by Noah Gordon
They met the springtime in Beverley. The air softened, the sun emerged and so did a crowd of pilgrims who had been visiting the town’s great stone church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. He and Barber threw themselves into the entertainment, and their first large audience of the new season responded with enthusiasm. All went well during the treatments until, ushering the sixth patient behind Barber’s privacy screen, Rob took the soft hands of a handsome woman.
His pulse hammered. “Come, mistress,” he said faintly. His skin prickled with dread where their hands were glued together. He turned and met Barber’s gaze.
Barber whitened. Almost savagely, he pulled Rob away from listening ears. “Are you without doubt? You must be certain.”
“She will die very soon,” Rob said.
Barber returned to the woman, who wasn’t old and appeared to be in good estate. She made no complaint of her health but had come behind the screen to buy a philter. “My husband is a man of increasing years. His ardor flags, yet he admires me.” She spoke calmly, and her refinement and lack of false modesty gave her dignity. She wore traveling clothes sewn of fine stuff. Clearly, she was a woman of wealth.
“I don’t sell philters. That is magic and not medicine, my lady.”
She murmured regret. Barber was terrified when she didn’t correct his form of address; to be accused of witchcraft in the death of a noblewoman was certain destruction.
“A draught of liquor often gives the desired effect. Strong, and swallowed hot before retiring.” Barber would accept no payment. As soon as she was gone, he made his excuses to the patients he hadn’t yet seen. Rob was already packing the wagon.
And so they fled again.
This time they barely spoke throughout the flight. When they were far enough away and safely camped for the night, Barber broke the silence.
“When someone dies in an instant, a vacantness creeps into the eyes,” he said quietly. “The face loses expression, or sometimes purples. A corner of the mouth sags, an eyelid droops, limbs turn to stone.” He sighed. “It isn’t unmerciful.”
Rob didn’t answer.
They made their beds and tried to sleep. Barber rose and drank for a while but this time didn’t give the apprentice his hands to hold.
Rob knew in his heart that he wasn’t a witch. Yet there could be only one other explanation, and he didn’t understand it. He lay and prayed. Please. Will you not remove this filthy gift from me and return it whence it came? Furious and dispirited, he couldn’t refrain from scolding, for meekness hadn’t gained him much. It is such a thing as might be inspired by Satan and I want no further part of it, he told God.
It seemed his prayer was granted. That spring there were no more incidents. The weather held and then improved, with sunny days that were warmer and drier than usual, and good for business. “Fine weather on St. Swithin’s,” Barber said one morning in triumph. “Anyone will tell you it means we’ll have fine weather forty more days.” Gradually their fears subsided and their spirits rose.
His master remembered his birth day! On the third morning after St. Swithin’s Day, Barber made him a handsome gift of three goose quills, ink powder, and a pumice stone. “Now you may scribble faces with something other than a charcoal stick,” he said.
Rob had no money to buy Barber a natal gift in return. But late one afternoon his eyes recognized a plant as they passed through a field. Next morning he stole out of their camp and walked half an hour to the field, where he picked a quantity of the greens. On Barber’s birth day Rob presented him with purslane, the fever herb, which he received with obvious pleasure.
It showed in their entertainment that they got on. They anticipated each other, and their performance took on gloss and a keen edge, bringing splendid applause. Rob had daydreams in which he saw his brothers and sister among the spectators; he imagined the pride and amazement of Anne Mary and Samuel Edward when they saw their elder brother perform magic and pop five balls.
They will have grown, he told himself. Would Anne Mary recall him? Was Samuel Edward still wild? By now Jonathan Carter must be walking and talking, a proper little man.
It was impossible for an apprentice to advise his master where to direct their horse, but when they were in Nottingham he found opportunity to consult Barber’s map and saw they were near the very heart of the English island. To reach London they would have to continue south but also veer to the east. He memorized the town names and locations, so he could tell if they were traveling where he so desperately wanted to go.
In Leicester a farmer digging a rock from his field had unearthed a sarcophagus. He had dug around it but it was too heavy for him to raise and its bottom remained gripped by the earth like a boulder.
“The Duke is sending men and animals to free it and will take it into his castle,” the yeoman told them proudly.
There was an inscription in the coarse white-grained marble: DIIS MANIBUS. VIVIO MARCIANO MILITI LEGIONIS SECUNDAE AUGUSTAE. IANUARIA MARINA CONJUNX PIENTISSIMA POSUIT MEMORIAM. “‘To the gods of the underworld,’” Barber translated. “‘To Vivius Marcianus, a soldier of the Second Legion of Augustus. In the month of January his devoted wife, Marina, established this tomb.’”
They looked at one another. “I wonder what happened to the dolly, Marina, after she buried him, for she was a long way from her home,” Barber said soberly.
So are we all, Rob thought.
Leicester was a populous town. Their entertainment was well attended, and when the sale of the physick was finished they found themselves in a flurry of activity. In quick succession he helped Barber to lance a young man’s carbuncle, splint a youth’s rudely broken finger, and dose a feverish matron with purslane and a colicky child with chamomile. Next he led behind the screen a stocky, balding man with milky eyes.
