"Tell me, sweet Margery," Peg said, placing bowls and spoons on the table, "what comes of your wooing of the great Theobald?"
"Little enough. I saw him just a few moments ago and chased him through half the streets of this town, begging and cajoling, to no use. Theobald will not help me, nor send me patients, nor agree to offer whatever instruction he thinks I need. God's wounds!" Margery said, banging her fist on the table so that the spoons danced. "It is bad enough I must go crawling to Theobald because he is the city's leading physician, but worse to be turned away. I will speak no more of this. Tell me some news."
"Old Agnes sold a love potion to the sheriff and was taken as a witch," Peg said.
Margery frowned. "Perhaps more cheerful news."
"I saw Nathaniel Cross at the butcher's in the east market yestermorn. He and Sarah have taken in yet another stray cat and her kittens."
Matilda stood listening. What kind of place was this? she wondered. Blood and Bone Alley. Goose girls who masquerade as physicians. People who consort with cats. Matilda could hear the cats outside the door fighting over the eel she had thrown there. She hated cats. Father Leufredus said a cat was more likely a witch than an animal and refused to bless a house with a cat in it. Saliva mucusque! she thought. Do these peo-pie know nothing of the Devil and his creatures? For certain the air will be corrupted and we will fall dead in fevers and consumptions. Matilda crossed herself. And then again.
"Don't you be mocking Nathaniel, Marg my dear," Peg was saying. "I warrant his gooseberry liniment and sweet temper have done more to soothe the aches and pains of this town than all my pushing and pulling."
"You ever did have a sweet spot for Nathaniel, Peg."
"In truth I do, for his is the best soul God ever made." Peg turned to Matilda. "Nathaniel has suffered much these last years. His good wife is sore sickly, and his own eyes are failing him, yet still he is sweet and comforting as honey wine. But as Margery knows well, my Tom is the only man for me." Peg patted Margery on her arm. "Mayhap you, dear Marg, should start looking for a man of your own. Might dull that sharp tongue of yours."
Saint Paul did say it was better to marry than to burn, thought Matilda, although who would ever marry that goose girl I do not know. She snorted as she pictured this Margery bedecked in bridal finery.
Peg and Margery looked at Matilda, who felt her cheeks flame. Margery cleared her throat and said, "Good day to you, Peg. And good fortune. She seems a bit unusual, your pious new servant girl."
"The cook fire is calling the candle hot, dear Margery," said Peg with a laugh.
Margery winked, turned, and left, kicking up little dust storms as she hurried to the door. Matilda frowned at her departing back. Servant girl? She was here to attend to Peg, not to be a scullion.
Peg looked at Matilda's frown and said tartly, "Mistress Margery, whatever you may think, is twice the physician, three times the person, and at least four times a better soul than that person who calls himself Master Theobald or any other hundred people I could name."
"Of course, Mistress Peg," Matilda said. I sincerely doubt it, Mistress Peg, Matilda thought.
Chapter Five: Tending a Cat
Alkelda Weaver from Acorn-under-Bridgewater brought in her baby daughter, whose right leg had been broken in a fall from her cradle some months before. The leg had been set by the village barber but was healing crookedly, so the right foot pointed west while the left pointed north. It was so cold in the shop that ice shone in the cracks on the wall, and the cracks in Peg's work-worn hands bled; still, she examined the baby's tiny bones slowly and gently.
"Why do you trouble yourself about such matters?" Matilda asked hesitantly as Peg moved the right foot back and forward. "Could you not call on the saints for help? Saints Victor and Peter and Servais are said to be excellent for foot trouble. Surely they would cure her, were it God's will."
"God gave me this brain and these hands to do His will, I think," said Peg, "and by Saint Elmo's elbow, I plan to do my best."
Matilda frowned in confusion. She could find nothing to dispute in Peg's statement, yet she felt sure that Father Leufredus would not agree with it.
"Watch what I do," Peg said to Matilda. She rubbed the child's leg with colewort ointment, goose grease, and ginger, then pulled and pushed. "We must loosen the joint that has healed crooked and get her foot used to turning another way." Peg sang over and over, "Tumbling toadflax and pimpernel, soon your leg will be all well," but the little girl cried with pain.
