The Physician

by Noah Gordon

  “You’ve grown faster than these weeds,” Barber observed wryly, and it was true; already he stood almost as tall as Barber and he had long since outstripped the clothing Editha Lipton had made for him in Exmouth. But when Barber took him to a Carlisle tailor and ordered “new winter clothes that will fit for a while,” the tailor shook his head.

  “The boy still grows, does he not? Fifteen, sixteen years? Such a lad outgrows clothing quickly.”

  “Sixteen! He’s not yet eleven!”

  The man looked at Rob with respect-tinged amusement. “He’ll be a large man! And he’s certain to make my raiment appear to shrink. May I suggest that we make over an old garment?”

  So another suit of Barber’s, this one of mostly-good gray stuff, was recut and sewn. To their general hilarity it was far too wide when first Rob put it on, yet much too short in the arms and the legs. The tailor took some of the material left over from the width and extended the pants and the sleeves, hiding the joined seams with rakish bands of blue cloth. Rob had gone without shoes most of the summer but soon the snows were due, and he was grateful when Barber bought him boots made of cowhide.

  He walked in them across Carlisle’s square to the Church of St. Mark and sounded the knocker on its great wooden doors, which were opened at length by an elderly curate with rheumy eyes.

  “If you please, Father, I seek a priest name of Ranald Lovell.”

  The curate blinked. “I knew a priest so named, served the Mass under Lyfing, in the time when Lyfing was Bishop of Wells. He is dead these ten years come Easter.”

  Rob shook his head. “It’s not the same priest. I saw Father Ranald Lovell with my own eyes but several years ago.”

  “Perhaps the man I knew was Hugh Lovell and not Ranald.”

  “Ranald Lovell was transferred from London to a church in the north. He has my brother, William Stewart Cole. Three years younger than I.”

  “Your brother by now may have a different name in Christ, my son. Priests sometimes bring their boys to an abbey, to become acolytes. You must ask others everywhere. For Holy Mother Church is a great and boundless sea and I am but a single tiny fish.” The old priest nodded kindly and Rob helped him to close the doors.

  A skin of crystals dulled the surface of the small pond behind the town tavern. Barber pointed out a pair of ice gliders tied to a rafter of their little house. “Pity they aren’t larger. They won’t fit, for you have an uncommonly great foot.”

  The ice thickened daily, until one morning it gave back a solid thunk when he walked out to the middle and stamped. Rob took down the too-small gliders. They were carved from stag antler and were almost identical to a pair his father had made for him when he was six years old. He had quickly outgrown those but had used them for three winters anyway, and now he took these to the pond and tied them onto his feet. At first he used them with pleasure, but their edges were nicked and dull and their size and condition did him in during his first attempt to turn. His arms flailing, he fell heavily and slid a good distance.

  He became aware of someone’s amusement.

  The girl was perhaps fifteen years old. She was laughing with great enjoyment.

  “Can you do better?” he said hotly, at the same time acknowledging to himself that she was a pretty dolly, too thin and top-heavy but with black hair like Editha’s.

  “I?” she said. “Why, I cannot, and would never have the courage.”

  At once his temper disappeared. “They were meant more for your feet than mine,” he said. He stripped them off and carried them to where she stood on the bank. “It’s not at all difficult. Let me show you,” he said.

  He quickly overcame her objections and soon was fastening the runners to her feet. She couldn’t stand on the unaccustomed slickness of the ice and clutched at him, alarm widening her brown eyes and causing her thin nostrils to flare. “Don’t fear, I have you,” he said. He supported her weight and propelled her along the ice from behind, conscious of her warm haunches.

  Now she was laughing and squealing as he pushed her around and around the pond. She was Garwine Talbott, she said. Her father, Aelfric Talbott, had a farm outside the town. “What is your name?”

  “Rob J.”

  She chattered, revealing a store of information about him, for it was a small town; she already knew when he and Barber had come to Carlisle, their profession, the provision they had bought, and whose house they had taken.

