The Queene's Cure

by Karen Harper

  MEG WAITED UNTIL SHE CLOSED THE SHOP THAT AFTERNOON and could escape upstairs. Only then did she take from her canvas apron pocket Dr. Clerewell's note, which Nick had slipped her several hours ago. Ben was gone. Street noise still rose up from the Strand, but it seemed private and silent here above the shop.

  Meg wondered if she'd see the little girl today, Susanna Miller's youngest child, from the house directly across the way. These top stories leaned out so far that, if the shutters were open, it was easy to see in each other's places. Yes, there she was, running hither and thither about the Millers' main chamber. The golden-haired, giggling three-year-old vision made Meg's arms ache for her own babe sometimes.

  Before the sun sank over the tightly packed, gabled rooftops, she broke the wax seal and smoothed the note open on her knees.

  My Dear Mistress Wilton,

  Because we have forged a working partnership for particular cures and causes, I feel I may be so bold as to sue for your assistance in this matter, as you have helped so in another. To wit, I have a young, once-comely female patient who is sadly disfigured and afflicted with the scrofula or struma, which is also known as the King's—no, I reckon these days, more appropriately—the Queen's Evil.

  Your former days in service to our queen and your skill with herbal healings must have given you an intimate knowledge of this ceremony from former years. And, I believe, if I can but bring my patient to this traditional royal service on Wednesday at Westminster Abbey, our Gracious Majesty's mere touch may save this girl from a lifetime of misery—and I may accomplish my aim.

  “That's a good one,” Meg muttered. “Said he didn't believe in traditions in medicine, now wants to rely on the oldest healing ceremony I know.”

  But perhaps, she thought, it was his sad, once-comely female patient who begged him to get her into the healing ceremony. Meg wondered how old this comely girl was.

  And so, I implore you to let me know if you

  have attended or seen this age-old service, so that I

  might know what to expect and how I might

  position myself for best results.

  Meg's mind drifted to that ceremony. As one who fancied herself a healer in earlier days, before all the restrictions put on herbalists or apothecaries, Meg had been dazzled by the beauty of the ceremony and the power of her queen. Standing in the slant of sun through stainedglass windows, the queen touched and blessed each ill person. She presented each with a specially minted coin, a golden angel on a ribbon to wear around their poor, swollen necks.

  Gold angel, Meg thought, distracted from her reverie by the sound of giggling. She looked up to see the little Miller girl, waving through her window. Meg smiled and waved exuberantly back. That girl was a golden angel better than any queen's coin.

  Meg had seen that ceremony four times since Elizabeth had held the throne, twice while in her service, twice after she had been dismissed. Mostly the royal household physicians and those of the Royal College brought their patients to be healed of the disfiguring tumors and scabrous marks of the dread disease. But it was true that other doctors could bring their patients and hope the monarch turned aside to them too.

  It was tradition that French and English monarchs touched victims of glandular neck tumors. The affliction was known as the King's Evil, for superstitious folk of yore believed the monarch's touch could cause as well as cure the disease, and the unfortunate name stuck. The Tudors kept up the ancient practice, for the message to the people was a sound political one: God granted to his chosen sovereign, at least upon occasion, the Lord's own power to heal.

  Meg had already planned to sneak away from the shop to watch Her Grace this year. It was a marvelous opportunity to see her when she was not sweeping grandly past in a barge or on horseback or hidden in that damned coach of hers.

  Meg skimmed the rest of the note, rereading the end where Dr. Clerewell offered to treat Gil's muteness for however long that took and for no remuneration, so that the boy could regale them with tales of the palace. Tears prickled her eyelids. Yes, Meg thought, no matter that she risked Ben's throwing a fit if he ever learned she had spent hours on the day after next with Marcus Clerewell. She'd take the good doctor there and show him where to stand. If she could snag Nick first thing on the morrow before she and Ben took care of their unpleasant business in Chelsea, trying to collect a fee, she'd send him back with her reply.

