by Smith, Skye
"Then the good news is that he will live," Daniel told him. "What I remember is that the ones that died, died of the fever before the rash began. Once the fever broke all that the Dutch physicians did was to order them kept clean and fed on salty soup until they recovered."
"That is all?" Johnson asked. "We are both apothecaries, and we have seen men waste away from camp fever, and eventually die. It would be more normal to purge them of the poison."
"Do as you wish," Daniel replied with a shrug. "If they are from Reading, then they will be royalist scouts or messengers, and none of my concern. I've told you what I know, and now I think I will mount up and ride to the next inn."
"What's that you say!" Johnson said sharply. "Are you then saying that this spotted fever is a plague? Does it spread quickly amongst men?"
"Not quickly, no," Daniel replied, "but it spread surely and not how you would expect. Perhaps not even from the latrines. Remember the Spanish name for it, Bed Fever. Our Spanish prisoners thought that it was spread by the beds, and not just by the bed, but the bed clothes and the man's clothes. If someone sleeps in their blankets after them, they will also catch this fever. I saw this happen in Holland."
"So the bedding was not cleaned properly of the foulness and corruption," Rosewell said.
"Of course they were. We are speaking of Dutch Lutherans who treat cleanliness as godliness," Daniel told him with distain in his voice, "and Dutch armies who have been at war with Spain for decades now and follow written rules about how to keep an army camp healthy in damp places. No, there was something else. In the end they burned all of the beds and bedding and all of the clothing of the sick men and issued them with new. Only then did the illness stop spreading."
"Ah, so now I understand," Johnson replied, "why you no longer wish to stay at this hotel. If these men have slept in the beds, then you no longer trust those beds. That is if your memory is good, and if this is the same illness, and if the inn's cleaning women do not clean properly. A lot of 'ifs'."
"I have no desire to suffer weakness and fevers," Daniel replied, "and I cannot afford to be laid up for a month or more. One of us should warn the innkeep. He will not be pleased, but to be safe he must burn all of the bedding that these men have used, and clean their room with lye soap."
"A month or more of weakness, and then fevers," Johnson said, almost to himself. "Nay, I cannot afford that either. Next week I am to be sworn in as a physician in Oxford."
"These men were from Reading. Are you two also from Reading? You can speak truthfully for I am a clubman not a rebel. Would you know how common this illness is there."
"We are from the royalist garrison at Basing House," Johnson replied, "sent here to buy medicines. But yes we have heard that there is great sickness in the royalist garrison in Reading. The word is that it is camp fever likely brought on by some ale makers who were pinching pennies by not properly boiling their ingredients or by not adding a bitter herb to keep it from spoiling."
"If you are making for Oxford," Daniel suggested, "then perhaps you should stop in at Reading and warn them."
"Reading is under siege," Rosewell sniffed. "There will be no way for us to get in until the garrison surrenders or the siege is lifted. Are you on your way south? These men had been given their leave from the Reading garrison, and were on their way home to their estate in the Arun valley near Arundel."
"South yes, but by a different road. If their fever has broken, then hire a cart to take them home. The innkeep will help you find a carter, for he will be glad to be rid of them. Just be sure to..."
"Yes, I remember," Johnson interrupted. "Clean them up, burn their clothes and bedding, give them new ones, and feed them salty soup."
"I remember something else from Holland," Daniel added. "They shaved all the hair from the sick men and burned it. All the hair."
"That smacks of witchcraft," Rosewell said, but Johnson laid a hand on his arm to quiet him.
"You are sure that it was the Dutch physicians who order the shaving?" Johnson confirmed and then thoughtfully said, "Could it be that they blamed this illness on the vermin that live in our hair?" He almost laughed aloud for all three men immediately began scratching. "Fleas, ticks, lice, bedbugs. I must give this more thought. They are all biting vermin that feed on our blood. William, pull back the covers again so I can inspect the rash."
