by Brandy Purdy
A few days later, Pirto bundled me into a warm, fur-lined cloak, and, with Mrs. Forster fluttering about and fussing over me, and the children holding tightly to my hands and crowding close, promising, “We’ll protect you, Amy!” I carefully descended the stairs for the first time since I had arrived at Cumnor. They took me out into the park, to see the pond, though it was iced over, so there were no frogs to be seen, and settled me on a stone bench to be warmed by the frail wintry gilt of the afternoon sun. And Mrs. Forster took the opportunity to introduce me to the other two ladies who lodged at Cumnor, each occupying a wing of her own.
First she introduced me to the imperious and formidable Mrs. Owen, the ancient, white-haired mother of Cumnor’s owner, Dr. Owen. Her wits and tongue remained as sharp as newly-honed razors despite her years, and she expressed her opinions with such utter and adamant conviction, one would have thought God Himself had descended from Heaven to present them to her chiseled on stone tablets, as if they were as sacred and inviolable as the Ten Commandments. She prodded my hip with her cane and bade me turn ’round for her inspection, then gave a grunt that left the question dangling of whether she approved of me or not.
Then there was an aging beauty named Elizabeth Oddingsells who emphasized her voluptuous charms to the fullest degree with dramatic and expert use of henna, rouge, kohl, tight lacing, and a skillful dressmaker with more than a touch of flamboyance in his or her needle. It was only just after breakfast, and she was wearing peacock feathers in her hair. She showed an amazing amount of bosom despite the cold, taking the court fashion for low bodices to a most daring extreme, which provoked Mrs. Forster to lean in close and whisper into my ear that she was known to even rouge her nipples and on many an occasion had suffered the “accidental embarrassment” of having her breasts pop out the top of her gown. “But don’t you be fooled by it, if it happens—and it will, if you stay long enough at Cumnor—she used to practice making it happen when she was a girl and by now has it down to an art. Some women are content to smile coyly and bat their eyelashes, but that’s not enough for Lizzy Oddingsells—she has to burst out of her bodice. She even did it once while feigning to faint at my uncle’s funeral and had every man there rushing to help her. One man forgot to watch where he put his feet and fell into the open grave in his haste to reach her.”
I found Mrs. Forster’s manner toward Mrs. Oddingsells curiously frosty, colder than mere disapproval merited, and after the introductions had been made and Mrs. Oddingsells had retreated to sit some distance away with her peacock-plumed head bent over her embroidery, Mrs. Forster confided their history to me.
“If I were you, my dear Amy, I would not get too close to Lizzy Oddingsells. She’s a sly one and more like than not to smile in your face one day and stab you in the back the next; she has a habit of betraying her friends.” She went on to explain that in their girlhood they had been the very best of friends. “We were so close, people thought us joined at the hip; she was like a big sister to me. Now ...” She sighed and shook her head. “Well, let’s just say that red bodice she is wearing is an apt choice. She’s my husband’s harlot, and there’s no use denying it or trying to sugarcoat it; the truth is what it is.”
The affair had begun when Mrs. Forster was “enceinte,” she said delicately, patting her stomach to make sure I got her meaning, in case I did not know this fashionable French word that ladies now preferred to use because they thought it sounded prettier and more elegant than to say that they were “with child” or “pregnant.”
“Men have their needs and are prone to straying, like randy tomcats, at such a time,” she continued, and by the way she spoke and shrugged, so plain and matter-of-fact, I gathered that Mrs. Forster was not overly troubled by this and simply accepted it as the way of the world and a woman’s lot.
But what she could never forgive or forget was “that Lizzy Oddingsells’s putting herself forward like the brazen slut she is and luring my husband into her bed! Afterward, she tried to tell me she had done it for my sake, and for my children, saying better that it be her, my best friend, who had me and my babies in her heart, than some other woman who would use her wanton wiles to put money in her purse and jewels and silk gowns upon her person, and take food out of our mouths and clothes off our backs for the glory and greed of her own self. Humph!” Mrs. Forster’s exclamation showed just what she thought of Mrs. Oddingsells’s charitable explanation. “If my children and I did not live in such proximity to her, I would wish the plague upon her! If she fell facedown in a mud puddle, I would not stoop to help her up; rather, I would plant my foot on the back of her head and gladly hold her down and watch her drown!”