  Before she took out pen and ink, Meg reluctantly closed the shutter, lit a candle, and built up the lowburning hearth fire. But at the last moment, she couldn't bear to burn the note that asked for her help and so graciously acknowledged her healing skills and former importance to the queen. Instead, she folded and stuffed it in the toe of her oldest darned stocking in the chest at the foot of the bed.

  IT WAS AFTER ELIZABETH HAD DINED ALONE THAT CECIL was announced again.

  “My men have brought Dr. John Caius in, Your Grace,” he told her, standing at the door to her privy chamber where she sat now alone. “And he's evidently as mad as a wet hen about being summoned so late at night.”

  “The pomposity of these men I have approved in their positions boggles the mind,” she told him, rising from the same table at which she'd worked all afternoon. “And Pascal?”

  “He's evidently gone home—to Chelsea, to be precise.”

  “Indeed?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “They used to say ‘All roads lead to Rome,’ but now I believe they lead to little Chelsea. Then mayhap we shall pass him on the river in the morn, for I am going to see the wigmaker.”

  The queen was in a foul mood, having put her stomach off her food by another row with Robin after crossquestioning his squire, then taking a quick glance at the most moldy, moth-eaten, and horribly hacked effigy she had ever seen. Its face was painted wood, not delicate plaster. Her memories of it, like her memories of how much she had so desperately desired Robin, were not to be trusted.

  Yet the man had admitted that his effigy's wig had come from Chelsea, and worse, that its gown had once been Elizabeth's, borrowed from the Wardrobe in Blackfriars, in another seeming coincidence she did not like. He swore up and down she'd given the gown to him when he'd merely hinted he needed one. It had made her furious that she no doubt would have done so once, that and more for the wretched man.

  “Let them fetch Dr. Caius in,” she ordered Cecil when she saw he was still staring at her, “but wait a moment until I go tell Ned Topside something. And stay, my lord, though I intend to do the talking.”

  THE PHYSICIAN ENTERED, ALL OBEISANCE AND SMILES. If he was nonplussed, he wasn't showing it. “I was so relieved to hear you are not ill, Maxima Regina,” he began, bowing low, “for to be called out so precipitously after dark usually bodes no good news for a physician.”

  “As you can see, I am hale and hearty,” she said and watched his quick, dark eyes assess her.

  “Then you wish to discuss our part in the King's— I mean, Queen's—Evil healing ceremony day-after-tomorrow?” he asked, either jumping to conclusions or playacting that he was innocent of what she intended to ask.

  “I would never take my time,” the doctor went on when she stared back at him, “to discuss diseases with the common people, but, of course, if you, Your Gracious Majesty, would like information or advice on anything, I am willing.”

  “How magnanimous of you,” she retorted, her voice steel-tipped as she folded her hands on the table before her. “Give me advice then, doctor, on why you and your colleagues have not yet found a medical cure for that dread disease called the Evil.”

  “I—why, of course, we have treatments for it, namely the family of herbs called scrophulariaceae. And the affliction is properly called tubercular adenitis.”

  “Quite a series of impressive tongue-twisters,” she observed, starting to rise. Cecil hastened forward from his post by the door to pull out her chair for her, then stepped away again. The queen leaned toward Caius on stiff arms over the table. “No doubt the mere mention of that disease scares its poor, untu
tored victims, but do not play your obscure language and knowledge games with me!”

  “Let me explain, Your Majesty,” Caius said, raising his hands as if to hold her off. “That grouping of herbs are selected for the glandlike tubers on their roots which mimic the human tumors. Therefore, learned medical minds deduce those must be meant as a sign of their specific curative power. In this instance, to whit, the herbs of figwort, speedwell, and foxglove, which—”

  “Which obviously do not heal scrofula and thereby necessitate this ceremony for the worst afflicted. As I have long preached to you, doctor of doctors,” she plunged on, rapping her knuckles on the table to emphasize her words, “more work … must be done … to heal and help … my people.”

  Here he got a coughing fit. She wondered if it wasn't from his bitter memories of being dismissed from her service as court physician in this very room.