Matilda was appalled. Dear Saint Hippolytus, who knew suffering, she prayed, please deliver this child from her torture at the hands of the bonesetter. But the saint replied, You consider this torture? Why, I was tied by my feet to a team of horses and dragged through thistles and thorns. That was torture! This is healing. Watch and learn.
So Matilda watched, and finally it was over. Peg told Alkelda Weaver, "Bring her to see me every week, and mayhap we can have the right foot facing northwest at the least." Then she set out the remains of the bread and sausage for mother and daughter.
"I gave our dinner to Alkelda Weaver," said Peg to Matilda later, "for they have a long, hungry walk back to their village. Put water to boil for porridge."
As she listened to her empty stomach grumble, Matilda wished that Mistress Peg would think of others who might be hungry before she gave their dinner away. Or that she would run out of porridge. Or that she could miraculously produce food, as did the blessed Saint Brigid. Thinking about Saint Brigid reminded her of rainy afternoons at the manor hearing Father Leufredus tell about the lives of the saints: Saint Hormisdas, who cleaned the camel stables; Simeon Stylites, who lived atop a pillar; the holy martyrs Agatha and Agnes and Athanasius the Fuller. Matilda sat down on the bench. Time went on.
Peg came in from the buttery. "What has my useless helper been about all this time, sitting in here?"
Matilda jumped up. "I am thinking about saints."
"You mean you are doing nothing? Letting moss grow on you? Where is the water for porridge? Why is the floor not swept?"
Matilda grabbed the broom. Sweeping? How unimportant, lowly, and unholy! How could Peg dare criticize her piety? Could Peg not see her concern for Heaven, for doing what was commanded, for pleasing God and Father Leufredus? She felt she had fallen among barbarians, who neither understood nor wished to understand but disagreed with her even so. Father Leufredus must come back for her! To that end Matilda called on Saint Ambrose of Milan for help, but the saint answered, I am fully occupied being the patron of bishops and beekeepers and do not have the time to come to your assistance. I suggest you discover who aids those who attend to bonesetters and do not bother me.
"Saliva mucusque," said Matilda as she rubbed her hands, red and sore from the rough handle of the broom.
Later, when the porridge was still a lump in her gut, there came an impatient knocking at the door. "Will no one let us in? Must I stand here all day?" a voice called.
"Old Mother Uffa," said Peg, "who has the little house at the end of the alley. Open the door for her."
The woman at the door was old enough to be Methuselah's mother, with a face as russet and wrinkled as last year's apple. Her small body was twisted and bent, and there on her chin was the wart Matilda had once imagined on Peg.
As Peg helped her to the table, Mother Uffa croaked, "Keep your quackish hands off me. Naught wrong with Mother Uffa, but Hag here has a bad leg." The old woman opened her cloak to reveal the patient.
Matilda was horror-struck. Hag was a cat—an old, ugly, skinny cat, with patches of pink skin showing through her brownish fur and a tail that bent in the middle as though God had changed His mind in the fashioning of it. She yawned in Matilda's face, exhibiting both her one remaining tooth and breath that reminded Matilda of her bargain eel.
"Well, old dear," said Peg, taking up the cat, "let's see what ails you." While Mother Uffa complained about the butcher, the Lord Mayor, the King, and even Peg herself, Peg gently examined the cat's l
eg.
"Hag is an exceptional cat," said Peg to Matilda as Hag bit her probing fingers. "Most evil-tempered animal in the alley. And very important to Mother Uffa. We must do what we can."
It was bad enough, Matilda thought, to be occupied with the unsaintly business of pushing and pulling bones. But a cat! A creature with no soul that consorted with devils and ate rats! She would not touch it, she vowed. How would she ever explain this to Father Leufredus?
"Ah, here," Peg said. "The leg is broken. I can feel the two edges. A clean break. Matilda, prepare the comfrey as I showed you. We will pack it across the break and bind it with linen cloth to help the bone heal together again."
"But a cat..."
"Matilda! The comfrey!"
Matilda drained the comfrey pulp and handed it to Peg with a frown. Peg packed it around the break and wrapped the leg in linen strips to hold it immobile.
"There, old girl," said Peg to Hag. "Take heart. You'll be running and jumping again before you can say 'Saint Cadwaladr.'"
