The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  Spare we him a line or two, and look back to Juliana, who, conflicted in her thoughts about me very doubtfully, adventured to send a messenger to Doctor Zacharie in her name, very boldly to beg me of him, and if she might not beg me, to buy me with what sums of money soever he would ask. Zacharie jewishly and churlishly denied both her suits, and said if there were no more Christians on the earth, he would thrust his incision knife into his throat-bole immediately. Which reply she taking at his hands most despitefully, thought to cross him over the shins with as sore an overwhart315 blow ere a month to an end. The Pope (I know not whether at her entreaty or no) within two days after fell sick. Doctor Zacharie was sent for to minister unto him, who, seeing a little danger in his water, gave him a gentle comfortive for the stomach and desired those near about him to persuade his Holiness to take some rest and he doubted not but he would be forthwith well. Who should receive this mild physick of him but the concubine Juliana, his utter enemy! She, being not unprovided of strong poison, at that instant in the Pope’s outward chamber so mingled it, that when his grand-sublimity-taster came to relish it, he sank down stark dead on the pavement. Herewith the Pope called Juliana, and asked her what strong-concocted broth she had brought him. She kneeled down on her knees and said it was such as Zacharie the Jew had delivered her with his own hands, and therefore if it misliked his Holiness she craved pardon. The Pope, without further sifting into the matter, would have had Zacharie and all the Jews in Rome put to death, but she hung about his knees, and with crocodile tears desired him the sentence might be lenified, and they be all but banished at the most. ‘For Doctor Zacharie,’ quoth she, ‘your ten-times ungrateful physician, since notwithstanding his treacherous intent, he hath much art and many sovereign simples, oils, gargarisms,316 and syrups in his closet and house that may stand your Mightiness in stead, I beg all his goods only for your Beatitude’s reservation and good.’ This request at the first was sealed with a kiss, and the Pope’s edict without delay proclaimed throughout Rome, namely, that all foreskin clippers, whether male or female, belonging to the Old Jewry, should depart and avoid upon pain of hanging, within twenty days after the date thereof.

  Juliana, two days before the proclamation came out, sent her servants to extend upon Zacharie’s territories, his goods, his movables, his chattels and his servants; who performed their commission to the utmost tittle, and left him not so much as master of an old urinal-case or a candle-box. It was about six o’clock in the evening when those boot-halers entered. Into my chamber they rushed, when I sat leaning on my elbow and my left hand under my side, devising what a kind of death it might be, to be let blood till a man die. I called to mind the assertion of some philosophers, who said the soul was nothing but blood. Then, thought I, what a thing were this, if I should let my soul fall and break his neck into a basin. I had but a pimple rose with heat in that part of the vein where they use to prick, and I fearfully misdeemed it was my soul searching for passage. Fie upon it, a man’s breath to be let out at a back door, what a villainy it is! To die bleeding is all one as if a man should die pissing. Good drink makes good blood, so that piss is nothing but blood under age. Seneca and Lucan were lobcocks317 to choose that death of all other: a pig or a hog or any edible brute beast a cook or a butcher deals upon dies bleeding. To die with a prick, wherewith the faintest-hearted woman under heaven would not be killed, oh God, it is infamous.

