by DM Bryan
“Indeed, sir, I think I would know if I suffered either pox or spots.”
“You are perhaps over-warm?”
“I am entirely comfortable,” said I, although the presence of some waxen death mask glaring at me from behind the doctor ensured the contrary.
“I notice you pant, as if in the throes of some curious passion.”
“My want of breath can be easily explained, sir. I am old and fat, and your stairs are steep.”
“In that case, I would ask you to show me your lingual organ.”
Instead, I showed him my extreme dislike of his request, which in truth I did not understand.
“Fie, ’tis only your tongue, woman. You would show it to me in the street quick enough.”
“Only my tongue? Then why not say so?”
“It is but the lingua franca. That’s Greek to you, I have no doubt.”
“You may speak your thieves’ cant—I don’t care. A doctor’s language is only a stew of dead words come up in the world.”
“Hah,” said the doctor, wiping his nose with the same handkerchief with which he had been polishing his glasses. “Hah, I’m sure. Every trade has its own language. You now, Mother, I’m certain you have your own words for whatever the rest of us need not understand.”
Indeed, I have, but I would not have him know the nature of my employment or my disguise was to no purpose. Besides, his overly familiar usage distressed me a great deal.
“Why do you call me Mother?” I said. “You should know I inhabit a very nice set of rooms near the Covent Garden, where every day, on clean linen, I lay out a dinner for my husband, the mercer.”
“Madam, said the doctor, lifting the skull from the table and holding it between us as if to ward me off, “I am deep in my studies and unless you require prescribing, I need not think of you at all.”
I wanted to go then. His manner, equal parts familiarity and condescension, sickened me, but I would not turn back, having come so far. “Sir,” I said, embroidering upon the truth, “I have heard you praised by the highest kind of people as a physician of considerable skill.”
The doctor now employed his handkerchief to polish the ridged area over the skull’s empty obits. His own eyes shone at my praise, but he only said, “Do not attempt to flatter me, madam. Why, that is no more than my housemaid acknowledges daily at market.”
“All London,” I said, continuing to embroider, “and perhaps all the world says that no one who implores your aid perishes but that they disobey your prescription. Once a man or woman is under your care, there is no other way to die.”
A lobster smile split the man’s nose from his chin, and he polished all the harder, saying, “Tut, people do talk, but ’tis true I have a pilule that will make you clear as a newborn babe. It operates by inducing a gentle salivation to restore the freshness of your breath and return to your cheeks the rose that so captivated in the summer of your youth.”
I stared at him, until he confessed. “I speak of mercury,” he said, and then he struck a sort of orating pose, like a priest in his pulpit, with his body bent forward, one foot advanced and the other knee bent. He raised his left hand, but relaxed his right at his side, the palm turned to me so that he might speak. “Nobel Specifick!” quoth he “Glorious is
thy Use.”
I did not know what to say, nor indeed where to look while he undertook this performance, so I said, “I do not wish my cheeks to recover the rose of youth. That flower should hang very oddly from such a wizened stem.”
“A flash of wit, Mother.”
“And again, I do not choose to be addressed by that name.”
He gave a roguish grin. “And yet I suspect you will refuse to give me any other, for all your talk of mercers.”
I had to admit, he had me there. Mrs. Betty had summoned the mercer’s wife from under my satin skirts, but I had not thought to supply that lady with a false appellation, and now invention would not serve me quick enough. Besides, I do not like to lie.
“I have a girl in my care,” I said, to get more directly to the point of my visit.
“Ah.”
“Think what you will, sir, but she is a good girl, and one I would not lose. She is very low, and suffers mightily from some condition I cannot easily understand.”
“Is she below? You may bring her up.”
“She is not below. I did not bring her with me. I can tell you whatever you need to know.”
The man set down his skull and tucked his handkerchief into some inner pocket of his coat. Setting his glasses on the bridge of his nose he peered at me overtop the wire rim. “Come, come,” he said, “the melancholic chambermaid has very few causes—she is with child, surely.”
“She is not—no sir, not her.”
