Matilda Bone

by Karen Cushman

  Boggle and Slodge were Blood and Bone Alley's barber-surgeons, who would cut your hair, your whiskers, or your leg off if you had the coin, for the alley was too poor a place to attract the kind of surgeon who does not also cut hair. Matilda knew their shop by the buckets of blood and bloody rags outside but had never been within.

  "The barbers?" she asked. "Were you not afeared? Did you have to watch them cut off someone's leg?"

  Nathaniel smiled and answered, "No, no. Indeed, much of their business is but tending dog bites, pulling teeth, and trimming beards."

  "Were they any help with your eyes?" asked Peg.

  "Boggle said obviously I want vomiting. Never, said Slodge, just a good cleanout of my bowels. 'Foul fiend!' Boggle shouted. 'Would you kill the man?' When they began talking about boiling oil, blistering, and excisions, I left the shop in a hurry."

  Margery, Peg, and Nathaniel all laughed. The noise finally slowed to a wheeze and a sneeze, and Peg said, "Poor Nathaniel, is there no help for you? My mother used to say there was nothing like cabbage and honey to improve eyesight, though do you eat it or spread it on, I do not know. Or onion juice in the eye, or the blood of a tortoise, or seed of wild cucumber crushed in water, or—"

  "Superstitions," said Doctor Margery. "Useless superstitions. Medicine teaches us that the eyes send unseen visual rays out to an object. If these rays are disturbed—by wine, women, baths, leeks or onions, by garlic, mustard seed, fire, light or smoke, dust, pepper, or beans—the sight fails."

  The goose girl's opinions? Surely Nathaniel would laugh at her, but to Matilda's surprise he asked, "This then is what ails me?"

  Margery shrugged. "It could also be a test from God, some foreign substance in the eye, or a cancer in the brain. Most likely it is because you are old, Nathaniel, and your eyes are wearing out like the soles of your shoes."

  Master Nathaniel sat silent.

  Matilda imagined his eyes fading from summer-sky blue to gray and misting over with blindness. She felt sadness, and the feeling frightened her. It was the sign of an earthly attachment. Father Leufredus would surely disapprove. Still, there it was, sadness, and another feeling she did not recognize. The nameless feeling tightened her chest, tickled her throat, and made her long to touch Nathaniel gently, the way Peg did. She thought of all the words that might describe this new feeling—compassion, pity, sympathy, mercy—but decided it was best said in Latin: misericordia, distress of the heart.

  Chapter Ten: Doing her Best

  Lightning split the sky, followed by a great clap of thunder and a torrent of soft raindrops. There was a sweet smell in the air. Spring was but a promise, but a promise was better than winter.

  Matilda was alone, Peg off seeing to Grizzl, when a man came seeking Peg, his right hand cradled in his left, pain in his eyes. Stephen Bybridge, for that is what he was called, living as he did near the bridge to the eastern part of town, said, "My hand aches some'ut fierce and prickles run up and down my arm, like bugs was dancin' on it, but I can see no bugs. Might Mistress Peg know what is wrong?"

  "Mistress Peg is from home," Matilda said. She was about to bid him come another day when she thought, I have learned well from Father Leufredus. Surely with his knowledge I can be useful.

  To Stephen Bybridge she, eager yet a bit apprehensive, said again, "Mistress Peg is from home, but I will do what I can."

  She prayed silently to saints known to listen favorably to petitions from the faithful. She recalled the Latin words for hand (manus), arm (brachium), pain (dolor), even bugs (formicae—well, truly that was ants, but was the closest Matilda could come at the moment). She tried to remember what Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine might have said about hands and arms, but recalled only texts about resting in the hands of God. Comforting, but no help for Stephen Bybridge.

  She thought of the saints in Heaven who suffered withered arms, useless arms, missing arms. Were they cured? How? Was any saint ever cured of an aching hand? She could not think of one. She could think of no saint with bugs or prickles on his arm, although Saint Mark was said to be effective against fly bites. Disheartened, she admitted that what she had learned from Father Leufredus was no help here. She gave up trying her learning and her Latin. She would try what she had learned so far from Peg.

  Carefully she examined Stephen's hand, his arm, his elbow. She felt his forehead. Very gently, she moved his hand around. Then she looked at him, sat back, looked at the ceiling, and looked at him again.

