The Nostradamus Prophecy

by Theresa Breslin

  At these words Berthe crossed herself, and when Mistress Anne had gone from the room with her children she muttered, ‘Possessed they may be. I’d say it’s a judgement of God for those who meddle in what they shouldn’t.’ She stared at me inquisitively. ‘What do you say, farm girl?’

  I didn’t give her any reply, but went out of the door into the hallway. Going past the cupboard where I had spent the previous night I went to the front of the house. Beside me was the staircase leading to the upper rooms, in front of me was the main outside door, and on my left, another door with a key in the lock. I turned the key and pushed it open and found myself in a long narrow room with windows and its own outside door, which gave onto the street on the other side of the house.

  The room was both a shop and a workplace. Before me ran a counter where customers might wait to purchase their goods. Behind this, on either side of the doorway in which I stood, were numerous rows of shelves with dozens of jars and bottles, and below these, banks of drawers of various sizes. All were labelled and numbered in fine script. At one end, partly concealed behind a screen, was a stove, several sinks, a table and some workbenches. Over one of these a man stooped. He was spooning powder into a small wooden box, but stopped and looked up as I opened the door.

  ‘A new face,’ he said. ‘Enter. Enter. Tell me your business.’ He beckoned with his hand to bid me go near to him.

  As I approached he did not straighten up and I saw that he could not. His body was bent yet he was not a true hunchback. As I hesitated, he came towards me with a shambling gait as if his bones did not quite connect to each other.

  ‘And who are you, miss, who has forgotten her manners and stares at poor Giorgio in such a rude way?’

  My face reddened and I gabbled, ‘I am – I am Lisette. I am kin to Mistress Anne, the daughter of her cousin who lives at Montvieulle, and I’ve come to live here for a while.’

  ‘What! Yet another refugee for this already overburdened family to take care of?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I will earn my keep. I can work as hard as anyone else. I’ve been told that I am to assist you. And in particular this morning Mistress Anne has sent me to see if you have a remedy to ease her youngest child, who is in pain.’

  ‘Well, then’ – Giorgio was now close to me and being shorter than I was obliged to look up into my face – ‘let’s find out if you are to be of any use to me in this apothecary shop. What kind of pain is the child suffering?’

  ‘I – I don’t know what you mean,’ I stammered.

  He limped back to his place and took up the spoon to continue what he had been doing when I’d come into the room.

  ‘Think about the question I have asked and then answer me.’

  ‘You want me to describe the pain the child is suffering?’

  He nodded. Despite being engaged in his work I saw that he was attentive to me.

  I recalled how loudly the child had screamed. ‘It was a sore pain.’

  ‘Ah!’ Giorgio said in a false tone of wonder. ‘A sore pain. That makes it all so much more clear.’

  ‘Don’t mock me,’ I said, rising to his taunt. ‘I have no expert knowledge to describe the child’s condition. And it seems to me that rather than using this situation to teach me a lesson in humility, it would be better if you explained to me the information you seek. We are wasting time when a child is suffering.’

  ‘Oh, well uttered!’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘Although, a somewhat tart reply for a mere country girl.’ He shook his spoon free of any remaining loose powder and used it to gesticulate at the shelves. ‘There are a dozen remedies here that will ease pain. Some of which could stupefy the child unto death, even. To be of best help I need to try to determine what is causing the pain. So this is what I would like to know.’ He held up his fingers one by one as he itemized his list. ‘The location of the pain. The severity of said pain. Is it constant or intermittent? Be it an ache or a stabbing pain? Is the child vomiting? Are the bowels loose? Is there an accompanying fever, or is the child producing normal sweat?’ He paused and gave me a piercing look. ‘Now, speak, and let us judge how observant you are, Miss Lisette.’

  I rhymed off my answers in the order he had asked the questions and held up my fingers in rotation to mimic him. ‘The pain appears to be in the child’s head. It is very severe. It comes and goes, but when it comes it causes the child to rub the side of its head and howl. To my knowledge the child has not vomited or soiled itself. There is a fever, yes.’

