The Speckled Monster

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

  When the music stopped and the child was whisked off to eat or sleep or be coaxed out of tiresomeness by her nurse—now quite well, and what a relief—Lady Mary peppered Mr. Maitland with notes of advice, in an entirely different tone.

  With Mr. Maitland’s experiment well under way, Dr. Richard Mead began his own, on a seventh prisoner, a young girl of eighteen. Sir Hans had somehow managed to take charge of the Turkish inoculation—though really, thought Dr. Mead, it was by rights his; he had known Lady Mary since girlhood, and that ought to have counted for something. Instead, he had had to settle for a slightly different experiment. Nonetheless, Dr. Mead had high hopes for this other method, from China. It did not require cutting.

  Which wasn’t to say that it did not have its unpleasant moments, he thought. If only the girl would lie still! He picked up a small bit of cotton and dipped it in matter he taken from ripe pocks that morning. Laying one hand firmly on her head, lest she wriggle, he proceeded to pack her nostrils with the pocky cotton.

  The papers, quite shamefully, claimed it had been done while the girl was asleep.

  Right on cue, the eagerly awaited rashes bloomed across Mr. Maitland’s patients on Monday morning, the sixth day after their inoculation. Red spots and flushings had appeared on all the five, but the marks were clearest on Mary North, especially about her face, neck, and breast. “The engrafting has taken root,” he observed with satisfaction.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” quipped Mrs. Tompion, though her symptoms were quite similar.

  They were still all without any nausea, headache, or thirst, though when pressed, they agreed that they might have been a little hot in the night. All of them, that is, except Evans. He had suffered no twinge whatsoever, and made no effort to satisfy the doctor on that point. By evening, his incisions had dried up entirely.

  The next day, Mr. Maitland found them all much the same, though by nightfall, the spots were darkening and then paling in the center as they swelled into blisters.

  The rash was a relief, but the lack of sickness was beginning to make Mr. Maitland irritable. He had not wanted any part of this—had done his best to refuse, but Sir Hans and the Princess of Wales would have none of it. And behind them had loomed the long shadow of the king. So here he was. But the last thing he needed was a failure, what with the entire Royal College of Physicians and Royal Society staring over his shoulders. The Princess of Wales and the king himself, too, if you counted their eyes by proxy.

  It didn’t help that Dr. Mead’s poor girl suffered much more than all Mr. Maitland’s six patient put together. Not that he’d wish her torments on anybody. Sharp pains had begun to knife through her head her soon after Dr. Mead had packed her nostrils; her fever had spiked the same day and had never left her till this very morning, when her eruption, too, had begun. Lizzy had stayed with her night and day, he saw, doing her best to cool the girl down with damp rags.

  “It does not as yet look the least bit like the smallpox,” sniffed Dr. Wagstaffe, over his shoulder.

  “No,” said Mr. Maitland. “If we are lucky, it never will. It looks, instead, like inoculation for the smallpox.” He turned to face Dr. Wagstaffe. “Otherwise, there would be little point in inoculating, would there?”

  On Wednesday, August 16, though, he breathed a sigh of relief. The rashes continued developing well, and at last his patients’ incisions began to discharge a thick, purulent matter. At the bend of her thigh, near the incision on her leg, Ann Tompion had produced a satisfyingly large yellow pustule. Alcock had even suffered a slight fever in the night; his urine was notably cloudy, and he had more fresh pustules appearing on his face and arms. Cawthery had a large yellow pustule on his left cheek, and several small ones on his face.

  By Thursday, Alcock’s pustules were ripe with yellow matter, ringed with red. Of the five patients with pocks, he had by far the greatest number: no less than sixty. Though she had fewer, Mrs. Tompion pocks looked similar, especially on her right arm and thigh. A few other fresh ones were scattered about her chin and mouth. Lizzy had the fewest; she could hardly count ten. But at least she had some. At last, Mr. Maitland was happy to say, his chickens were properly speckled with pocks you might find on any natural smallpox patient.

