The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  She rose up slowly and turned to look in Tom’s direction. Lany was hunched down next to him. When she saw Janie, she stood and came over to her.

  “I heard what you said to James.” She placed one hand on Janie’s arm. “What about Tom?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s got no feeling in the injured leg. The other one seems to have sensation. Was he able to move it at all when he first fell?”

  “A little,” Lany told her. “He was able to use the other leg to help us get him on the travois. He didn’t feel completely leaden.”

  The tone in Janie’s voice betrayed her uncertainty. “Then I don’t think he has a spinal injury.”

  “Should we be moving him?”

  “In a better world, probably not,” Janie answered. “But I can’t do anything for him out here in the woods. He needs to be warm and dry and clean.”

  “Do we need to go now?”

  Janie heard the anxiety in Lany’s voice. “We’ll go as soon as the light comes back. It won’t be long now. In the meantime, though, we should get some blood into our other patient. I’ll need to type him and see if there’s anyone here who can be a donor.”

  Lany stuck out her arm. “Type A positive,” she said.

  “You’re certain?”

  Lany nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Then let’s hope he is too—it’ll save us a lot of trouble.”

  Janie went to James again. “Believe it or not, I’m going to take some of your blood.”

  She unwrapped the bandage and smeared some of the oozing blood onto a paper.

  “A positive,” she said. “Great luck.”

  Lany stood, while James sat. Janie hooked a direct line from one to the other. As Lany’s blood was dripping into him, Janie looked up at her and said, “Got any diseases I should know about?”

  “Nice time to ask,” Lany said, “but no. I’m clean as a whistle. God alone knows how, with everything I’ve been exposed to.”

  The mountain was simply too steep for the horse to pull up the stretcher, so Evan, his mother, and Janie all worked together to carry it up the incline. When they reached the path, they hitched it to the horse again and Janie ran ahead. She found Kristina and Alex in the main room of the lodge, sitting on a sofa together. Kristina was cradling Alex in a blanket and staring blank-faced at the roaring fire. His face was red with scratches; one eye was slightly swollen.

  They sat up instantly when they saw Janie.

  “Dad?” Alex said. His face was a mix of fear and hope.

  “They’re bringing him along.”

  “Is he—is he…”

  “He’s not dead. But his leg is very badly hurt.”

  They huddled and held each other and wept. Finally, Janie whispered, “No matter what happens, we’ll be okay. We’ll find a way to make it all work.”

  As she tried to pull away, Alex clung tightly to her. She let him cling for a few more moments, then pulled his arms away from her neck. “I have to go get ready for Dad,” she said. Then she kissed her young son on the forehead. “You did an amazing thing last night. Your father will be very proud of you.”

  “He won’t yell at me?”

  He would if he could, Janie thought. “No, Alex, he won’t. What you did was very brave.”

  As she walked out of the room, Alex struggled out of the blanket and ran after her. He caught her hand, and she turned.

  “I want to help you make Dad get better.”

  “Alex, it’s going to be a lot of work, doing lots of hard things—”

  “You can teach me, Mom. I’ll study really hard, I promise.”

  His face was so hopeful. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that his father’s road to recovery would be very long, with or without his help.

  “Please.”

  “Okay, Alex, I’ll teach you. But maybe we should wait until your dad is feeling a little better.”

  “I want to learn now.”

  She looked down at her beautiful son, the boy she’d stolen from another time and place. She’d brought him forward as a means of satisfying some selfish craving in her own heart to know about the man he’d once been, and rarely, if ever, had she wondered if it was something Alejandro or those who loved him would have wanted, had he and they been given the choice.

  “Okay,” she said softly. “We should get started, then. Go wash your hands. It’s the first thing a doctor has to do.”

  The small boy nodded solemnly and ran off. His mother watched, wondering why, all of a sudden, he seemed inexplicably taller.

  Nineteen

  This April day, though touched with a slight chill, was balmy in comparison to the day—a thousand bitter winters ago—when Alejandro had first traversed the length of the Charing Cross road. He rode then to the same destination; by his side was Adele, who would, a short time after that, become the only lover he had ever had, until Philomène. On that windy November day, in a cold downpour, they rode with wild urgency to find the midwife known as Mother Sarah. Now, for an entirely different reason, he traveled to the same place. The road looked so much the same that Alejandro thought he must have gone back in time, but the place had a way of working its magic on the intellect, fooling it with mists and glamours. He had long since given up trying to understand the strange and seemingly impossible things that happened to Adele and him while they were there.

  Yet, familiar or not, he could not seem to find the road that led east to the meadow. He stopped his horse along a stretch of road that tweaked a moment of recognition, but it dissipated within his confused brain, leading nowhere. The road, the open clearing, two tall oaks that had grown into a leafy embrace—all seemed to have disappeared. The meadow might well be overgrown; he could not imagine that anyone would dare to disturb the bones of the plague dead who had been so hastily buried there in the dark days of 1349. To do so would surely invite the wrath of God! Somewhere, just beneath the surface of the soil, lay buried a shirt that he had worn in the throes of his own disease. That insignificant bit of cloth could not begin to enshroud the thousands of Londoners who had given up their souls in the Great Mortality.