  "I do not know what to do now," she admitted. "I do not know. Best you wait for Mistress Peg."

  Soon enough Mistress Peg arrived. "I tried to help him, Mistress Peg," said Matilda. "I tried everything I know but could not." She shook her head sadly.

  "Knowing is not enough. You must also listen and look," said Peg, hanging her cloak on its hook. "What did you ask him?" Matilda was silent. "Well, look at him. What do you see?"

  "I see an oldish man in a dusty tunic and worn boots of hard leather, with brown hair, a hopeful face, and a hand that pains him."

  "Let me see what I can see," Peg said. She examined the man's arm. "Has this arm ever been broken?" she asked him.

  "No," he said.

  "The wrist? Any of the fingers? The thumb?" He shook his head.

  "Have you suffered a severe blow to the elbow?"

  "No," he said again.

  "I am puzzled as to just what is wrong and why."

  Matilda felt less stupid; Peg did not know what to do either. But where did that leave poor Stephen Bybridge?

  "Please, mistress," he said, "do what you can. If I can't work, I can't eat. And no more can my little ones."

  "Tell me," Peg said to Stephen, "how long has it pained you?"

  "Since Saturday."

  "Tell me everything you did Saturday."

  "I woke with the bells, washed me hands and ears. Had a bit of bread and ale. Gathered me tools and went over to the priory, where we are building a tower. Gregory Haresfoot was there already, so I picked up me chisel and—"

  "Your chisel?" Peg asked loudly. "What work is it you do?"

  "I am a stonemason, and a fine one, in truth. Leastwise I was..."

  "Thundering toads!" Peg shouted. "I know what's amiss." Matilda moved in to watch as Peg moved Stephen's hand this way and that, bent it and pulled it, asked, "Does this hurt?" and "How is this?" and "This?"

  She sat back and smiled. "I've seen this before in a mason. The joint here where your thumb meets your wrist is sprained from the pounding and jarring of heavy hammers on chisels. I can splint it. You rest it, and you'll be sound as a bell in no time." Peg took Stephen's hand. "Matilda, bring me the ash-bark ointment and soak a strip of that leather in water. No. A smaller strip. There. Yes, like that."

  Matilda wondered how it would feel to save someone's hand or his livelihood or his life. Father Leufredus thought theology more important than medicine, but Matilda could not think how theology could have helped the mason the way Peg had. Mistress Peg was able to heal the man's hand by asking questions and listening to the answers. By remembering what she had seen and heard, and what she had done before. For the first time Matilda wished not that Peg could hear Father Leufredus but that Father Leufredus could hear Peg.

  Peg-Peg rubbed Stephen's thumb joint with ointment and herbs, then tightly wrapped it in the wet leather. "There. A most tidy job, if I do say so myself. Sit in the sun as much as you can today to hasten the leather drying. Come back to see me in seven days. And rest that well."

  "Rest it? You mean not work?"

  "Not with chisels. Not for a while. Maybe not ever, if you don't want to injure the hand again."

  Stephen grew pale. "Not work? Mistress, what will become of us?"

  "Go to Rufus Mason at the new Church of the Holy Blood. I tended his hand for him last year, and he is ever anxious to repay the favor. He will have work for you that does not involve chisels."

  "What do I owe you, mistress?"

  "Two pennies, which can wait until your hand i
s better and you have work."

  "Thank you. And God bless you for your skill."

  When Stephen had gone, Matilda turned to Peg. "He thinks you are a wonderworker like Master Theobald."

  Peg shook her head, red curls springing from beneath her kerchief. "He might well think that, but I am not. I find my skills cannot help poor Grizzl. Her body grows daily more twisted and her cough harder, and Margery and I, who love her, can do nothing." She brushed the beginnings of tears from her eyes. "Even skill and love and care cannot overcome God's will."

  "Then do you not waste your time?" asked Matilda.

  Peg shook her head. "How can I know what God's will is? I just do what I can as well as I can."

  And still Grizzl is dying, thought Matilda. What good is all this effort?

