by Karen Harper
AFTER A SPECIAL EARLY EVENING PRAYER SERVICE AT Whitehall, beseeching power for the queen's healing touch on the morrow, Elizabeth rose from the royal pew. Gray shadows crawled in even here amidst lanterns and candles; the autumn wind howled outside. Harry Carey, standing in the doorway at the back of the chapel, gestured to her.
“Pascal's been brought in,” he mouthed before she reached him. Since her cousin Margaret was among her women trailing behind, Elizabeth lifted a quick finger to her lips.
“Where?”
“At the Royal Physicians' Hall, examining candidates for the curing ceremony.”
“I mean not where was he taken but where is he now?” she whispered as they began to walk together.
When her women caught up with her, even blunt, bold Harry evidently recalled this was covert business. He darted his eyes twice in the opposite direction from the royal apartments.
“Ladies,” Elizabeth said, turning to face them with a smile, “my dear cousin Harry has a surprise for me, and I will join you later.”
“A fine new hawk, no doubt,” Margaret Stewart put in as if given leave to speak, “from the queen's Master of the Hawks. Always you are so generous to us, your blood kin,” she added with a flash of smile, though her voice was edged with sarcasm.
Elizabeth bit back a sharp retort. Motioning two guards—Jenks and Clifford—to follow, she preceded Harry in the direction he had indicated, then turned to Jenks as she walked. “Hie yourself to my privy library and fetch that bag with the timepiece and scourge we found in Chelsea and bring them to me posthaste in … In?” she prompted Harry.
“Ah, so no one would catch wind of it, I stowed Pascal in the gatehouse chamber above the Sermon Court,” he said as they walked the corridor overlooking the tiltyard.
“Good, for I shall preach him quite a sermon and, I swear, he will confess—to something. Make haste, Jenks,” she urged as he dropped back. She heard him break into a run going in the opposite direction.
“But I was thinking,” Harry told her, “if you have Pascal arrested, you'll be short a physician for the curing ceremony in the morn. And if you yet want me to take a few men and search the cellar of the Royal Physicians' College Hall while that ceremony's going on, I won't be about to protect you there.”
“Harry, I will be fine. I believe it is God's will I continue the healing ceremony. It is in a public, holy place which will be packed with my full contingent of Yeomen Guards and Gentlemen Pensioners, not to mention my closest courtiers.”
“Namely, Lord Robert Dudley, who watches you— well, like a hawk.”
She said naught to that as they climbed the lantern-lit stairs to the gatehouse. “As for being short a physician,” she told him, “I shall tell Dr. Huicke, despite his age and bad knees, I need him there tomorrow. God knows, I ignore my household physicians too much lately anyway. They've been vexed to no end that I have twice summoned Dr. Burcote.”
Despite her assurances to Harry, the queen was quite anxious about the service for the Curing of the Queen's Evil tomorrow. She was no coward, but she wanted out of London where a poxed effigy or leeched body could appear in her privy, protected property. She yearned for open spaces where villains could not materialize from nor melt into crowds.
From Hampton Court she could see more clearly and plan her next moves. It was but a short barge ride from London, so she could easily dispatch her Privy Plot Council members to do what they must, arrest who was guilty. Cecil had deduced from his interrogator's questioning of Katherine Grey and her husband that, even if they were being used by outside hostile forces, they were hardly instigators. Then who was?
Harry opened the door for the queen, and she entered. Peter Pascal's great bulk blotted out the last of the outside light from where he stood at the window. The chamber contained several armchairs set back against the walls and three tapestries of a hunt scene. Lanterns hung from the old wall sconces. The queen indicated that Harry's two men should step outside, but she kept him and Clifford with her. Pascal made a bow so low he almost toppled onto his face.
“I visited Chelsea this day,” she began, moving into the middle of the room while the men seemed to crowd the corners.
“I heard such, Your Majesty,” he admitted after a brief, awkward pause. “My steward sent word you were just passing by and examined my house, including my privy chapel. And that you dubbed my home a cathedral to my mentor—”
“Is it not?” she demanded, her voice rising. “I swear you are practicing idolatry at the least! Do you not adore Sir Thomas More as if he were some saint to you? And would you not do anything to avenge his loss, even on the one who had naught to do with his demise?”