  He glanced up through the trees to check the position of the sun. By its lay, he knew the direction he’d chosen was correct. He could not seem to make his memory work properly; could it be that the spell of the place had extended this far out and was already warping his thoughts?

  He turned his mount into the woods and urged him forward through the thickening brush. A pheasant ran in front of their path, startling the horse, who reared up and neighed. Alejandro calmed the animal with soothing words and urged him forward again. And then there was a doe who came almost within touching distance and stood there as still as a statue, staring at him from within a pair of deep-brown eyes.

  She is here, among these animals…. An owl hooted somewhere off in the distance; he turned his head toward the sound just in time to see the winged creature lift off a branch and disappear into the shadows of the forest. When he turned back to the doe again, she was gone.

  Logic yielded to fantasy in his weary mind. “Run,” he whispered to all the beasts of the woods. “Tell your mistress I am here.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a needling rain began to fall. The horse picked its way carefully through the underbrush and finally stepped into the clearing. The rain ceased, and as he traversed the high grass of the meadow, the sun’s rays began to shine.

  A stand of flowers now covered the spot where he had clawed at the earth with his bare hands to bury his clothing as the hounds barked in the distance. He stopped the horse and stared, transfixed, at the colorful cluster of blossoms, and wondered what Sir John Chandos—a man he had befriended—must have thought when his king commanded him to hunt the fugitives down. A Jew and a little girl—not his customary prey, certainly, for Chandos was a warrior of great skill who had survived many battles, including the bloodbath that had later occurred at Poitiers. Edward had sent him and his finest men out to find and
capture them, a simple enough task. And yet, he had failed; Alejandro knew in his heart that the failure must have been intentional. It would not have been unlike the man, who fairly dripped with honor, to let Alejandro and Kate escape, despite his loyalty to the king. There would have been no honor for such a good man in such a vile capture.

  Insects buzzed lazily through the air, landing at will. The horse fluttered his ears to rid himself of the interlopers. Time slowed, just as it had in 1349 when he and Adele crossed this meadow. Ahead were the two ancient oaks, old lovers entwined in a desperate embrace.

  Poor gentle beast, he thought, patting the horse’s neck, you have no notion of what faces you. Alejandro stared at the space between the trees, gathering courage, until finally he heeled the horse. The animal bolted forward through the arch and into the forest beyond.

  They plunged into air so warm that it felt like the waters of a bath. On the other side of the oaks there was a sweet, musky scent; rays of sunlight, confounding all reason, seemed to turn corners. Step by step, they proceeded along the root-snarled trail. Alejandro could barely breathe; he looked from side to side constantly, waiting for the shade of the warrior Eduardo Hernandez to rise up out of the earth. Would he be greeted again by Matthews, the young soldier who died at the hands of comrades who feared he had brought plague into Windsor, or even Carlos Alderon, the Cervere blacksmith whose fish-belly-white corpse Alejandro had exhumed, thus beginning his forced journey through the whole of Europa?

  Would Adele come, and speak to him in her sweet voice?

  “Time still runs here at an unfathomable pace,” he said quietly.

  Of course, the woman he’d found in the stone cottage on his first visit would be long dead; at that time, she was already white-haired and bent. By now, Alejandro was certain, her bones and a drift of dust would be all that remained of her on this earth. Her cottage might well be deserted and uninhabitable.

  Yet, in his memory, Mother Sarah was as alive as she might ever have been. Her riddles, which prompted him to think beyond what he assumed to be the limits of his own mind, all came back to him. It was she who had shown him the curative qualities of the sulfurous water that welled up from the depths of the earth to present itself as foul-smelling ooze. Had she stumbled upon its chemical nature through a fortunate accident, or had someone before her made a serendipitous association through repeated observation? He regretted that he had not thought to ask her when he had the chance.

  He recalled the words of the Talmud: When we face our Creator in our last hours, we must answer for all those pleasures we have not tasted. So, too, he assumed, would God hold him responsible for all the knowledge he had not managed to acquire.

  Why, he lamented silently as he rode, could I not have another lifetime, that I might know and understand all that escapes me in this one?

  Suddenly he was at the edge of an open space; in its center was the small cottage in which Mother Sarah had lived. He pulled back on the reins to bring the horse to a stop and sat silently astride the big animal, with all his senses tuned and taut. The sound of insects seemed almost thunderous, the rustle of leaves like a clarion. The shadow of a bird might well have been a bolt of lightning. When a rabbit ran out from under a thick stand of brush, Alejandro started. He was reminded, on seeing it, how hungry he was. But food would have to wait until he was sure his body and this place were indeed real.

  A voice came out of the thicket from his right.

  “Welcome back, Physician.”

  The horse turned a full circle around as Alejandro struggled to control him. When the animal was calm again, he turned him to the right and found himself facing what he thought must be another apparition.

  “It cannot be,” he said, almost under his breath. “Surely—”

  “Surely I am dead by now?”

  For a moment Alejandro could not speak. Finally he breathed, “Yes.”