After these harsh and heated words, Mrs. Forster flashed me a smile and patted my hand. “I know that you, my dear Amy, will understand exactly how I feel,” she said in what was obviously a discreetly veiled reference to my husband’s dalliance with the Queen.
I nodded and assured her that I did, though I was right sorry, I said, to see what began as such a loving and happy friendship end in such gall and bitterness.
The next person Mrs. Forster introduced me to was a Dr. Walter Bayly, who had just set up his practice in Oxford. Robert had made inquiries about the various physicians practicing near Cumnor and had settled on this promising young man as the perfect one to undertake my cure. He had even sent him potions prepared by the Queen’s own apothecary to give to me, including more hemlock pills, explaining that I was “sorely heavy with an overabundance of melancholy, but, like a naughty child, My Lady is reluctant to take her medicine, and I hope you, good Dr. Bayly, can persuade her to do what is best for her; I am putting my trust entirely in you.” I know he wrote these words, as Dr. Bayly gently chided me for my recalcitrance and read me this snippet of my husband’s letter, saying afterward, with a cajoling smile, “Now, we must not let Lord Robert down.”
He was a very kind and comely young man, tall, lean, and red-haired with eyes the pale green color of gooseberries. And, according to Mrs. Forster, local gossip said that since his arrival many ladies had found need to consult him, for their own sake or that of their children, even for the most trifling ailments that they could have easily treated themselves with their own grandmothers’ remedies: time, rest, and common sense. Even Mrs. Oddingsells had consulted him because she always broke out in a rash after eating strawberries, and Dr. Bayly had calmly advised her not to eat them.
Like a court gallant, he kissed my hand when we met and sat by my bed and exchanged pleasantries with me, putting me right at ease, before he inquired about what ailed me. But when I bared my breast to him, he went as white as milk. He stepped quickly away from me and went to stand by the window, staring out, bracing himself against the stone sill.
With his back still turned to me, he asked what had been done for me thus far. I told him of the remedies Pirto and I had tried when we first thought it merely an abscess, but when I mentioned the hemlock pills Robert had given me, prescribed by the Queen’s own physician, he spun ’round abruptly with his whole body atremble and his eyes staring wide, like a man who had just been frightened out of his mind.
I felt a sudden coldness like a shawl of ice thrown over my shoulders and a prickling upon the nape of my neck and turned to see that the phantom gray friar was standing beside my bed, like a sentinel keeping watch over me. For a moment I wondered if Dr. Bayly could see him too, but I knew better than to ask, lest he think me mad.
Dr. Bayly made a valiant effort to compose himself. He swallowed hard, and in a jumbled rush of words spoken so fast I could barely make sense of them, he said, if I heard aright, that I had no need of the physick my husband had supplied for me. He thought the suffering the hemlock pills would cause would far outweigh any slight benefit that might be derived from taking them. With sorrow pooled within his eyes, he said that he was sorry, “so very sorry,” but there was nothing he could do for me, that I was in God’s hands and must trust Him to protect me and effect my cure if such was His desire. And then he
was gone, rapidly mumbling something about rest, prayer, and fresh air.
And he never did come back to see me, not even when I worsened and Mrs. Forster, wringing her hands and unable to bear my pain, sent for him and begged him to help me; still he declined to treat me, to interfere or risk being blamed for something that was none of his doing and that he wanted no part of. He was, after all, a young man just starting out in his profession, and if my death were laid upon his shoulders, it would be a burden he could never shake off. And if those higher placed so desired it, he might even pay for my death with his own life to disguise the misdeeds of others.
“No, Madame,” he said adamantly to Mrs. Forster, in a voice loud enough for me to hear through my half-opened door, which was as far as he would come, “better that I walk away now and have no part of this. I shall write to Lord Robert and tell him that in my opinion his lady has no need of the physick he recommends and that there is nothing I can do for her and that I must decline to undertake her treatment. If he disagrees, then with all due respect, better that he seek the advice of a physician with greater experience of her particular malady. And, in confidence, I tell you, Madame, I will not be hanged to cover another’s sin!”