  In this meditation did they seize upon me. In my cloak they muffled me that no man might know me, nor I see which way I was carried. The first ground I touched after I was out of Zacharie’s house was the Countess Juliana’s chamber. Little did I surmise that fortune reserved me to so fair a death. I made no other reckoning all the while they had me on their shoulders, but that I was on horseback to heaven, and carried to church on a bier, excluded for ever from drinking any more ale or beer. Juliana scornfully questioned them thus, as if I had fallen into her hands beyond expectation: ‘What proper apple-squire318 is this you bring so suspiciously into my chamber? What hath he done? Or where had you him?’ They answered likewise afar off, that in one of Zacharie’s chambers they found him close prisoner, and thought themselves guilty of the breach of her Ladyship’s commandment if they should have left him. ‘Oh,’ quoth she, ‘ye love to be double-diligent, or thought peradventure that I, being a lone woman, stood in need of a love. Bring you me a princocks319 beardless boy (I know not whence he is, nor whither he would) to call my name in suspense? I tell you, you have abused me, and I can hardly brook it at your hands. You should have led him to the magistrate; no commission received you of me but for his goods and his servants.’ They besought her to excuse their error, proceeding of duteous zeal, no negligent fault. ‘But why should not I conjecture the worst?’ quoth she. ‘I tell you troth, I am half in a jealousy he is some fantastic youngster who hath hired you to dishonour me. It is a likely matter that such a man as Zacharie should make a prison of his house! By your leave, sir gallant, under lock and key shall you stay with me till I have enquired farther of you. You shall be sifted throughly ere you and I part. Go, maid, show him to the farther chamber at the end of the gallery that looks into the garden. You, my trim panders, I pray guard him thither as you took pains to bring him hither. When you have so done, see the doors be made fast and come your way.’ Here was a wily wench had her liripoop320 without book. She was not to seek in her knacks and shifts: such are all women, each of them hath a cloak for the rain and can bear her husband’s eyes as she list.

  Not too much of this Madam Marquess at once. Let me dilate a little what Zadoch did with my courtesan after he had sold me to Zacharie. Of an ill tree I hope you are not so ill-sighted in grafting to expect good fruit. He was a Jew, and entreated her like a Jew. Under shadow of enforcing her to tell how much money she had of his prentice so to be trained to his cellar, he stripped her and scourged her from top to toe tantara.321 Day by day he digested his meat with leading her the measures. A diamond delphinical dry lecher it was. The Ballet of the Whipper322 of late days here in England was but a scoff in comparison of him. All the colliers of Romford, who hold their corporation by yarking the blind bear at Paris garden,323 were but bunglers to him. He had the right agility of the lash; there were none of them could make the cord come aloft with a twang half like him. Mark the ending, mark the ending.

  The tribe of Judah is adjudged from Rome to be trudging; they may no longer be lodged there. All the Albumazers, Rabisaks, Gideons, Tebiths, Benhadads, Benrodans, Zedekiahs, Halies of them were banquerouts324 and turned out of house and home. Zacharie came running to Zadoch’s in sackcloth and ashes presently after his goods were confiscated, and told him how he was served, and what decree was coming out against them all. Descriptions, stand by: here is to be expressed the fury of Lucifer when he was turned over heaven-bar for a wrangler.325 There is a toad-fish, which taken out of the water swells more than one would think his skin could hold, and bursts in his face that toucheth him. So swelled Zadoch, and was ready to burst out of his skin and shoot his bowels like chain-shot full at Zacharie’s face for bringing him such baleful tidings. His eyes glared and burnt blue like brimstone and aqua vitae set on fire in an eggshell. His very nose lightened glow-worms; his teeth crashed and grated together like the joints of a high building cracking and rocking like a cradle whenas a tempest takes her full butt against his broadside. He swore, he cursed, and said:

  ‘These be they that worship that crucified God of Nazareth. Here’s the fruits of their new-found gospel: sulphur and gunpowder carry them all quick to Gehenna! I would spend my soul willingly to have that triple-headed Pope with all his sin-absolved whores and oil-greased priests borne with a black sant326 on the devils’ backs in procession to the pit of perdition. Would I might sink presently into the earth, so I might blow up this Rome, this whore of Babylon, into the air with my breath. If I must be banished, if those heathen dogs will needs rob me of my goods, I will poison their springs and conduit-heads, whence they receive all their water round about the
city. I’ll tice all the young children into my house that I can get, and, cutting their throats, barrel them up in powdering-beef tubs, and so send them to victual the Pope’s galleys. Ere the officers come to extend, I’ll bestow an hundred pound on a dole of bread, which I’ll cause to be kneaded with scorpion’s oil that will kill more than the plague. I’ll hire them that make their wafers or sacramentary gods, to minge327 them after the same sort, so in the zeal of their superstitious religion shall they languish and droop like carrion. If there be ever a blasphemous conjurer that can call the winds from their brazen caves and make the clouds travail before their time, I’ll give him the other hundred pounds to disturb the heavens a whole week together with thunder and lightning, if it be for nothing but to sour all the wines in Rome and turn them to vinegar. As long as they either have oil or wine, this plague feeds but pinglingly328 upon them.’

