The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  The bear rose again to stand shakily on two limbs. The good eye looked out at them with defiance but with a calm foreknowledge, and Rob was reminded of the woman who had come to him in Northampton with the wasting sickness. The drunkard was jabbing the point of the lance toward the huge head when Rob went to him and ripped the lance from his hands.

  “Here, you fucking fool!” Barber called sharply to Rob, and started after him.

  “Good Godiva,” Rob said. He leveled the lance and drove it deep into the torn chest, and almost at once blood sprang from a corner of the contorted muzzle.

  A sound rose from the men that was similar to the snarling made by the dogs when they had closed in.

  “He’s addled and we shall tend him,” Barber called quickly.

  Rob allowed Barber and Wat to jostle him out of the pit and beyond the ring of light.

  “What kind of stupid shitepoke is this lump of a barber’s assistant?” Wat asked, enraged.

  “I confess I don’t know.” Barber’s breathing sounded like a bellows. These days his breathing was heavier, Rob realized.

  Within the ring of torchlight, the pitmaster was announcing soothingly that there remained a strong badger waiting to be baited, and the complaints turned to ragged cheers.

  Rob walked away while Barber apologized to Wat.

  He was seated near the wagon by the fire when Barber came lumbering in. Barber opened a bottle of liquor and drank half of it off. Then he dropped heavily into his bed on the other side of the fire and stared.

  “You are an arsehole,” he said.

  Rob smiled.

  “If the bets hadn’t already been settled they’d have had your blood and I shouldn’t have blamed them.”

  Rob’s hand went to the bearskin on which he slept. The pelt had grown rattier than ever and must soon be discarded, he thought, stroking it.

  “Goodnight, then, Barber,” he said.

  16

  ARMS

  It didn’t occur to Barber that he and Rob J. would come to disagreement. At seventeen years of age the former apprentice was exactly what he’d been as a whelp, full of work and sweet agreeability.

  Except he drove a bargain like a fishwife.

  At the end of the first year of employment he asked for one-twelfth share instead of one-twentieth. Barber grumbled but finally agreed because Rob clearly was deserving of larger reward.

  Barber noted he scarcely spent his wages and knew he was saving his money to buy arms. One winter’s night in the tavern at Exmouth, a gardener tried to sell Rob a dagger.

  “Your opinion?” Rob asked, handing it to Barber.

  It was a gardener’s weapon. “The blade is bronze and will break. The hilt is adequate perhaps, but a handle so gaudily painted can hide defects.”

  Rob J. handed back the cheap knife.

  When they set forth in the spring they traveled the coast and Rob haunted the harbor docks seeking Spaniards, for the best steel weapons came from Spain. But he had bought nothing by the time they had to turn inland.

  July found them in upper Mercia. In the township of Blyth their spirits belied the village’s name; they awoke one morning to see Incitatus lying on the ground nearby, stiff and unbreathing.

  Rob stood and looked bitterly at the dead horse while Barber vented his feelings through cursing.

  “You think a disease did him?”

  Barber shrugged. “We saw no sign yesterday, but he was old. He wasn’t young when I came by him a long time ago.”

  Rob spent half a day breaking ground and shoveling, for they didn’t want Incitatus eaten by dogs and crows. While he dug the great hole, Barber went out and searched for a replacement. It took him all day and cost him dear, for their horse was vital to them. Finally he bought a baldfaced brown mare, three years old and not quite fully grown.

  “Shall we also name her Incitatus?” he asked, but Rob shook his head and they never called her anything but Horse. She was sweet-stepping, but the first morning they had her she threw a shoe, and they returned to Blyth for a new one.

  The blacksmith was named Durman Moulton and they found him finishing a sword that made their eyes glisten.

  “How much?” Rob asked, with too much eagerness for Barber’s bargaining taste.

  “This is bought,” the craftsman said, but he allowed them to hold it and feel its balance. It was an English broadsword entirely without ornamentation, sharp and true and beautifully forged. If Barber had been younger and not so wise he would have been tempted to bid for it.

  “How much for its exact twin, and a matching dagger?”