  ‘Good. Very good.’ As I was speaking Giorgio had pulled out a wooden ladder and was kicking it before him along the row of shelves.

  He did this in a practised but awkward manner, but I felt I already knew enough about his character not to offer assistance.

  ‘Is there any other, even minor piece of information that you can add to help my diagnosis? The slightest thing, which might at first seem unimportant, may assist.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Did she sleep at all last night?’

  ‘Only after a long time. I play—’ My tongue tripped over the word ‘played’, and I felt a stab of fear. I had nearly given away the fact that I was a musician! I hurriedly changed my sentence. ‘I placated her with a lullaby.’ Giorgio did not appear to notice anything odd but I thought to make a joke to distract him so I added, ‘She did sleep then, poor mite. But I fear it was more to do with her exhaustion from crying than my good singing.’

  Giorgio placed his ladder against a shelf. He hauled himself up a step or two and, opening a large bottle, took out what appeared to be a piece of tree bark. ‘Did Mistress Anne offer a suggestion as to what might be wrong?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, and then, hoping to show him that I could match wits with him, I added, ‘But the kitchen maid, Berthe, did. She declared it to be a judgement of God.’

  ‘Myself,’ Giorgio said as he clambered down the ladder, ‘I declare it to be earache. And with this’ – he held up the piece of tree bark – ‘we may effect to give the child some relief.’ He peered up into my face with a calculating look. ‘Now, Miss Lisette. Whose judgement will you abide by? That of God or that of Giorgio?’

  I stepped away from him. It was a question worthy of any Inquisitor.

  He laughed at my confusion. ‘Would we be thwarting God’s will by making a preparation with willow bark to help this child?’ He addressed the remark to me from over his shoulder as he shuffled back to his workbench.

  ‘It cannot be God’s will that a child suffers,’ I said as I followed him to see what he was doing. I had met doctors and apothecaries aplenty in the courts of England and France but mostly they preferred to keep their recipes secret.

  Giorgio handed me the tree bark and a small metal food grater. ‘Take some thin shavings from the inner side,’ he instructed me, then he continued our discussion by saying, ‘There are those who would argue that when God sends an affliction then man must bow his head and suffer, as Job did in the Bible story.’

  ‘God made the plants for us to harvest,’ I replied. Grasping the grater, I applied myself to obtaining the finest bark shavings possible.

  Giorgio broke off a piece of honeycomb and added it with the shavings to a small pannikin of water simmering on his stove.

  ‘And the same God endowed you with the intelligence to devise this concoction,’ I added.

  ‘And did he also grant you the intellect, Miss Lisette, to remember the ingredients, the amounts, and the method to prepare a similar concoction if so requested?’ Giorgio folded his arms and waited.

  I recited his recipe to him and was rewarded with what I detected to be a small gleam of approval in his eyes. But he did not gratify me with any kind remark. I was to learn that Giorgio was very spare with compliments. When the mixture had boiled for some minutes he strained it into a cup and added a dollop of amber liquid which smelled to me like mead. This he gave to me, saying, ‘Take this to Mistress Anne and say that the child must swallow all of it.’ He reached und
er the counter and took the stopper from a large jar that was kept there out of sight. ‘Here is a sugar stick for the child to suck, that it might be easier to get her to take the medicine.’

  I took the items from him and went to do as he asked. I was conscious that he was watching me, so in order not to spill any drop I set the cup on the counter while I pulled open the door leading to the house.

  Berthe, the kitchen maid, fell against me. She must have been leaning close to the door on the other side.

  ‘Mistress Anne said to bring in some breakfast for you both,’ Berthe said, walking past me quickly carrying two bowls of porridge.

  Had she been loitering to listen? And if so, how long had she been there? Had she heard Giorgio and me having the type of conversation that some might consider blasphemous?

  I found Mistress Anne in the upstairs family room rocking the grizzling child upon her knee. ‘Ah’ – she glanced up in relief as I entered the room and reached out her hand for the medicine – ‘I knew that Giorgio would not fail me.’

  I helped her coax her little girl to drink the medicine.