  She soon liked being on the ice. Her eyes gleamed with pleasure and the cold turned her cheeks ruddy. Her hair flew back, revealing a small pink earlobe. She had a thin upper lip but her lower lip was so ripe it appeared almost swollen. There was a faded bruise high on her cheek. When she smiled, he saw that one of her lower teeth was crooked. “You examine people, then?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Women as well?”

  “We have a doll. Women point out areas of their ailment.”

  “What a pity,” she said, “to use a doll.” He was dazzled by her sidelong glance. “Does she have a fine appearance?”

  Not so fine as yours, he wished to say but lacked the courage. He shrugged. “She is called Thelma.”

  “Thelma!” She had a breathless, ragged laugh that made him grin. “Eh,” she cried, glancing up to see where the sun stood. “I must get back there for late milking,” and her soft fullness leaned into his arm.

  He knelt before her on the bank and removed the gliders. “They are not mine. They were in the house,” he said. “But you may keep them for a while and use them.”

  She shook her head quickly. “If I bring them home he would near kill me, wanting to learn what things I did to get them.”

  He felt a rush of blood to his face. To escape his embarrassment he picked up three pine cones and began juggling for her.

  She laughed and clapped her hands, and then in a breathless rush of words told him how to find her father’s farm. Leaving, she hesitated and turned back for a moment.

  “Thursday mornings,” she said. “He doesn’t encourage visitors, but Thursday mornings he brings cheeses to the market.”

  When Thursday came he didn’t seek out the farm of Aelfric Talbott. Instead he loitered fearfully in his bed, afraid not of Garwine or her father but of things that were happening within him that he couldn’t comprehend, mysteries he had neither the courage nor the wisdom to confront.

  He had dreamed of Garwine Talbott. In the dream they had lain in a hayloft, perhaps in her father’s barn. It was the kind of dream he had had several times about Editha, and he tried to wipe his bedding without catching Barber’s attention.

  The snow began. It dropped like heavy goose down, and Barber lashed hides over the window holes. Inside the house the air became foul, and even by day it was impossible to see anything except right next to the fire.

  It snowed four days, with only brief interruptions. Searching for things to do, Rob sat next to the hearth and fashioned pictures of their various herbs. Using charcoal sticks rescued from the fire, on bark ripped from firewood, he sketched curly mint, the limp blossoms of drying flowers, the veined leaves of the wild bean trefoil. In the afternoon he melted snow over the fire and watered and fed the chickens, being careful to swiftly open and close the door to the hens’ room, for despite his cleaning the stink was becoming impressive.

  Barber kept to his bed, nipping metheglin. On the second night of the snowfall he floundered his way to the public house and brought back a quiet blond trull named Helen. Rob tried to watch them from his bed on the other side of the hearth, for although he had seen the act many times he was puzzled by certain details which lately had made their way into his thoughts and dreams. But he was unable to penetrate the thick darkness and studied only their heads illuminated in the firelight. Barber was rapt and intent but the woman appeared drawn and melancholy, someone engaged in joyless work.

  After she had left, Rob picked up a piece of bark and a stick of charcoal. Instead of sketching the plants he tried to shape the features of a woma
n.

  Heading for the pot, Barber stopped to study the sketch and frowned. “I appear to know that face,” he said.

  A short time later, back in his bed, he lifted his head from the fur. “Why, it is Helen!”

  Rob was very pleased. He tried to make a likeness of the unguent seller named Wat, but Barber could identify it only after he added the small figure of Bartram the bear. “You must continue your attempts to re-create faces, for I believe it is something that can be useful to us,” Barber said. But he soon grew tired of watching Rob and went back to drinking until he slept.

  On Tuesday the snow finally stopped falling. Rob wrapped his hands and head in rags and found a wooden shovel. He cleared a path from their door and went to the stables to exercise Incitatus, who was growing fat on no work and a daily ration of hay and sweet grain.

