The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  The elders of Eyam congregated as usual in the public house across from the church in the center of town. Each one had a flagon of ale in front of him, in preparation for conducting the town’s business. All politicking in Eyam was conditioned by a good dose of the drink, which made the efforts ever so much more pleasant and the outcomes of their deliberations far more sensible, at least in the eyes of the direct participants. There were seven, all of whom took the task of caring for Eyam far more seriously than one would expect from observing their methods of government. It was around the very table at which they now sat that the seven had decided to create a ruse of plague with a black flag, to keep out shipments of goods that might bring plague into it.

  The physician who was sent there, they were told by a man who had once served as a guard at Windsor, would not allow anyone or anything in or out, without first a quarantine. And we survived the winter, without a death save one, of a man who had ventured outside.

  They were on their third round of ale pots when Mistress Covington came rushing into the public house, with a look of terror upon her face.

  Thomas Blackwell was finishing his pint in the tavern and listening to the deliberations among the council of elders when the tailor’s wife rushed in.

  “God’s mercy,” he whispered to himself after hearing the tale of her husband’s sudden illness. He ordered another pint and drank it down fast.

  One of the elders followed her. When he came back a few minutes later, his face was white with terror.

  “He brought in bolts from London.”

  The remaining elders were on their feet within seconds. Blackwell watched the lot of them run out the door. Where they planned to go, he could not imagine. He only knew that he must go home, for he would drive his wife and children like cattle to the ends of the earth, if necessary, to keep them from the plague.

  Alejandro and Kate were sitting at the long table in the main house, sorting the herbs they had gathered. Some they would leave for the mistress of the house; the rest they would take with them. They were otherwise prepared to depart at first light. When Blackwell arrived all lathered after his sprint from the village, Alejandro half-stood, anticipating another difficult encounter.

  But no challenge materialized. Instead, Blackwell blurted, “Covington the tailor—he is ill. The elders say he is plagued.”

  Alejandro stood fully and asked, “Where does he live?”

  “Behind the church, off the alleyway—he brought in woven goods from London! His wife told the elders that he has had three shipments over the last month, all delivered secretly. God curse the man!” He sat down hard on a bench and put his face into his hands. After a long and troubled sigh, he said, “He may have brought death into our midst.”

  Alejandro remembered the bowlegged man he had seen with his heavy burden, who scratched at his back as he hurried down the alleyway. He could only imagine what was in Blackwell’s heart. He put a hand on the man’s arm. “Please, you must take me there,” he said.

  He followed Blackwell back to the public house. All seven elders of Eyam were deep in conference, their heads close together. Blackwell removed his hat and cleared his throat to interrupt, and the elders turned toward him in unison.

  An aged man with a full white beard spoke first. “Not now, Thomas, we are engaged in a serious—”

  “I know what you’re discussing, Uncle,” Blackwell said. “I saw Mistress Covington when she came in, all a-froth.”

  “Then you’ll know we haven’t time for trivial matters.”

  “It’s not a trivial matter I bring to you.” He pointed back over his shoulder. “I’ve a houseguest, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  The white-haired uncle looked Alejandro over and said, “Aye, it was noticed. And not appreciated. There is discouragement against it, as you know.”

  “I’m on the outskirts,” Blackwell said, as if that might justify his disobedience. “And I’ve come here to tell you, this guest may be of some help to us.”

  All eyes turned to Alejandro, who stepped forward. “I am a physician,” he said.

  There was an immediate change in the expressions of all the elders. A space was made between two of the men at the table. “Well, then. That is another matter entirely. Sit down, sir,” Blackwell’s uncle said. Blackwell himself was left standing as Alejandro assumed a seat.

  “We would know if it is plague that ails Covington,” the uncle said. “We cannot be certain ourselves.”

  “I must see the man in order to make that determination.”

  They conferred among themselves for a moment, until Blackwell’s uncle said, “You’re not afraid to do so?”

  “I am as afraid as any man ought to be of plague, but I will take what precautions I can.”

  No one seemed interested in knowing what those precautions might be.

  The elder looked up at Blackwell. “Nephew, will you lead him there?”

  “Aye, Uncle, if that is your wish.”

  “You’re a good lad.” He turned to Alejandro. “You’ll bring us your report?”

  “Immediately.”

  Blackwell—visibly disturbed—put his hat back on his head and moved in the direction of the door. Alejandro followed and soon found himself following his host down the same alleyway that he’d seen Covington negotiate a few hours before. Blackwell stopped when there were still many paces left to reach the door.

  “There it is,” he said, pointing.

  Alejandro knew that Blackwell would not go any farther. “I can do my work without your presence. It would be wise for you to wait here.” He left his distraught companion where he stood and walked to the door of the Covington household. He rapped on the wood planks of the door and heard muffled voices within. The door was soon opened by a frightened-looking woman; behind her, clinging to her skirts, was a young girl. Both wore hollow, desperate expressions.

  “Be gone with you, stranger,” the woman whispered. “We’ve a sick man within.”

  “I am a physician, sent by the elders,” he said. He pointed to Blackwell.

