The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  She dismounted and used her knife to cut away a few remaining small branches, then got back up on Jellybean. With gentle words, she urged Jellybean down the slope. The horse moved slowly but with amazing balance. They reached the water again, and Janie brought her to a halt.

  She spoke gentle reassurances as if the horse could understand her; no one else was available to hear her dilemma.

  Or so she thought.

  “If we go into that water, we’re going to have to get home today so I can get warm again.”

  She patted the horse on the neck. “So what do you think?”

  The horse snorted.

  “I’ll take that for a yes.” She loosened the straps on the saddlebag and made something akin to a backpack that rode high on her shoulders. Then, balancing the pole across her lap like a high-wire artist, she heeled the mare in the sides and they headed into the water.

  To TCMEKASET from L. Don’t pull Sam.

  Evan stared at the e-mail. “It’s got to be from my mother,” he said. “But it doesn’t make any sense. What do all those letters mean?”

  Michael stood behind him, still in his pajamas. The chime had sounded in the early hours of the morning; it was still enough of an anomaly that everyone came awake. “Us,” he said. “Our first intials. But Don’t pull Sam…”

  As Michael was pondering the meaning of the strange message, Evan went through all the letters silently. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s got to be us. But there’s no visible reply address. She couldn’t have sent it from the PDA, or the address would show.”

  “Don’t pull Sam…” Michael said again. “Wait a minute—she doesn’t want us to take samples.”

  “But why?”

  After a pause, Michael said, “I don’t know.”

  They both went silent. Their concentration was broken by Alex’s arrival.

  “Does it say anything about my mom?” the boy asked.

  After a look of concern at Michael, Evan said, “Not really. But sometimes no news is good news. I’m sure she’s fine.”

  Jellybean heard the interlopers before Janie did. The horse began to prance nervously at the edge of the water; Janie thought she was just hesitant to enter the cold current.

  Janie cooed, trying to soothe the horse. “It’s okay, baby…”

  And then the sound of snapping twigs made her turn her head around. She saw two ragged men barreling down the embankment directly toward her. One had a rope in his hand.

  He wasn’t interested in her, he wanted Jellybean! She herself would be expendable, just another mouth to feed.

  “Heeyah!” she shouted. She slapped the reins down on the mare’s back, and Jellybean bolted forward into the frigid water. She glanced back at their pursuers when Jellybean was knee deep; in the roughness of their entry into the water, both men had been splashed. The shock of the cold water had stopped them momentarily. But it wasn’t long before they started after them again.

  “Come on, Jellybean, go!”

  The horse plowed into the river. The two men followed apace. She turned and shoved the pointed pole at them; when one grabbed on to it, she shoved backward with all her might, and the point went into his chest. Blood blossomed on his shirt, and he let go, sinking into the water. The other man took up his comrade’s cause and tried to grab the pole, but Janie pulled it out of his reach just in time. He slowed and fell back, and finally turned away to help his fallen companion.

  Janie turned and looked to the opposite shore. It was still a thousand miles away. When the water began to seep inside her boots, she began to understand just how cold she would be for the next several hours. By the time the water hit her knees, she had already lost all feeling below that point. It was an effort to heel the horse with the current pulling at her legs, but they had to keep moving.

  She lowered her upper body to lay against Jellybean’s neck, knowing she would need the warmth of the horse’s flesh as the water rose. The horse was still stepping but seemed with each step to float up just a bit. Finally, one step touched nothing; Janie could feel the slight dip of the horse’s body as the river bottom went out of reach. The water hit Janie’s belly, and she almost cried out with the shock of it. A wave of nausea ran through her, and she retched, but nothing came up, because there was nothing within that could be expelled.

  As soon as Jellybean’s hooves left the river bottom, she began to swim like a champ, but they began to drift downstream with the force of the spring current. Janie plunged the pole into the water on the downstream side of the horse, pushing forward and in opposition to the current at the same time. Still, they drifted, at a rate that was a lot faster than Janie had anticipated; they moved south nearly as fast as they were moving west.

  “Come on, baby,” Janie shouted above the sound of the current. She worked her legs against the mare’s side with as much force as she could manage and shoved the pole over and over again into the silt of the river bottom. They were aiming for a sandbar on the other side, but at their rate of drift, Janie saw that they might miss it. Beyond that, the river widened; the shore would be much farther away.

  She prayed, through blue and chattering lips. Thy will be done, but please, let me get home to see my husband and my son again. She clenched her teeth and shoved the pole into the muck with all of her heart and soul.

  Twenty-nine

  My beloved Alejandro,

  I pray that this morning finds you and your daughter both safe and free. It finds me a bit sick to my stomach; this, I know will pass, but not soon enough.

  De Chauliac has given Guillaume a wonderful knife! Yesterday he had some fine pieces of wood delivered, and he presented them to him for his whittling. The boy is just as pleased as he could possibly be to have these splendid things, and it is just in time to soothe his spirits, for we have had some unfortunate news. His playmate, the child of one of the cooks, took ill with the pox and has not been brought to the house since the first of his pustules appeared. I was terrified at first for Guillaume; each day I have examined him thoroughly, and by God’s grace, or so I thought, he showed no signs. On the fourth day of my examinations, he showed me the place on his arm where, according to him, “Grand-père scratched my arm to ward off the pox.” You will of course be required to explain this on your return, which I hope and pray will be soon.