  The total came to more than a year’s income for Rob. “And you must pay one-half now, should you place the order,” Moulton said.

  Rob went to the wagon and returned with a pouch from which he promptly paid over the money.

  “We return in one year to claim the arms and pay the balance,” he said, and the smith nodded and told him the weapons would be ready.

  Despite the loss of Incitatus they enjoyed a prosperous season, but when it was nearly over, Rob asked him for one-sixth.

  “One-sixth of my income! To a young herring not yet eighteen years of age?” Barber was genuinely outraged, though Rob took his outburst calmly and said no more.

  As the date of their annual agreement approached it was Barber who fretted, since he was aware how greatly his situation had been improved by his journeyman.

  In the village of Sempringham he heard a woman patient hiss to her friend: “Get into the line which awaits the younger barber, Eadburga, for they do say he touches you behind the screen. They do say he has healing hands.”

  They do say he sells a shitload of the Specific, Barber reminded himself wryly.

  He didn’t fret that the younger man’s screen usually had the longer lines in front of it. Indeed, to an employer Rob J. was gold in his pocket.

  “One-eighth,” he offered finally.

  Though he suffered to do so he would have gone to one-sixth, but to his relief Rob nodded.

  “One-eighth is just,” Rob said.

  The Old Man was born out of Barber’s mind. Always seeking to improve the entertainment, he invented an old lecher who drinks the Universal Specific Physick and goes after every woman in sight. “And you must play him,” he told Rob.

  “I’m too large. And too young.”

  “No, you shall play him,” Barber said stubbornly. “For I’m so fat that one look at me would reveal who I am.”

  They both watched old men for a long time, studying how they walked in pain and the kind of clothing they wore, and they listened when old people spoke.

  “Imagine what it must be like to feel your life disappearing,” Barber said. “You believe you’ll always be able to get hard with a woman. Think about growing old and not being able to do that.”

  They fashioned a gray wig and a false gray mustache. They couldn’t give him wrinkles but Barber covered his face with cosmetics and simulated an old skin made dry and rough by years of sun and wind. Rob bent his long body and developed a hobbling walk, dragging his right leg. When he spoke he made his voice higher and hesitant, as if he had learned to be a little afraid.

  The Old Man, dressed in a shabby coat, made his first appearance in Tadcaster, while Barber was discoursing on the remarkable regenerative powers of the Universal Specific. Walking painfully, he tottered up and bought a bottle.

  “Doubtless I’m an old fool for wasting my money,” the dry old voice said. Opening the container with some difficulty, he drank the physick then and there and made his slow way to the side of a barmaid who had already been instructed and paid.

  “Oh, you are a pretty,” he sighed, and the girl glanced away quickly as if abashed. “Would you do a kindness, my dear?”

  “If I’m able.”

  “Just place your hand upon my face. Merely a soft warm palm on an old man’s cheek. Aaah,” he breathed as she complied shyly.

  There were titters as he closed his eyes and kissed her fingers.
/>   In a moment his gaze opened wide. “By the blessed St. Anthony,” he breathed. “Oh, it’s most remarkable.”

  He limped back to the bank as quickly as possible. “Let me have an other,” he told Barber, and drank it at once. This time when he returned to the barmaid she moved away and he followed.

  “I’m your servant,” he said eagerly. “Mistress …” Leaning forward, he whispered into her ear.

  “Oh, sirrah, you mustn’t talk so!” She moved again, and the crowd was convulsed as he followed.

  When, a few minutes later, the Old Man limped away with the barmaid on his arm, they roared approval and then, still laughing, hurried to pay Barber their pennies.

  Eventually they didn’t have to pay a female to play against the Old Man, for Rob quickly learned to manipulate women in the crowd. He could sense when a good wife was taking offense and must be abandoned, or when a more venturesome woman would not feel abused by a juicy compliment or even a quick pinch.

  One night in the town of Lichfield he wore the Old Man costume into the public house and soon had the drinkers howling and wiping their eyes over his amorous memories.