  “Actually,” she said, after Cecil stepped forward to offer him a swig of ale and the doctor quieted a bit, “I sent for you to speak more of that effigy that so strangely appeared in my coach outside your Royal College. Such a cough,” she observed when he began to hack again. “You are quite well yourself, are you not, doctor?”

  He nodded, but when he spoke his eyes watered and his voice was not his own. “Neither I nor the others at the College know aught of that unfortunate incident, Your Majesty. Nor have we learned more in inquiring of our servants about it, et cetera.”

  “Then I must tell you that my inquiries so far,” she clipped out, “indicate I could both dismiss you from your position and have you sent to the Tower you have recently visited more than once without my express permission.”

  “The Tower?” he gasped, coughing again. “Merely because I treated those of your blood living there, Your Majesty?”

  “Treated them and tampered with matters of state.”

  “With what matters of state?” he whispered, apparently aghast.

  “I have it from Katherine Grey's own lips that you urged that her husband be allowed to see her when my wishes were quite the opposite. A fine cure that was, since she is—as you know and I did not until today— with child again!”

  “She was deeply melancholy in heart and mind, and it was affecting her health, Your Majesty.” His voice was still rough, but his cough seemed to have been scared out of him. “However, I assure you, I had no notion your lord lieutenant would leave them to their own devices. I was shocked to learn that—”

  “And saw fit not to tell me she was breeding another heir!” she accused, coming around the table at him so fast he fell back several steps. “And, of course, another heir to whom Catholic conspiracies could flock!”

  He jumped back again as she reached beside her to smack the table with a fist, splattering ink and sand from her writing pots. “And, doctor, she told me of the life mask your foreign friend has made of her face,” she cried, gesturing and pointing, “a face conveniently enough similar to mine as is the face on the effigy I found outside your door. Ned, now!” she called through the inward door she'd ordered left ajar.

  Ned Topside came in, carrying the red-wigged, stuffed effigy upright as if he had his arms around a real woman. Again it looked so real that he seemed to be embracing the queen herself from behind. He held it close before Dr. Caius's stunned face.

  “Where,” Elizabeth demanded, “is your Italian friend now, doctor, the one so skilled at masks and at dissecting corpses? Were you asking me for bodies so he might practice his forbidden arts here in my realm as he did in Catholic countries?”

  He gaped at the effigy's face, then back to her. If she had not known his deceit—the depths to which all men could stoop to serve themselves—she would have sworn he had never laid eyes on the mock queen before.

  “But this—this is made to look as if you—that is, as if it—has the small p-pox,” he stammered.

  “Are you informing me of that as if I am some simpleton? It is mockery at best and treason at worst!”

  “I—my friend is Stefano Natus, Your Majesty, a physician and a fine limner and sculptor who trained with me in Padua.” His gaze repeatedly darted from the effigy to her, then back again. He was visibly trembling now. “Our teacher there, the illustrious Andreas Versalius, was a genius in the art of anatomy. He taught all his pupils to dissect—for which he had to beg or steal executed cadavers. And he encouraged us to draw to the best of our ability what structures of the human form we found, muscles, bones, veins, organs, the body's innermost workings—but—but,” he rasped, as if he'd run out of breath, “we did not fashion effigies of those diseased.”

  Still shaking, he drew himself up to his full height and looked her straight in the eyes. “It is what our English physicians—your physicians—must needs do to propel your realm into the forefront of the medical arts, Your Majesty. Ad astra per ardua. It is why I implored you and yet implore you to allot us corpses, however much it seems to go against tradition, for no more true progress can be made otherwise. And yes, Your Majesty, I took Stefano Natus along once to see Katherine Grey, Lady Hertford, and knowing he was skilled in sculpting as well as drawing had him make a life mask of her.”

  “And this is it?” she demanded, pointing to the plaster face.

