‘Come then. If there is no other, try your skill. Will it hurt? I am a player not a soldier hardened to pain.’
I thought then that he had done better to avoid the cause of it if he feared to suffer.
‘It must hurt as I cleanse it for the blood has dried and must be removed. But after I will give you a sleeping draught and when you wake you will begin to feel better. Some one of you hold his hands and press tightly while I work.’
Two of them came forward and took him on either side. I pulled out the bottle of arnica water and began to sponge the gash. He cried out when I first touched him until one of them gave him a wooden spoon to bite on. I worked as gently and swiftly as I could and when the flesh was clean I put ointment of burnet on a pad and laid it to his head, bandaging it firmly in place. Then I mixed opiate in wine and gave him to drink.
One of those who had held his hand now took mine and gazed at it. ‘So soft. It is indeed like a maid’s hand.’
‘My father said a physician should be known for gentle hands since in sickness the lightest touch may be as a blow to one in health. And indeed women may make cunning enough physicians if they are let, as witness many midwives. My lady herself helps in the healing of her house and the many poor who come to her.’
‘Midwives and witches too,’ another said. ‘I would not put myself under the hands of a cunning woman.’
‘Then you should not travel abroad to foreign lands,’ the first said, ‘for women there may play the physician if Boccaccio is to be believed. Meanwhile if you should lack employment in your father’s trade, master physician, you may repair to us and we will soon teach you to play a maid. Then you can physick us while we are on the road.’
I thought that his words were too close to the truth. A player who dealt in dreams and things imagined might see deeper into the heart and mind than other men and put me at risk of discovery. Therefore I bowed to them all and said that now I had other business I must attend to, that they should let the wounded man sleep and I would come again to dress his wound. I urged them to give him only broth with a little white bread when he awoke and to call for me if he should seem to grow weaker or the fever grow hotter.
The new steward who had succeeded the murdered Davys met me in the hall where the stage was now set up and the players would perform next day. ‘You must go at once to the countess who has been calling for you.’
‘I was sent for to attend one of the players and was hard put to leave their company.’ I found my lady distracted with all the confusion and their majesties’ demands.
‘I have none to help me. My sons are constantly riding or hunting and I do not trust the new steward as I did Hugh Davys to smooth our path so that all things are in order as I like. My head throbs. Where have you been Amyntas? Dr Gilbert was here to tend me but his ways are too harsh. I do not need either to be purged or let blood now but only some soothing draught. Where were you?’ she asked again.
‘Madam I was sent for to tend a wounded man among the players and as they are the king’s servants I could not refuse. Then after I had treated his wound, the others would have discourse with me trying to bend me to be of their company and play the maid.’
I had hoped that this would cause her to smile and lighten her humour for I saw she was on the edge of a black melancholy which would serve her badly with a court that looked always for amusement and diversion, and where only princes or their favourites are suffered to indulge damp or dark humours.
‘And do you intend to leave me to become a mere player?’
‘My lady knows I will never leave while she has need of me. Let me bring you some special wine to calm your agitation.’ So I went to our laboratory and mixed a decoction of that plant called the melancholy thistle that grows in moist places, in wine, which together will expel superfluous melancholy which causes care and despair and agitation, and will leave the patient merry after a time.
When I returned with the cup I had prepared, my lady asked me to bring her commonplace book in which she was used to note all such things as it amused her to keep to look on again.
‘I remember,’ she said, ‘when the young earl my son was first at Oxford he sent me some sonnets that were passed from hand to hand among his friends, asking me to compare them with the incomparable Astrophel and Stella of my dear brother. Some I copied into this book, not that they came near his in beauty, but that I might have to hand what passes for poetry in these degenerate days, being more sugared than my brother’s verses or those near to him in time as Mr Spenser his Amoretti or even my son’s tutor Daniel his Delia. Read this one to me.’
She handed me her book, all in her own delicate hand, open at the page.
A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou the Master Mistress of my passion. A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change as is false woman’s fashion.
‘They are hard on us women, the male poets, when I think it is not we who are fickle. Go on.’
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth…
My lady sighed, ‘yet more of our inconstancy. Even my dear brother might write so sometimes.’
A man in hue all hues in his controlling
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created
Till nature as she wrought thee fell adoting,
And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.
‘There Amyntas you may hear the coarseness that my brother was never guilty of in that “pricked”, an effect of young men’s idle wit that seeks praise for itself above that it would seem to praise. Yet are not you in the opposite case to this, Amyntas, being indeed not pricked out for women’s pleasure?’
‘Madam, I often forget in what form I was made and then I remember and wish to be other than I am.’
‘But then I could not take you into my bed and pass the time with you in innocent games.’
I could not answer my lady.
The play was to be given the next day. In the afternoon while there was still a little grey light lingering outside the house I crossed to the barn where the sick player lay to tend his wound. This time when I entered a few looked up to salute me but none challenged my presence. I saw at once why this was, for the wounded man was sitting up on his straw pallet, his face cheerful and not flushed with fever, his eye bright but not extremely so.
