by C. J. Sansom
'Dorothy says I am a man of air, cheerful and light,' he observed.
'With a touch of the phlegmatic, surely. If your temperament was all air, you could not work as you do.'
'And you, Matthew, were always melancholic. Your dark colouring and spare frame mark you out.'
'I was not so spare before my fever eighteen months ago.' I gave him a serious look. 'I think that would have carried me off without Guy's care. Do not worry, Roger, he will help you.'
I turned with relief as Guy entered the room. He was sixty now and his curly hair, black when first I knew him, was white, making the dark brown hue of his lean features even more striking by contrast. I saw that he was beginning to develop an aged man's stoop. When we had first become friends six years before, Guy had been a monastic infirmarian; the monasteries had housed many foreigners and Guy came originally from Granada in Spain, where his forebears had been Muslims. Having abandoned a Benedictine habit for an apothecary's robe, he had now in turn exchanged that for the black high-collared gown of a physician.
When he came in I thought his dark face seemed a little drawn, as though he had worries. Then he looked at us and smiled broadly.
'Good day, Matthew,' he said. His quiet voice still carried an exotic lilt. 'And you must be Master Elliard.' His penetrating dark eyes studied Roger closely.
'Ay.' Roger shuffled nervously.
'Come through to my examination room, let us see what the problem is.'
'I have brought some urine, as you asked. I gave it to the boy.'
'I will look at that.' He smiled. 'However, unlike some of my colleagues, I do not place entire reliance on the urine. Let us first examine you. Can you wait here a while, Matthew?'
'Of course.'
They left me. I sat on a stool by the window. The light was growing dim, the jars and bottles casting long shadows on the floor. I thought again of Adam Kite, and wondered uneasily whether Guy, still secretly loyal to the old church, might also say Adam was possessed. I had found myself thinking too over the last few days about the dark-haired woman keeper. What had she meant by saying she could never leave the Bedlam; Was she under some permanent order of detention?
The door opened and the boy Piers entered, carrying a candle and with a large book under his arm. He placed the book on a high shelf with several others, then went and lit the candles in a tall sconce. Yellow light flickered around the room, adding the smell of wax to the scent of herbs.
He turned to me. 'Do you mind if I continue my work, sir?' he asked.
'Please do.'
He sat at the table, took a handful of herbs and began grinding them. He rolled back the sleeves of his robe, revealing strong arms, the muscles bunching as he crushed the herbs.
'How long have you been with Dr Malton now?' I asked.
'Just a year, sir.' He turned and smiled, showing sparkling white teeth.
'Your old master died, did he not?'
'Ay, sir. He lived in the next street. Dr Malton took me on when he died suddenly. I am lucky, he is a man of rare knowledge. And kind.'
'That he is,' I agreed. Piers turned back to his work. How different he was from most apprentices, noisy lewd lads forever looking for trouble. His self-possessed, confident manner was that of a man, not a boy.
IT WAS AN HOUR before Guy and Roger returned. It had grown dark, and Piers had to bend closely to his work, a candle beside him. Guy put a hand on his shoulder. 'Enough for tonight, lad. Go and get some supper, but first bring us some beer.'
'Yes, sir.' Piers bowed to us and left. I looked at Roger, delighted to see an expression of profound relief on his face.
'I do not have the falling sickness,' he said and beamed.
Guy smiled gently. 'The strangest matters may have a simple resolution. I always like to start by looking for the simplest possible explanation, which William of Ockham taught is most likely to be the true one. So I began with Master Elliard's feet.'
'He had me standing barefoot,' Roger said, 'then measured my legs, laid me on his couch and bent my feet to and fro. I confess I was surprised. I came expecting a learned disquisition on my urine.'
'We did not need that in the end.' Guy smiled triumphantly. 'I found the right foot turns markedly to the right, the cause being that Master Elliard's left leg is very slightly longer. It is a problem that has been building up for years. The remedy is a special shoe, with a wooden insert that will correct the gait. I will get young Piers to make it, he is skilled with his hands.'