Meanwhile Daniel was stepping further and further away from the sick men, for he was suddenly feeling very itchy and becoming fearful of picking up some vermin in this stable. One of the many good reasons why his clan had a communal bathhouse and sweat lodge was to fight the spread of such vermin. Which was why one of the first things they did with guests was to encourage them to enjoy the use of the bathhouse. The cottagers of the Fens were mostly a filthy lot because they worked in the mud and the damp, and put up with the smells and with the vermin that lived on them. Not so in his clan. After a day of muddy work there was always warm washing water and dry heat awaiting them."
"Yes, they could be," Johnson was saying as he pointed something out to Rosewell. "Don't look at them as a rash but as the old bites of their vermin. They could easily be a month or two's worth of bites, now all suddenly gone red at the same time. I must write all of this down before I forget it."
That was the last that Daniel heard from the two learned apothecaries, for he was hurrying through the stable door to find the stable lad and Femke. As he walked he felt itchy-scratchy all over, as if his skin were crawling with vermin. He was sure that it was his imagination, but the faster he was out of this place the better he would feel. There would be another inn, there must be another inn on this busy road. The thought of a warm bed on such a wet day appealed, but the thought of who had rented the bed before him did not. Not an inn, then. Perhaps a farm house. No, farmers were crawling with vermin. Where then? Where could he sleep the night without collecting the vermin of other folk?
That night he slept well at the millhouse down beside the river. The millers name on the sign by the gate was a good Dutch name and the miller's wife wore absolutely white starched lace around her collar and had been scrubbing the door step when he stopped by to ask if he could stay the night.
"The Angel Hotel is just up on the high street," she told him, as if questioning why he would ask her for lodgings.
"It is far too noisy with all of the comings and goings of the coaches," Daniel told her. "I need quiet if I am to sleep well."
The wife looked at him as if he were the village fool, expecting quiet in the house beside the mill wheel, but she took his coin and showed him to a pleasant enough room. At least it was clean. "It was my son's," she told him, "but he was pressed into the service of the king. We think he is at Reading." She went silent in prayer.
That night Daniel did sleep well despite the creak of the great wheel. The linens were so clean that they were crisp. Before first light, however, he was tossing and turning and wakecious, and it wasn't because he needed to pee. It was Johnson's fault. The man was a good Samaritan and would likely send the sick men on their way to Arundel, but he would not be stopping at Reading on the way to Oxford. The Reading garrison would therefore not be told the source of the illness that was striking down their men, including perhaps the good and only son of the miller's wife..
Worse, and this was what was really keeping him from finishing his sleep, parliament's army was now surrounding Reading. General Assex may have no idea that there was a creeping plague within those defenses. Not just common camp fever that his hospitaller officers would well know how to contain, but something more insidious, and perhaps beyond their knowledge.
After an hour of tossing his conscience, a simple decision put him back to sleep again, . A decision and a pee. Tomorrow he would take the long detour to Essex's siege camp at Reading and warn the general of the illness and of how it spreads. His business with Robert Rich could wait a few more days. The confirmation of his vice-governorship could wait. Men's lives were at stake, perhaps a lot of lives.
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15
Chapter 22 - The Plague in Reading in April 1643
Reading was an old town with a castle, a ruined abbey, and some tall church towers. It had been built straddling the River Kennet just where it joined with the River Thames. While spying it out, Daniel had to admit that whoever had thrown up the latest defenses had more than a lot of common sense. The confluence of the two rivers created many low and damp meadows, so over the centuries many drainage ditches had been dug to try to keep them dry. Where ever possible these meadows had been allowed to flood again to create a defense without the need to dig new earthwork dykes and ditches.
The weaknesses in the ancient walls had been filled in either with dressed stones stolen from the abbey ruins, or with log pales. Where there were no walls, dykes and ditches had been dug and planted with sharpened stakes. The current defenses formed a rough square with corners at the old castle on the southern hill, the Grey Friars church with its tower, the abbey with its tower, and a bastion that had been built to protect the old London gate. The River Kennet ran through the town at a diagonal between the castle corner and the abbey corner.