‘Here is my little physician. Truly I must speak as I find and I find you the very master of physick. If I had had the king’s physician himself I could not have been cured more quickly. If they could find a part for me as a wounded soldier coming from the wars in this bandage I would strut my part on stage tomorrow.’
Going close to him I took his wrist. ‘Sir you must be quiet a little yet or you may cause the fever to return by overheating of the blood. Your pulse is still too quick and shallow for all your wound is recovering. I will dress it again and then prescribe you a draught to make you sleepy for fear you should excite a hot vapour in the brain or should stumble and inflict a new contusion on your broken head.’
‘If you promise me such a sweet drink as yesterday I will be good and he still.’
I unwrapped his head and found the wound clean, with just a little weeping I could wipe away without causing him such pain that he had to be held down by his fellows. Then I applied fresh burnet ointment and bound him up again. Although I was as gentle as I could be, by the time I had finished he was content to lie back while I mixed his potion and raised his head to drink. The smell of his breath was rank in my face as I bent over him so that I was hard put not to turn away until he had emptied the cup, and the stench from his body and clothing almost caused me to let his head drop.
‘Tomorrow you should wash a little and shift yo
ur shirt and slops.’
‘Will you not come and do it for me master physician? Those hands of yours would be kinder to my flesh than my own.’
‘Now Nick,’ one of the players said, ‘he is not for you. Let one of the hirelings wash you. They will do well enough. But not they that are to play the maids tomorrow. Keep them fresh for their parts. You should be gone master physician, unless you want the work. He stinks because he has pissed himself in sleep.’
‘He will sleep again soon,’ I said returning my things to my bag. ‘It is an effect of the draught that it gives some men imaginings.’
‘He needs a potion for excess heat in the loins and privities, master physician. But he would not thank you for it.’
I had never been at a play apart from seeing the mummers in the inn yards at the fair and at Easter and Christmas feasts in the great house. I was therefore determined to find a place where I might hear and see all. This was not easy for everyone was of the same mind so that there was a great press of people behind the seats provided for their majesties, my lady herself and the first among the courtiers. Her two sons lay on either side of their majesties propped upon their elbows in the appearance of pages or esquires.
At length I was obliged to stand upon a stool to get above the heads of the listeners, leaning against the jamb of the door so that I might not fall off. The room was lit with a thousand candles, or so it seemed, and a painted cloth hung in the hind part of the stage showed a house of columns and a portico of steps in stone with beyond a prospect of the sea and shore and a painted ship asail on the waters. I had never seen the sea yet I knew what was represented to my gaze and might almost hear the distant waves of the prospective.
Their majesties had entered with the court and taken their places. There was a murmur of voices, then a fanfare from an unseen trumpet. Music began to sound and the players came up on the stage before the painted columns, attired in such rich silken clothes they vied with the court that watched them. The noblest of them began to speak and I leant forward to hear. He spoke of love and music.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh.
His words pierced into my breast and I felt as if a cord binding up my heart had snapped, letting the blood flow through my veins up into my bursting brain. From where I leant on the door jamb I could see the countess dressed in all her finery, the noblest lady of the court as it seemed to me.
The lord said that he would go hunt the object of his love.
O when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.
That instant was I turned into a hart,
And my desires like fell and cruel hounds
E’er since pursue me.
Then there entered a messenger come from his lady who said she would see no one, being in deepest mourning for her dead brother. I saw my lady start at this so close it seemed to her own affections that I wondered if he who writ it had knowledge of her grief. The noble and his attendants retired and now came on new players, one of whom I recognised through his maid’s clothes as he who had accosted me when I first entered their barn. Yet he acted the maid so truly that after few words only I no longer saw the boy from the barn. The captain told her and us too that they were in Illyria which seemed to me with its fair prospect that it must lie close to Elysium. She too was mourning for a brother drowned. She would seek service with the duke’s lady Olivia but the captain who had rescued her advised otherwise, saying the lady would see no one. Then she said she would personate a youth and seek service with the duke. ‘Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him.’
Next came two clownish knights whom I had also seen in the barn in undress but now they too were dressed in the finest silks and velvets with feathered bonnets on their heads. I marvelled at the rude words from their lips yet the king and queen laughed heartily, though my countess was silent, and then again was the duke returned, this time with the maid in boy’s attire to be sent on a mission to woo his lady for him.
And now for the first time came on the lady Olivia herself as finely arrayed as my countess at her richest so that it was as if we spied upon ourselves and eavesdropped on our own words. First was the sour steward of her company with a licensed fool who tried to bring the lady out of her grief for her brother. Then entered one of the foolish knights deep in his cups although it was not yet noon. I thought that she was surrounded by fools, apart from her waiting woman who had more sense than the rest together, yet their clowning seemed to please the watchers.