'I am more grateful than I can say, sir,' Roger said warmly.
There was a knock, and Piers returned with three pewter goblets on a tray which he laid on the table.
'Let us drink to celebrate Master Elliard's liberation from falling over.' Guy took a stool and passed another to Roger.
'Roger is thinking of starting a subscription for a hospital,' I told Guy.
Guy shook his head sadly. 'Hospitals are sorely needed in this city. That would be a good and Christian thing. Perhaps I could help, advise.'
'That would be kind, sir.'
'Roger still holds to the ideals of Erasmus,' I said.
Guy nodded. 'I once studied Erasmus too. He was in high favour when I first came to England. I thought when he said the church was too rich, too devoted to ceremony, he had something — though most of my fellow monks did not, they said he wrote with a wanton pen.' His face grew sombre. 'Perhaps they saw clearer than I that talk of reform would lead to the destruction of the monasteries. And of so much else. And for what?' he asked bitterly. 'A reign of greed and terror.'
Roger looked a little uncomfortable at Guy's defence of the monks. I looked from one to the other of them. Guy who was still a Catholic at heart, Roger the radical reformer turned moderate. I was not so much between them as outside the whole argument. A lonely place to be.
'I have a case I wanted to ask your advice about, Guy,' I said to change the subject. 'A case of religious madness, or at least perhaps that is what it is.' I told him Adam's story. 'So the Privy Council have put him in the Bedlam to get him out of the way,' I concluded. 'His parents want me to get him released, but I am not sure that is a good idea.'
'I have known of obsessive lovers,' Roger said, 'but obsessive praying — I have never heard of such a thing.'
'I have,' Guy said, and we both turned to look at his dark grave face. 'It is a new form of brain-sickness, something Martin Luther has added to the store of human misery.'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'There have always been some people who hate themselves, who torture themselves with guilt for real or imagined offences. I saw such cases sometimes as an infirmarian. Then we could tell people that God promises salvation to any who repent their sins, because He places no one outside His mercy and charity.' He looked up, a rare anger in his face. 'But now some tell us that God has decided, as though from caprice, to save some and damn others to perpetual torment; and if God does not give you the assurance of His Grace you are doomed. That is one of Luther's central doctrines. I know, I have read him. Luther may have felt himself a worthless creature saved by God's grace, but did he ever stop to think what his philosophy might mean for those without his inner strength, his arrogance?'
'If that were true,' Roger said, 'surely half the population would be running mad?'
'Do you believe you are saved?' Guy asked suddenly. 'That you have God's grace?'
'I hope so. I try to live well and hope I may be saved.'
'Yes. Most, like you, or I, are content with the hope of salvation and leave matters in God's hands. But now there are some who are utterly certain they are saved. They can be dangerous because they believe themselves special, above other people. But just as every coin has two sides, so there are others who crave the certainty, yet are convinced they are unworthy, and that can end in the piteous condition of this young man. I have heard it called salvation panic, though the term hardly does justice to the agonies of those who suffer it.' He paused. 'The question perhaps is why the boy
became consumed with guilt in the first place.'
'Maybe he has committed some great sin,' I said. I was glad to see Guy shake his head.
'No, usually in such cases their sins are small, it is something in the workings of their minds that brings them to this pass.'
'Will you help me try to find what it is, Guy? Some in the Bedlam think Adam is possessed. I fear they may do him harm.'
'I will come and see him, Matthew,' Guy said. 'I will go as a doctor, of course, not an ex-monk, or he would probably fear he was indeed in the hands of the devil.' Suddenly my friend looked old and tired.
'Thank you,' I said. 'Young Piers seems a hard worker,' I observed.
'Yes, he is. A good apprentice. Perhaps better than I deserve,' he added quietly.
'How so?' I asked, puzzled.
He did not answer. 'Piers is very clever, too. His understanding is marvellous quick.' Guy gave a sudden smile that transformed his face. 'Let me show you something I have been discussing with Piers, something new in the world of healing, that many of my fellow physicians disapprove of He rose and crossed to his shelf of books. He took down the big volume that Piers had replaced earlier. He cleared a space on the table and placed it there carefully. Roger and I went over to join him.
