The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice

by Michelle Lovric

  At this point he allowed his voice to weaken and trail away. He paused entirely to swig on a bottle himself, and then threw himself back into the fray, at a louder volume than before, his agonized whispers of the last few seconds replaced by a vigorous, loud tone.

  “And I have known it do good service in Cutaneous Affections. By reason of its neurotic quality it comforts the Nerves, and restrains the raging Excandescence of the Spirits. It’s endowed with a mucilaginous, soft, and friendly sweetness. By incrassating the blood disposed for Fluxion, and correcting it when acrid, it’s also laudably used in Pleurisy, Rheumatism, Small Pox, Measles, and Stone. It retrieves the failing Tone of the Intestines, corrects their slipperiness, and represseth their continual bearing downward. It draws out watery and pituitous Humors, by irritating and vellicating the parts of the Mouth. It consenters Acrimony, appeaseth Gripes. It coats over the upper parts of the Throat and Larynx with a sort of Emplastic Slime, and so obtunds their exquisitely irritable sense. It also prohibits the extillation of too thin, sharp, and fluxile Serum from the Glands; corrects nidorous Belching. It does edulcorate, stop up, stringe, and ronorate; give ease in the Lumbago. It is Stomachic, Anticolic, Anthelminthic, Antapoplectic, Febrisic; and good in the bite of a mad dog …”

  The Zany now produced from his waistcoat a most frightful wax model of a rabid dog with his foaming mouth clamped to the foot of a bellowing child.

  At this point, knowing the inevitable and profitable conclusion, I withdrew, catching the eye of the quack and pointing at the Anchor Tavern. He nodded.

  I went inside and ordered myself a gin. I believed that I had earned it, having carried off my part most handsomely.

  • 4 •

  A Quilt for a Cap

  Take Male Peony root 2 drams; Spanish Angelica root 1 dram; Florentine Orris, Lavender flowers, each half a dram; Arabian Stechas flowers 1 dram; Cloves, Nutmeg, Mace, each 1 scruple; Storax calamite. Laudanum, Amber, Balsam of Tolu, each 1 dram; Oil of Rosemary 5 drops; reduce it to a gross Powder; which being mix’d into Cotton, is to be quilted in a silk Cap according to Art. Every Night at Bed-time, let this Cap be fumed and warm’d with the smoak of Amber, Olibanum, Balsam of Tolu, or the like. Sprinkled upon Coals.

  It’s of signal use in Humid, Pituitose Affections of the Head, in cold, customary, rheumatic Pains of the same. And it’s believ’d to recreate the Spirits, and roborate the Brain.

  The Zany bent over his food and flung large particles of it in the direction of his mouth.

  “There’s no need to gollop it like that, in front of a lady,” reproved Dottore Velena. With his handkerchief, he wiped the worst of the dirt off a chair close to his own and offered it to me with a flourish.

  “Lie-dee? ’Er? She’s nuffin but a hairy, she’d do it wiv anywan’.”

  For emphasis, the Zany spat vehemently against the window-sill. He tore another mouthful of meat from the bone with his teeth and slammed the cutlet back on the plate. With a great spraying of masticated gristle in my direction, he snarled, “Whar you staring at me lek I was a monument?”

  I lowered my eyes. Not wanting to be unfriendly, I moved from my own chair to the seat of honor offered by the Dottore.

  We were in the filthy dining room of the Anchor. I was still wondering where the elegant diners were to be found. Perhaps on the upper floor? I told myself it was better to be down in this room, despite its savory wallpapering of grease, for the last person I wished to meet today was Valentine Greatrakes, who no doubt took his refreshments upstairs with the other aristocrats.

  The Dottore raised his voice to a stage whisper and loomed over the Zany: “No more of your snash, shut it, or you’re in for a light bruising,” he hissed. “I’m just about heart-roasted with you already.”

  His Italian had dissolved in two pints of Russian stout. I believed that I knew his accent: I had once been engaged to extract information from a Scottish laird. Though more refined, there had been something in the Milord’s warbling vowels that now reminded me of Dottore Velena, who continued to berate the Zany for his “aggravatious” table manners, to no avail.

  The Dottore smiled at me as he called over a sweat-stained waiter. “You look proper famished, my dear. We must supply you with some brute necessities.” He ordered me what he termed “a spitchcock of eels and a plate of buttered crabs.”

