There are more beggars and vagrants coming into the city from the country parishes than ever before. Some bring disease with them. Many will die, especially their infants. That is a sad fact indeed. But it is God’s will.’
‘I know that,’ says Nicholas.
‘Then there’s the tavern brawls, the street-fights after the curfew bell rings, children and women falling under waggon wheels, wherry passengers slipping on the river stairs…’
‘I appreciate Coroner Danby is a busy man—’
The clerk picks up his pen. ‘And thank Jesu the pestilence has spared us so far this summer. No, sir, I fear there will be no time to spare for investigating the death of a nameless vagrant child. There are barely enough hours in the day to arrange inquests for those who do have a name.’
Nicholas has often treated patients whose grasp on reality is failing. He’s prescribed easements for those who hear voices, or see great cities in the sky where the rest of us see only clouds. He’s treated over-pious virgins who say they converse nightly with an archangel, and stolid haberdashers who tell him a succubus visits them in bed after sermon every Sunday to relieve them of their seed. He doesn’t believe in possession. He believes in it about as much as he believes it necessary for a physician to cast an astrological table before making a diagnosis, something most doctors he knows seem to consider indispensable. Yet, as he leaves Whitehall, it has not occurred to him that his natural concern for Eleanor’s safety is a tiny breach in the wall of his own sanity. Or that the soul of a dead infant boy might have discovered the crack.
Their father has taught the Shelby boys never to leave a task unfinished. Sown fields do not reap themselves. Nicholas visits the sisters at St Bartholomew’s hospital who prepared the infant for Vaesy’s examination. Their recollection is hazy. They welcomed three dead infants to the mortuary crypt on the day before the lecture, none of them memorable.
He speaks to the watermen down by the Wildgoose stairs on Bankside, where the child was pulled from the river.
‘Why, sir, we know the very fellows who found the body,’ one of the watermen tells him. Then, with heartfelt regret, ‘But working on the water don’t pay for itself, Master—’
It costs Nicholas twice the price of a wherry fare to get the names. And when he locates them, the men turn out to have been somewhere else on the day.
I thought I’d been in London long enough not to get gulled so easily, he thinks as he walks back across the bridge. He feels dispirited. Oddly ill-at-ease. He longs to share his fears with the one person he knows would listen sympathetically. But that’s impossible. How can he dare even whisper of child-murder when Eleanor is so close to her time?
Three days after his visit to Coroner Danby’s clerk at Whitehall, Nicholas attends a formal lunch at the College of Physicians. Harriet has strict instructions not to linger if the baby comes – she is to hurry by the fastest route to the Guildhall, and no stopping to gossip on the way.
Today’s guest of honour is John Lumley, Baron Lumley of the county of Durham and of various estates in Sussex and Surrey. It is Lord Lumley who, by the queen’s gracious licence, had endowed the College of Physicians with an annuity of forty pounds a year – from his own purse, of course, not hers. It pays for a reader in anatomy. Sir Fulke Vaesy is the present incumbent.
The agenda is wearyingly familiar to Nicholas: first the prayers, then the food – roasted pigeon, salmon and plum porridge. Then an address by the College’s distinguished president, William Baronsdale. The heat of the day and the heaviness of his formal gown lead Nicholas to wonder if he can fall asleep without anyone noticing.
Baronsdale rises with ponderous solemnity, his ruff starched to the unyielding hardness of ivory. He’s barely able to move his head. He looks to Nicholas like a ferret stuck, up to the chin, in a drainpipe.
‘My noble lord, sirs, gentlemen,’ he begins sonorously, ‘it is my duty to acquaint you with the gravest threat to face this College in all its long and august history.’
His drowsiness instantly banished, Nicholas wonders what impending calamity Baronsdale means. Has there been an outbreak of pestilence he hasn’t heard about? Has Spain sent another Armada? Surely Baronsdale isn’t going to mention the chaos everyone fears will come with the queen’s death, given that she cannot now be expected to provide the realm with an heir. Discussion of the subject is forbidden by law. Not even old Dr Lopez, Elizabeth’s physician, who at this very moment is wiping his plate with his bread, dares mention it.