  On Wednesday he helped some boys of the town shovel the snow from the surface of the pond. Barber removed the hides that covered the window holes and let cold sweet air into the house. He celebrated by roasting a joint of lamb, which he served with mint jelly and apple cakes.

  Thursday morning Rob took down the ice gliders and hung them around his neck by their leather thongs. He went to the stables and put only the bridle and halter on Incitatus, then he mounted the horse and rode out of the town. The air crackled, the sun was bright and the snow pure.

  He transformed himself into a Roman. It was no good pretending to be Caligula astride the original Incitatus because he was aware that Caligula had been crazy and had met an unhappy end. He decided to be Caesar Augustus, and he led the Praetorian Guard down the Via Appia all the way to Brundisium.

  He had no difficulty in finding the Talbott farm. It was exactly where she had said it would be. The house was tilted and mean-looking, with a sagging roof, but the barn was large and fine. The door was open and he could hear someone moving about inside, among the animals.

  He sat on the horse uncertainly, but Incitatus whinnied and he had no choice but to announce himself.

  “Garwine?” he called.

  A man appeared in the doorway of the barn and walked slowly toward him. He was holding a wooden fork laden with manure that steamed in the cold air. He walked very carefully and Rob could see he was drunk. He was a sallow, stooped man with an untrimmed black beard the color of Garwine’s hair, who could only be Aelfric Talbott.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  Rob told him.

  The man swayed. “Well, Rob J. Cole, you do not have luck. She isn’t here. She’s run off, the dirty little whore.”

  The shovel of dung moved slightly and Rob was certain he and the horse were about to be showered with smoking-fresh cow shit.

  “Go away from my holding,” Talbott said. He was crying.

  Rob rode Incitatus slowly back toward Carlisle. He wondered where she had gone and if she would survive.

  He was no longer Caesar Augustus leading the Praetorian Guard. He was just a boy trapped in his doubts and fears.

  When he got back to the house he hung the ice gliders up on the rafter and didn’t take them down again.

  11

  THE JEW OF TETTENHALL

  There was nothing left to do but wait for spring. New batches of the Universal Specific had been brewed and bottled. Every herb Barber had sought, except for purslane to fight fevers, had been dried and powdered or steeped in physick. They were tired of practicing juggling, weary of rehearsing magic, and Barber was sick of the north and jaded with drinking and sleeping. “I am too impatient to linger while winter peters out,” he said one morning in March, and they abandoned Carlisle too early, making slow progress southward because the roads were still poor.

  They met the springtime in Beverley. The air softened, the sun emerged and so did a crowd of pilgrims who had been visiting the town’s great stone church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. He and Barber threw themselves into the entertainment, and their first large audience of the new season responded with enthusiasm. All went well during the treatments until, ushering the sixth patient behind Barber’s privacy screen, Rob took the soft hands of a handsome woman.

  His pulse hammered. “Come, mistress,” he said faintly. His skin prickled with dread where their hands were glued together. He turned and met Barber’s gaze.

  Barber whitened. Almost savagely, he pulled Rob away from listening ears. “Are you without doubt? You must be certain.”

  “She will die very soon,” Rob said.

  Barber returned to the woman, who wasn’t old and appeared to be in good estate. She made no complaint of her health but had come behind the screen to buy a philter. “My husband is a man of increasing years. His ardor flags, yet he admires me.” She spoke calmly, and her refinement and lack of false modesty gave her dignity. She wore traveling clothes sewn of fine stuff. Clearly, she was a woman of wealth.

  “I don’t sell philters. That is magic and not medicine, my lady.”

  She murmured regret. Barber was terrified when she didn’t correct his form of address; to be accused of witchcraft in the death of a noblewoman was certain destruction.

  “A draught of liquor often gives the desired effect. Strong, and swallowed hot before retiring.” Barber would accept no payment. As soon as she was gone, he made his excuses to the patients he hadn’t yet seen. Rob was already packing the wagon.