  Our progress on the Cyrurgia continues. This morning, may God be praised that the work went quickly, we discussed and recorded Father Guy’s theories on the matter of foul breath. Were this not a serious tome, my dear, I should have laughed most heartily! Of course you will read this yourself on your return, but I cannot restrain myself from recording a line or two, to lighten my spirits; even Father Guy laughed when he read what he himself had written.

  In the curation of stinkage of the breath there are two rules, the common and the particular. The common is of the diet and of the purgation. Be it made after the kind of the humor from which the stink or filth cometh. It is showed that stinkage of the breath and the taking thereof in the likeness of smellings of fishes is an evil token in sharp fevers. And the substances of gruel and all broths and sops and garlic and onions make evil breath.

  Bring your sweet breath back to Paris that it might once again mingle with my own.

  By the middle of the next morning, the tailor’s wife began to feel poorly. She took to her bed at the height of the sun, with only her young daughter to attend her. When the terrified child opened the door to Alejandro and Kate the next day, she blurted out, “I did what you told us to do, but my mother and father are no better at all!”

  They followed her to the hearth, where there stood a bucket and a cloth. The path of water drips ran along the rough plank floor to where the parents themselves lay on their pallets of straw. Alejandro knelt down between the two and pulled their blankets down. There was no need to touch either one, for their buboes were well visible, and his eyes told him all he needed to know.

  He glanced up at Kate and saw in her expression a clear concurrence
with this opinion—there was little reason to be encouraged. “You have been tending to them well,” he said to the girl as he rose, keeping his doubts to himself. He made an effort to smile, though he was certain the gesture fell short of his intent. “You are a brave and good child.”

  Kate took him lightly by the arm and pulled him away from the hearth. “I know only too well what trials await this child,” she whispered.

  You must not let me spit out the medicine, he heard himself saying to her, a thousand years before. No matter how I protest, I must swallow it.

  He cursed whatever force of nature had changed Mother Sarah’s waters from healing sulfur to the bland, innocuous liquid it had become. He glanced back at the little girl, who now knelt between her two parents with the cloth in her hand. She dutifully wiped away the sweat on their brows. She was a spindly waif with long blond hair and large, round eyes of a fine light blue, so much like Kate in her childhood. His heart ached with the understanding that the child might well not live to become a grown woman, as his daughter had.

  As if she could read his thoughts, the girl looked up and asked, in a trembling voice, “Am I going to become sick too?”

  The truth, both knew, would frighten the girl. Kate touched her gently on the shoulder and said, “Only God knows if that will happen. You must look to Him for that answer. Continue to do what you have already done. This will help your mother and father greatly.”

  “It will help them to live?”

  After a short hesitation, Alejandro said, “I say again, that is for God to decide. Now we must go.”

  A look of utter panic came over the child’s face. “Please, can you not stay, even just for a little while?”

  “I am sorry, child, but others are sure to become ill and we must prepare. We will come again tomorrow.”

  Her brave little nod brought tears to his eyes.

  Outside in the alleyway, Kate clutched his arm and leaned against him. “Oh, Père,” she whispered, “I hated to leave her.”

  “As did I, daughter. But there is nothing to be done. And what I said was true. We must prepare.”

  None of the Blackwell children was outside the house when they returned.

  “I’m keeping them inside,” Blackwell said when the question was posed. “I’ll not lose these children, I swear it.”

  “You had best let them out again, then,” Alejandro said.

  Blackwell narrowed his eyes. “I do not understand. In the tavern, you said we must all keep to our homes.”

  “I know, and this is wise for those who live close to one another, as do those who live around the market. But here, where you have a good distance between yourself and the next cottage, it is wiser to let them outside.”

  “But the humors of plague—”

  “—are just as likely to live inside your house as out. Perhaps more so.”

  He was on the verge of telling the man about the sight of rats scampering out of a burning house in which seven souls lay dead; the vision from long ago would haunt him forever. But it had been difficult enough to convince the learned de Chauliac, who still would not entirely acquiesce, insisting that the humor traveled on the breath of one victim and then into another. We are both a bit right was the tenuous peace they had eventually reached on the matter. And though Blackwell was no fool, he was unlikely—in the midst of the blossoming horror—to listen to well-considered scientific explanations.

  Quietly, Alejandro said, “We will minister to any of your family who fall ill, should that happen.”

  Blackwell’s voice trembled. “I shall pray diligently that no such ministrations will be needed.”

  “As will I,” the physician said.

  By noon of the following day, six more people in Eyam were ill, and dozens more were showing signs. Alejandro and Kate worked long into the night caring for the sick and dosing out what comfort they could. When they were on the point of exhaustion, Alejandro went to the town elders in desperation.