This lunch might yet prove more entertaining than I’d expected, thinks Nicholas.
In fact, it transpires that Baronsdale is warning them of a far greater hazard than any of those Nicholas has contemplated. It is this: how to stop the barber-surgeons passing themselves off as professional practitioners, thus impertinently considering themselves the equal of learned physicians.
An hour later, with Nicholas’s eyelids again feeling like lead, the great men of medicine agree on their defence. The nub of it, according to Baronsdale, is that the barber-surgeon uses tools in the practice of his work. He must therefore be a tradesman. In other words, little better than a blacksmith. ‘Why, if everyone who wields a sharp point in their daily toil considers themselves a professional,’ proclaims Baronsdale, ‘there’d be a guildhall, a chapel and a chain of office for the seamstresses!’
Nicholas has an urgent need to talk to the wall at Grass Street again. But there’s no escape for him. Not yet. Baronsdale hasn’t finished. It appears the barber-surgeons are not the only threat facing the College.
‘On Candlewick Street, a fishmonger named Crepin is alleged to be selling unauthorized cures for lameness, at two pennies a pot,’ he whines. ‘On Pentecost Lane, one Elvery – whose trade is that of nail-maker – is said to be concocting a syrup to cure the flux. He prescribes it without charge. Doesn’t expect so much as a farthing.’
Mutters of disapproval from around the table.
‘There is even a woman—’
More than a few gasps of horror.
‘Yes, a common Bankside tavern-mistress. Goes by the name of Merton. They say she concocts diverse unlicensed remedies, without any learning whatsoever!’ Baronsdale wags a finger to signify the Christian world is teetering of the edge of the pit of hell. His neck twists rigidly in his ruff as though he’s trying to unscrew his head. ‘We must put an end to these charlatans,’ he says gravely, ‘lest the learning of fifteen centuries be hawked outside St Paul’s Cross for a loaf of bread or a pot of ale!’
The applause is warm and appreciative. But Nicholas notices the guest of honour, John Lumley, seems unperturbed by these dire warnings of impending catastrophe. In fact, is that a yawn the rather sorrowful-looking patron of the chair of anatomy is trying to stifle?
Though Nicholas has only observed John Lumley from his own lowly orbit, Lumley’s reputation is well known to him. He is the queen’s friend, though he’s served time in the Tower for once desiring a Catholic monarchy. He’s a man of the old faith, yet in possession of a mind always on the search for new knowledge. His great library at Nonsuch Palace is said to be the match for any university library in Europe. And though he funds the chair of anatomy from his own purse, he’s not a physician. Which, thinks Nicholas, might just make him the perfect man to turn to.
But how, exactly, does a junior member of the College raise the subject of infanticide with one of its most senior – especially after his betters have gorged themselves on roasted pigeon and salmon, fine Rhenish wine and flagons of self-congratulation?
With confidence. That’s the answer, Nicholas decides as he waits in the Guildhall yard while around him the servants of the more successful physicians prepare for their masters to depart. Get to the point right away. Don’t hang back. Tell him what you saw.
&n
bsp; He spots Lord Lumley’s secretary, Gabriel Quigley, standing aloof to one side. Quigley is a bookish fellow in his mid-thirties. The severe folds of his gown serve only to accentuate his angular frame. His thinning hair falls loosely over a brow marked by traces of the small-pox. He looks more like a fallen priest than a lord’s secretary.
‘Would you do me a service, Master Quigley?’ Nicholas asks. ‘I’d be grateful for a brief audience with Lord Lumley.’
Quigley’s reply tells Nicholas in no uncertain terms that a lord’s secretary is considerably nearer to God than a mere physician, any day of the week. ‘His lordship is a busy man. What would be the subject of this audience, were he to grant it?’
‘A matter of great interest to an eminent man of physic,’ says Nicholas, biting his tongue. It’s better than ‘The violent overthrow of this place and all who dwell in it’, which is what he’s been considering since before the plum porridge was served.