  That night Matilda lay awake on her straw pallet, puzzling over God's will and Margery's skill and Grizzl's dying. Feeling confused and alone, she called on Saint Cyr for comfort, but the blessed saint said only, Enough. I died before I was three. I know little of this world. Saint Elfleda responded that she was sent to an abbey as an infant so knew only praying and fasting and doing what she was told. That was no help. Matilda thought to call next on Saint Mary Magdalene, who certainly knew much about the world, but she was not at all sure that what that saint knew was what she wanted to know.

  Tears prickled her eyes. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of people sick and suffering who begged her for help, but she had no hands and could only say over and over in Latin: Volo, non valeo—l would, but I cannot.

  The next Sunday, when Matilda arrived back from Mass, she found Peg bustling about from Gilbert Carpenter to the red-haired brothers who sold salt and spices at the market to a tall man she did not recognize who lay silent as death on the table. The four had been carried to Peg's from the Shambles, where, drunk and fighting, they had slipped on bloody beef bones and knocked into each other, one after another, like ninepins.

  Peg looked up from wrapping Gilbert Carpenter's wrist. "Matilda, thank Saint Modomnoc the Beekeeper, you are back! I need you to pound some comfrey, cut linen into strips, and—"

  "It is Sunday, Mistress Peg, the Lord's day. Is it not a grievous sin to work on Sunday?"

  Peg stopped wrapping and looked at the girl. "These men are injured and in pain. They've come to us for help. Would you turn away fellow human beings in pain because they are in pain on a Sunday?"

  Matilda stood confused and unsure. Peg said, "Ah, have you learned nothing from me, for all your experience with pounding and pulling?" She finished wrapping Gilbert's wrist and started to bandage the elbow.

  Matilda lay down on the floor with arms outstretched, so Peg had to step over her, and prayed for Peg's soul.

  After a few minutes Matilda lifted her head to watch Peg. Her hands, chapped and red as they were, were as deft as a juggler's as she stepped to the unconscious man on the table and began to move his arms and legs, hands and feet about. Her smile, even though weary, cheered and eased her patients, doing as much to help them, Matilda saw, as her bandages, splints, and liniments. Matilda sighed, prayed to God for forgiveness in case she was wrong, and got up to help.

  Peg smiled at her. "Good. This man's ankle is broken, and both wrists are sprained. We have to set and splint them all—and soon, before he wakes, for he is hard to handle even when he has not a belly full of ale. Now pound the comfrey."

  Afterward Peg said, "Come and have a bite of supper. You have earned it. And my pleasure. And the gratitude of those men." With hands like tree roots, strong and sturdy, yet gentle as a pigeon's sound, she tore a piece of bread from a hard loaf. As Matilda chewed her own piece of bread, she watched Peg, feeling something like awe. Peg worked hard, earned little, ate poorly, was cold in the winter and would be hot in the summer. She saw friends suffer, patients die, and the unworthy prosper. Nevertheless she had more of laugh lines than frown lines marking the freckled surface of her face as she sat down happily to her bread-and-porridge supper, while Matilda sat tormented over having worked on Sunday, fearful that either Peg was wrong and Matilda had sinned, or Peg was right and Father Leufredus was wrong, and then where was Matilda?

  She put her head in her hands. Saint Perpetua, Matilda prayed, I am tormented and confused.

  My child, she heard the saint responding, I was torn apart by wild beasts. I find it difficult to sympathize with your small worries.

  The trouble with saints, Matilda thought, was that you never could tell just what they would say.

  Chapter Eleven: Easing Sarah

  On her way back from the market one day, smelling strongly of the fish heads and onions she carried, Matilda stopped by to greet Tildy, as had become her habit. "Fat Annet just poured a bowl of frumenty over the cook," Tildy said. "I am afeared that her temper is growing worse as the days grow warmer. Best you not come here anymore, or we both may suffer the consequences." Tildy and Matilda agreed to meet instead at the town well each Wednesday and Friday when the bells rang for the hour of Sext, after dinner when the sun was highest in the sky.

  Matilda thought herself fortunate all the way home. Peg was so much kinder than Tildy's Fat Annet and never begrudged her helper time for a visit or a gossip or a getting-lost walk around the town.

  When she entered the shop, she was surprised—knowing Peg was out seeing to Matthew Carbuncle's broken hip—to hear someone move in the darkness. A rat? she thought. A cat? Or Father Leufredus come at last? Her heart jumped. She squinted to see through the dimness.