"How much?" asked Mother Uffa.
"You owe me nothing," said Peg.
"I pays my way."
"Well, then, I will take a kitten from Hag's next litter."
Mother Uffa agreed, picked up Hag, and left the shop cackling.
"1 think you were cheated," said Matilda to Peg. "How can you be sure that cat will have kittens?"
"She won't. She is much too old," said Peg. "Did you think I really wanted one?"
Matilda was confused by Peg's logic but even more concerned for Peg's soul. "Truly you should not be treating cats, Mistress Peg. Father Leufredus says a cat is cane pejor et angue. That means worse than a dog or a snake."
"By Saint Kentigern's salmon, you are so priest-ridden that one might think you have nothing of your own to say."
Of course I do, Matilda thought, but I try not to say it. Father Leufredus wished her to subdue her will to God's. And to his. And she struggled to do so.
Never had she felt so alone. If only she could talk with her holy priest, she would be comforted, but she could not. If she had skins and ink, she could write to him, but she had not.
The next day when she was sent to the market ("Cheese," said Peg. "No mold. Not over a penny's worth. And an onion. Fresh."), Matilda took her bundle of belongings with her. After securing the cheese and onion, she sought out a parchment seller. Many questions led her to the shop of a crippled widow, Juliana Parchmenter, who agreed to trade writing supplies for what Matilda had. Finally they settled on a linen shift and a pair of stockings: it was all Matilda owned except for what she wore. Though the parchment page was rough and marred with small holes, there was also a pot of good black ink and a goose-quill pen. Matilda ran back to Peg's with her purchases.
After their cheese-and-onion supper, Matilda broke the ice in the jug, washed her hands and face, and knelt shivering on the floor, her unbraided hair falling about her like a river of ripening barley. Pater noster, she said, and O Deus mens, and Benedictus qui, all the customary prayers learned so carefully at the side of Father Leufredus. Then finally she was able to sit on her pallet and write a letter, in her best Latin and finest calligraphy. At St. Werburgas Church, London, the right godly and worshipful Father Leufredus, she wrote,
I recommend me to you, beseeching your blessing and your heedfulness. I helped to doctor a cat today. I pray God will forgive me. I did not choose to do it but was compelled by Peg. She is teaching me bonesetting, at which, I must admit, she does have some skill and experience. And she does not seem especially wicked, except for her hair, which is the Devil's own red, although she is unholy and most wrong at times. But a cat! I am exceedingly confused by this world. What I know to be true and valuable and right is counted as little here, and what I know to be wrong-headed is approved.
I continue to do as you have taught me, to pray and meekly obey, but still I fear my soul is in danger. I can almost smell the foul breath of the mighty goat-horned Satan, who sits by my bed, waiting to snatch me with his sharp claws, the moment I forget my Latin or take my eyes from Heaven, and sweep me off to Hell, where fire falls from the sky like rain. May it please you, could you please come back for me soon?
By your humble pupil,
Matilda
She put the letter under her pallet and lay down to sleep. On nights like this, when the fear of Hell chilled her soul, Matilda liked to imagine her arrival in Heaven. The great and holy ones would be there to greet her: Saints Peter and Paul, Patrick, Praetextatus, Vincent, Scholastica and Cunegund, and Saint Lucy carrying her eyes on a platter. Matilda used to imagine arriving on a creamy white horse, but after the hard and bony seat she had suffered all the way from Lower Woadmarsh, she now preferred to picture herself in a litter with scarlet silk curtains all around. God, seated on a big chair with an embroidered footstool, would call impatiently, "Bring her here. To me. Hurry. Hurry. I have waited so long." And He would seat her right next to Him—God, with His white hair, and fine, noble hands, and Father Leufredus's face.
The next morning she went to the Church of Saint Zoe the Martyr. Seeking out the priest, she explained her situation. "I must get word to Father Leufredus. Could you keep this letter for me and send it next time you meet someone going to London?"
The priest agreed, blessed her, and blew his nose in the sleeve of his cassock, so touched was he by her story.
Chapter Six: Leeching
"There," said Peg, wiping her hands on her skirt. "Now take those soft hands of yours to Grizzl's and rub her just as I showed you."
