Daughters of the Doge (Richard Stocker)

by Edward Charles

  Edward Charles

  PAN BOOKS

  To Sheila, who understands when my eyes glaze over and

  I go off to Tudor England or Renaissance Venice.

  Contents

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  PART 5

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  PART 1

  Into the Unknown

  CHAPTER 1

  October the 29th 1555 – Wilmington, Devon, England

  The Bear Inn was quiet as we arrived, with just the usual drone of conversation and the comforting smell of warm bread, warm men and warm beer. It was not to last. As soon as he saw us, the man began to scream.

  ‘Don’t take my leg off! Please God! For pity’s sake, don’t take my leg off!’

  He was lying at the foot of the stairs, down which he must have fallen; his leg looked grotesque. My companion knelt beside him and put a reassuring hand on his brow. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t lose your leg. Lie quietly and tell me your name.’

  ‘Sam, sir. Sam Darkstone, I am a merchant.’ He looked imploringly at each of us, one after the other. ‘Please, gentlemen. I can’t do my job if I lose my leg, and I have a wife and six children to feed.’

  ‘Well, Sam, my name is Tom, Thomas Marwood, and I am a doctor. My assistant here is Richard Stocker and together we are going to help you – that is, as soon as this rabble gives us room to breathe.’ My good friend and mentor turned to the crowded passageway filled with silent, shuffling men, all dressed in working clothes and staring awestruck at the gruesome sight. ‘Stand back there and give this man some air.’

  Thomas exercised his authority to limited effect. Reluctantly, those at the front made an effort to retreat, but were prevented from doing so by the crowd behind them, who continued to press forward.

  The patient was lying awkwardly, his back twisted across the step, and his right leg turned at a seemingly impossible angle. His breeches had been undone at the knee and his hose were ripped open to expose the flesh of his lower leg, which was dominated by a great, hard white lump – as big as my fist, although flatter, stretching the skin to its limits. Above it was a peculiar dent where his knee would normally be.

  Thomas looked up at me as he crouched beside the patient. ‘Do you see what’s happened, Richard?’

  ‘Is it his kneecap?’ I replied uncertainly.

  ‘Correct. His patella. Now, with luck and his cooperation, we can put this right.’ He turned back to the cringeing patient.

  ‘Sam, I need you to trust me now. I know your leg hurts, and it will hurt a bit more before we have finished, but I need to move you so that we can make it better. Just do exactly as I say and don’t fight me. Is that understood? Now, ignore the pain, try to relax and let your leg go loose.’ The sweat poured from the man’s face as he nodded his uncertain agreement, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘Richard, hold him under his armpits, so his body cannot rotate.’

  I did as I was bid and watched as Thomas slowly straightened the man’s legs, the patient whimpering as he did so. As soon as Sam was lying straight, Thomas, kneeling, lifted the right leg until its heel rested on his own left shoulder. Sam whimpered again, but dared not cry out. ‘Now, steady does it.’ Supporting the straightened leg with his shoulder, Thomas pressed the patella firmly and insistently with the butt of his hand.

  The loud ‘pop’ made the crowd gasp and jump back nervously. They gasped again, this time in disbelief, when they saw that the straining lump was gone and the knee looked normal once more.

  ‘Well, look at that! It’s a bloody miracle, that’s what it is,’ called a red-faced farmer at the front of the crowd. ‘It’s a bloody miracle. Look at that leg – whole again.’

  The patient lay still, not daring to look at his leg, waiting to discover what next was required of him. ‘Come, Sam, give me your hand, and rise up, for I do believe you can walk again.’ The patient shook his head, apparently not believing it was over. ‘Come, man, it is done. Let me help you stand.’ Gently but firmly, being careful not to undo the good he had just done, Thomas raised him to his feet and Sam began to walk unsteadily and disbelievingly towards the crowd, who retreated backwards before him, like a herd of nervous yearling bullocks.

  ‘Here, Sam, take this,’ shouted the landlord, and passed a foaming tankard to the astonished patient, who downed it in one draft.

  ‘Have you done that operation before, Thomas?’

  The excitement had subsided, and we had found ourselves a quiet corner of the inn, to one side of the fire and away from draughts. Before us on the table were good bread, local cheese, strong pickles made by the landlord’s wife and tankards of fine ale. My friend shook his head and grinned. ‘No, neither done it nor seen it done, Richard.’

  ‘Then how did you . . .?’

  He reached across the table. His eyes were merry and there was the tiniest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. I had seen that look before, and knew it signalled that a lesson was about to be imparted. ‘Pass me your notebook.’