  It was the rude boy from the street. "I am here to see Red Peg the Bonesetter," he said. He peered closely at her. "You? The small girl with the green eyes and dimpled chin? Surely a miracle has brought us together again."

  "Muddy Walter, I see," the girl said, dizzy with disappointment. "Peg is my mistress. She is not here, but you can tell me what is it you want of her."

  "My master is Nathaniel Cross, the apothecary. His wife, Sarah, who suffers many ailments, is now much afflicted with pains in her legs. Nathaniel thought Peg might have some lotion or tonic to soothe them."

  "I will ask Peg when she returns."

  "It would help greatly if you were to bring it, for I am most fearsomely busy." Walter moved toward the door. "We must move from our large shop in the High Street. We will be the new tenants of Mother Uffa's small, dark shop. Your neighbors." At that the boy smiled.

  Matilda pitied Nathaniel's predicament and would not mind having him for a neighbor. She was less sure about this boy, who both irritated and intrigued her. She shrugged. "Mayhap I could bring the tonic tomorrow."

  "And what is the name of the valued bonesetter's helper we will be indebted to?" Walter asked.

  "Matilda."

  "Well, Matilda the Bonesetter, we are grateful. No, that is much too big a name for someone as small as you. Let me rather say, Matilda Bone, we are grateful."

  "As well you should be, Walter Mudd."

  He left her.

  Matilda Bone, she thought. Never had she been called any name but Matilda. Or clerk's daughter. Or priest's girl. Matilda Bone. It sounded well enough, although she would have preferred Saint Matilda or Matilda the Wise.

  The next day there was a commotion at the far, dark end of the alley as Nathaniel, Sarah, and Walter moved into Mother Uffa's old house. Peg rejoiced over her new neighbors and the bouts of draughts that promised. She mixed a lotion of monkshood, meadowsweet, and oil of wintergreen, and rubbed it into Matilda's legs to demonstrate the proper application. "I would see to Sarah myself," she said to Matilda as she smoothed and rubbed, "but Sarah and I would get lost in chatter and she would never rest. She must rest. There," she said to Matilda with a soft slap. And Matilda set off for Nathaniel's, her legs still stinging from the wintergreen and burning from the rubbing.

  The shutters were closed when Matilda approached the shop, so she knocked softly. "Come in, whoever you be," she heard from within. Opening the door a crack, she peeked in. It looked like a wizard's workroom. The air was smoky and
heavy with the sweet smells of herbs, spices, and magic, and the room was so dark that bits of daylight shone like tiny stars through the chinks in the wall. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Matilda could see shelves of bottles and jars, beakers and flagons covering the walls. Leaves, barks, branches, and herbs sprouted from the ceiling. In the center of the room was a long table on which bowls of mustard-yellow clay, wooden pestles, weights, and scales were piled.

  "Come in, come in, girl, and shut the door, lest ye let in the cold, the tax collector, and all the creatures that prowl the streets," said a voice as crackled and whispery as dry leaves. Matilda stepped slowly inside and closed the door behind her.

  "Closer, so I can see you." Matilda walked slowly toward the voice, which seemed to be coming from a bundle of clothes near the table. Upon closer inspection the bundle proved itself a tiny round woman, with a face as wrinkled and soft as an old glove left outside in the rain. She was seated in a chair like a throne, with a carved back and lions' paws to rest her arms on—a chair such as a queen might have. At her feet lay two sleeping cats. Several more sprawled over the table. And on the woman's lap, one leg raised in the air and held there as she ceased her licking to examine the girl, sat Hag.

  "You must be the Matilda Nathaniel told me was coming," the woman said. "I said to him, 'Nathaniel,' I said, for I only call him Master Cross when I am angry with—"

  "Enough, Sarah, my dumpling," said Nathaniel, coming in with his arms full of bundles and baskets. "Now, who is this come to see us?"

  "It is I, Matilda."

  "Matilda? Matilda? Do I know a Matilda?" he asked.

  "Matilda, from Peg's."

  "Matilda who? And Peg who?"

  Matilda was confused. It was only yesterday he had sent Walter. Could he have forgotten? Were his wits addled as well as his eyes? "I am from Red Peg the Bonesetter, come with a lotion for Sarah's legs. Walter calls me Matilda Bone."