  “I will concede that the prisoners’ appearances are similar to each other,” said Dr. Wagstaffe. “But they bear no resemblance whatsoever to the smallpox. Look at that woman’s arm.” He pointed at Mrs. Tompion. “A boil with a bit of matter in it, I give you that. But it has not altered a whit from the first day of eruption, which is contrary to the progress of the true smallpox,” he snorted.

  “It has not altered since the first time you saw it, perhaps,” replied Mr. Maitland icily. “But I assure you, it began as a red pinpoint fleck, and has developed through the stages of a true pock, though more quickly than in natural smallpox. There are those, sir, who regard the speed of inoculation as one of its blessings, not one of its failings. Furthermore, it has not quite remained unchanged. It has grown.”

  “It’s a pimple with matter in it!” cried Dr. Wagstaffe.

  “If it has matter in it,” retorted Mr. Maitland, “why may it not be a pock?”

  “Because there is one of them,” said Dr. Wagstaffe. “Whoever heard of one pock?” He turned and walked out of the room as if trailed by robes of victory.

  “Don’t you worry sir,” said Lizzy. “We’d all much rather have one small pock, than the smallpox.”

  Mr. Maitland was gratified to hear someone from the other side of the barrier agree. “Man’s a sanctimonious bag of vapors,” said a clear, light voice from the back corner. “I’ve seen inoculations in the East, and now I’ve seen ’em here, and I’ll tell anyone you please that your incisions and eruptions are the very same as those I’ve observed in Constantinople.”

  The whole room turned to look at the speaker. Lizzy and Mary stood up so as to be able to see; after a moment, even Mrs. Tompion joined them. He was a slight fellow with a black mustache, leaning casually back in an armchair by the fire. He had affected, as some of London’s eastern merchants and travelers did, the clothing of the East: a glimmering caftan that seemed to have been made of gold softened until it flowed like water, a red velvet turban, and a jewel in one ear. But the voice was honeyed English. “And that is not a few, you can be sure. For my money, sir, you can also be sure that none of your patients will ever again be infected with the smallpox.”

  “Much obliged for your kind words of support, sir,” said Mr. Maitland, making his way through the crowd. “Might I beg the pleasure of your acquaintance?”

  The man stood and thrust out his hand. “Mr. Cook, sir. Turkey merchant. Pleasure is all mine.”

  “Not at all,” said Mr. Maitland. “Might I offer you some refreshment in a more auspicious environment, sir, where we may discuss the matter further?”

  Lizzy sighed as Mr. Maitland led Mr. Turkey-Cook away. She would dearly like to have heard their conversation.

  In the carriage at the front gate, the man sat back and watched Mr. Maitland with bright dark eyes. “Where shall we go?”

  “Child’s Coffeehouse, I think. Much the best in the vicinity for intellectual discussion. Unless you have another preference, my lady?”

  “Damn,” said Lady Mary.

  The surgeon raised a brow, but she waved him off. “As long as I am dressed like a man, I will talk like one. How long have you known?”

  “You may swear like a sailor, my lady, and I would still know your voice. How long have you been growing that mustache?”

  “As long as I have been feeding my girl’s ridiculous rat of a dog—never did like small dogs, but this one has at last proved its worth,” she said, patting the black fuzz carefully glued to her lip. “Except that it does rather make me want to sneeze.”

  “Everyone sneezes in Child’s. Great deal of snuff. And Turkish tobacco too.”

  “Then we are still going?” She sounded like a young girl being granted permission
to attend her first ball.

  He shrugged. “It is your lark, my lady. So long as you allow me to maintain my ignorance, I will maintain your disguise. For a price.”

  “Which is?” she said sharply. Through the carriage windows, the dome of St. Paul’s loomed large and close overhead, and then disappeared altogether as they rolled into the churchyard and drew up at the door of Child’s.

  “Just regale the company with lovely stories of successful inoculation.”

  For two hours, “Mr. Cook” happily drew a smoking, sneezing circle of men—clergy, proud university wits, poets, and booksellers—close around her as she spun tale after salacious Turkish tale, until the men supposed they had stumbled into Aladdin’s cave rather than Child’s Coffee house. They ended with a carousing toast to the undoubted success of the Newgate experiment.