Matilda went first to the shop of Horanswith Leech, the bloodletter, at the end of Blood and Bone Alley where it met Frog Road. As many times as she had passed his shop and crossed herself in apprehension, she had never been inside nor seen the dreaded bloodletter. She walked slowly, kicking at stones and bones and things, anxious to delay her arrival as long as possible.
The door to Horanswith Leech's home was barred, and no one answered her knocking. Relieved for the moment, Matilda sat on an upturned herring barrel and waited. Too soon came a man in dusty black gown and mantle, spotted with mud and blood and a year's worth of spilled dinners. He looked much like a leech himself, his thin little hands like pincers and teeth sharp enough to draw blood. On his head he wore what looked like a yellow clay pot.
"Is it me you want?" he asked.
"If you are the leech," Matilda said, staring at the ... hat? pot? helmet? crown?
He took the object off his head, freeing his black hair, dusty and coarse as a horse's. "Bleeding bowl, you see," he said. "Easier to carry. Keeps my hands free." Horanswith Leech, without doubt.
Matilda followed him into the gloomy room that was his home and shop. It smelled of blood and dirt and insects.
"Busy, busy. What's the reason? It be early bloodletting season," he said. "Everyone wants to be bled before spring. You also, pretty thing?"
Matilda shuddered, both at the thought of bleeding and at his dreadful rhymes. She shook her head. "Mistress Peg asks that you and I go to Grizzl Wimplewasher by the river. She suffers from aches in her hands and feet and those places where two bones rub together. You are to bleed Grizzl and I to apply this liniment."
Horanswith Leech grinned, his tiny sharp teeth glowing in the gloom. "Excellent, excellent, for whatever ailment." He looked at the girl closely. "I perceive that you truthfully wonder how bleeding could possibly help her."
Matilda nodded.
"You know four humors rule the body in any circumstance: blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile, which must be kept in balance," said Horanswith Leech to Matilda. "Illness or pain, if I may be redundant, means one of the humors is superabundant. Or even double. Too much blood is the cause of most trouble."
"And bleeding?" asked Matilda.
"Reduces pains, without a doubt, once we let the extra blood out. For one of Grizzl's age and condition, I think the leeches. We won't open a vein, which a bit overreaches."
Matilda shivered as Master Leech took the cover
off a large pottery crock. "My beauties, we have work to do. Come, Arelda, Maude, and Gerty, too. Time to work, Agrippina, Felix, Basil, Thomelinus. We'll have her up and dancing between us." He picked up the wriggling black leeches one by one and dropped them into a leather pouch, put his bowl on his head, and hurried out the door. Fearful and disgusted but curious, Matilda followed.
Matilda trailed Horanswith Leech so closely that she saw little but his black woolen back flapping down Frog Road, around the market, to the river, and past three bridges until they came to a cottage small as an overturned wagon, made of mud and straw. Grizzl stood before her door, stirring a great mass of wet linen in a large iron pot. "Ah, good, you are here," she said. "Peg told me you would surely come." She straightened, rubbed her red hands together, coughed a time or two, and said, "Go in out of this chill. I will be there as soon as I hang these to dry—as well as they can in this winter wet."
Grizzl was small and slight of build, her face brown from the sun and wrinkled, her teeth all gone or mostly so. Although her arms were strong and well muscled from the lifting and wringing of wet linen, her wrists and elbows were swollen and bruised and red.
Matilda watched Grizzl, coughing again, struggle to lift the mass of soggy linen. The girl bent to help her, fearing that Grizzl would perish before she ever finished and Peg would be angered. While Horanswith Leech waited within, Grizzl and Matilda hung wet laundry from bushes, fence posts, and the thatch of the cottage roof. Matilda's hands froze, her clothes dripped icy drips, and her back ached. Never at the manor had she thought of who did the laundry. She hoped it was not a tiny hobbled woman like Grizzl.
Finally they entered Grizzl's cottage. It was dark and smoky. More laundry had been hung about the room, carefully, so it did not drag on the dirt floor or hang in the small fire pit. Grizzl had no table, no bench, no bedstead, only a small straw mattress where she sat herself down now. While Horanswith Leech felt her pulse, Arelda, Agrippina, Gerty, and the other leeches fed on her blood, until, swollen and satiated, they dropped off.
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