“Naught to do…” he choked out before he seized control of himself. His voice had momentarily gone so high-pitched he almost squeaked. “Your Majesty, the men who died because they would not sign your father's Act of Supremacy making him—now you—head of the English church, your birth which caused—”
“Enough!” she shouted, smacking her fist into her palm instead of his face. “Let the past be past! Let us pursue this another way, then. To what lengths would you go to discredit, annoy, or try to terrify me? You and your crony, Dr. Caius, who used to serve at court, think you know all my medical secrets, do you not? The queen fears the pox, you tell each other, and she detests being leeched. We shall show her! We will work closely with those who would usurp her place, starting with the Scottish Earl of Lennox, mayhap poor, pliable Katherine Grey. Let us encourage her to bear heirs to supplant this queen.”
He stared aghast at that tirade, then seemed to recover himself. “I—well, yes, both of us did urge the Lieutenant of the Tower to allow Katherine to meet and have talks with her husband—”
“Talks? 'S blood and bones, if my learned doctors believe only talks would result from two defiant, passionate young rebels being left alone together, I have no hope of medical progress in my realm. So do not ask me again for corpses to dissect, though you would love to dissect me!”
“Your Grace, I beg you,” he said, clasping his fat fingers together so they went stark white, “have pity and mercy, for I am guiltless of your other accusations of trying to harm your person. Physicians take an oath to do no harm, to rescue, to preserve.”
Finally, the man looked and sounded terrified. Good, she thought, for it was high time to turn the screws again. But where was Jenks? As if her desire had summoned him, a knock sounded on the door. He entered, out of breath, with the sack she had called for.
“Ah,” the queen said, taking it and drawing out the still mud-encrusted timepiece, which she dangled by its short chain. “Look what has turned up. Do you know where you lost it?”
He stepped forward but did not reach for it. “I evidently lost it where you found it, Your Majesty, but since it was lost indeed, I know not where.”
“Do not mince words with me!”
“I swear by all that's holy, the last time I had it was at the physicians' hall the day after your visit. That would be Saturday, September the twenty-sixth. I thought I laid it down on the table in our council chamber. I have searched high and low for it, as it was a gift from …”
“From?” she prompted.
“A dear friend.”
“Let me guess. Sir Thomas More?”
He squared his trembling shoulders. “God's truth.”
“Peter Pascal, Physician of the Royal College of London,” she droned as if she would pronounce some dire verdict, “did you treat a Chelsea girl, one Anne Wyngate, for a broken right arm Friday last?”
“Anne Wyngate? The old wig-maker's granddaughter? I did not, and haven't seen her for days,” he declared, his voice steady now. “Why, I spent that day—that very day you visited the Royal College of Physicians—with you, Your Majesty.”
“A scant two hours I can vouch for. And for all I know, Anne could have sought your help the next day in London or Chelsea.”
“But what has any of that to do with my lost timepiece? And something e
lse I recall now,” he added, his words becoming so rushed they slurred. “It was lost somewhere at the College. On the day you sent William Cecil to peruse our books—that very Saturday morning you just mentioned—I told him I had lost my timepiece, that I was looking for it. I am certain I did, so ask him!”
Evidently emboldened by his defiance, Pascal reached for his timepiece, but she snatched it away and dropped it back in the bag. “Your timepiece is sullied, and your testimony may be, too, doctor. But let us examine one thing more together.”
She drew out the leather, plaited scourge that she had seized from his study and shook it once at him. The little pieces of bone at the end of the thongs clicked together. He gaped at it as if it were a sheath of serpents.
“And your house steward inadvertently mentioned,” she went on, “that you wear a hair shirt like that relic of Sir Thomas on the altar in your privy shrine to him.” She fixed him with her narrowed gaze. “Will you deny using that and this, too, so I must have my men bare your back to testify against you? For what misdeeds or secret sins does a learned, wealthy physician punish and flagellate himself, Dr. Pascal?”