  ‘Zadoch, Zadoch,’ said Doctor Zacharie, cutting him off, ‘thou threat’nest the air, whilst we perish here on earth. It is the Countess Juliana, the Marquis of Mantua’s wife, and no other, that hath complotted our confusion. Ask not how, but insist in my words, and assist in revenge.’

  ‘As how? As how?’ said Zadoch, shrugging and shrubbing.329 ‘More happy than the patriarchs were I if, crushed to death with the greatest torments Rome’s tyrants have tried, there might be quintessenced out of me one quart of precious poison. I have a leg with an issue; shall I cut it off, and from his fount of corruption extract a venom worse than any serpent’s? If thou wilt, I’ll go to a house that is infected, where, catching the plague and having got a running sore upon me, I’ll come and deliver her a supplication and breathe upon her. I know my breath stinks so already that it is within half a degree of poison. Ill pay her home if I perfect it with any more putrefaction.’

  ‘No, no, brother Zadoch,’ answered Zacharie, ‘that is not the way. Canst thou provide me ere a bondmaid endued with singular and divine qualified beauty, whom as a present from our synagogue thou mayest commend unto her, desiring her to be good and gracious unto us?’

  ‘I have, I am for you,’ quoth Zadoch. ‘Diamante, come forth. Here’s a wench,’ said he, ‘of as clean a skin as Susanna. She hath not a wem on her flesh from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. How think you, Master Doctor, will she not serve the turn?’.

  ‘She will,’ said Zacharie, ‘and therefore I’ll tell you what charge I would have committed to her. But I care not if I disclose it only to her. Maid (if thou beest a maid), come hither to me. Thou must be sent to the Countess of Mantua’s about a small piece of service, whereby, being now a bondwoman, thou shalt purchase freedom and gain a large dowry to thy marriage. I know thy master loves thee dearly, though he will not let thee perceive so much. He intends after he is dead to make thee his heir, for he hath no children. Please him in that I shall instruct thee, and thou art made for ever. So it is, that the Pope is far out of liking with the Countess of Mantua, his concubine, and hath put his trust in me, his physician, to have her quietly and charitably made away. Now, I cannot intend it, for I have many cures in hand which call upon me hourly. Thou, if thou beest placed with her as her waiting-maid or cup-bearer, mayest temper poison with her broth, her meat, her drink, her oils, her syrups, and never be bewrayed. I will not say whether the Pope hath heard of thee, and thou mayest come to be his leman in her place if thou behave thyself wisely. What, hast thou the heart to go thorough with it or no?’

  Diamante, deliberating with herself in what hellish servitude she lived with the Jew, and that she had no likelihood to be released of it, but fall from evil to worse if she omitted this opportunity, resigned herself over wholly to be disposed and employed as seemed best unto them. Thereupon, without further consultation, her wardrop was richly rigged, her tongue smooth filed and new edged on the whetstone, her drugs delivered her, and presented she was by Zadoch, her master, to the Countess, together with some other slight newfangles, as from the whole congregation, desiring her to stand their merciful mistress and solicit the Pope for them, that through one man’s ignorant offence were all generally in disgrace with him, and had incurred the cruel sentence of loss of goods and of banishment.

  Juliana, liking well the pretty round face of my black-browed Diamante, gave the Jew better countenance than otherwise she would have done, and told him for her own part she was but a private woman, and could promise nothing confidently of his Holiness; for though he had suffered himself to be overruled by her in some humours, yet in this that touched him so nearly, she knew not how he would be inclined; but what lay in her either to pacify or persuade him, they should be sure of, and so craved his absence.

