The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  “How very sweet,” the king said. “But unnecessary—you are my child, after all, a princess of royal lineage. Your sister and brothers only make such gestures when there is someone present to see it. I see no reason why you should be required to behave any better than they do.”

  She did not acknowledge the sentiment, but said simply, “You wished to speak with me, Your Majesty.”

  “Yes, indeed. Please,” he said, gesturing to a finely carved chair, “sit.”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “Very well, then. I command you to sit.”

  Kate did so. She folded her hands together in her lap and stared at them.

  The king held a plate of dried apricots sprinkled with sugar in front of her. “Will you have one?”

  “No, thank you. I have no stomach for food at the moment.”

  The king ate a few before putting the plate down again, keeping his eyes on Kate all the while. He brushed the sugar off his hands and said, “Have you chosen a suitable costume for the masque?”

  She lied. “I was not aware that I was expected to attend. I received no invitation.”

  “Well, of course this is an oversight,” he said. “Your sister is so bound up in preparations for her wedding that it must have slipped her mind. It is in her honor, of course, and we intend to announce her engagement formally. I have decided, though it is against my better judgment, to honor her request for a dance at the Maypole. You being one of our family, and a young woman of appropriate age, why, she would naturally assume that you would know yourself to be included.”

  On hearing this, Kate looked up. “I am not a member of your family. And despite the taint you imbued to my blood, I am no royal princess.”

  Remarkably, through all her insults, the king kept control of his temper. “I beg to differ,” he said. “We have received this just yesterday from Avignon.” He pulled a scroll out of one sleeve and offered it to Kate.

  She eyed the scroll but did not take it from his hand.

  “I would advise you to read it,” he said.

  She finally accepted it and struggled to control the shaking in her hands as she unrolled it to its full length. Her eyes widened as they moved down the page. When she was finished reading what the pope had written, she let the scroll roll back on itself again, then dropped it to the floor.

  The king smiled. “That bit of rebellion will not mitigate its contents. You are now my legitimate daughter, by virtue of this papal bull. After your sister’s engagement is acclaimed, we will also announce yours, to Count Benoit, a cousin of the Baron de Coucy, whom I believe you already know.”

  Rage boiled up within her; she kept it at bay by concentrating on thoughts of her son.

  The king did not seem to notice. “His lands are in Bretagne, and his allegiance will be most helpful to me. The famille de Rais is too powerful in that realm; they own far too much land for my liking, but they refuse to ally themselves to me.”

  He smiled, though it was not a pleasant gesture. “So. I will make an ally of their rival. You will play your part in that alliance, as befits your lineage.” He stepped closer and spoke directly into her ear. “You will smile at Count Benoit and act the proper lady. You will accept him as a princess of England should accept the husband her father chooses for her. At the masque, you will receive the congratulations and gifts of well-wishers, and you will stand next to your betrothed, smiling as the happy fiancée. When you and the other maidens are finished with your May dance, you will dance with him. I have gone to considerable lengths, not only with the Holy Father, but with my queen as well, to arrange all of this, and you will comport yourself accordingly.”

  “You might have asked the bride before going to all this trouble.”

  “It matters not what the bride thinks. This is a diplomatic match. And she,” he said, touching the side of her cheek, “is no diplomat. Her thoughts on the matter are inconsequential.”

  He waited for a moment to let that thought settle into her. “In time, if you are a good and proper wife, your new husband may accept your child, and he can come to live with you. We should very much like to see this happen, as he, too, is of royal blood, and his future—”

  As the king spoke, Kate did all she could to keep herself from saying, You will never set eyes on him. When she could stand no more, she blurted, “And what if the bride refuses the groom?”

  The king did not appreciate this interruption and let her know with a scowl. “Then she will find herself childless.” He stared intently into her eyes. “Is my meaning clear?”

  “Very much so,” Kate said. She rose up without asking permission, giving no indication that she knew he was still blind to Guillaume’s whereabouts.

  The king remained seated, but his eyes were upon her. “Good,” he said. “But your leaving is too hasty! Now that we have reached this understanding, it is only proper for you to meet your groom.”

  As the king rang the summoning bell, Kate stood in place, staring downward in speechless horror. She heard the chamber door open but could not look, heard the footsteps across the room but could not turn her head to the sound. She heard the king say, Arise, to his visitor, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

  “Count Benoit,” King Edward said, “allow me to present my daughter, Katherine Plantagenet.”

  Alejandro stayed in a modest inn, waiting for a vessel that might accept him as a passenger. For several days, no ships appeared except one vessel filled with supplies for the English army, and he wondered anxiously if the war between the French and the English had escalated to the point where no passages were being made, save those of the military. If so, he knew, there would be no passage at all, and his mission would be doomed. Finally, in desperation, he asked the innkeeper why the port was so quiet.

  Why, ’tis on account of Les Pax. Have you been so long at travel that you do not know that tomorrow is Good Friday?

  Ah, yes, I had forgotten!