The only weakness that Daniel could see in the defenses was that they had not included a defense of the draw bridge that crossed the River Thames to the village of Caversham on the north bank. The bridge was important because it carried the road that led to Oxford. Since that road, and therefore that bridge was the town's obvious supply line, the defenders should have thought of some way of keeping the bridge safe.
All of this Daniel noticed while riding about looking for General Essex. He also noticed that the town had sustained heavy damage from a week of Essex's cannon balls, and that not a tower in the town, whether of castle or of church, was undamaged. He eventually found Essex's siege headquarters in a draughty old moated manor house in the village of Southcote. There he was told to sit and wait until he was sent for, and there he had sat for hours.
It was maddening. He had ridden all of this way, out of his way, to warn General Essex of a very real risk to his army, and now he had spent three hours sitting on a bench awaiting an audience with 'Fat Robin', as his men affectionately called him. Or was that 'Old Robin'? After all of that, he was now being told by a snot nosed lad in a fancy uniform that he could not see the general personally, but that if he wrote a note that he would pass it to the general's scribe.
The lad was obviously only a staff officer because he had been born into the right family, not because he knew anything about running an army. Daniel began to fume. How dare snot-nose tell this to him, a veteran of wars and battles, a master of ships, a confidant of John Pym, the leader Reform Party, and of Robert Rich, the Lord Admiral.
"Why can't the general see me?" Daniel asked in a calm voice that hid his desire to break that snot-nose. Four times now he had told the lad why he was here, and why it was so urgent.
"He has gone to meet with Colonel Richard Fielding of the royalist garrison to finalize the truce," snot-nose told him through an up turned nose without moving his lips. "That is perhaps a bit more important than meeting with you, wouldn't you say?"
It took a lot of restraint not to punch that nose. Perhaps if the lad couldn't speak through his nose then he wouldn't be able to speak at all. Instead Daniel asked, "I thought that Colonel General Arthur Aston was in command of the royalist garrison."
"Apparently not," snot-nose droned insipidly. "Sir Arthur was hit in the head by flying brick during one of our cannonades so Colonel Fielding has been commanding the defense. It seems that Fielding is not enamoured to Sir Arthur's promise to starve and die rather than surrender."
Everything to do with General Essex was maddening, and not just to Daniel, but to all of the field commanders like Waller and Hampden who were in continuous skirmishes with the royalist flying armies while they waited impatiently for the general and the main army to attack the king's sanctuary at Oxford. Reading should have fallen in three days given the size of Essex's army and the train of artillery that was pounding the defenses walls and ditches. Or so said the junior officers he had listened to in the mess where he had snatched some bread and cheese for this long wait.
They had told him that by the second day the army had completely surrounded the town including the taking of the Caversham Bridge, which had cut the defenders off from being relieved by road from Oxford. Unfortunately, General Essex and his staff officers had no understanding of anything beyond infantry and horse, so they had not blocked the river. By the forth day, the defenders were relieved by barges carrying six hundred musketeers and all sorts of supplies up the Thames from the village of Sonning, and directly into the fortified town via the River Kennet.
Essex's blunderings would have been funny if they didn't always cost so many lives. It always seemed to Daniel that Essex was only pretending to be at war with the king, for his actions always seemed to cripple the efforts of others. Not openly mind you, for then he would be replaced by someone competent like Waller or Hampden and the king would be defeated within a week. For instance, apparently the royalist Colonel Fielding had wanted to surrender as soon as General Anston had been felled by a flying brick, but Essex had refused to accept his offer.
"Where are they meeting?" he asked of snot-nose. "What I have to say concerns them both. It would be more efficient if I need explain it only once."
"Nay, nay, this I will not tell you," snot-nose droned. "To bring new information to the negotiation table at the very moment they are signing a truce, why, that would be madness. The general would have our heads."