  The old woman who stood before him laughed, and when she did, the birds began to sing, as if in chorus to her chant. A stronger breeze came up in further accompaniment. “Take ease,” she said. She pulled on her chin as if to demonstrate her own reality. “I am not a specter, if that is what you fear. But I am not the woman you imagine me to be; I am her daughter.”

  Alejandro stared, as if his eyes were lying to him. “But—you might be her twin! The likeness is uncanny.”

  “So I am told, but I eschew the glass, so I cannot say whether ’tis true.”

  Alejandro said, “It is said that witches make no reflection in the glass.”

  The woman laughed again, with the same lilt. “I am no witch, Physician—leastwise, no more witch than yourself, though it was rumored after your leaving hereabouts that you are the Devil himself. I am merely an old woman who cares not to examine the lines that have overtaken her face.”

  A moment of silence passed as the two regarded each other. Finally, the woman spoke. “She told me you would come again.”

  “She” could only mean Mother Sarah. “That seems a rather bold prediction. Your mother was a woman of great substance, but I daresay even she could not have known what was to happen in the future.”

  “You are here, are you not?”

  “Only because the twists of fate have compelled it.”

  “The reason matters not. You have come back to us, as she said you would.”

  She turned and lifted her skirts slightly, then waddled off toward the cottage. After a few steps, she turned back to him and motioned with her hand. “Well, come along. You did not travel here for pleasure, so let us be about your business.”

  He dismounted and tied up the horse, then walked along the stone path toward the cottage. With each step he felt lighter, as if, one by one, his burdens were being lifted from his shoulders.

  My Dear Companion,

  April 29—how slowly time passes since you left here. It is as if each second is a minute, each minute an hour, each hour a day. I miss your comforting voice more than I can say. Each day as I enter the surgery, my heart hopes to hear you greet me, but always I am disappointed.

  Father Guy’s health and stamina continue to improve, though he wears a look of melancholy often, I think from worrying about you. Rats and plague, he says, how bold the thought! This led us to a discussion of contagion today as part of our work; he is absolute in his belief that some invisible vapor lives in the air, some poisonous humor that floats unseen from one man to the next. It is a daring concept, brilliant in its simplicity, and I am hard-pressed to come up with a reason to doubt it. When I tell him so, however, he reminds me that one cannot absolutely disprove any theory and that we must not be concerned with reasons for doubt, but instead should concentrate our thoughts on finding sound reasons to believe it true. Those reasons, he insists, must be demonstrated, for only in that way will others embrace his theory. He deprecates himself because he cannot come up with the means to do so.

  Save your daughter, and hurry back, so you can save our poor teacher from himself!

  Chaucer walked by the entry to the kitchen with quiet steps, hoping not to be detected. He glanced in through the door, and in just that moment, a scullery maid looked up from the work on the board before her. He smiled at her and made a little wave, not knowing what else to do; the young girl blushed and looked away. He continued past the kitchen, reasonably sure that she would not make much of his presence as he skulked around in search of the fault Kate had described.

  Shaped like a pine tree, she had told him—wide at the base, narrow at the top.

  He continued following the passageway, looking for the narrow tributary that would branch off a few paces beyond the kitchen. He found it where she said it would be.

  His heart quickened with excitement as he turned into the narrower passage. He had to strain to see, for there was no torch, and he had not brought one, knowing that it would attract attention. He felt along the wall with his hands—the top of the passage will be near to the level of your eyes, she had said, on the left side.

  Hi
s hands came upon an indentation in the stones. “May it please God,” he whispered as his hands moved up, down, and around, “that there be no dragons lurking in these rocks.”

  But the passageway was obstructed. He found an indentation in the surface and pushed with some force. Sand and pebbles tumbled down, creating a pile around his feet, but when he reached forward again, his hands found only a solid wall. He stepped back and brushed the debris from his hands, his heart heavy with the discovery that Kate’s passageway had been filled in.

  His shoes and stockings were caked with dirt and sand. They will ask me how that came about. He hurried to his own quarters, to clean them in privacy.

  On his door was a note.

  “Quickly,” Nurse said when she saw Chaucer at the door. She pulled him in and then closed the door immediately. “Isabella is much about today, in a proper tizzy over her costume for the masque or some other such nonsense. Do your business as fast as you can and then be off, or there’ll be whatnot to pay.” She gestured with her hand toward Kate’s bedchamber.

  Chaucer nodded and went to the door. When she saw him enter, Kate rose up from her chair, blushing, one stocking on, the other in her hand.

  “Forgive me,” Chaucer said hurriedly. “I came as quickly as I could, because we must make another plan. I found the passageway easily, but it is filled!”

  “Oh, no…” she cried.

  “But that is not all—there are additional complications.” He held up the king’s summons. “I am called for transcription at sunset tomorrow. There are official papers to be signed regarding the engagement, and the terms have only just been negotiated. The papers must be ready before the masque begins.”

  “So even if I can find another way out, there is no one to bring the horse….”

  “I can bring it out in the morning,” Chaucer said, “for I am not required until late in the afternoon.”

  “No, it will likely be stolen or, worse, taken away for stabling.” She looked into his eyes and said, with great defiance, “I will go on foot.”