He nodded. “Well, then, ’tis that other depravation of Venus—she is poxy, no doubt.”
I snapped my skirts angrily and slapped away an imaginary speck on the virgin green folds. “She is a good girl and innocent. I would swear it upon my own life.”
A point of light flashed on the doctor’s lenses as his eyebrows shot up and then down again, but when his glasses were resettled on the bridge of his nose he was quiet. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Is she very red or extremely pale?”
“She is pale.”
“Do her eyes water excessively? Is there a red tint or a yellow taint to the white? Are they clear, like the ether, or glassy, like a public house window?”
Betty’s eyes, I thought, were as they had always been, only sadder. I shook my head.
“Have you observed the movement of her bowels to have a thin, watery consistency or are they well-shaped, holding their form in the bottom of the chamber pot?”
“Sir?”
“These are my methods, madam. An examination of the stools can tell me a great deal. Now, what have you observed?
Mrs. Betty herself emptied the pot each morning from the balcony into the fetid mud of the Bell Inn. Our little efforts vanished under the superior products of the horses, who were hourly in and out of the yard. I shook my head.
The doctor sighed. “But you have felt her pulse, I suppose?” he said. “Have you judged of its number?”
Alas, I did not understand him, and I shook my head. The doctor sighed again and began to come toward me. Confused, I backed away, stepping directly into that infernal contraption, all cogs and levers, until I felt the press of metal through the layers of my skirts. Now I could reverse no further without doing myself some grievous harm. I lifted an arm to defend myself, but could not. The man forestalled me from taking further action by seizing my hand and holding his fingers lightly to the inside of my wrist.
“Now now,” he said, “I mean only to give you a demonstration.” Reaching into an inner pocket, the doctor drew out a pocket watch, saying, “Verse is composed according to number, but so are ordinary men and women. I intend to publish something on this observation, which I believe to be novel to myself.” And then he began to count aloud, staring intently at the face of his little clock.
Dear Justice Gonson, the man’s touch disturbed me, and with each new number he spoke aloud, came a whiff of the kippered herring and ale with which he’d broken his fast. I twisted and would have torn myself away, but his hold must have been alchemical. All at once, I felt a pinching pain on my left side, as though a demon sat there, tightening his fingers. Then the doctor, though not the fiendish pain, released me, and the man returned to his place by the table. There, in a single movement, he tucked away his pocket watch and plucked out the handkerchief, with which he commenced polishing the end of his own nose.
I staggered on the spot, astonished by his behaviour and breathless at his boldness. “What have you done, sir?” said I, checking myself for marks—for evidence of some sybaritic familiarity unknown to a respectable laundress like myself. A chill lay upon me, and my own
flesh showed damp.
The doctor replied indistinctly, for his cloth obscured his face and any sense he might be making, and so I spoke again. “Sir, I demand you explain yourself—oh, oh, I must sit down.”
His handkerchief returned to its hiding place in the braided coat, and now I could see his visage. Upon the crabby face sat an unexpected expression of compassionate sympathy. At once, the man brought me a chair and urged me into it. Then he said, his voice low and moist, “Your blood, madam, is not in order. It is good you have come to see me, although I am truly sorry at the facts of your case.”
“Doctor, sir.” I took a deep breath, for to be sure I was strangely disordered by both his actions and now by his countenance. I took my own handkerchief from the pocket I had tied into my borrowed finery, and I mopped my face. It took all my powers to remind him that I did not come on my own behalf. “It is my girl who has the whole of my concern, and I will not be waylaid by some stratagem to sell me a phial or physic for myself.” This last came out as a whisper.
“When did your pain begin?”
“My pain?” said I. “You have unleashed some devil, I think.”
“Dear dear,” said the doctor, bending low over my chair and picking up my wrist again. This time I could not struggle, and I allowed him to set his fingers on my skin as though he were plugging holes in a pipe. “You must not exert yourself,” he told me.
Indeed, I could not have moved even if I’d wanted to. His room swam about me, his fishy ornament bleeding into the stuffed head above the closet. The pilasters of his window sprouted seaweed, and the watery light showed me his coat, now blue-green and plated. His touch came again, as gauzy as crayfish whiskers. How very cold I was, and how certain I would die. I began to say the Lord’s Prayer.