  “Who is that ferret-faced fellow glowering in the corner?” she asked as they were leaving. “He looks even more like a rat than Mary’s dog.”

  Mr. Maitland glanced over and groaned. “Isaac Massey. Apothecary at Christ’s, and therefore my esteemed colleague.”

  Mr. Massey began to rise, as if he might step over to speak to them. One glance at the Machiavellian smile on Lady Mary’s face made Mr. Maitland take her elbow and firmly steer her out the door and into his coach.

  “As it is, Dr. Wagstaffe will already know everything we’ve said before we even reach your door,” he said to her protest, “and will be sharpening his knives. He already feels he needs to discredit me. I would prefer he didn’t feel the need to flay me alive as well.”

  * * *

  The next day, Friday the eighteenth, Alcock’s pocks looked the same as the day before, though fuller and larger. Unfortunately, his fever had soared, which had nothing to do with the smallpox. He had jail fever.

  Mr. Maitland instantly quarantined him from the others. Lizzy begged to be allowed to nurse him, but Mr. Maitland adamantly refused. “I have no protection to offer you from jail fever, my dear, but distance. It is a highy contagious and malignant fever, and I cannot risk losing you. It was a fine offer, however,” he said as her face fell. “Take care of the others,” he suggested.

  She did, though they didn’t much need it. Their only real discomfort came from their incisions, which bloomed larger by the day and ran copiously.

  “Haven’t we grown nice?” said Mrs. Tompion with a yawn. “Too particular to abide so much as a smear of dirt on our sleeves.”

  Wiping her arms and her leg yet again, Lizzy looked curiously at the thick yellow pus oozing out of her. Dirt was not really what she would have called it. It looked more like rancid butter, though it smelled considerably worse.

  On Saturday morning, Mr. Maitland stopped in to see Alcock first, and emerged in a rage. “Do you know what that Alcock has done in the night?” he roared. “He has taken a pin and pricked every last pustule he could come at.”

  Lizzy felt giggles rising and quickly looked at her feet and coughed.

  “Yes, Alcock was feverish. Yes, he was possibly delirious,” Mr. Maitland reprimanded the staff. “But you are being paid to watch him, not to watch him make a hash of himself and the experiment, all at once.”

  The remains of Alcock’s pustules were already crusting; a few had already scraped off. Most were still ringed by red: but as far as watching the development of inoculated pocks, Alcock’s were ruined. With perverse solidarity, his incisions stopped running too.

  Across the next two days, the others’ pocks also began to dry up, though their incisions still ran. Then even those slowed and began to dry up.

  Applebee’s, read Mrs. Tompion, was now grumbling that “any Person that expects to be hang’d may make Use of it, if they please,” to get off scot free. Mr. Maitland was inclined to interpret this as an inside-out compliment. “They smell defeat,” he said with a smile.

  Neither Dr. Wagstaffe nor Dr. Freind proved ready to surrender, however. “It is no true smallpox,” they insisted as invited doctors assembled for a final consultation. “There has been no regular rash,” Dr. Wagstaffe said with contempt, “except in Alcock and that girl who had it stuffed up her nose. In the others, it is more likely to have been the chicken pox, and therefore cannot possibly have made the prisoners proof against future infection.”

  “The prisoners did not have many pocks,” conceded Sir Hans. “However, the second incisions, by which such a vast discharge has been made, may have been a mistake. They seem to have impeded the eruption, rather than contributing toward it. Perhaps they drained too much of the poison.”

  “First you had it that the second incisions were the solution,” objected Dr. Wagstaffe. “Now you point to them as the problem.”

  “Furthermore,” proclaimed Sir Hans, “the prisoners’ experience of the practice answers the Turkish descriptions exactly. The pocks that did ripen have followed the development of natural pocks, though with more speed and less fullness. In conclusion, we firmly believe the prisoners to be, in all respects, safe from any future infection.”

  “Preposterous,” said Dr. Wagstaffe over the applause, in exactly the same tones he had said it the very first day. “And premature, as well,” he added.

  Later, as Sir Hans and Dr. Steigerthal were taking their leave of Mr. Maitland, Sir Hans shook his head and said, “Odious as Dr. Wagstaffe is, I am sorry to say, he has a point. I fear we must devise another test, somehow, to demonstrate the protection.”