"Well in the meanwhile time, is there anyone else I can speak to? The army hospitaller, the general's physician, anyone with a background in medicine who has the ear of the general?"
"Well why did you not ask that before?" snot-nose replied with a haughty smirk. "Come with me."
* * * * *
"So you are not the hospitaller or the physician?" Daniel asked the young captain that snot-nose had led him to and left him with. His name was Nicholas Culpeper and he wore the insignia of an infantry captain with the London trained bands.
"I have studied medicine all of my life, and have even translated medical texts. If need be I will set up a field surgery to save lives, but no, I hold no official medical rank with this army," Culpeper admitted. He and his company of sixty volunteers were on guard duty watching the Caversham Bridge on the road that led to Oxford. "What is this all about?"
And Daniel began to tell him the all of it. It was a relief to tell anyone, just to stop it from going around and around in his own mind. Yesterday at the mill he should have written it all down. Today while waiting on the bench he should have written it all down. There were critical things that he did not want to forget, and that was why they kept going around and around in his mind. Perhaps now if he told them they would stop going around and around, hopefully. "Since you are a man of letters, than may I ask you to write down what I tell you. It is important."
Culpeper reached into his side bag and pulled out pen, ink, and a note book. "Tell me all of it," he said encouragingly.
Daniel spoke and he wrote for nearly a half an hour. Culpeper was writing two versions at the same time. One was the full story as Daniel was relating it, while the other was a short list of the key points. At the end, when Daniel had nothing more to say, Culpeper went back through his notes and asked questions to make sense of it all.
Eventually Daniel asked him, "So what do you think?"
"I think," Culpeper began, "that the truce they are agreeing on today must include a discussion of this illness in Reading. We need to know how many are ill, and are these truly the symptoms, and what they have done about it. Of course, since the noticeable symptoms of feverish stomach problems may not appear for weeks, then all of this may be hard to put numbers to. Was this truly confirmed by Thomas Johnson?"
"You know Johnson?"
"I have read his
books on plants and herbs. Hasn't everyone?" Culpeper looked at the tall man bristling with weapons and under his breath added, "No, perhaps not everyone."
"Johnson confirmed the symptoms and accepted my explanation, as did the other royalist officer, William Rosewell."
"Ah yes, Rosewell, the master's disciple. You do realize that whomever gets this description of symptoms and diagnosis into print first will be assured acceptance into the company of physicians."
"You said before that you had translated medical texts," Daniel said. "Have you ever read about anything similar."
"Many things. That is the problem with your diagnosis, as I am sure Thomas Johnson told you." Culpeper stopped to think. He checked his notes. "You were wrong. Of course you were wrong. In translation. You said that the Dutch physicians called it 'spotted fever like typhoid'. No you have that backwards. Typhoid translates to 'like typhos'". He corrected his notes. "Like typhos. So this must be the infamous typhos that the ancient Greeks wrote about. Typhos, the Greek word for hazy, which must describe the weakness of mind and body."
"The Greeks? So it is a known plague?"
Culpeper was getting very agitated, very uncalm. "Not a plague so much as a normal disease that can spread rapidly by the crowding together of grimy men in damp conditions." He turned and looked out from under the canopy that his men had rigged to keep them sort of dry in the endless drizzle. "Like this camp."
"And did the Greeks know how it was spread?"
"Fleas and lice. What you called skin vermin. We have to tell all of this to the general and soon. If the royalists surrender under good terms, they will take this typhos to Oxford with them. If our army enters Reading, then they too will contract it. Reading must be cordoned off and cleansed." He stopped talking and then listened to a warning call and immediately walked out from under the awning and towards the bridge, with Daniel on his heels. His orders were to stop all traffic across the bridge except for locals that lived on the other side, and Essex's messengers who were constantly riding with dispatches to John Hamden's forces to the north east. The warning call had been that there were riders approaching from the Oxford side of the bridge.