And in truth I could not fault him, and I readily forgave him. Why should he throw away his life and a promising career to be Robert’s scapegoat? Had I been in Dr. Bayly’s shoes, I think I might have done the same, though it would have hurt my heart and weighed heavily upon my conscience to turn my back on a soul in the throes of so much suffering. But if I could do nothing to ease that suffering, why should I risk being blamed when the inevitable occurred, when it could mean the gallows or ruin for me and the loss of everything I had worked so hard to achieve? Dr. Bayly was not a bad man. He did the right and honorable thing and walked away rather than let Robert buy and use him for his own ends.
The days came and went. Sometimes they passed so fast, I lost count of them. Sometimes they dragged by like convicts trudging along weighed down by chains and shackles. My once-rosy cheeks were now as white as chalk, and even my gums had lost their healthy pink hue. My whole body was sore and ached as though I had been beaten and was mottled with bruises I could not explain; I knew I had done nothing to cause them. I suffered fevers that waxed and waned without rhyme or reason. Some days I found the strength to walk; other days I crawled. Often I awoke feeling as though I had not slept at all. I tried to rise but instead fell back into the arms of Sleep. Some days doctors came, an endless procession of them; they came to bleed me, and I would lie and watch listlessly as my blood poured into a basin, and marvel at how watery pale it looked, as though the bloom had faded from my blood as well as from my rosy cheeks. But the doctors just smiled and said I must eat plenty of rare red meat, juicy and red, the bloodier the better, even though the very thought of it made me sick, and drink red wine, and stuff myself with all the red berries my stomach could hold, all red like blood to brighten and strengthen my own.
I preferred to be outside in the park whenever I could, for Cumnor Place itself, despite Mrs. Forster’s reassuring words upon my arrival, continued in a state of cold, perpetual gloom, which I could never grow accustomed to. Every time the wind rattled the windows, my heart felt as if it were trying to leap out of my chest and run away, just like I wanted to run away, but no matter how much I wanted to win back my life, to outpace Death, I could not run away from myself, from the disease and pain-racked body that housed my soul. There was no way to escape my fate and nowhere to hide from it. Death’s hand cupped and fondled my breast like a lover, but His touch withered and rotted instead of excited, it festered and inflamed my flesh instead of my passions, and it gave pain in the place of pleasure.
Mrs. Forster tried to help me all she could. I drank barley water until I feared my bladder would burst just to please her. And I tried every remedy she recommended and tested the skills of this wise or that cunning woman, even those reputed to be witches, who came on the sly in the night to dose me with mysterious tonics and elixirs, some sweet, others bitter, to apply poultices either hot or cold, and to smear ointments on my breast that smelt so bad they made me even sicker. In one form or another—salves, ointments, poultices, plasters, and gums—my breast was slathered with olive oil, turpentine, rhubarb, castor oil, quicksilver, bitterage of gold, sulfur, vinegar, licorice, tincture of lead, a paste made of fox lungs and tortoise livers, crushed coral, chalk, and boar’s tooth, pulverized pearls, and alabaster, oil of roses, hemlock, cinnamon, deadly nightshade, treacle, mandrake, valerian, linseed oil, goat’s dung, crab’s eyes, and viper’s fat. But most of them hurt more than they helped. I would lie in my bed, my breast stinging, burning, and throbbing, impaled by stabbing pains beneath the dressing, and tears would fill my eyes, I felt such hopelessness and despair.