  He knew he would have to observe the holiest of Christian days along with everyone else, lest he reveal himself to be a Jew. The next morning, on rising, he made no request for food but instead fasted as everyone else did. And when the innkeeper left with his family just before noon to join the procession through the streets of Calais toward their church, he followed in silence, trying hard to lose himself within the crowd. All around him he heard tearful prayers as the column of Christians mourned their way through the narrow streets.

  The crowd of worshippers wound its way into a small square; hundreds of people were already gathered there. They seemed to have a collective anger over something in their center, though he could not see what it was. He pushed through the mass of people, politely so as not to attract too much notice, until he came to the center.

  There, in a small clearing, he saw something that made his growling stomach want to give up what little it held. Three men were nailed to crosses; they wore white cloths around their loins and crowns of thorn around their heads. Blood dripped from their hands, feet, and foreheads.

  He had seen these crosses in this marketplace during his meanderings through Calais as he awaited passage. But he had taken them to be symbols of Christianity, rather than the tools of torture and execution.

  All around him, people were making the sign of the cross and then pressing their hands together; he did so himself, lest he stand out. After a short time, the temperament of the crowd began to change, making a gradual shift from lamentation to indignation. The moans and cries of misery were replaced by angry shouts, until finally one man stepped forward and shook his fist at the man on the center cross.

  “Killer of Christ! Die now, as you made our Savior die!”

  Alejandro looked quickly to the man on the center cross and then to the two who flanked him. They were all dark and bearded. He looked to the ground and saw long locks of hair that had been cut away lying in the dirt beneath their feet.

  Beneath those loincloths, he came to realize, all three would be circumcised.

  The sa
me man who had shouted out the accusation threw a rock, which hit the man in the center squarely in the chest; Alejandro saw the man’s head raise up in a grimace of pain and then flop back down again. Soon more rocks were hurled by others as well.

  With a heart breaking and bitter, he turned and slipped through the throng of people as quietly as possible. He could not, as he had done once before, put an arrow through the heart of the sufferer to end his misery. No soldier would come forward with a sword of mercy to pierce the side of any of the men on the crosses. These Jews would die a slow and painful death, alone and afraid.

  The expression on Kate’s face was intended to leave no doubt in Benoit’s mind that she would never willingly submit herself to him.

  He bowed low to her, showing his greasy scalp under thinning black hair. She closed her eyes until she sensed that he was fully erect again.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said. He looked her up and down, quite lewdly. “I am exceedingly pleased by your loveliness.”

  She thought, Not half as much as I am disgusted by your beastliness.

  She curtsied so slightly that it was almost imperceptible, but said nothing, and would not look him in the eye.

  The king let the insult go without reprimand. “You shall make your first appearance together as a happy couple at the masque.” He turned to Kate. “Tell me again, for I have forgotten what you said earlier—what sort of costume will you wear? It ought to be something fetching, to show your beauty. No doubt your fiancé will appreciate seeing you in glamorous attire, as will his admirers.”

  Finally Kate turned to face Benoit, though she was speaking more to the king. “One cannot imagine that he has any.” She rose up from her chair. “Will that be all, Your Majesty? I am feeling faint with all this excitement and would retire to my chamber.”

  “Yes,” he told her. “I shall not keep you any longer.”

  “Indeed not.”

  She turned and walked out, quite calmly, leaving her fiancé bewildered and the king with an odd sense of discomfort.

  The holy days came to an end, and life in Calais began to return to normal. Finally, Alejandro found a captain willing to take him across—for an exorbitant price. On the morning of departure, there were many people waiting to board, as vessels had not departed in the time of the holiday. He stood on the pier and looked out at the gray sea. The chill of the ocean crept into his bones and made him shiver, or perhaps it was the natural fear that came from knowing what lay on the other side of these harsh waters. Twice before he had crossed; neither time was it enjoyable. It would be no more pleasant this time, from the look of the sky.

  The vessel was of a good size, and he realized, as a small crowd gathered on the dock, that he would not be alone in his passage. He watched as a flock of groomsmen led horses up a wide plank that reached from the dock to the starboard side of the boat. His own horse was among the group; the animal pranced wildly as a stranger drew him by the reins up the wood boards. Bit by bit, the rest of the luggage was brought aboard, and, finally, the passengers. The best of those who waited went aboard first, followed thereafter by commoners who were still prosperous-looking, far more so than the ragged crowd in which he himself waited.

  A figure on the plank caught his eye. He leaned forward and peered closely at the squat woman in a fancy red hat who boarded among the commoners with means.

  He shook his head to clear it, not believing what his eyes saw: It was Emily Cooper.

  Impossible! But she turned as he was watching her, and the face came into full view. It was the same woman he had known in Avignon; there was no mistaking it. He quickly ducked behind a pylon.

  But something about her was different; she had always had a pink and rosy complexion, even in the darkest hours of her husband’s decline. Now she was pale and shivering, with her shawl wrapped tightly around her. The fashionable red-plumed hat she sported did nothing to improve her ashen look. She struggled to carry a small satchel and would not give it up to the deckhand; draped over it, folded in a small square, was the same blanket that Alejandro had seen on her dying husband. A sense of terrible foreboding overtook him when he saw it.