  “And another gin,” I added.

  When the food arrived, grim and greasy, he advised me, kindly but inexplicably, to put myself “outside of that.”

  I did my best to eat it while the men ate, belched, drank, and gossiped in their impenetrable way.

  At last the Zany announced conclusively, “There was ructions and then the two of them got beasted into each other. Arry was mollocated.”

  This meant very little to me. And now that the men were fed I thought it was time to talk about business. I leaned over and boldly pulled the bottle out of Dottore Velena’s top pocket.

  “What’s in it?” I asked, holding the emerald glass to the light and jiggling the liquid. “I mean the bottles you sell the clients?” I was sure they would not be deceived by gin.

  “Now that would be telling, lassie,” said the quack, winking and thumbing his nose roguishly.

  I added, “And how ill shall it make them?”

  The quack laughed heartily, “Not at all. When I sell it in the country, the farmers buy it to exterminate their plaguey rats, and they find it does the beasts a favor, for they thrive noticeably upon it.”

  “And where do you get it?” I asked, carelessly.

  His reply teetered my world on its axis.

  “We all round here get it from Dizzom at Bankside.”

  “Dizzom, who works for Valentine Greatrakes?” I gasped.

  “Ark at ’er, sitting lek a craw in da mist,” observed the Zany, highly diverted by my discomfort.

  “The same,” said Dottore Velena approvingly. “I see you know a thing or two, young lady. It’s teeming with brains, you are: It’s clear the education’s been at you, dearie. Aye, it’s Dizzom that fills our bottles and prints our handbills, and supplies our quilted caps and what-you-will, all on behalf of his master, naturally.”

  “But … but, I thought Mr Greatrakes was a … gentleman.”

  “Indeed, a very great gentleman, of his kind!” Both the Dottore and the Zany were smiling broadly. There was no disguising the mockery in the quack’s voice. “The very greatest patron of all quacks, whores, thieves, and beating-boys. The very pinnacle of a gentleman, at least on this side of the river, the one who has an interest in every glassblower in Bankside, for only he can replenish their bottles with free-traded liquors just as fast as they can blow em. Not bad for the bastard brat of a Corktown maid, brought up by the Angel-Makers, and who’s served his time up chimneys and down drains mudlarking before coming to his present great estate.

  “The said gentleman’s presently in Venice,” the doctor added confidentially, “free-trading a little Venetian treacle our way.”

  My lover? A smuggler? A fabricator of nostrums? A pimp? A printer of quacks’ handbills? I felt faint. And what was he doing in Venice? The likeliest answer warmed my cheeks—he had gone looking for me!

  But I had no time to examine my feelings. The quack was rising from his seat. Like me, he was anxious to settle terms. He had not noticed how I now trembled and struggled for breath, though the Zany still looked at me with contemptuous curiosity.

  “I’ll give you a shilling on each dozen bottles sold,” pronounced Dottore Velena, in a conclusive manner.

  I had planned to negotiate: I had need of all my scattered wits now. I did not wish to be condemned to demonstrate only cures against love diseases. I hoped to change my illness to something more respectable, like the Bloody Flux. But first I must make sure of my employment, and survival.

  “A shilling for each half-dozen, and a say in which disease is killing me,” I countered.

  It was the Zany’s turn to gasp. “A shilling! For that minky girl!”


  “Now, now,” temporised the Dottore, with his hand on his companion’s wrist. “Don’t ye see that the good fairies have showered all their gifts on this lady and the bad fairies have been most sparing in their attentions? Did ye not hear the snapping of the heartstrings when they looked at her dying? We took twelve guineas today, and it wasn’t you they paid to see. You wait; we’ll be knee-deep in prosperity in no time with this one.”

  “Knee-deep,” I repeated, staring hard at the Zany.

  “You’re a piece of work,” the Dottore laughed, now looking intently at me. With a slight menace in his voice, he added, “But you do a good job, almost professional, I’d say.”

  He narrowed his eyes and spoke harshly to me for the first time: “Is it Doctor Trigg who taught you? Or that bastard Merry?”

  Certain that he would never believe me, I was able to give my first honest answer: “Oh no, I trained on the stage, in Venice. I am an actress.”