  ‘Did Giorgio make you welcome in the pharmacy?’ Mistress Anne asked me as she gave me the empty cup to take away.

  ‘He is a singular man,’ I answered her.

  Mistress Anne smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is true. He has his own distinct way of coping with life. But if you pay him good attention you will learn a great deal.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  AND IN THE time that followed I did learn a great deal from Giorgio.

  From the very beginning he did not treat me as the type of assistant who was there to sweep and dust and clean the various utensils. He sought to train me as a true apprentice. On my return to the shop that morning with the empty cup he instructed me to put on an apron and prepare a large batch of the liquid he called Salix verum.

  ‘Inflammation in the inner ear frequently takes more than one treatment to dispel,’ he said as he supervised me boiling up more of the infusion. ‘Therefore we must have some phials ready in case the child has another attack. And do not be surprised if, when we open for business today, some of our customers bring children with similar symptoms. In my experience the same sickness spreads within a community. That is something you should note, Miss Lisette. Speaking of which,’ he added, ‘I expect you can read a bit. But can you write?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Very good. I will give you a blank book and you may make such notes as you see fit. I warn you, there is much to learn and I do not wish to keep repeating myself.’ Giorgio went to one of his store cupboards and took out a leather-bound notebook, which had a pencil attached to it with a fine cord. ‘There, take that and keep it handy by you.’

  I put the book in the pocket of my apron and made notes in it all the time I worked in the apothecary shop. When we closed up in the evening I would open it and read and re-read it to memorize the new recipes and ingredients I had learned. There was never any free time to do this during the day. Every morning, even in the worst of weather, there was usually a customer waiting outside to be let in. And when we closed for siesta Giorgio often used these hours for us to mix and prepare more medicines. Most of the herbs we used came from Nostradamus’s own extensive physic garden. Some of these I was familiar with, as Chantelle had instructed me in their effects: comfrey as a poultice to treat bruises, mint and marjoram for colds and sore throats, rosemary and anise to aid digestion. Others were entirely new to me, and came from seeds and plants obtained from the Orient and the New World. I learned their medicinal properties, how to accurately weigh amounts, and chop and grind these with pestle and mortar.

  The first few weeks I was there, Master Nostradamus was too weak to rise from the day couch in his study and his wife forbade anyone apart from her to come into his presence. I fretted with impatience and worry. I wanted to speak to the prophet as soon as possible to beg him to petition the king and queen regent on my behalf and to question him as to what he meant by saying that I had been directed to his house for another reason altogether. Mistress Anne attended to him faithfully. I ran up and down the four flights of stairs keeping the lights replenished and carrying food and drink, medicines and poultices. Mostly I stayed in the outer rooms and heard only the murmur of her voice as she entreated him to eat. But one time she did call to me for help to prevent him rising up from his sick bed.

  Evening was approaching and I was lighting the candles and lamps when suddenly his voice sounded out like rocks crashing down a mountainside:

  ‘See the world as it turns! The lands to the west! Fire and fury will rain down from Heaven’s door!’

  Did he mean the New World? Those countries recently discovered to the distant west, beyond the great ocean, and already claimed as their own by the kings and queens of Europe?

  ‘By a tree man first came to life and by a tree will he perish!’

  Was this the tree in the Garden of Eden?

  ‘Are you there, girl?’ It was Mistress Anne’s voice I heard now. ‘I need some assistance if you are.’

  I ran into the inner room. This was the sanctum where the prophet pored over his mystical texts and where he kept his aids to divination. On either side of the window shelves bowed under the weight of books and manuscripts, some crumbling with age. The other walls were covered in charts depicting human and celestial bodies. It was rumoured that he had dissected cadavers in his quest for knowledge. I shuddered as I saw the tall posters of two skeletons showing the human bones stripped of their flesh. One was that of a man, the eyeless sockets of his skull staring out at me. Beside it was the woman, long hair trailing low across her body to preserve her modesty. On the ceiling, in a great wheel, were depicted the signs of the zodiac, and above and below them were many numbers and symbols, known and unknown. Along the top level of the walls the planets were numbered and named: Mars, Venus, Jupiter and the rest. As I stared at them it was as if their influence reached out to me. There were drawings in Nostradamus’s own hand showing the movement of the planets, tracing their course in the skies above us. And here was his wide desk with its astrolabe and a half-completed horoscope, his quill pen discarded, the ink crusted on its tip. His silver walking cane stood propped beside his day bed.