  His back turned, she asked Diamante what countrywoman she was, what friends she had, and how she fell into the hands of that Jew. She answered that she was a magnifico’s daughter of Venice, stolen when she was young from her friends, and sold to this Jew for a bond-woman, ‘who,’ quoth she, ‘hath used me so jewishly and tyrannously that for ever I must celebrate the memory of this day wherein I am delivered from his jurisdiction. Alas’ (quoth she, deep sighing), ‘why did I enter into any mention of my own misusage? It will be thought that that which I am now to reveal proceeds of malice, not truth. Madam, your life is sought by these Jews that sue to you. Blush not, nor be troubled in your mind, for with warning I shall arm you against all their intentions. Thus and thus’ (quoth she) ‘said Doctor Zacharie unto me. This poison he delivered me. Before I was called in to them, such and such consultation through the crevice of the door hard-locked did I hear betwixt them. Deny it if they can, I will justify it. Only I beseech you to be favourable lady unto me, and let me not fall again into the hands of those vipers.’

  Juliana said little but thought unhappily. Only she thanked her for detecting it, and vowed, though she were her bondwoman, to be a mother unto her. The poison she took of her, and set it up charily on a shelf in her closet, thinking to keep it for some good purposes; as, for example, when I was consumed and worn to the bones through her abuse, she would give me but a dram too much, and pop me into a privy. So she had served some of her paramours ere that, and, if God had not sent Diamante to be my redeemer, undoubtedly I had drunk of the same cup.

  In a leaf or two before was I locked up. Here in this page the foresaid goodwife Countess comes to me. She is no longer a judge but a client. How she came, in what manner of attire, with what immodest and uncomely words she courted me, if I should take upon me to enlarge, all modest ears would abhor me. Some inconvenience she brought me to by her harlotlike behaviour, of which enough I can never repent me.

  Let that be forgiven and forgotten. Fleshly delights could not make her slothful or slumbering in revenge against Zadoch. She set men about him to incense and egg him on in courses of discontentment, and other supervising espials to ply, follow and spur forward those suborning incensers Both which played their parts so that Zadoch, of his own nature violent, swore by the ark of Jehovah to set the whole city on fire ere he went out of it. Zacharie, after he had furnished the wench with the poison, and given her instructions to go to the devil, durst not stay one hour for fear of disclosing, but fled to the Duke of Burbon,330 that after sacked Rome, and there practised with his Bastardship all the mischief against the Pope and Rome that envy could put into his mind. Zadoch was left behind for the hangman. According to his oath, he provided balls of wildfire in a readiness, and laid trains of gunpowder in a hundred several places of the city to blow it up, which he had set fire to and also bandied his balls abroad, if his attendant spies had not taken him with the manner. To the straitest prison in Rome he was dragged, where from top to toe he was clogged with fetters and manacles. Juliana informed the Pope of Zacharie’s and his practice. Zacharie was sought for, but Non est inventus:331 he was packing long before. Commandment was given that Zadoch, whom they had under hand and seal of lock and key, should be executed with all the fiery torments that could be found out.

  I’ll make short work, for I am sure I have wearied all my readers. To the exec
ution place was he brought, where first and foremost he was stripped; then on a sharp iron stake fastened in the ground he had his fundament pitched, which stake ran up along into the body like a spit. Under his arm-holes two of like sort A great bonfire they made round about him, wherewith his flesh roasted, not burned; and ever as with the heat his skin blistered, the fire was drawn aside and they basted him with a mixture of aqua fortis, alum water and mercury sublimatum,332 which smarted to the very soul of him, and searched him to the marrow. Then did they scourge his back parts so blistered and blasted with burning whips of red-hot wire. His head they nointed over with pitch and tar and so inflamed it. To his privy members they tied streaming fireworks. The skin from the crest of the shoulder, as also from his elbows, his huckle bones, his knees, his ankles, they plucked and gnawed off with sparkling pincers. His breast and his belly with seal-skins they grated over, which as fast as they grated and rawed, one stood over and laved with smith’s cindery water333 and aqua vitae. His nails they half raised up, and then underpropped them with sharp pricks, like a tailor’s shop window half-open on a holiday. Every one of his fingers they rent up to the wrist; his toes they brake off by the roots, and let them still hang by a little skin. In conclusion, they had a small oil fire, such as men blow light bubbles of glass with, and beginning at his feet, they let him lingeringly burn up limb by limb, till his heart was consumed, and then he died. Triumph, women; this was the end of the whipping Jew, contrived by a woman, in revenge of two women, herself and her maid.