  “Once I was a rutter. I well recall swiving a plump beauty … hair like black fleece, teats you would milk. A sweet thatch like dark swansdown. While on the other side of the wall her fierce father, half my age, slept all gentle and unknowing.”

  “And what age were you then, Old Man?”

  He carefully straightened an aguish back. “Three days younger than now,” he said in his dry and dusty voice.

  All evening, fools quarreled for the right to furnish him tipple.

  That night, for the first time Barber aided his assistant back to their camp instead of being supported there himself.

  Barber took refuge in victualing. He spitted capons and barded ducks, gorging on fowl. In Worcester he came upon the slaughtering of a pair of oxen and bought their tongues.

  Here was eating!

  He boiled the great tongues briefly before trimming and skinning them, then roasted them with onion and wild garlic and turnip, basting with thyme honey and melted lard until outside they were glazed sweet and crisp, and inside were so tender and yielding that the meat scarcely needed to be chewed.

  Rob barely tasted the fine rich food, being in a hurry to find a new tavern in which to play the old ass. In each new place the drinkers kept him continually supplied. Barber knew he best liked ale or beer but presently recognized uneasily that Rob would accept mead, pigment, or morat—whatever there was.

  Barber watched closely for signs that the hard drinking would hurt his own pocketbook. But no matter how puky or sodden Rob had been the night before, he appeared to do everything as previously, save in one detail.

  “I note you no longer take their hands when they come behind your screen,” Barber said.

  “Nor do you.”

  “It’s not I who has the gift.”

  “The gift! You have always held that there is no gift.”

  “Now I think that there is a gift,” Barber said. “I believe that it’s dulled by drink, and that it flees before the regular use of liquor.”

  “It was all our fancy, as you said.”

  “Listen well. Whether or not the gift has fled, you shall take each person’s hands when they come behind your screen, for it’s evident they like it. Do you understand?”

  Rob J. nodded sullenly.

  Next morning, on a wooded track they met a fowler. He carried a long cleft stick which he baited with doughballs imbedded with seeds. When birds came to feed on the bait, by pulling on a rope he was able to close the cleft on their legs and capture them, and he was so clever with the device that his belt was hung all around with little white plovers. Barber bought the flock. Plovers were deemed such a delicacy they were commonly roasted without being drawn, but Barber was too picky. He cleaned and dressed each little bird and made a breakfast that was memorable, so that even Rob’s thunderous visage lightened.

  In Great Berkhamstead they presented their entertainment before a good audience and sold a lot of physick. That night Barber and Rob went to the tavern together to make peace. For a portion of the evening all was well, but they were drinking strong morat that tasted faintly of bitter mulberries, and Barber watched Rob’s eyes grow bright and wondered if his own face reddened that way with drink.

  Soon Rob went out of his way to jostle and insult a great burly woodcutter.

  In a moment they were trying to maim one another. They were of a size and their brawling was savagely earnest, a form of madness. Benumbed with morat, they stood close and struck again and again with all their strength, using fists and knees and feet, and the blows and kicks sounded like hammers on oak.

  Finally exhausted, each was able to be dragged apart by a small army of peacemakers, and Barber took Rob J. away.

  “Drunken fool!”

  “Look who talks,” Rob said.

  Trembling with rage, Barber sat and regarded his assistant.

  “It’s true I may also be a drunken fool,” he said, “but I have ever known how to avoid trouble. I have never sold poisons. I have nothing to do with magic that casts spells or raises evil spirits. I just buy large amounts of liquor and put on entertainment that allows me to sell small flasks at fine profit. It’s a living that depends upon not calling attention to ourselves. Therefore your stupidity must cease and your fists must stay unclenched.”

  They glared at one another, but Rob nodded.

  From that day Rob appeared to do Barber’s bidding almost against his will as they moved southward, racing the migrating birds into autumn. Barber chose to bypass the Salisbury Fair, understanding that it would aggravate old wounds for Rob. His effort was to no avail, for when they camped in Winchester instead of Salisbury, that night Rob returned to the campfire reeling. His face had the look of bruised meat and it was evident he’d been brawling.