“Hush, mistress. You must show me your tongue.”
Show him my tongue? The terrible fellow. My mouth came open to pray, or set him straight. Or perhaps only to groan, for I never found out. I could not breathe and a lightless tide rose up around my shoulders. Grey lapped the edges of my vision. Through a hole of light, he came at me in a surge of frockcoat and a reek of kippers. Then I tasted a sharp bitterness and felt a tide of spittle between my dry lips. His rubbing fingers, strong and certain, exerted a firm pressure on my jaw. My panic passed its crest and subsided, as I swallowed, gagged. A moment later, I was drinking silken air.
Justice Gonson, I do not know how long I sat, hunched in my chair, panting and sweating. In this position, I remained until, almost insensibly, my agony began to diminish, and, with much time elapsing, I could lift my head. When the tears had fully drained from my eyes, and I was able to look about me again, I found the doctor standing over by his table, with the skull cradled in his hands. Above him, the giant’s head and the hanging fish had both returned to their places. The noises of London—cries, clops, shouts, knocks—came audibly through the window. Someone outside was selling carrots and cauliflower at the top of her lungs. New lamb and fresh mint. I took the first easy breath I’d had since I made my way up that man’s twisted stairs.
“There now,” said the villain himself, fixing me with his wet gaze.
“What did you give me?” I demanded of him, the bitter taste of his physic still numbing my lips. “What vile poison did you force upon me?”
He gave me a surprised look, eyebrows and claw-tipped wig rising alike. “Why,” said he, “ ’tis only Foxglove. I will sell you some if you have not a supply of your own, for it is most efficacious, as every old wife knows. Or, perhaps not every old wife.” His laughter struck me as cruel, and he soon broke off when I rose from my chair.
“Nay,” he said, “continue sitting. You must not rise too soon.”
“So you might ply more of your dishonest tricks?”
“What?” said he.
I swayed on my feet, but I would not be distracted from my purpose. I had been badly frightened, and like the foolish old woman he thought me, I determined he should bear the brunt of my unhappiness.
“You are no more than a quack,” I said. “My girl, who suffers at a distance, you cannot prescribe for, but in the old body, who visits you in your chamber of horrors, you induce a fit and pretend to cure it so that you might sell me some of your venomous extract—”
“Fairy’s Gloves, madam. Virgin’s Thimbles. Every countrywoman knows—”
“I am not from the country. I am a city woman through
and through.”
“More’s the pity,” said the doctor, dropping his skull near to his foot, where it did not shatter as he clearly feared it might, but rather rolled beneath the table and so was lost to view.
I left him there, Justice Gonson, in that terrible closet hung with grisly trophies, and the last I saw of him was his end indeed. For, having moved myself to the door of that room, I looked back to find him groping beneath the table for his treasure, with only his hindmost parts protruding from beneath the cloth. Sir, Mr. Justice, I longed to put my foot to his sea-coloured trousers, but I dared not, for I did not trust that I would weather the exertion required for such a swift, hard kick as that man merited.
Indeed, I was not entirely recovered from my adventure, for I vomited twice on the stairs on the way down, and thrice in the sedan chair on the way home. I am very sorry to tell you, none of those spontaneous purges landed outside the window, which this time was jammed shut. Instead, I splattered the chair’s inner lining—a white silk, which was neither well-chosen nor often laundered. I gave the men good advice for the removal of any stain, including the one I left behind me, but they did not receive my counsel in a manner that pleased any of us. In truth, they were somewhat threatening, and I was obliged to spend another farthing in the form of a tip, making my excursion cost more than intended.
When I reached home, my good Betty was so disturbed by what she termed “my shocking condition” that she forced me to take to my bed, obliging herself to rise from her own. Indeed, Justice Gonson, it is the same bed, but we cannot both convalesce at once. Betty says I have effected the cure I sought, even if my method was not entirely as I might have wished, but I can tell she humours me. Her face is pale and pinched, and I do not like what I see in her eyes.