  “Oh yes indeed! How could I not have guessed it,” he sneered, though in a jocular manner. “Well, I’ll not ask you more.”

  I winked, and looked shifty. “So I can teach you some Venetian words—or those that will pass for them, surely.”

  I could see that this concept had caught his interest. While his nostrums were doubtless the purest effluent, he took a definite pride in his act. Any refinements I might bring to it would be gratefully received.

  “So what do we call you, lassie?” he asked me.

  “I am Mistress Giallofiore,” I said, thinking quickly.

  “Missis Jallowfi-whore?” he chuckled, emphasising the whore.” He raised his glass: “To Mistress Jallowfi-whore, our Venetian actress. Your blood’s worth bottling, my dear.”

  The Zany howled, “It’s nobbut a wheen of blathers the whole story. A shilling! Jallow-fi-whore, wha’ kind of a name is that?”

  “The first thing we shall work upon is your Venetian pronunciation,” I said as primly as I could manage.

  “Where do you lodge?” the quack was asking.

  I smiled cheekily. “From today, wherever you lodge, master.”

  The Zany choked on his beer. “She’d skin a flea for half a penny, this one.”

  I pointed to the valise at my feet. I had been so confident of my performance that I had taken leave of my landlady that morning, explaining that my fortune had come in with unexpected swiftness.

  • 5 •

  An Expression of Millipedes

  Take live Millipedes and white Sugar, each 3 ounces; when they are well beaten and mix’d together in a Mortar, add white Wine 1 pint; and strain and squeeze out the Liquor.

  Millipedes abound in Volatile Salt (as all Insects do) they incide, and dissolve tough clammy Phlegm wheresoever it sticks, attenuate, exalt and depurate the Blood, penetrate into the Glands, Nerves, Fibres, smallest Pipes and Passages, piercing through Obstructions, deterging, cleansing and comforting, and are famous for their Diuretic quality. They are used in cases of Gravel, Sand, Dropsy, Jaundice, Kings-Evil, Cough, Phthisic, Consumption at the beginning. Hypochondriac Affects; Scorbutic Joint Pains, dimness of Sight.

  Dottore Velena’s handbills advertised that he was to be found “at home in his rooms” between the hours often and eleven “to be spoke with.”

  Like most quacks, he lodged above a tavern. His was the Feathers, in Winchester Square. A fine, corrupt, leaning old building it proved, on a par with the Anchor for its sordidness and noise.

  When we returned there the light had already grown dim. Business done, I had permitted myself to sink into a dispirited state, cast low by the shocking discovery about my lover. A smell as frowsy as a dove’s nest smacked my nose as Dottore Velena opened the door to his private apartment. The Zany, whose real name was never revealed to me, was put out that he must now share these limited digs with a third party, and that a female. He turned his back on me immediately, pulled down a kind of hinged plank from the wall, threw a blanket on it and lay down to sleep, rather theatrically framed by a curtain of alligator skins with a canopy of dried poppy heads, all strung in rows from the ceiling above him.

  The Dottore showed me the screened chamber-pot and the jug of stale water for washing, and finally a kind of large cat-basket, where I might sleep myself. He told me, with a sentimental tremor, that it had previously been used for several cats who had perished in experiments, and whose mummified remains dangled stiffly from a beam.

  The Dottore himself seemed content with a minimal deshabillé. He donned a quilted bedcap over his wig and stretched himself out in a leather chair, a strange object that had suffered a large neat bite out of its seat and boasted two separate footrests that spread his legs wide apart. He was soon unconscious, snoring in an oatmealish kind of way, the satin ribbons of his bedcap ruffling in the gusts. I do not remember falling asleep, but drowsiness must have overtaken me fast, despite the lumpen pillow, leprous with stinking mold. My last clear memory of that night was starting up at the looming silhouette of an enormous bird, but that image too had the quality of a dream.

  The next dawn I was amused to see the preparations made for patients. The Zany jumped up smartly at cockcrow and stalked out of the door without a backward look, presumably gone to his preferred cookshop to breakfast. The quack’s cap and wig had tottered from their perch in the night, revealing a bald head above the collar of his undershirt. This, too, was removed and he performed thorough ablutions in his native state while I averted my eyes. Then he remounted his voluminous wig, which boasted not one but three beribboned tails, and he pulled on the decent black suit I had seen the day before, finally shrugging a plush jacket over it.