‘My lord, I wondered if I might speak to you about Sir Fulke Vaesy’s recent lecture,’ Nicholas begins, with a respectful bend of the knee, when Quigley brokers the meeting.
‘The drowned boy-child?’ Lumley recalls. ‘Coroner Danby took not a little convincing over him.’
‘A most unusual subject, my lord.’
‘Indeed, Dr Shelby. One likes to feel that when Sir Fulke dissects a hanged criminal, the fellow is making some sort of reparation for his offences by adding to our understanding of nature. But a poor drowned child is quite another matter. Still, I always say we men of learning should not let our natural sensitivities get in the way of discovery.’
Natural sensitivities. Nicholas prays Lumley isn’t going to turn out to be as lacking in them as his protégé. ‘My lord, on the subject of the infant – I couldn’t help but notice—’
At that very moment, to his horror, Sir Fulke Vaesy himself emerges from the College hall. Striding over, he bows as graciously as his girth will allow and booms, ‘A grand lunch, my lord! And all the better for the dessert: barber-surgeons cooked in a pie!’ He glances at Nicholas. ‘How now, Shelby? Wife foaled yet?’
‘Any day, Sir Fulke,’ Nicholas says lamely. He can hear the sound of doors slamming. Doors to his career. And it will be Vaesy who’ll be doing the slamming, if Nicholas says in the great anatomist’s hearing what’s been on his mind these past few days.
‘Dr Shelby was about to mention your lecture, Fulke.’
‘Was he now?’
Nicholas bites his tongue. ‘I was going to say how instructive I found it, Sir Fulke.’
Vaesy beams, thinking good reviews can only make Lumley’s forty pounds a year that bit more secure.
Lumley pulls on the hem of his gloves in preparation for departure. ‘Was there anything else, sirrah? Master Quigley suggested you wished to speak to me on an important matter.’
Nicholas clutches at the only straw left to him: delay. ‘Perhaps I might be allowed to correspond with you, my lord – to seek your views on matters of new physic. I’d value them greatly.’
To his relief, Lumley seems flattered. ‘By all means, Dr Shelby. I shall look forward to it. I always like to hear from the younger men in the profession – minds less set. Don’t you, Fulke?’
Vaesy doesn’t seem to understand the question.
As Nicholas walks away he can almost hear the drowned boy whispering his approval: You are my only voice. Don’t let them silence me. Don’t give up.
On his way home Nicholas stops by the East Cheap cistern to wash the dust from his face. It’s hot, he’s eaten too much, listened to enough worthy back-slapping to last him a decade. Close to the fountain stands a religious firebrand reciting the gospels, punctuating his readings with dire warnings of man’s imminent destruction, to anyone who will listen. Few bother. A lad in a leather apron leads a fractious ram by a chain in the direction of Old Exchange Lane. A rook alights on the branches of a nearby tree and begins to caw loudly.
These are the minor details that will stay seared into Nicholas’s mind for ever. They have no particular importance. They are mere dressing for the centrepiece of the masque: Harriet.
She’s hurrying towards him, not even bothering to lift the hem of her dress from the filth of the street. He opens his mouth to call out.
Boy or girl? Jack or Grace?
He doesn’t care which. A boy will be the greatest physician in Europe, a girl the mirror of her mother. But the words cannot fly his mouth. They are glued there by the awful expression on Harriet’s flushed face.
Silence.
Elise has sworn never to allow a single word to pass her lips, no matter how long she lives or how desperate she becomes. A single careless word might bring the angel back.
Silence is a hard restraint. It is by no means her natural state. Her mother used to tell her that God Himself would soon go deaf from her constant chattering. But that was before Mary Cullen had descended into her own mute world of drunken insensibility, informing her on the way that God had crippled her little brother Ralph as a punishment for Elise’s ungovernable tongue. Now silence is Elise’s only protector.
She would beg for food, but she knows what will happen if she does: people will spit at her, throw stones that buzz like bees past her head or strike her painfully in the back. They will call for a man with a whip to chase her away, or threaten her with a branding, even having an ear sliced from her head to mark her for the vagrant they say she is.