  And so they fled again.

  This time they barely spoke throughout the flight. When they were far enough away and safely camped for the night, Barber broke the silence.

  “When someone dies in an instant, a vacantness creeps into the eyes,” he said quietly. “The face loses expression, or sometimes purples. A corner of the mouth sags, an eyelid droops, limbs turn to stone.” He sighed. “It isn’t unmerciful.”

  Rob didn’t answer.

  They made their beds and tried to sleep. Barber rose and drank for a while but this time didn’t give the apprentice his hands to hold.

  Rob knew in his heart that he wasn’t a witch. Yet there could be only one other explanation, and he didn’t understand it. He lay and prayed. Please. Will you not remove this filthy gift from me and return it whence it came? Furious and dispirited, he couldn’t refrain from scolding, for meekness hadn’t gained him much. It is such a thing as might be inspired by Satan and I want no further part of it, he told God.

  It seemed his prayer was granted. That spring there were no more incidents. The weather held and then improved, with sunny days that were warmer and drier than usual, and good for business. “Fine weather on St. Swithin’s,” Barber said one morning in triumph. “Anyone will tell you it means we’ll have fine weather forty more days.” Gradually their fears subsided and their spirits rose.

  His master remembered his birth day! On the third morning after St. Swithin’s Day, Barber made him a handsome gift of three goose quills, ink powder, and a pumice stone. “Now you may scribble faces with something other than a charcoal stick,” he said.

  Rob had no money to buy Barber a natal gift in return. But late one afternoon his eyes recognized a plant as they passed through a field. Next morning he stole out of their camp and walked half an hour to the field, where he picked a quantity of the greens. On Barber’s birth day Rob presented him with purslane, the fever herb, which he received with obvious pleasure.

  It showed in their entertainment that they got on. They anticipated each other, and their performance took on gloss and a keen edge, bringing splendid applause. Rob had daydreams in which he saw his brothers and sister among the spectators; he imagined the pride and amazement of Anne Mary and Samuel Edward when they saw their elder brother perform magic and pop five balls.

  They will have grown, he told himself. Would Anne Mary recall him? Was Samuel Edward still wild? By now Jonathan Carter must be walking and talking, a proper little man.

  It was impossible for an apprentice to advise his master where to direct their horse, but when they were in Nottingham he found opportunity to consult Barber’s map and saw they were near the very heart of
the English island. To reach London they would have to continue south but also veer to the east. He memorized the town names and locations, so he could tell if they were traveling where he so desperately wanted to go.

  In Leicester a farmer digging a rock from his field had unearthed a sarcophagus. He had dug around it but it was too heavy for him to raise and its bottom remained gripped by the earth like a boulder.

  “The Duke is sending men and animals to free it and will take it into his castle,” the yeoman told them proudly.

  There was an inscription in the coarse white-grained marble: DIIS MANIBUS. VIVIO MARCIANO MILITI LEGIONIS SECUNDAE AUGUSTAE. IANUARIA MARINA CONJUNX PIENTISSIMA POSUIT MEMORIAM. “‘To the gods of the underworld,’” Barber translated. “‘To Vivius Marcianus, a soldier of the Second Legion of Augustus. In the month of January his devoted wife, Marina, established this tomb.’”

  They looked at one another. “I wonder what happened to the dolly, Marina, after she buried him, for she was a long way from her home,” Barber said soberly.

  So are we all, Rob thought.

  Leicester was a populous town. Their entertainment was well attended, and when the sale of the physick was finished they found themselves in a flurry of activity. In quick succession he helped Barber to lance a young man’s carbuncle, splint a youth’s rudely broken finger, and dose a feverish matron with purslane and a colicky child with chamomile. Next he led behind the screen a stocky, balding man with milky eyes.

  “How long have you been blind?” Barber asked.

  “These two years. It began as a dimness and gradually deepened until now I scarce detect light. I am a clerk but cannot work.”