“How long have you been blind?” Barber asked.
“These two years. It began as a dimness and gradually deepened until now I scarce detect light. I am a clerk but cannot work.”
Barber shook his head, forgetting the gesture wasn’t visible. “I am able to give back sight no more than I can give back youth.”
The clerk allowed himself to be led away. “It’s a hard piece of news,” he said to Rob. “Never to see again!”
A man standing nearby, thin and hawk-faced and with a Roman nose, overheard and peered at them. His hair and beard were white but he was still young, no more than twice Rob’s age.
He stepped forward and put his hand on the patient’s arm. “What is your name?” He spoke with a French accent; Rob had heard it many times from Normans on the London waterfront.
“I am Edgar Thorpe,” the clerk said.
“I am Benjamin Merlin, physician of nearby Tettenhall. May I look at your eyes, Edgar Thorpe?”
The clerk nodded and stood, blinking. The man lifted his eyelids with his thumbs and studied the white opacity.
“I can couch your eyes and cut away the clouded lens,” he said finally. “I’ve done it before, but you must be strong enough to endure the pain.”
“I care nothing for pain,” the clerk whispered.
“Then you must have someone deliver you to my house in Tettenhall, early in the morning on Tuesday next,” the man said, and turned away.
Rob stood as if stricken. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone might attempt something that was beyond Barber.
“Master physician!” He ran after the man. “Where have you learned to do this … couching of the eyes?”
“At an academy. A school for physicians.”
“Where is this physicians’ school?”
Merlin saw before him a large youth in ill-cut clothing that was too small. His glance took in the garish wagon and the bank on which lay juggling balls and flagons of physick whose quality he could readily guess.
“Half the world away,” he said gently. He went to a tethered black mare and mounted her, and rode away from the barber-surgeons without looking back.
Rob told Barber of Benjamin Merlin
later that day, as Incitatus pulled their wagon slowly out of Leicester.
Barber nodded. “I’ve heard of him. Physician of Tettenhall.”
“Yes. He spoke like a Frenchy.”
“He’s a Jew of Normandy.”
“What’s a Jew?”
“It’s another name for Hebrew, the Bible folk who slew Jesus and were driven from the Holy Land by the Romans.”
“He spoke of a school for physicians.”
“Sometimes they hold such a course at the college in Westminster. It’s widely said to be a piss-poor course that makes piss-poor physicians. Most of them just clerk for a physician in return for training, as you are apprenticing to learn the barber-surgeon trade.”
“I don’t think he meant Westminster. He said the school was far away.”
Barber shrugged. “Perhaps it’s in Normandy or Brittany. Jews are thick as thick in France, and some have made their way here, including physicians.”
“I’ve read of Hebrews in the Bible, but I had never seen one.”
“There’s another Jew physician in Malmesbury, Isaac Adolescentoli by name. A famous doctor. Perhaps you may glimpse him when we go to Salisbury,” Barber said.
Malmesbury and Salisbury were in the west of England.
“We don’t go to London, then?”
“No.” Barber had caught something in his apprentice’s voice and had long known that the youth pined for his kinsmen. “We go straight on to Salisbury,” he said sternly, “to reap the benefits of the crowds at the Salisbury Fair. From there we’ll go to Exmouth, for by then autumn will be on us. You understand?”
Rob nodded.
“But in the spring, when we set out again we’ll travel east and go by way of London.”
“Thank you, Barber,” he said in quiet exultation.
His spirits soared. What did delay matter, when finally he knew they would go to London!
He daydreamed about the children.
Eventually his thoughts returned to other things. “Do you think he’ll give the clerk back his eyes?”
Barber shrugged. “I’ve heard of the operation. Few are able to perform it and I doubt the Jew can. But people who would kill Christ will have no difficulty in lying to a blind man,” Barber said, and urged the horse to go a bit faster, for it was nearing the dinner hour.
12
THE FITTING
When they reached Exmouth it wasn’t like coming home but Rob felt far less lonely than he had two years before, when he had first seen the place. The little house by the sea was familiar and welcoming. Barber ran his hand over the great fireplace, with its cooking devices, and sighed.
They planned a splendid winter’s provision, as usual, but this time would bring no live hens into the house out of deference to the fierce stink chickens imparted.
Once again Rob had outgrown his clothing. “Your expanding bones lead me straight into penury,” Barber complained, but he gave Rob a bolt of brown-dyed woollen stuff he had bought at the Salisbury Fair. “I’ll take the wagon and Tatus and go to Athelny to select cheeses and hams, stopping overnight at the inn there. While I’m away you must clean the spring of leaves and begin to work up the season’s firewood. But take the time to bring this woven wool to Editha Lipton and ask her to sew for you. You recall the way to her house?”
Rob took the cloth and thanked him. “I can find her.”
“The new clothing must be expandable,” Barber said as a grumbled afterthought. “Tell her to leave generous hems which can be let out.”
He carried the fabric wrapped in a sheepskin against the chill rain that appeared to be Exmouth’s prevailing weather. He knew the way. Two years before, he had sometimes walked past her house, hoping for a glimpse.