“I—I …” He staggered back into the wall, then righted himself. “For not being worthy of him—Sir Thomas. I live my entire life morally, helping others to be more worthy. But I swear I am innocent of harming the Wyngate girl—or you.”
Their eyes met and held. She had given John Caius another chance, and her proof was yet tenuous against Dr. Pascal too. Nor could she afford to gut her Royal College of Physicians by sacking its leaders, not yet, not before the ceremony tomorrow. And not when she was determined to advance the estate of medical arts in her realm.
But it was this man's pitiful admission from the depths of his soul that had softened her rage at him. Each mortal, she well knew, however brilliant, blessed, or powerful, carried dark faults and failures within. It was a bloody, brutal struggle to try to cure the plagues of one's past.
“Swear not to me, nor by your Sir Thomas,” she said, her voice quiet now. “If Lord Cecil says you speak the truth about telling him you lost your timepiece by early Saturday, I will see you at the ceremony tomorrow morning, where you will do your duty under the watchful eye of those I can trust. I do not wish to let your patients nor my people down.”
“I—yes, of course, Your Majesty,” he said, blinking back tears with a sniff. “Dr. Caius and I will do our duty. We will be certain everything goes well at—at the Queen's Evil ceremony.”
“I tell you flat out,” Elizabeth said, enunciating every word, “and you may pass this on to Dr. Caius. As to duty, you shall both be removed from yours and have your licenses revoked should anything go even slightly askew tomorrow or hereafter. And while I am away at Hampton Court, you will have men with you to observe your every move, moves which must be your striving for the good of my people's health.
“Harry,” she said, turning away from the wide-eyed doctor, “hold Dr. Pascal here until I speak with Lord Secretary Cecil, then have one of your men escort him either to prison or the physicians' hall. Your other man will find Dr. Caius and remain with him.”
In a change of heart, she handed Pascal the sack with the timepiece, but threw the scourge at his feet. With Jenks and Clifford in tow, she headed for her privy quarters.
“A moment, Your Grace,” Jenks said as he followed her into her apartments for a Privy Plot meeting. No one else was in the presence chamber yet. Jenks went down on one knee though he looked up at her.
“Your Gracious Majesty,” he began, his face so in earnest, “I've protected you for years and would give my life for you.”
“I know that, my man. Say on.”
“I do not like the tactic of allowing those we suspect to keep close to your person, guards or not.”
“I have had Katherine Grey and her lord sent to separate rural exile, and word of that will be a warning. Everyone else is under watch, whether they know it or not, even my Lord Dudley. But,” she added, wringing her long fingers, “I yet hope those behind this effigy plot are so desperate that they will make another rash move and so be snared.”
“But they are getting more desperate in their deeds,” he argued. “First just that poxed dummy, but now corpses.”
“I do the work of our blessed Lord's healing touch tomorrow,” she assured him, wishing she could likewise comfort herself as she bent to touch his shoulder. “All will be well, for He has put me on the throne of this realm and, no doubt, means to keep me here a good while.”
“Hmph,” Kat said, making them both jump as she came into the room from the queen's bedchamber. “Wish I hadn't heard your brother and sister say the same in their youth, then both ruling but a few scant years apiece.”
“But neither was healthy as I am!” Elizabeth shouted, throwing up her hands. “Is no one on God's green earth, not even my intimates, on my side?” She stomped into her bedchamber and slammed the door.
TRUMPETS ANNOUNCED THE QUEEN'S ARRIVAL AS SHE walked the long aisle of the Abbey's nave toward the altar. Gowned in black and gold, wearing the traditional embroidered apron for the ceremony, she pulled a long velvet train her ladies held for her. Courtiers, including the Stewarts, awaited her arrival. Pikemen lined the way to hold back those in the pews or standing in the crowded church; her Gentlemen Pensioners followed, interspersed with ladies-in-waiting, also all bedecked in ebony hue. Before the altar awaited the black-garbed physicians, those of the college and the queen's household, fourteen in total number. Only the afflicted, waiting their turns off to the side, were clothed in white.