  Thus arrayed, he proceeded to pull all manner of accoutrements into view that had been concealed on trays and drawers closed fast into walls and desks in the night. Within minutes he had transformed our sordid sleeping chamber into an Aladdin’s cave of potions-m-the-making, all, he informed me proudly, according to the highest fashion of the trade.

  Every surface glinted with mysterious bottles, some filled with swarthy tar-drippings, others with fair water, colored, so he told me, with sandalwood and cochineal. The largest of them was boiling with live millipedes, though a grim, still sediment at the bottom of the jar showed unfortunate trampled multitudes. Laid open by the divan was Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy propped up on a pile of musty Greek and Latin tomes. Only the most observant visitor would notice that this pile was glued together and wheeled at the bottom, to allow for speedy stowing in a low cupboard. The momma light gradually revealed shelves stacked with small bags. I was told that these were much sought after to hang about the necks of children as an infallible prophylactic against rickets. Inside was the finest muscovado sugar imported from the West Indies. This, and the loose knot, ensured that children frequently consumed the contents, thereby providing a brisk trade in re-orders.

  On the desk of Dottore Velena reposed a human skeleton, marked up with esoteric calculations. Behind him hung the stuffed corpse of a monkey, who, he informed me, had formerly performed the duty of Zany for him. He patted it affectionately and a cloud of dust rose and glowed about its mournful head like a halo. “Used to drink a pint of ale like a Christian every nig ht,” he reminisced. “And he certainly drew the ladies.”

  Next to the monkey a pure spermaceti candle was prepared for swift lighting at the sound of a client’s foot on the stairs. Its luxurious glow would illuminate an artfully careless pile of gilt coinage, done up to look like guineas, an indication of rich fees already received that morning from grateful patients.

  The chair in which the Dottore had slept now revealed its obstetric nature as he plumped up in it a large leather dummy of a woman in the throes of birth. And in a corner I discovered the truth of that nightmarish bird that had haunted my last moments of consciousness the evening before. It was an impressive duckbilled alembic where even now Dottore Velena hovered, stirring up some fragrant powder with his lotion spatula. The whole device trembled upon a crippled table, bandaged at the joint
s and yet extravagantly gilded with hieroglyphic decorations around its rim.

  It was as elaborate as any stage set I’d trodden in my life as an actress, and there was something pleasingly familiar about it.

  I pulled on my own costume, the respectable gray dress, after boldly demanding my turn at the ewer, and presented myself for work more cheerfully than I had ever done before.

  Dottore Velena handed me a cup of hot chocolate that spouted from the beak of the alembic. With the other hand, he poured me my morning glass of gin.

  For any actress there are moments of boredom on the stage, when she is not the center of attention and is obliged to erase herself from the eyes of the spectators to allow some other actor to strut his grandeur or his pitifulness. There are slow buildings of character, and early deaths. Even the prima donna is sometimes backstage.

  But with Dottore Velena, I performed nothing but climaxes: I was always either Expiring-in-Doloros-Convulsions or Being-Born-Again-in-the-Very-Blossom-of-Health. I lived Life-after-Death-by-a-Regiment-of-Diseases. By the time I made my entrance, the crowd had already grown mobbish, and were satiated on the Zany: I was beautiful, I was haunting, and they loved me.

  We developed the act to the highest pitch of quackery, rivaling anything to be seen on the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice. Sometimes Dottore Velena relieved me of a worm as long as the Maypole in the Strand, using his Vermifugus Pulvis, or Anti-Vermatical Worm-Conquering Powder (made chiefly of flour). In this case I clutched my belly and crossed my eyes while Dottore Velena explained the grim battle taking place therein, as the complicated knots of the worm were broken up in my duodenum (“Aah,” I sighed), and its Phlegmatick Crudities were dissolved in my bowel (“Oooh,” I shrieked)…. Presently he reached under my skirt and brought away a long white woolen skein slicked with grease that came and came and came, and which the Zany seized and wove around the stage like a demented spider making a web. The Dottore all the while intoned his soothing explanations, and the audience hung on his every word, their faces fervent with belief.