She answered his knock on her door promptly. He nearly dropped his bundle as she took his hands, drawing him in from the wet.
“Rob J.! Let me study you. I’ve never seen such alterations as two years have made!”
He wanted to tell her she had scarcely changed at all, and was struck dumb. But she noted his glance and her eyes warmed. “While I have become old and gray,” she said lightly.
He shook his head. Her hair was still black and in every respect she was exactly as he had remembered, especially the fine and luminous eyes.
She brewed peppermint tea and he found his voice, telling her eagerly and at length where they had been and some of the things he had seen.
“As for me,” she said, “I’m better off than I had been. Times have become easier, and now people are again able to order garments.”
It reminded him why he had come. He unwrapped the sheepskin and showed the material, which she pronounced to be sound woollen cloth. “I hope there is sufficient quantity,” she said worriedly, “for you’ve grown taller than Barber.” She fetched her measuring strings and marked off the width of his shoulders, the girth of his waist, the length of his arms and legs. “I’ll make tight trousers, a loose kirtle, and an outer cloak, and you’ll be grandly clothed.”
He nodded and rose, reluctant to leave.
“Is Barber waiting for you, then?”
He explained Barber’s errand and she motioned him back. “It’s time to eat. I can’t offer what he does, being fresh out of aged royal beef and larks’ tongues and rich puddings. But you’ll join me in my country woman’s supper.”
She took a loaf from the cupboard and sent him into the rain to her small springhouse to fetch a piece of cheese and a jug of new cider. In the gathering dark he broke off two willow withes; back in the house, he sliced the cheese and the barley bread and impaled them on the wands to make cheese toast over the fire.
She smiled at that. “Ah, that man has left his mark on you for all time.”
Rob grinned back at her. “It’s sensible to heat food on such a night.”
They ate and drank and then sat and talked companionably. He added wood to the fire, which had begun to hiss and steam under the rain that came in through the smoke hole.
“It grows worse outside,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Folly to walk home in darkness through such a storm.”
He’d walked through blacker nights and a thousand worse rains. “It feels snow,” he said.
“Then I have company.”
“I’m grateful.”
He went numbly out to the spring with the cheese and the cider, not daring to think. When he came back into the house she was in the process of removing her gown. “Best peel the wet things off,” she said, and got calmly into the bed in her shift.
He removed the damp trousers and tunic and spread them on one side of the round hearth. Naked, he hastened to the bed and lay down next to her between the pelts, shivering. “Cold!”
She smiled. “You’ve been colder. When I took your place in Barber’s bed.”
“And I was sent to sleep on the floor, on a bitter night. Yes, that was cold.”
She turned to him. “‘Poor motherless child,’ I kept thinking. I so wished to let you into the bed.”
“You reached down and touched my head.”
She touched his head now, smoothing his hair and pressing his face into her softness. “I have held my own sons in this bed.” She closed her eyes. Presently she eased the loose top of her shift and gave him a pendulous breast.
The living flesh in his mouth made him seem to remember a longforgotten infant warmth. He felt a prickling behind his eyelids.
Her hand took his on an exploration. “This is what you must do.” She kept her eyes closed.
A stick snapped in the hearth but went unheard. The damp fire was smoking badly.
“Lightly and with patience. In circles as you’re doing,” she said dreamily.
He threw back the cover and her shift, despite the cold. He saw with surprise that she had thick legs. His eyes studied what his fingers had learned; her femaleness was like his dream, but now the firelight allowed him the details.
“Faster.” She would have said more but he found her lips
. It was not a mother’s mouth, and he noted she did something interesting with her hungry tongue.
A series of whispers guided him over her and between heavy thighs. There was no need for further instruction; instinctively he bucked and thrust.
God was a qualified carpenter, he realized, for she was a warm and slippery moving mortise and he was a fitted tenon.
Her eyes snapped open and looked straight up at him. Her lips curled back from her teeth in a strange grin and she uttered a harsh rattling from the back of her throat that would have made him think she lay dying if he hadn’t heard such sounds before.
For years he had watched and heard other people making love—his father and his mother in their small and crowded house, and Barber with a long parade of doxies. He had become convinced that there had to be magic within a cunt for men to want it so. In the dark mystery of her bed, sneezing like a horse from the imperfect fire, he felt all anguish and heaviness pumping from him. Transported by the most frightening kind of joy, he discovered the vast difference between observation and participation.
Awakened next morning by a knocking, Editha padded on bare feet to open the door.
“He’s gone?” Barber whispered.
“Long since,” she said, letting him in. “He went to sleep a man and awoke a boy. He muttered something about needing to clean out the spring, and hurried away.”
Barber smiled. “All went well?”
She nodded with surprising shyness, yawning.
“Good, for he was more than ready. Far better for him to find kindness with you than a cruel introduction from the wrong female.”
She watched him take coins from his purse and set them on her table. “For this time only,” he cautioned practically. “If he should visit you again …”
She shook her head. “These days I’m much in the company of a wain-wright. A good man, with a house in the town of Exeter and three sons. I believe he will marry me.”