At last the messenger from the duke who had stood at the gate all this time, was admitted and it was again as if he who writ it knew my case. ‘I am not that I play.’ Yet for me the tables were turned for I loved my lady and she I feared only played with me while I could see that the lady Olivia might love the false Cesario, but he only feigned a passion in behalf of another. So at one and the same time I watched the play played out before me, and yet watched my lady in the front rank among the court and myself where I stood upon my stool in the darkest part of the hall.
The scene came to an end. All clapped and refreshments were brought on for those of the court. Taking a salver from one of the servants I went forward and knelt before my countess.
‘Well, well, my little Cesario,’ she said low so that others might not hear, ‘have you brought me one of your famous potions? I would not sleep through the rest of the play.’
‘It is only wine my lady, unless you bid me otherwise.’
‘These men make fine maids do they not master physician? And maids may make fine men to strut and peacock but not upon the stage. And if you should take a motto Amyntas I think I know what it might be.’
‘Non sum quod gero.’
‘You are a clever child. Now I remember I have seen this played before in the late earl his day before his last illness. At the behest of the young gentlemen of the Inns of Court but I had forgot much of it, even the Lady Olivia grieving for her brother. These toys are well enough for the public stage, the multitude, not keeping to the classic mould as my brother wrote, and as I did in my translation of the French Antonius which I will give you to read. Or better we will read it aloud together as I have done before with Mr Daniel. But see, they are to begin again.’
So I watched as the action unfolded, sometimes entranced with the words of love from the Lady Olivia for the young Cesario, sometimes cast down at the impossibility of his loving her, and instead setting his affections on the duke. Between came the tediousness of the clowns and fools though once when the poet seemed to call in doubt that the devil may deal in witchcraft I remembered my father his belief that witchcraft was but delusion as the words seemed to hint at. I thought a shadow passed across the king’s face and he did not laugh at these antics as he did before. Then I remembered his own Demonologie and that the Scots are said to be more credulous in these matters under the influence of their mists and mountains.
I thought that plays were witchcraft enough in themselves for what we supposed we saw or believed for a little time under the spell of the words was all imaginings, the stuff of dreams. Those persons who seemed to move so solidly before us were not that they seemed but the actors I had seen in the barn, and the one who played the rude sea captain, Antonio, was he who had gently urged me in jest to join their troupe as player and travelling physician.
At last in the resolution of the action I saw all my hopes and fancies expire when Cesario was revealed as Viola and the Lady Olivia was married to her brother Sebastian as if one might substitute for the other with no loss but only gain. And I understood that all my hope might be to conjure up my dead brother from the grave and assume his shape by that alchemy I did not believe in, not even if I should take up my father’s quest again for the philosopher’s stone which had the power to transmute all things, and should find the secret where he and all others had failed. For indeed it could not engraft upon another stem to improve the fruit, and without I was thus pricked out, as my lady said, there was no remedy for my lo
ve but only the chaste pain of virtuous devotion. Yet even had I been so endowed by nature what mistaken pride made me think, apart from the actor’s simulated passion of the Lady Olivia, that her gaze would fall on me who had not even Cesario’s pretence to be a gentleman?
‘Make love to me,’ she’d said but did she really mean it or just ‘fuck me’, ‘screw me’ or whatever the in-term is for what can carry all or nothing of tenderness or lust. The dreary shoals of spam with their pathetic peddled porn are more and more depressing. Yet someone out there must love them, sitting alone in front of a screen clicking down on penile enlargement, tossing off among the titties, crawling the ‘mega adult sites’, the stickers of the prossies in the old phone boxes replaced by cyber softwares. At least they promised flesh and blood pleasures. Now I’m left with that old lament of Yeats: ‘tell how love fled and hid his face among a crowd of stars’.
Forget it, Jade. That was in another country and the wench is dead, to you anyway. Time to get on your bike and mingle with the natives of Wessex. Let’s see if your smart card will get you in. Soon they’ll be asking for a DNA sample before you’re allowed to buy a discouraged substance, not just drugs, booze or smokes but a packet of full-fat crisps leading to the obesity of nations and a drain on the medical resources of the state.
Full summer’s abloom now and because I’m not in a hurry I can take my time, idling almost, and arrive at the gates with my heart thumping but not from doing a ton on the motorway, just the natural excitement of the chase, the adrenaline of fight or flight we share with all our mammal kin though whether I’m hunter or prey I’m never sure when I fetch up against the Wessex security system. I take off my helmet, get out the plastic pass card and wheel the Crusader up to the metal fence. I swipe the card and wait. Hey presto, Aladdin’s cave is opening before me. I push the bike inside. The gates must be operated by sensors; they begin to close silently, purposefully, behind me. What would happen if I stepped back between them? An alarm? Crushed bones? It’s something I might badly need to know sometime: how to get out if things go pear-shaped or my card doesn’t work and I’m trapped inside.
Alchemy Page 19