'De Humani Corpora Fabrica,' Guy said quietly. 'The workings of the human body. Just published, a German merchant friend brought it over for me. It is by Andreas Vesalius, a Dutch physician working in Italy. They have been allowed to practise dissection of bodies there for years, though it has been forbidden here till recently.'
'The old church disapproved,' Roger said.
'They did, and they were wrong. Vesalius is the first man to dissect human bodies on a large scale for centuries, perhaps ever. And you know what he has found? That the ancients, Hippocrates and Galen, the ultimate authorities whom a physician may not question without risking expulsion from the College of Physicians, were wrong.' He turned to us, a gleam in his dark eyes. 'Vesalius has shown that the ancients erred in many of their descriptions of the inner form of the body. He concludes they too were not allowed to dissect bodies, and that their descriptions came from studies not of men but of animals.' He laughed. 'This book will cause a great stir. The college will try to have it discredited, even suppressed.'
'But how can we know Vesalius is right, and the ancients wrong?' I asked.
'By comparing his descriptions and drawings here with what we can see for ourselves when a body is opened. Four bodies of hanged criminals the barber-surgeons' college is allowed now, for public dissection.' I quailed a little as his words, for I was ever of a squeamish disposition, but he went on. 'And there is another way I have been able to see for myself
'How so?' Roger asked.
'A London coroner can call for a body to be opened and examined if it is needed to find out how a man died. Most physicians think the work beneath them and the pay is not great, but I have offered my services and already I have been able to test Vesalius' claims for myself. And he is right.' Guy opened the book slowly and almost reverentially. It was in Latin, illustrated with drawings that were marvellously executed but with something mocking and even cruel about them; as Guy flicked over the pages I saw a skeleton leaning on a table in the pose of a thinker, a flayed body hanging from a gibbet, all its innards exposed. In the corner of a drawing of exposed bowels, a little cherub sat passing a turd and smiling at the reader.
Guy laid the book open at a picture of a human heart cut open on a table. 'There,' he said. 'Do you see; The heart has four chambers, four, not the three we have always been taught.'
I nodded, though all I could see was a horrible tangle of valves and tissue. I glanced at Roger. He was looking a little pale. I said, 'That is very interesting, Guy, but a little beyond us, I fear. And we must be getting back to Lincoln's Inn.'
'Oh. Very well.' Guy, normally the most sensitive of men, did not seem to realize the book had disturbed us. He smiled. 'Perhaps this new year heralds in a time of wonders. I hear a Polish scholar has published a book proving by observation of the planets that the earth goes round the sun, not the other way around. I have asked my friend to bring me a copy. This new year of 1543 may find us on the threshold of a new world.'
'Do you know many foreign merchants?' Roger asked curiously.
'We of alien looks or words must stick together.' Guy smiled sadly. He brought our coats, and Roger left his fee of a mark. Guy promised the inserts for his shoes would be ready in a couple of weeks at most.
We left, Roger thanking Guy again profusely for his help. When the door was closed Roger clasped my arm. 'I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your guiding me to Dr Malton. I will ever be in your debt.'
'There are no debts between friends,' I said with a smile. 'I am glad to have helped.'
'I could have done without the dissection book, though,' he added as we rode away.
WE RODE ON, up Bucklersbury. We passed the ancient mansion from Henry Ill's time, the Old Barge, long converted into a warren of crumbling tenements. Barak and Tamasin lived there.
'Roger, do you mind if I leave you to go on?' I asked. 'There is a visit I would like to pay.'
He looked up at the Barge, raising his eyebrows. 'Not some doxy?' he asked. 'I hear many live there.'
'No, my clerk and his wife.'
'And I should go and see my new client.'
'What is the case?'
'I do not know yet. A solicitor has sent me a letter about a client of his, who has some property dispute over in Southwark. His client is too poor to pay for a barrister, but he says the case is a worthy one and asked if I will act pro bono. It is all a bit vague, but I agreed to go and meet the client.'