Upon Mrs. Forster’s recommendation, I consulted a boastful Frenchwoman who described herself as a “wise wizardess.” She thought the flesh of my afflicted breast had a look she described as “peau d’ orange,” like the pitted skin of an orange peel, and she spent hours rubbing my breast with oranges and put me on a diet of nothing but the juice and flesh of oranges for a month, hoping to cure “like with like.” But this “cure” only left me with a sore and burning throat and my skin sticky with the rancid odor of rotting flesh masked by the smell of oranges. Some even recommended charms that I should wear on my person or uttered spells over my body. There was a Cornish woman, whom I felt sure must be a witch, who burned seven crabs alive whilst she chanted and danced naked beneath a full moon, then mixed them with oil and rubbed the resulting concoction onto my breast with a heron’s feather. Another tried to burn the cancer out by applying a coating of sulfuric acid; he and his assistant held me down as I thrashed and screamed. Afterward, my breast was so very red, inflamed, and swollen that it bled at the slightest touch. Another told me to be brave as he touched a hot iron to the bulging, tumorous mass. And other doctors, both dubious and esteemed, traveling charlatans and nostrum peddlers, came and went, with their leeches and lancets, enemas, plasters, purges, and potions, all of them leaving me feeling more tired and spent and mired in even greater pain and despair than when they found me.
Mrs. Owen, who had been a wife and mother to two fine doctors, did her best to recall remedies that might ease if not cure me, and swore by the efficacy of enemas for all human ails. She fed me licorice pastilles until the very sight or mention of them sickened me and served me weekly with a vile and nasty purging beer in which watercress, treacle, licorice, rhubarb, red dock, raisins, honey, rue, lime, garlic, liverwort, feverfew, sassafras, figs, sugar, comfrey root, aniseed, lavender, saffron, egg yolks, and mashed hazelnuts were blended into the strongest beer.
They all meant well, I am sure, but nothing really helped, though, to make them feel better, I nodded and smiled and thanked them and said I felt a little better even when I didn’t at all.
But it was all to no avail. And many a night I woke up thrashing and screaming, my face wet with tears from a dream in which they all—Robert; his royal paramour, my jewel-encrusted enemy, the Queen; all the doctors and charlatans, witches and wisewomen I had seen; and Mr. and Mrs. Forster, Mrs. Owen, and Mrs. Oddingsells, the Hydes, and Sir Richard Verney—ran after me, chasing me, each touting a particular remedy and brandishing it high in the air—bottles of pills and potions, leeches, lancets, purgatives, charms, magical spells, roots and herbs they swore were a sovereign remedy—whilst I, in a stumbling, fear-blind panic fled before them, desperate to outrun them and these cures that were supposed to make me better but instead only made me more ill, running as fast as I could, encumbered by my full, heavy skirts, whilst Fear tugged at my hair, pulling me back, slowing me down, dragging me to the ground. And they all fell on me at once, forcing my mouth open wide, cramming and pouring their pills and potions down, forcing me to swallow, opening my veins to bleed me, putting leeches to suckle on my diseased breast, and lifting my skirts to inflict the immodest indignity of an enema. It was a horrible dream, and I
hated it so much that if I wasn’t so very tired, I would have been afraid to go to sleep. I always awoke exhausted and feeling as if I had been running for my life the whole night through.
I think my illness made Robert repent some of his former cruelty and indifference, at least a little, at times. He seemed to remember and think of me more often after I became ill. After I came to Cumnor, I began to regularly receive pretty parcels from London. One day it might be an elegant black velvet hat fringed with gold, a cloak and muff made of the most magnificent sables lined with golden satin very like the color of my hair, a bolt of heavenly blue silk to make a new gown, or green velvet slippers the color of the grass to remind me in winter of when I used to walk barefoot and carefree in summertime, a bed gown of buttery yellow damask festooned with ribbons and lace, a rainbow of embroidery silks or a cunning mechanical songbird that actually sang, with its feathers beautifully enameled, and my wonderful green chair, soft as a cloud that an angel in Heaven might have envied, all abloom with a garden of embroidered flowers, and, though he had never given a thought to it before, now Robert always made sure there were fragrant apple logs for my fire, just like I always had at Syderstone and Stanfield Hall. They were all such kind and thoughtful presents, not something just snatched from a shelf in a shop or from amongst a peddler’s wares; it was as though each one had been chosen carefully. And, for a time at least, I let myself dare to dream, and be deceived, that the cancer had done what I had been trying for so long but failed miserably to do—revive Robert’s tender feelings and remind him how much he used to care for me. But, oh, at what an exorbitant price! Now, if ever he came to my bed again, I had a body that would turn his lust to disgust!