The scrofula, or Queen's Evil disease, was similar to the small pox in that it could cause facial disfigurement and blindness, but unlike the pox, it was not often fatal. Instead of sunken pits on the skin, neck tumors were its dreaded signature and legacy. But for salvation by the royal touch, which the English and French had long sworn by, the disease was treatable but not curable.
Pitying the waiting victims, Elizabeth darted surreptitious looks at those she would be touching: forty-some folk, as many men as women and several children. Her gazed snagged Dr. Caius's then Pascal's. Both looked wary, watchful. Mayhap, she thought, she had put—if not the fear of God—the fear of queen into them.
Turning carefully while her women draped her train behind her, Elizabeth Tudor sat on the throne and steadied herself for the ritual that would precede the touching.
WOULDN'T TOUCH THIS WEIRD RUBBISH WITH A PIKE-MAN'S staff,” Harry Carey whispered to his companion as he lifted their lantern toward the glass jars on the shelves in the cellar of the Royal College of Physicians. “Looks like a damned butcher's shop. Wait till she hears about this.”
“But it could all be part of their trade,” Jason Nye, one of Cecil's scriveners, muttered. Two of Cecil's other secretaries were keeping the doctors' servants busy upstairs with questions. They'd gone to the front door while Harry and Nye, like foul footpads, had sneaked in the back.
The two men stood, Harry in disgust, Nye in awe, of things floating in what appeared to be—smelled to be— vinegar. An eyeball, an ear, a hand, a woman's breast, and things unnameable.
“They could have gotten those through accidents or necessary amputations,” Nye said, as if defending the doctors. “Or on a hunt. But for the hand and breast, they could be animal parts.”
“Could be,” Harry agreed, mesmerized as he squinted at the organs. He had seen such when deer were gutted but not pickled and put on display. “How about these then?”
They moved on to shelves of bones—obviously hu-man—a rib cage, even a grinning skull which Harry was tempted to turn to the wall.
“When the sextons bury new folk in city graveyards, you know the older bones are put in charnel houses or sometimes tossed aside, least of the poorer sort,” Nye said.
“Still, this kind of thing will give her reason to pursue them further, though I think she was wondering if we'd find corpses or at least effigies here. Look, you're the scrivener, so why don't you go through that stac
k of papers quick while I rummage about a bit more.” Harry pointed to a pile of paper impaled on a thick pin, the kind the doctors employed for bleedings if they didn't want to use a lancet.
“I'll need our light then,” Nye informed him and moved away with it.
Harry didn't like the idea of poking into the shadows down here, but they were both armed. There was absolutely nothing to fear, he tried to buck himself up.
ELIZABETH FOUGHT BACK THE PANIC SHE OFTEN FELT when she faced those who were so grievously afflicted that it made others stare. She tried to look only into the eyes of each scrofula victim as various doctors ushered them forward. Most of the ill women seemed awestruck and the men resigned; tears tracked down several cheeks. The children shuffled forward trustingly, and the queen squeezed each of their shoulders to stay them. One poor man, evidently a patient of Dr. Pascal, got a coughing jag and flecked her apron and hands with his saliva before Pascal pulled him away.
With each touch, her chaplains took turns reciting, “He shall lay hands upon the sick, and they shall recover.” Another intoned the Lord's Prayer as the sufferers continued to come two at a time to kneel before her. The queen placed her hands on the head of each and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads. The latter was a part of the ritual that rattled both the Protestants and Puritans, but, in this instance, she didn't wish to tamper with tradition.
Each time, she repeated, “I touch thee and God heals thee,” then hung a newly minted gold angel coin on a ribbon around the patient's neck. The coins bore the image of the archangel Michael, and she knew a fierce underground trade in them abounded. People believed that, if they could not be touched for the Queen's Evil by their monarch, perhaps owning an angel coin, called a touch piece, could heal them.
CAN'T BEAR TO TOUCH, LET ALONE SMELL SOME OF these healing herbs down here either, like they're moldy or rotten,” Harry told Nye as the man skimmed through the papers stuck on the spike. “I'd be a night soil man afore I'd be a doctor.”