  “We passed an abbey this morning while you were driving the wagon, yet you didn’t stop to inquire after Father Ranald Lovell and your brother.”

  “It does no good to ask. Whenever I ask, no one ever knows them.”

  Nor did Rob speak any more of finding his sister Anne Mary or Jonathan or Roger, the brother he had last seen as an infant.

  He had given them up and now sought to forget them, Barber told himself, struggling to comprehend. It was as if Rob had turned himself into a bear and offered himself anew for baiting in every public house. Meanness was growing in him like a weed; he welcomed the pain brought by drink and fighting, to drive out the pain he suffered when his brothers and sister entered his mind.

  Barber couldn’t decide whether Rob’s acceptance of the loss of the children was a healthy thing or not.

  That winter was the most unpleasant they spent in the little house in Exmouth. In the beginning, he and Rob went to the tavern together. Usually they drank and exchanged talk with the local men, and then found women and brought them home. But he couldn’t match the younger man’s unflagging appetites, nor, to his surprise, did he wish to do so. Now it was Barber, many a night, who lay and watched the shadows and listened, wishing they would for Christ’s sweet sake get it over with and shut up and go to sleep.

  There was no snow at all that year but it rained incessantly, and the hiss and spatter soon offended the ear and the spirit. On the third day of Christmas week, Rob came home in a fury.

  “The damned publican! He’s barred me from the Exmouth Inn.”

  “For no good reason, I trust?”

  “For fighting,” Rob muttered, scowling.

  Rob spent more time in the house but was moodier than ever, and so was Barber. They didn’t have long or pleasant conversation. Mostly Barber drank, his familiar answer to the season of bleakness. When he was able, he imitated the hibernating beasts. When he was awake he lay like a great rock in the sagging bed, feeling his flesh pulling him down and listening to his breath whistling and rasping out of his mouth. He had taken a dim view of many a patient whose breathing sounded bet
ter than his own.

  Made anxious by such thoughts, he rose from bed once a day to cook an enormous meal, seeking in fatty meats protection against chill and foreboding. Usually next to his bed he kept an opened flask and a platter of fried lamb congealed in its own grease. Rob still cleaned house when he was of a mind, but by February the place smelled like a fox’s den.

  They welcomed the spring eagerly and in March packed the wagon and drove out of Exmouth, moving across the Salisbury Plain and through the low scarpland where begrimed slaves dug through limestone and chalk to grub out iron and tin. They didn’t stop in the slave camps because there wasn’t a halfpenny to be earned there. It was Barber’s thought to travel the border with Wales until Shrewsbury, there to find the River Trent and follow it northeastward. They stopped in all the by-now-familiar villages and little towns. Horse didn’t step into a parade prance with anything like the verve that had been shown by Incitatus, but she was handsome and they dressed her mane with scores of ribbons. Business by and large was very good.

  At Hope-Under-Dinmore they found a craftsman in leather who had clever hands and Rob bought two scabbards in soft leather to hold the weapons he had been promised.

  When they reached Blyth they went at once to the smithy, where Durman Moulton made them a satisfied greeting. The artisan went to a shelf in the dim recesses of his shop and came back carrying two bundles wrapped in soft animal skins.

  Rob undid them eagerly and caught his breath.

  If it was possible, the broadsword was better than the one they had so admired the previous year. The dagger was equally wrought. While Rob exulted in the sword, Barber hefted the knife and felt its exquisite balancing.

  “It is clean work,” he told Moulton, who accepted the compliment for what it was.

  Rob slipped each blade into its scabbard on his belt, testing the unfamiliar weight. He placed his hands on their hilts and Barber couldn’t resist studying him.

  He had presence. At eighteen he finally had reached full growth and stood a double span higher than Barber. He was broad in the shoulder and lean, with a mane of curling brown hair, wide-set blue eyes that changed their mood more swiftly than the sea, a large-boned face and a square jaw he kept scraped clean. He half pulled from its sheath the sword that advertised him as freeborn, and slid it down again. Watching, Barber felt a chill of pride and an overpowering apprehension to which he couldn’t give a name.