'Who's the solicitor?'
'A man called Nantwich. I've never heard of him. But there are so many jobbing solicitors looking for work around the Inns these days.' He drew his coat round him. 'It is cold for riding, I would rather go home and quietly celebrate the end of my fears.' He turned his horse, then paused. The air was heavy with wood-smoke and chill with frost. 'Where is spring:' he asked, then waved a hand in farewell and rode off into the dark night. I dismounted, and walked towards the lighted windows of the Old Barge.
Chapter Five
I HAD VISITED Barak's tenement in the days before he married Tamasin, and remembered which of the several unpainted street doors to take. It gave on to a staircase leading to the ramshackle apartments into which the crumbling old mansion was divided. The stairs creaked loudly in the pitch-black, and I recalled thinking on my previous visit that the whole place seemed ready to fall down.
I remembered Barak's apartment as a typical young man's lodging: dirty plates piled on the table, clothes strewn about the floor and mouse droppings in the corners. I had been glad when he announced, on marrying Tamasin, that they would move to a little house somewhere near Lincoln's Inn, and sorry when the plan was abandoned. The Old Barge was no place for a young girl, especially one as fond of domesticity as Tamasin.
On the second floor I knocked on the door of their tenement. After a minute the door opened a fraction, and I saw a coiffed head dimly outlined against the candlelight within. 'Who is it?' she asked nervously. '
'Tis I. Master Shardlake.'
'Ah, sir. Come in.' Tamasin opened the door and I followed her into the big room that served as dining-room, bedroom and parlour. She had been at work here; everything was clean, the plates stacked in a scuffed old dresser, the bed tidily made. But the place stank of damp, and patches of black mould spotted the wall around the window. Rags had been stuffed between the rotting shutters to keep out the wind. Attempts had been made to clean the wall, but the mould was spreading again. Barak, I saw, was absent.
'Will you sit, sir?' Tamasin indicated a chair at the table. 'May I take your coat? I am afraid Jack is out.'
'I will keep it. I - er - will not be long.' In truth it was so cold in the fireless apartment that I did not want to remove it. I sat and took a proper look at Tamasin. She was a very pretty yo
ung woman, still in her early twenties, with high cheekbones, wide blue eyes and a full mouth. Before her marriage she had taken pride in dressing as well as her purse would allow; perhaps a little better. But now she wore a shapeless grey dress with a threadbare white apron over it, and her blonde hair was swept under a large, white housewife coif. She smiled at me cheerfully but I saw how her shoulders were slumped, her eyes dull.
'It has been a long time since I saw you, sir,' she said. 'Near six months. How are you faring, Tamasin?'
'Oh, well enough. I am sorry Jack is not here.'
'No matter. I was passing on my way from taking a friend to consult Dr Malton.'
'Would you like a cup of beer, sir?'
'I would, Tamasin. But perhaps I should go . . .' I was breaking the proprieties in being with her alone.
'No, sir, stay,' she said. 'We are old friends, are we not?'
'I hope so.'
'I should like a little company.' She went and poured some beer from a jug on the dresser and brought it over, taking a stool opposite me. 'Was Dr Malton able to help your friend?'
I took a draught of the beer, which was pleasantly strong. 'Yes. He had taken to falling over without warning, he thought he was taking the falling sickness, but it turns out he only has something amiss with his foot.'
Tamasin smiled, something like her old warm smile. 'I should think he is mightily relieved.'
'He is. I imagine when he gets home he will be dancing round his lodgings, bad foot and all.'
'Dr Malton is a good man. I believe he saved you when you had that fever the winter before last.'
'Yes. I think he did.'
'But he could not help my poor little Georgie.'
'I know.'
She stared at an empty spot against the far wall. 'He was born dead, laid dead in his little cot over there that we had made.' She turned to me, her eyes full of pain. 'Afterwards I did not want Jack to take the crib away, it was as though some part of Georgie remained while it was there. But he hated the reminder.'