  She had somehow acquired the means to return to England. There had been no money in that family, even before the man took ill. She had little to sell of value—

  A terrible realization came over him as he saw her nod politely to an English soldier, who smiled back as if they knew each other.

  She had sold him out.

  Alejandro would have turned around to wait for the next ship, had his horse not already been brought up the plank. When it was his turn to board, he pulled his hat down over his face as much as he could. He stepped off the plank and onto the deck while the boat strained up and down against its moorings. He quickly handed his billet of passage to the steward, then slipped into a throng of passengers. The cooper’s wife stood not thirty paces from him, looking out to sea. He pulled his cowl up around his neck and watched her as the ropes were untied and the ship put to water.

  All that day he kept his eyes on her; she stayed in one place, with her back leaned against the side of a wood stairway that led up to a platform at the stern of the craft. As the hours progressed, she grew ever more pale, and toward sunset she lowered herself to a sitting position. Though the sailors who crewed the ship went up and down that steep staircase all day, no one paid her much attention, and Alejandro realized that those whose trade was to ride the seas would not find it even slightly odd for a passenger to seem sick.

  But they didn’t know what he knew, that she’d already been unwell when she set foot on the ship, long before the wicked, lurching waves of la Manche had taken hold of it. The waters were still glassy when he first noticed her malaise.

  Would she recognize him, without his beard, wearing European attire instead of the robes of his people? Perhaps. But if what he suspected of her current condition proved to be true, she would not be thinking clearly.

  In his mind, he heard the voice of an old man telling the tale of a plague ship at the start of the Great Mortality, a thousand lifetimes ago on his journey from Spain to Avignon:

  It stood a month in the harbor before anyone dared set foot upon it.

  He would have to risk her recognition. Pestis secunda had not the savagery of the Great Mortality, but it held its own, and if the ship arrived in London with a plagued passenger, they would surely be sent back to the mouth of the Thames. There they would be forced to wait at some mooring until everyone on board had died or all danger of spreading the disease was past—weeks, at the very least.

  He did not have weeks to wait.

  The physician moved slowly along the rail, holding it tightly against the strong wind, and made his way from his position at the fore-end of the ship to one farther astern, which afforded him a closer view of Emily Cooper. He was perhaps only fifteen feet away from her when she glanced up with her glazed eyes and stared directly at him.

  He froze where he was and waited, doing nothing at all. She held his gaze for a few moments, and then her head dropped so her chin rested on her chest. He moved a bit closer; she did not react. He moved closer still, now only about five feet from where she sat.

  For a full hour, as the sun slipped below the horizon, he kept a silent and motionless vigil over Emily Cooper. Her condition deteriorated rapidly; whatever aberration had spared her husband for so long was not at work in her. She began to cough, and her shivering became plainly visible. Someone would notice that she was more than seasick, soon enough; he placed himself directly in front of her and glanced around quickly to see if anyone was looking in their direction.

  The wind picked up, and the boat began to toss even more violently than before. The other passengers gathered at the front of the boat. After a few moments of confusion and fright, they seemed to form a kind of circle. Alejandro stood up on his toes and saw in their midst a priest in a brown robe, whose hands were outstretched as if in blessing.

  While the others were distracted, Alejandro be
nt over and lifted Emily Cooper’s chin with one hand. She seemed unaware that he was doing it. On her neck he saw a cluster of dark buboes.

  The wind grew stronger still. The people in the circle of blessing clutched on to each other, forming a tight ring against the wind. They huddled closer as the priest railed against the sudden storm.

  With the gale raging and the salt water spraying up onto him, Alejandro bent down and picked up Emily Cooper. For one second she opened her eyes, and by her expression he thought she knew him. He looked away from her and out to the sea. In two quick steps he was at the rail.

  “Forgive me,” he said to her. He glanced back to the circle of passengers; no one seemed to be looking. Then he closed his eyes again and dropped her into the sea. The splash could hardly be heard in the whistling wind, and she made no cries of protest. Clinging to the rail, he looked down and watched as Emily Cooper sank slowly out of sight. All that remained of her—the red hat—floated on the surface for a few seconds, until it, too, was sucked into the deep by a sudden swell.

  He moved forward, holding on to the rail, and finally reached the circle of passengers. He grabbed the wrists of two on the outer edge and separated them. He was pulled into their midst, almost welcomed. He listened as the priest in the center continued to shout above the howling wind.

  The Latin words flowed over him—kyrie eleison—a thousand times, or so it seemed. He prayed for mercy, hoping that any God would hear him, for he was as much in need of forgiveness then as in any moment of his life.

  In time, the heavily laden craft proved worthy of its burden, though the winds continued to be unfavorable. It was morning of the following day before they rounded Ramsgate and entered the Thames. Alejandro stood at the rail, still stiff from a sleepless night of self-accusation spent on the hard deck. He watched the scenery through tired eyes as the boat drifted down the Thames, driven in large part by the incoming tide.