  The woman looked out the door and saw Thomas Blackwell. “Oh, Blessed Virgin,” she said. She opened the door wide, and Alejandro strode through. Stretched out on a pallet before the hearth lay the tailor Covington.

  He stood over the man and looked down and saw immediately all that he needed to see. He said nothing to the man’s wife.

  “He scratched and scratched himself, like he had the scabies,” the woman offered. “Once before, when a spider got him, he swelled all up like that. But this time, he’s much worse. I try to keep the cobwebs down, Lord knows, but with all the other work—”

  “Madam, this was not the work of a spider,” Alejandro said. He turned and looked her square in the eye. “Your husband is gravely ill, which I am sure you know already. It is my considered opinion that he suffers from plague.”

  The woman gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes and began to blubber.

  “You yourself, as well as your daughter, are in danger of acquiring the malady. Nevertheless, to avoid contaminating others, you must remain here in the house. Do not leave, or you will expose others to the same dangers.”

  “But I must get bacon grease! I’ve none in the kitchen.”

  “It will not work,” Alejandro said.

  “It cured Mistress Harrison; she drank a full beaker, thinking in her delirium that it was water. She was sick one more week, and then she was cured!”

  “I assure you, madam, that bacon grease is no cure for plague. You must not drink it, or you will do grievous damage to your intestines.”

  “We’ll have no need of intestines if we die!”

  The little girl began to whimper.

  His heart went out to the child, but there was no way to avoid the truth of the situation. Soon, both of them would fall ill, and both would most certainly die.

  “We’ll leave that in God’s hands,” Alejandro said. “But please, do not waste your time on such quac
kery. It will come to no good, and may do much harm.”

  “But my husband,” the wife pleaded. “Is there nothing you can do for him?”

  “Nothing,” he said mournfully. “I know of nothing that will ease his distress. There are some means by which you can keep him comfortable until fate plays its hand. Wipe the sweat from his brow—the water will cool his fever—and avoid sharp noises, for they will pain his ears.”

  “How long…”

  “One day, perhaps two. But no more than three. By then you will know if he will live or die. He may drink ravenously, or he may disdain water altogether; it will be one or the other. What I can say with surety is that this man must not leave this house. Nor should you.”

  As Sir John Chandos watched de Coucy depart with the ill man and the rest of the party, leaving him alone with Benoit, he wondered what would happen to the poor fellow. It was fait accompli that Edward Plantagenet would rather perish in battle than face the humiliation arising from such a gross failure of hospitality as inviting the nobility of Europa to the wedding of his daughter, only to have them succumb to plague within the walls of his castle. It was not the deaths the monarch dreaded but rather the ignominy, for, truth be told, there were many in attendance that he would rather see dead.

  Sir John laid his head on the hard ground and covered himself with a thin blanket. On the other side of the fire, Benoit snored and snorted, then mumbled in his sleep. Chandos wondered as he drifted into sleep how the events that would soon unfold at Windsor would affect the fate of Britain. He came to the conclusion that he could not know and that his worry would change nothing. Despite the foulness of the man with whom he presently kept company, Chandos much preferred sleeping under the open sky to the lavish accoutrements of tents and pallets he was forced to endure when he traveled with the king. The discomfort of the hard ground on this night would be a penance for the things he was about to do, for the sins he would commit against his monarch, a man he still, albeit begrudgingly, loved like a brother.

  When Alejandro returned to the public house, the elders of Eyam did not leave him to stand but moved aside and bade him sit among them.

  “The tailor is indeed plague-struck.”

  By now there were dozens of people gathered around the meeting; moans of disbelief arose from them. Kate stood at the far side of the crowd, flanked by Mrs. Blackwell, who wore a look of absolute horror on her face.

  “When you leave here tonight, go directly to your homes and remain there. Thus will you prevent the spread.”

  One of the elders said, “Many have gone to their homes before and perished. We are powerless.”

  Above the frightened din, Alejandro said, “No, you are not.”

  The tavern went quiet. “You have more power over this than you can imagine.” He paused for a moment. “I’m told that you’ve heard the tale of a physician who kept plague out of Windsor by allowing no one to go in or out.”

  There were ayes all around, until another of the elders said, “Rumors have a way of gathering substance where there is none in reality. How are we to know if it is true?”

  “Quite simply,” Alejandro said.

  He did not, in that moment, fear discovery; there was work to be done in Eyam.

  “You can ask him. It was I.”

  Twenty-eight

  “There’s every reason to believe that meetings like this are going on all over the world, but we only know for certain what’s going on here. And we don’t really have a handle yet on how the Coalition might respond to the deltas organizing, as it seems they are. But if they’re sending out a new plague, there’s every reason to think that they’re targeting the deltas as well this time.”

  For a few moments, Lany was quiet. An argument raged within her head—tell him, or not?

  Tell.

  “I think we may have seen it.”

  Bruce pulled a chair directly in front of her and sat down. “Speak,” he said.

  Lany spent a few moments arranging words in her head so she would tell him enough but not too much. “We discovered a body along the way, a man. His body was decomposed, but not too badly—the skin was spongy, like it had been frozen and then thawed. Had a kind of freezer-burn quality to it. We opened his clothing and looked at as much of him as we could. The person I was traveling with—”

  “You weren’t alone?”