  I reached down into my bag and drew out my notebook, which he had taught me to carry at all times. He nodded and began leafing through the pages, finally turning the open book towards me on the table. ‘There. What do you see?’

  It was a drawing of a leg – and, I thought, qui
te a good one – from just above the knee to the foot. I was proud of that drawing, and seeing it again brought back the memories of the patient whose leg it was, and the care I had taken, in not very good light, to capture the contours of the bones, joints and muscles. ‘It’s a leg; my brother’s leg. John Stocker’s, drawn as he lay on the farmhouse table, just over the valley there, at Lower Halstock. That’s the good leg and on the next page is the broken one.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘See how well you have captured the contours of the knee? When I was learning medicine in Padua back in 1533, I watched a leg like that being dissected by one of the professors. The advantage I have over you is that I have seen that joint slowly and carefully taken apart, and all these years later, I could still remember it, because I, too, made a drawing and attached notes to it. I still have the notebook back at home. What do we say?’

  ‘Observe, draw, and attach notes.’ I knew the chant by heart.

  ‘Exactly. Only by doing so at the time did I imprint the detail of that anatomy lesson upon my mind. Many times, in the twenty-two years since, have I looked again at that drawing and refreshed the memory. That is how we learn. We observe, we draw what we have observed, and we attach notes about condition, colour, and so on. When we get home I will lend you that old notebook, so you may copy the drawing in question, while the image remains in your mind. Then you will never forget.’

  ‘But how did you know how to put it back? How did you even know that it would go back?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘I simply took the view that if it had managed to jump out with pressure, and with the skin still unbroken, then careful pressure in the right direction should, with luck, put it back again.’

  We finished our meal, and our conversation returned to the events of the night before.

  I had been learning the art and science of medicine from Thomas for the last eighteen months, ever since returning home from London in the June of 1554. He had been good to me at that time, when I was still recovering from the dreadful events of the February of that year.

  Having been a servant in the Grey family for three years, I had watched as, in one brutal blow, the executioner had ended the life of Lady Jane, whom I had grown to respect and love in my final seven months with her in the Tower of London. Ten days later I had watched again as her father, my employer, the Duke of Suffolk, had lost his head on Tower Hill. And between those dates I had finally lost the love of my life, Jane’s sister, Lady Catherine, as she was required to return to Court, by command of Queen Mary In a single month, my life seemed to have crashed around me: Thomas Marwood, neighbour, friend and local doctor, had accepted the burden of putting it back together again.

  If anything, England had become an even more threatening place since then, and although in Devon I was distant from the worst of the persecutions and atrocities, still, for a committed Protestant, as I now was, life was precarious. In the last six months alone, it was said that fifty-four Protestants had gone to the flames. Life in Devon with Dr Marwood was good: I was learning a worthy trade and felt able to contribute to the community we served in Honiton and the surrounding valleys. But every day the persecutions nagged away at me and, since it was not in my nature to withdraw quietly from a confrontation, I became increasingly concerned that one day I would be tested and would have to defend my faith – perhaps with my life.

  Thomas understood and accepted my position, despite his own strong commitment to the Catholic faith.

  Life was not easy for him at the moment either. This year had been characterized by endless rains, which had ruined the crops across the country, and the failure of the harvest had resulted in famine and weakness throughout many counties. Thomas was worried and said the weakness rendered men vulnerable to disease. More than once in the last month I had heard him say, ‘I shall not be surprised if we see a new outbreak of the plague or some such pestilence.’ Week by week we waited. Then in the midst of all this gloom, an opportunity finally presented itself.

  The letter was from Edward Courtenay, the earl of Devon. For different reasons, the earl was well known to both of us. I had first met him during my time at the Tower of London with Lady Jane Grey. Though subject to being searched on the way in and out, I was allowed to make the occasional visit outside and I had used these occasions to teach the earl horse-riding. He, too had been a prisoner in the Tower – for the last fifteen years – and, having finally been released by Queen Mary upon her succession to the throne, had found himself in the embarrassing position of being a noble lord who was barely able to ride. My own position as former Second Master of Horse to the Duke of Suffolk had resulted in my being recommended to him.