And now I cannot leave this bed. I cannot lose my trade, sir, for it is my life, and I know not what I would do without its suds and the smell of sunshine on linen. My landlady tells me of an elderly lady, the wife of a country squire, grown to rival the fatness of her husband’s cattle, who took a fit like mine and died. First, that lady sweated, and next she grew chilled, and then she cried out that her stays had been fastened past bearing. This last frightened her maid very much for the lady wore no stays, her spell having come by candlelight. The poor girl ran for the master, but when she roused him from the table—for they were a couple who dearly loved to eat and drink—her mistress was already dead, blue and cold upon the floorcloth. And that floorcloth was new, according to my landlady, who does not fully understand how to end an anecdote. But now, Mrs. Tanner urges me to finish my own tale.
Good Mrs. Tanner. I have seen her looking at me with the same expression of compassionate regard I surprised on the face of the quack. Indeed, she presses me on the details of my attack. I tell her again of the fiendish pain, the pretended cure. “ ’Twas no more than a bit of trickery, designed to part a helpless old woman from her coin,” I say.
“And yet,” says Mrs. Tanner, “the doctor charged you nothing.”
That gives me pause. That makes me think. Could I have been wrong about the man, Justice Gonson—have I been unjust myself?
Now, I hear Mrs. Tanner herself on the stair, speaking too loudly to my landlady. She says I am very damp under her cap and that I gulp at the air like a carp in an ornamental pond. She fears a second attack. Now, she returns and for the good of her soul, I make her write out what else she said, which was, “Call again for Betty. I have loosened the old woman’s stays as much as dec
ency allows—oh, I would the girl gets here soon.”
I also wish my Betty would return from her errand, for I want the girl beside me. In the meantime, I beg you, sir, to know that I am your fully devoted and most respectful servant, etc. …
Chapter 6
Mrs. Betty’s final letter providing a description of the manner in which Mrs. Veronica makes her will and
disposes of her worldly goods. A fragment of manuscript: The Analysis of Laundry: Written with a View of Fixing the Fluid Nature of Washing. How the story ends.
Bell Inn Yard off Fryday Street, 1732.
My dearest Sadie,
How very pleased I was to receive your last letter and the important confidences it contained. So Mr. Nutbrown is to have an heir to his vast estates and holdings, or at least, he is to have a daughter, if events so prove. I am delighted for him and concerned for you. Shall I take a sisterly tone and prescribe your every move from the receipt of this letter to the weaning of the child to come? If you agree, I will dictate the quadrant of the breezes in which you may sit by the window and the direction of that wind in which you must not so much as open a curtain. I will forbid you to laugh heartily at a puppet show or to weep over your parson’s sermon—if indeed your parson is capable of producing such an excess of sentiment (for, certainly, not all have the gift). I will forbid you from standing beneath a clap of thunder or anywhere near a church steeple, and at all costs, you must avoid loud bursts of musket fire, which is only good advice. Sadie, please tell me that I am not wrong to imagine you, Mr. Nutbrown, and your happy burden to be safe from perils, real or imaginary. If you will do this, I will consider my sisterly advice dispensed and will say no more on matters of which I, in truth, know nothing.
My mistress also bids me write to say what pleasure your news gives her. Sadie, although I do not like to write of it, my mistress is much altered, and I am not able to give a very good account of her health by this letter. She has suffered some misadventure, although she has not yet told me everything, and she returned by chair very ill indeed. She has been in bed—oh sister, I weep a little to write those words, harmless though they seem. In any other woman, the phrase, common enough, would mean nothing of import. In the case of my mistress, who laundered late and still rose with the birds, her lying abed shocks me. I will not list here her complaints, for she describes them not at all, and I can only guess at the meaning of her intermittent bouts of nausea and her drooping arm. Although a doctor asks a great deal of coin, I sent the Bell’s boy for a good one, but she sent him away. Instead, she lies quietly enough while I do our washing and run our errands. The landlady’s daughter sits with her when I am gone, and often as not, my mistress sleeps.