  “I have never seen that before,” he insisted, tugging down the cuffs of his robe over his wrists. “The life mask of Lady Hertford is in Padua, Italy, with Stefano Natus so that he might sculpt a bust of it when he has the time. I am innocent of all these dreadful, half-spoken allegations and beg you to simply allow me to do my duty as I see it. And that begins when I examine those who will be blessed at the healing ceremony to be certain that the victims of scrofula you touch have that disease the Lord God gives the monarch to heal and no other.”

  Now he left her breathless. Either he was indeed the man to lead her London Royal College of Physicians boldly into the future or the most cold and calculating liar she had yet ever seen.

  THE THAMES TIDE RUSHED TOWARD THE SEA THE NEXT morning. For the first time in two years, Elizabeth admitted to herself that she wished she had Meg Milligrew in her service so she could take her place in her supposed sickbed while she ventured out on a privy task dressed as Meg. But this plain gray cloak and hood lined with squirrel from her own wardrobe would have to do.

  Chelsea was a small, charming village but four miles beyond Westminster. Its proximity was a blessing, for the queen planned not to take long at this task of questioning the old wig-maker. Had Honoria Wyngate not been reported as so ancient, she would have sent for her. But then, she admitted she was somewhat curious to see Chelsea again.

  Ned and Jenks sat, nearly shoved off the ends of the bench by her wide skirts, on either side of her under the three-sided canopy of the same working barge she'd taken to the Tower yesterday. Gil sat cross-legged on a leather cushion at her feet, his drawing tools and paper in a canvas sack. Six men-at-oars and six guards completed their party.

  “Remember to keep a watch on passing crafts for that crafty Dr. Pascal on his way back from Chelsea,” the queen reminded them.

  “Your wit never fails you,” Ned told her. “Not even when you're scared out of your wits.”

  “I wish I could quip and laugh my way through this spiders' web of clues and crises,” she admitted, hitting her fist on her knee. “Who knows but it is Dr. Pascal and not Dr. Caius who is our primary quarry? After that makeshift shrine I saw in the Tower, I am coming to believe he is truly of unhinged character. How I'd like a glimpse inside Sir Thomas More's old home in Chelsea where Pascal now resides. He's obviously never forgiven the Tudors for condemning and beheading his beloved mentor.”

  “The old wig-maker may have known Sir Thomas too,” Ned posited, “and is not just a hireling, but a fullfledged accomplice.”

  “Let's not jump to too many conclusions,” Elizabeth warned. “But if Honoria Wyngate or her staff, if she has aught, can identify who bought the wig”—she glanced down at the bag Ned held—“then we can begin to lay the blame at someone's door. And I'll
warrant it's the same someone who bribed the missing lace girl and her lover to hand over my gown from the Royal Wardrobe.”

  “But didn't the girl tell Kat he sounded foreign and spoke fancy or some such?” Ned interjected.

  “Any educated person could flummox a lace girl,” Elizabeth said. “Even some medical Latin strung together would do; though, of course, if we are dealing with a group of plotters, foreigners could be involved. I would wager all the gold angels I'm giving out at the healing ceremony tomorrow that someone Spanish sent Katherine Grey those little dogs and that the Lennoxes, who will be reunited with us at court this week, are covertly communicating with the former queen of France, my clever cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. But I'll catch them at spinning their webs. People who should be watched will be, and those whose conversations should be overheard—”

  Gil tapped her foot and signaled wildly. What if I talk? the boy signaled. If I talk and draw, I stay with you?

  “But of course,” she said, then signaled the rest of her thoughts to him with flying fingers: But your finest talking will always be through your art, and I'd not have it any other way.

  “I think, whether or not it is a conspiracy,” she went on to her men, “that doctors are involved. Mayhap their prodigious and pompous intellects are fed by taunting me before they strike.”

  “If not a doctor,” Ned muttered, “it's someone who wants us to think so, to point a finger toward a tooobvious scapegoat he—or she—can hide behind.”

  “Look, Your Grace!” Jenks shouted so close to her ear she jumped. “In that small barge there—that man!”

  “Has Dr. Pascal spotted us?” she asked. “Where is he?”