  Nostradamus had flung off his blankets and was pushing his wife aside as she wrestled with him to make him lie down. His face had sunk in, his skin was grey. He appeared too feeble to resist her, yet his eyes started from his sockets as he saw me and he tried again to rise up.

  ‘Who is this? Who is she who comes with the torch of hope burning when the Angel of Death is close on her heels?’

  I realized then that I still held a lit taper in my hand.

  ‘Hush, hush,’ Mistress Anne calmed him as I’d heard her do her youngest child. ‘You are having a nightmare due to fever.’

  ‘Am I fevered?’ Her husband grasped her hand and put it to his brow. ‘Tell me true. Am I fevered?’

  She bit her lip. ‘Not so much, no.’

  ‘Then’tis not a nightmare, but a vision I see. Woe and lamentation in our land.’ He managed to sit upright and cried out in a terrifying voice, ‘Pity the children for they will be butchered! The innocent are blamed. Blood runs red in the streets of Paris!’ He pointed a long bony finger at me. ‘The women cry for succour and you, Mélisande, can do nothing to help them.’

  I stood there, unable to move. This was the same prophecy that he had uttered in the, palace of Cherboucy at the time he had foretold the death of Chantelle. He fell back on his pillows, exhausted, and Mistress Anne indicated for me to leave them alone.

  I came down into the shop and went about my business very quietly. Giorgio gave me a curious look but made no comment. I knew him well enough to gauge that he was sensitive to a person’s mood or nuances in atmosphere. It was one of his skills in the diagnosis of an illness. He could not fail to notice now that I was disturbed, so I pre-empted any enquiry by saying, ‘Master Nostradamus seems troubled in his mind today.’


  Giorgio gave me a sidelong glance. ‘It would seem that your mind is also troubled.’

  ‘He proclaimed a great disaster to come.’

  ‘Master Nostradamus is wont to use a fanciful turn of phrase.’

  ‘He warned of death and destruction upon the land.’

  ‘There has been death and destruction on Earth since ancient times,’ Giorgio pointed out. ‘It is the way of things.’

  ‘He said that the blood of the innocent would be shed.’

  ‘The blood of the innocent is always spilled more profusely than that of the wicked. By very dint of them being wicked, the wicked contrive to avoid justice.’

  I saw that he was trying to lift my mood yet I was not amused. My sister Chantelle had also pointed out that certain things happen, whether prophesied or not.

  But Chantelle was now dead.

  ‘You know one can induce visions in one’s brain,’ said Giorgio. ‘If you stare at the moon long enough then you will see a shape there that will talk to you.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in the predictions of Master Nostradamus?’ I asked in surprise. I had always assumed that being his closest assistant Giorgio would believe in the prophecies.

  He shrugged.

  ‘What do you believe in?’ I asked him

  ‘I hold faith in the efficacy of medicine. I believe that for every illness Nature has, if not a cure, then a way of helping. Sometimes only to ease our passage through this world.’

  ‘Or out of it,’ I replied.

  ‘For a homely farm girl you possess a formidable wit.’

  I lowered my gaze. Giorgio shuffled nearer.

  I made to move away, but he blocked me. Why could I not keep my tongue quiet in my head? Mistress Anne had warned me about Berthe but had not said anything about Giorgio. Either she thought he would be less interested or she trusted him more. If she gave him the keys to the pharmacy then she must have some faith in him.

  ‘There is something I have noticed about you, Miss Lisette, as I watch you help me in my work.’ Giorgio reached out, took my hands in his own and turned them, palms up. ‘These are not calloused and rough with farm work. They look as though they belong to a lady at court.’