  “We cannot continue in this manner,” he told them. “We run from one house to another to give aid to the ill. Can we not bring the afflicted all together in one place for care and comfort?”

  The elders spoke among themselves briefly, until one said, “How many are now afflicted?”

  “Perhaps thirty. And more will succumb, have no doubt.” Alejandro let out a long breath. “In those homes that plague has not touched, the people should remain. But where it has already entered, the pest will show no more mercy here than it did in London—all the members of those households will almost certainly take sick. They must accompany their own to the place of quarantine. Until they become ill, they can help to care for their loved ones.”

  Another man said, “We have only the church with enough size for that.”

  “And when the church is full?” asked the first elder.

  On seeing their horrified looks, Alejandro added, “It will become full, I assure you.”

  They argued among themselves quite heatedly as the physician waited, his impatience growing with each word uttered. They reached no accord on a location for those who would not fit into the church but instead turned to a more obvious one.

  “Who will take these instructions to the people?”

  Again they argued, as if Alejandro were not there. Finally, when his patience was completely gone, he shouted above the din.

  “You will take it to them.”

  There was immediate silence. He glanced around the table until he had looked into each man’s eyes, and then said again, quietly, “You will.”

  There was no arch of victory to receive the returning warriors, for they had come back with nothing to show for their efforts but a sick man. The poor castellan was left alone with the groaning tracker while everyone else departed. De Coucy’s words still rang in the castellan’s ears: See that the sick man is taken care of.

  He moved slowly and carefully toward the stretcher and leaned over it, wondering what de Coucy had meant with that vague order. There was a sheen of sweat on the sick man’s face and he was markedly pale. He coughed every minute or so from deep within his chest. Not knowing what else he ought to do, the castellan hurried off in search of old Nurse, who was known to be wise in such matters.

  When he found her in the princess’s apartment, the old woman was—despite her age and frailty—dragging a laundry maid by the ear and shouting curses over the girl’s laziness and ineptitude.

  “You must come with me,” the castellan said, “for I am in dire need of your counsel!” He pulled her to the window and pointed toward the stretcher. It was ringed by a circle of curious onlookers, all of whom stayed well back.

  When the nurse saw the ill man lying there, she crossed herself rapidly. She dismissed the laundry girl, who ran off whimpering, and then turned back to the castellan.

  “He must be quarantined,” she said, stepping back into the salon.

  “But what if it is plague?” the steward asked, his voice terrified.

  “How shall one know that from this height?” she cried. “I am no physician, nor is there one on the premises. You had best send for the queen’s astrologer. Let him decide what must be done. But right now this man must be separated, or else we shall all die.”

  The castellan watched as she ambled off again, not knowing what was in her heart. But he knew how easy it was, after decades of serving Plantagenets, to hide one’s true feelings.

  King Edward sat in his ornate chair with his wife by his side and listened carefully as her court astrologer expressed—in quiet tones so the others in the courtroom would not hear—his learned opinion on the medical status of the ailing tracker. The king considered the practitioner a charlatan, for on several occasions he had steered the queen on paths that the king regarded as regrettable. To make matters worse, the astrologer had a thin, high-pitched, grating voice. He was at least as accurate as the palace physician in matters of the corpus, sometimes more so, but neither practitioner, in the king’s opinion, was worth the spit to polish his
boots.

  “There is currently an intemperate juxtaposition of Saturn with Venus; these two opposing forces have taken hold of the man’s internal organs by using his spleen as a gateway. It is a most unfortunate affliction, one from which I fear he may not recover. His humors are starkly out of balance.”

  “Speak plainly,” the king whispered. “I would know if this is some sort of contagion.”

  “I cannot say, sire. I shall require some time to do additional readings.”

  “How much time?”

  “Perhaps a day or two—the calculations are grueling….”

  The king stood slowly; his gout was flaring painfully after the rich excesses of the celebrations. The small, thin astrologer moved back involuntarily upon seeing the substantial monarch at his full stature.

  “Get out,” the king said.

  “Edward!” Phillippa protested. “He has come at my request to help us—”

  “He is no help at all,” the king said, interrupting his wife. He lowered his voice again, lest anyone else hear what he was saying. “I am more confused than I was before we consulted him. We have a palace full of guests…. Imagine the consequences if plague should enter these walls when all the royalty of Europa is in attendance for the wedding of our daughter!”

  For a few moments, Phillippa was speechless. Then she whispered, “You might at least have had the courtesy to allow him to finish his explan—”

  “I am the king. There is no requirement that I be courteous. And I have heard quite enough of his gibberish about confluences and influences and malfeasances.” He looked around the court for a moment, searching out of habit for his old friend, but remembered unhappily that Chandos was not present. He sat back in his chair and turned to a page. “Find Gaddesdon,” he said harshly, “and send him to me, at once.”

  The page ran off to find the king’s physician. The observers in the court all moved aside to let him pass, then closed ranks around the king again. The king smiled and gestured to the musicians to play, and the conversation resumed among the courtiers and dignitaries as if nothing at all had happened.