  “No,” said Mr. Maitland. “No more tests.”

  “Think on it,” said Sir Hans.

  On August 24, Mr. Maitland purged Alcock and Cawthery, to clear their systems of the last remaining poison. He did not bother with Evans. Purge all his poison, and there’d be nothing left, he thought.

  He had ordered drafts for the three women as well, but when they were brought in to the women, they refused to drink. “It’s not the right time of the month for a purge, sir,” said Lizzy uncomfortably. “Not for all three of us, as of this morning.”

  He checked with the laundresses, just to be certain, but they assured him it was just as Lizzy said: all three women had begun menstruating within fifteen minutes of each other.

  He sighed. The proclamation of victory would have to be postponed.

  Four days later, Mary North unaccountably washed in cold water. Even more unaccountably, the wardens let her. She went down with a violent colic, which lasted near two days and gave all the doctors a fright. All they needed now was to have her die of stupidity within sight of triumph. The opposition would not allow it to be a cold; they would have it that it was the inoculation.

  Sir Hans read a stern lecture to the staff. Mr. Maitland, for the second time, lost his temper, this time with his patients.

  “After all that risk, and in sight of pardon, must you come close to killing yourselves through idiocy?” he said irritably, pacing back and forth in the women’s chamber.

  “I could not stand the smell,” whimpered Mrs. North. “Not one minute longer, I couldn’t.” And then she doubled up in pain again.

  Lizzy looked at Mr. Maitland reproachfully, and he stomped out of the room.

  He was tempted, on the way home, to wonder whether Lady Mary’s suspicions of knavish physicians were not so far off after all. Perhaps Dr. Wagstaffe—No. He would not go there. Not without evidence.

  Two days later, on Wednesday, August 30, Mrs. North was still griping, but the pains had weakened to nips. Pushed by Sir Hans and Dr. Steigerthal, Mr. Maitland refused to wait any longer. Served up purges again, all three women drank them down. Along with everything else in their bellies, the potions carried off the last of Mary North’s colic pains.

  The next day, the men took their second purge; and on the first of September, the women swallowed theirs.

  For all intents and purposes—save the all important papers of pardon—the experiment was over.

  That evening at home, Mr. Maitland sat down to draft the report that Sir Hans Sloane would take to the Princess of Wales, and then to the king
himself. The papers, at any rate, had said the king had demanded an accounting.

  The experiment has perfectly answered Dr. Timonius’s account of this practice, and also the experience of all who have seen it in Turkey, he wrote. A doodle grew into a turkey cock; he shook his head and scratched it out. He had to focus on the here and now. On London, not Constantinople. On Newgate. He began again. Considering the subjects’ age, habit of body, and circumstances . . . He stopped again. He had to be precise, but he did not like sounding so ichie nor ochie. Wavery-quavery, Lady Mary would have said. He especially did not like Sir Hans frittering on about still more tests.

  He threw down the pen and sat back in his chair. After a few moments, he drove himself forward to the edge of his seat. He dipped the pen firmly in the ink. At the bottom of the page, he dashed off one more sentence in uncharacteristically large letters, sweeping back beneath it in a flourishing underline:

  It has been successful far beyond my expectation.

  7

  AN HOUR OF MOURNING

  Dock Square, Boston

  Wednesday, August 30, 1721

  ZABDIEL unwrapped the unbound proof sheets of his new book—his book!—and looked at them lying heavy and solid on the parlor table with a curious satisfaction and a pride that startled him. He had hurried that morning, inoculating Reverend Mr. Colman’s nephew as promised and visiting all his other patients, both natural and inoculated, in time to snatch one hour for dinner—and savor the new wonder of authorship. He was lifting the sheets from their wrapping when he heard a high-pitched bellowing below. He glanced out the window and saw Mary Dixwell puffing up the street, wailing and blubbering. He stepped quickly back, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Without bothering to look up, she rushed right up to the shop door and began rapping in desperation, pausing only to press her nose against the curving glass of his bay window. Surely she could see that the shop was shut up for the dinner hour?