So Elise does not beg. Instead, she lives off scraps of food thieved from window ledges and unattended tables, sleeps on the hard earth beneath the briars. She is utterly alone, without even little Ralph for company now. The only human voice she hears and does not flee from is her mother’s, whispering to her the old story: that there is somewhere better than here, my darling, and if you go down to the Tabard and beg a cup of arak on credit, I will tell you how to get there.
3
What follows Nicholas Shelby’s return to Grass Street is as predictable as the unravelling of a scarf when an errant thread is tugged, and just as unstoppable.
Ann cannot meet his wildly searching gaze. She turns from her son-in-law as though he’s a ranting madman. But this time neither she nor the midwife bars his entrance to the lying-in chamber.
Eleanor’s skin is feverish to the touch. His fingers come away chilled by her sweat. The flesh around her belly is as hard as iron. It does not yield to the pressure of his palm. Her eyes are closed, her breathing little more than the panting after a lost fight. She seems already to have put a great distance between them.
‘There is no sign of imminent birth,’ the midwife tells him. ‘Barely a single drop of blood discharged from the privy region – just some small quantity of her water.’ She makes it sound as though things are only a little awry, not quite as expected, no real need to worry. Do I sound like that, he wonders, when I’m delivering grim news?
It’s the first time he’s entered this chamber since it was closed off for the birthing. It feels like a foreign land to him. He glances to a collection of dark-red pebbles at the foot of the bed. ‘What are those supposed to do?’
‘They are holy stones, stained by the blood of St Margaret,’ the midwife replies, not a little frightened by the intensity in his stare.
‘She needs medicine, woman, not superstition,’ he shouts, sweeping them away with an angry wave of his hand. They rattle on the uneven floorboards like noisy accusations. ‘Harriet!’ he calls. The girl appears at his side. She seems to have caught some of Eleanor’s deathly pallor. ‘Run to the apothecary by All Hallows for a balm of lady mantle and wort. Hurry!’
‘No balm can alter God’s will, Nicholas,’ says Ann, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘It is not good to fight what is ordained.’
Ann is not a thoughtless woman; she’s already lost two children of her own, a boy in childbirth, another daughter who lived less than a month. Trials, she believes, are sent by God to test our mettle. Her words are intended to bring strength to her son-inlaw. Instead, they only make
him angrier.
‘It might help induce the birth,’ he shouts. ‘It has to be better than prayer and holy stones!’
Eleanor is fading away before his eyes. But it takes almost two full days. And not once during that time does Nicholas get so much as the paltry comfort of knowing she’s aware he’s beside her – not a squeeze of his hand, not even a slack smile of recognition. Nothing.
When he’s not sitting on a stool by the bed, moistening her lips with a wet cloth, he’s to be found leafing frantically through his books: Galen’s Art of Physic, Vesalius’s Fabrica, half a dozen more. He’s searching for some scrap of redeeming knowledge that he thinks he might have forgotten. But he’s forgotten nothing. Eleanor is going to die not because of what Nicholas has forgotten, but what he never knew.
On the second day, around eight in the evening, in his desperation he even considers a caesarean delivery. He’s heard about such a procedure, though he’s never actually seen one performed. And he knows that even if the child is saved, the mother will die. To his knowledge, there has only ever been one instance of both surviving, and that was in Switzerland. How can he possibly plunge a knife into the belly of his beloved Eleanor in order to save their child? But if he doesn’t…
Her breathing is getting slower and deeper. Now and again comes a sound like the one his winter boots make when he steps by mistake into the mud of the Finsbury fields. He grips Eleanor’s cold hand and screws his eyes as though peering into the sun.
Why did they wait so long to call me?
Why did I go to that wretched feast?
Why do the swiftly passing minutes of her final struggle mock me so cruelly? What good is my knowledge now?
Why can’t I do anything?
Why?… why?… why?
The day after the funeral service for mother and child, held at Trinity church, Nicholas stands in the lying-in chamber at Grass Street. Now it’s just another empty room – a sloping floor that creaks when you walk on it, irregular pillars of oak holding up a low sagging ceiling, a small leaded window giving onto the lane, the shutters open for the first time in weeks.