  Thomas knew him in what might be called a professional capacity, as he had been one of the doctors sent to review Courtenay’s condition during his later, brief reimprisonment by Queen Mary, this time at Kenninghall, immediately prior to his release. Both being Devon men, they had struck up an immediate friendship. Now released, the earl had been sent to Brussels, to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, but he was unhappy there and for months had been planning to escape to the sun and spend some time in Venice. The letter confirmed that his planned trip, which he had discussed with Thomas on a number of previous occasions, was now imminent and it invited Thomas and a companion to join him urgently.

  Thomas had jumped at the opportunity, having long yearned to make a return visit to Padua (another city in the Venetian Republic), where he had gained his knowledge of medicine years before. After a long discussion with Dorothy, his understanding wife, Thomas had sent a reply through a merchant sailing to Antwerp from Bridport, agreeing to meet on November the 18th in Louvain.

  And me? In truth, my motivations were partly negative. Under the influence of Lady Jane I had become a confirmed Protestant, but now I found myself in a country ruled with decreasing tolerance and increasing severity by the Catholic ‘Bloody Mary’. I was still unsure where my future lay, and the chance to escape for a while and to visit the greatest city in Europe seemed too good to miss. Thomas said it would also be an opportunity to visit the University of Padua and to see whether, as he had repeatedly insisted I should, I might enrol in the School of Medicine and begin my own career proper as a doctor; but in this I remained unsure, and the more Thomas tried to push me in that direction, the more I resisted it. Not that the life of a doctor didn’t appeal to me – it did, but at twenty years of age I wanted to shape my own life rather than have it dictated for me.

  And so, after months of loose discussion about the vague possibilities of such a journey, we began to make our own travelling arrangements.

  CHAPTER 2

  October the 30th 1556 – Stocker’s Farm, Coly Valley, Devon

  Unusually, my mother seemed reluctant to see me go; my mother, who had always been the one to push me into any challenge that might help me to make my way in the world, and who had been insistent that my brother John and I had a complete education.

  ‘Lord knows what you will get involved in in those foreign parts,’ she called from the dairy. As always, when she was embarrassed or upset, she had turned away and now shouted the words over her shoulder at me. ‘How long is this journey going to take? What is Dr Marwood’s poor wife going to do while he is away? Poor lamb, with those young ’uns and all.’

  ‘Now, Mother, don’t you worry about the doctor’s wife. She has two sisters in Honiton to help her with the children, and she is well provided for. In any case, she knows how important it is for Thomas to see his old friends again in Padua. We’ll only be away for three months or so.’

  ‘Ha!’

  Preceded by his three dogs, my father walked right into the middle of the conversation, as he always seemed to do when my mother and I were having words. He must have caught the back end of our argument, for he joined in, while all three of the dogs tried to jump up on my lap together.

  ‘You won’t be back before Christmas of next year, I’ll wager. All that way to travel and what will happen when you gets among them
noble ladies in Venice? Get yerself involved again, won’t ’ee? Just like up in Lunnon with that Lady Catherine sweetening you up and Lady Jane fillin’ yer head with Reformist nonsense. Just when the good doctor was getting yer head screwed back on the right way again.’

  ‘Don’t start on that, John. Richard’s religion is his own affair, even if it do seem a bit strange.’ Turning to take my side now, my mother saw Father in his mud-covered boots: ‘John Stocker. How many times have I told you? Get they muddy boots out of my kitchen! And they dogs. They belongs outside.’

  The dogs, knowing the rules as well as she did, and enjoying the chase, seemed to be grinning as they fled into the yard. I sat back against the inglenook and smiled. It was all so familiar: the animals, the warmth from the fireplace, the smell of Mother’s baking and this year’s bacon curing in the chimney above me. Home again. Nothing ever changed.

  ‘Anyway,’ my Mother shuffled back into the dairy, muttering over her shoulder again, ‘at least Richard came back from Lunnon a rich man! Look at him now: twenty years old, six-foot-and-more tall, and already wealthy. That’s what I calls progress.’

  Like my father, she had found it hard to come to terms with my love affair with Lady Catherine Grey and with Lady Jane’s impact upon my education and religious attitudes. I still found it strange: they had both been so keen to see me develop my education and to succeed, but when, having developed my own life at Court with the Duke of Suffolk and the Grey family, I returned home with views different from their own, both had been confused and upset.

  Over the last few months my mother had carefully avoided the issues of education and religion, instead bringing the conversation round to the very large amount of money I had received after selling the Spanish stallion and gold-leafed saddle presented to me by King Edward. I had not done anything with the money, which was being held for me by a banker in London until I found a suitable investment, but my mother did take pride in reminding her friends in Colyton that ‘Our Richard has done very well, and is now a wealthy man, you know.’