  “No.”

  “Where is the other person now?”

  “I don’t know. We separated just before you found me. If I were her, I’d be long gone. I hope she’s all right. But in any case, she said she thought it looked like plague but that there was no natural vector for it around here, especially over the winter.”

  “She’s right,” Bruce said.

  “So the guy we found had to have contracted this—whatever it is—in a manner that wasn’t completely natural.” She paused for a moment. “On the way here, we passed by a settlement in an old mill. There were fresh graves, three of them.”

  “Any idea how large the settlement is?”

  “Not really. We only saw a woman and a couple of kids. But it was a pretty big building; if the whole thing was occupied, it could have been hundreds of people.” She paused to consider what three new graves might mean. “If there are hundreds of people there, then I guess I would consider three simultaneous deaths to be high but normal. If there are less, though…”

  “Then three is a lot.”

  For a few minutes neither of them said a word. Then Lany spoke. “We detected a new strain of bacteria out in our area—in lots of places, some of them quite remote. We figured that it was getting out there naturally in the rodent population.”

  “If it’s the same one we’re tracking, I can tell you that rodents carry it but it has to get into them somehow. Birds are my guess; they’re low maintenance, high return. But I don’t have a handle yet on which species they might be using. It’s very slow to develop, whatever it is.”

  “Maybe the man we found was one of their field people,” Lany said. “We were wondering if he was an outcast from the settlement we saw, but with the graves there, you’d have to make the assumption that they’re taking care of their ill, or at least trying. Could there be a Coalition group around here? Maybe this is one of them.” She recalled the eerie Internet site about the community that died to the last soul. “If this was a Coalition guy and he contracted this thing they cooked up—no matter how—he’d be a problem. I’m guessing they’d try to eliminate him. There was a canoe near the body; why would someone be canoeing down a river in winter, while he was sick, except to escape?”

  “You could be right,” Bruce said. “Some of the groups in the Coalition have long histories of sacrificing their own members as a means of achieving the greater goal. It’s also possible that this guy was infected as an experiment, to see how it would unfold. Maybe he even knew about it, like the suicide bombers all did. And maybe he changed his mind.”

  “It could just have been a handling accident. Remember Reston?”

  “Who doesn’t?” he said. “They rewrote the book on procedures after those monkeys got sick.”

  After a pause, he said, “I knew a member of the Coalition, in London.”

  She eyed him with some suspicion. “I wondered how you had all this information about them. None of it was ever published.”

  “I didn’t know he was involved, but he told me, not too long before he died. Of something else, by the way, that he ironically picked up through a handling accident.” The small laugh he made after this revelation was weighted with bitterness.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, I’ve never told anyone before, even someone who I was—very close to.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “This guy was trying to recruit me. I told him no.”

  “Obviously.”

  “It was pretty confusing to me when it happened. He was someone I looked up to, at least once upon a time.”

  “I wish I could say bummer that he’s dead,” Lany said, “but it s
ounds like a case of poetic justice.”

  “Yes,” Bruce said, “but no. It’s murky.”

  He seemed lost in sorrow for a few moments, then regained himself. “Now you have to tell me how you know about the Coalition.”

  Oh, hell, she thought. A deal is a deal. “I was on the A-team of biocops.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “My goodness.”

  His interest was obvious, but the story was too long to tell with other, more urgent matters at hand. “That’s a story for later,” she said. “Right now it’s not germane. Let’s concentrate on the immediate, like this thing you think they might be cooking up.”

  He nodded. “It’s nasty. We have some concerns that the deltas may be at risk from this thing.”

  He saw her involuntary shudder.

  “There’s a double delta among you, then.”

  Fifty thoughts collided within her brain. Her cop’s instincts took over and sorted them out, according to their relevance. In the end, she went once again with her gut feeling that there was much here to be learned and that this fellow was a good man and ought to be trusted.

  “Two,” she said. “One of them is me.”

  “Then you have a lot riding on this.”

  “My life,” she said. “No more than anyone else.”

  “Okay, let me put it to you this way—the world has a lot riding on you, and all the other deltas. The Coalition is vulnerable right now. When things fell apart for everyone else, they fell apart for them too. It’s not really the same group anymore. Oh, the core philosophy is the same—wipe out anyone who doesn’t believe as we do—but the founders are all gone now. But don’t be fooled—there’s still some strength there, and despite what you found, it’s a safe bet that they’re much better at avoiding contamination themselves. They’ve picked up splinter groups along the way, other elements of the lunatic fringe that also have God on their side. They had to, to keep their numbers up. There are a lot of wackos with specific axes to grind, and they’re all just waiting their turn at the wheel. There’s going to be a big showdown one of these days. It looks like they’ve blended two killers—part plague, part DR SAM. But this new model doesn’t depend on whether or not there are receptor sites it can attach itself to—it bypasses them completely. The resulting illness develops more slowly because of that, but when it does it looks and acts like plague. That’s why the double deltas may not be immune or resistant—because this organism doesn’t use the receptor sites to hitch a ride like DR SAM did. It develops much more slowly because it has to do all its own work.”