by Ann Benson
Karle nodded respectfully, then said, “There is none, sir, we are newly acquainted, but since the gentleman is a physician, and as my dear uncle Etienne has pointed out there are so few these days, well, I thought it wise to ask him about a certain ailment from which I suffer, one that may concern a woman.”
“Ah!” de Chauliac said with a wave of his hand. “Such ailments are beastly. Say no more!”
“Happily, I need not, for the good doctor has given me what seems to be excellent advice.”
“He is an excellent physician. You will do well to heed what he says. And may I add my personal advice as well?”
“Please do. I am eager for good advice on this matter.”
De Chauliac smiled. “Then I would advise you to take care, young man, in choosing the sort of women you associate with.”
Karle and Alejandro glanced briefly at each other, then Karle said, “In this case, sir, the maid chose me.” And with a polite bow he departed their company.
It was a long moment before Alejandro recovered enough to realize that Flamel was speaking to him. He had to ask for a repetition of the alchemist’s question. And then he had to think quickly for a proper answer to the question of how he had acquired the book.
“It was bought from an apothecary.”
“Where, might I ask?”
“I do not recall, specifically. I was traveling at the time, and I did not always know the names of the villages I passed through. It was in the north, I think. No—wait; it may have been in the south.” He shrugged apologetically. “I have a poor memory for such details.”
Flamel glanced at de Chauliac, then turned back to Alejandro. His face glowed with uncontained excitement.
“I have been seeking this tome for a very long time. Within the circles of my craft there have been rumors of its existence, but no one has ever seen it. You have done the world a remarkable service by finding it. Tell me, did the apothecary say where he had gotten it from?”
“I did not ask the man, and he offered no explanation. I think it is safe to assume that he obtained it from a Jew. It may have been among the plunder of Strasbourgh. Or perhaps he bought it from some Jew who escaped.”
“Few escaped, praise God.”
“Only one would be required,” Alejandro said bitterly.
And before the discourse could sour further, de Chauliac jumped in. “Your translation proceeds well, I see.”
“Indeed, but there is much yet to be done.”
Flamel said, “I saw from your writing that you have just begun the pages that give instructions for transmutation. It would be a great honor for me to know your progress as it is made. And perhaps I can be of assistance to you, for I understand the meaning of many of the symbols you will find in the manuscript.”
“Why, that seems a wonderful idea!” de Chauliac said.
And Alejandro realized that there would be no choice, that it had been arranged while they were upstairs in his chamber. He wondered how de Chauliac had explained the bars on the windows. Or if the alchemist had even noticed them.
The party was ending, and one by one the guests took their leave. Karle had already followed Marcel through the door, leaving Alejandro with the gut-wrenching fear that he might never return. And the gross and unsavory alchemist had made effusive promises to return, much to the Jew’s regret.
Now the page Geoffrey Chaucer was about to depart. Alejandro took him aside briefly and whispered, “Remember, you must speak with your lord. Tell him I am most anxious to be of help.”
Chaucer winked his understanding of the conspiracy and said, “You shall hear from me soon. You may be confident of that.”
And then the lad went to de Chauliac and pleaded for a note to excuse his long absence. He received it, in short order, and went happily on his way, a youth with all the possibilities of the world before him. Alejandro watched with wistful envy as he disappeared into the courtyard. His adventuresome spirit and eager mind reminded the captive Jew of his own younger, freer self before he had stumbled on his path.
The lad’s love of English, however, was worrisome. But Alejandro could not concern himself with it now. And ultimately, he knew, such a youth would not be restrained, regardless of the world’s opinion of his chosen language.
On the straw pallet of their small upstairs room, Kate trembled in Guillaume Karle’s arms, and though the night was warm, she shivered in terror.
“But why can we not go now?”
“He said specifically tomorrow.”
“De Chauliac!” she moaned plaintively. “Who would think it?”
He let out a frustrated sigh. “Were I to know their history, I might understand the meaning of their meeting, but I have not been made privy to the secrets of your past.”
She shut her eyes tight and went silent.
“Kate, please, you must tell me these secrets. I am dangerously ignorant.”
She opened her eyes and searched his. “He told you nothing, then?”
“No,” Karle said, “but he asked me if you had told.” He took her face gently into his two hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “I will not betray you,” he promised. “My desire for you forbids it; and even without that, I am a man of honor. I would never be the cause of any harm coming to you, no matter the benefit to myself.”
She turned her face away, but he brought it back again to his own. “Please,” he begged. “Do you fail to see that I love you? I implore you to trust me. If we are ever to make a life together, I must know who you are.”
She removed his hands from her cheeks and pulled them gently down to her lap, then sat up straight and looked directly into his eyes. “I must have your promise that you will tell no one what I am about to reveal to you.”
“You have just now had it. Never doubt my sincerity.”
“Karle, this knowledge may not serve you well.”
“I will take that risk.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Should this become a burden, you must remember that I warned you. And that you accepted—”
“Yes! Accepted! For the love of the holy Virgin, go on!”
“Very well.” She sighed wearily. “What do you know of the English royals?”
“No more than any ordinary man ought to know.”
“You will soon know more than you ever cared to, I fear.”
He seemed genuinely confused. “But what has that to do with you?”
“It has everything to do with me. You see, Karle, I am—I—”
And then choking back her tears, she stopped, unable to continue.
“Yes?” he said. “Tell me!”
She blurted it out; there was no other way. “I am not Père’s child.”
“Dear God!” he said. “You might as well say that the sky is blue! Any fool could see that in a glance. Now, whose child are you?”
“I … am … the daughter of King Edward.”
An involuntary gasp escaped his lips. “Mon dieu.” He crossed himself.
“My mother was a lady of Queen Philippa’s household. Père was sent to Edward’s Court during the Great Plague to serve as physician, by de Chauliac himself. That is how our lives first crossed.”
Karle’s jaw dropped in shock, and when he found himself again, he said, “A princess? You are a princess of England?”
“No! You do not understand! I am nothing. Nothing. A bastard, despised by all who had anything to do with me. I was taken from my mother at a very tender age and sent to the household of my sister Isabella, who is the true daughter of my father and his queen. I was little more than a slave to her; the only ones who were kind to me at all were Nurse, God bless her, and should she have departed this earth, heaven hold her. And my sister’s lady, Adele! She was more a sister to me than Isabella. The queen, the king, all my royal brothers and sisters, they treated me like cold ashes from the hearth!”
“And what of your mother? Could she do nothing for you?”
“The queen forbade it. It was her vengeance against my
mother for allowing herself to be bedded by the king, though how she might be expected to escape him, I cannot understand. And then when I was only seven, she was taken by the plague.”
“So you told me. Mon dieu,” he repeated in amazement. “Truly, this is a most astonishing history. I never expected anything like this.…”
“What is most astonishing is that I am yet alive to tell it!” She hesitated a moment, then said, “And now I must demand another promise of confidence, or I cannot continue the tale.”
“Again, you have it—but can there be anything more damning left to tell?”
“Perhaps you will think so, perhaps not.” She caught in a breath, then blurted, “Pere is a Jew.”
Shocked silence was followed by a hushed, “That cannot be true. I would know it.”
“How?”
“By his … qualities … he bears none of the characteristics of a Jew.”
“He bears a scar. On his chest. He was branded with the circular mark.”
And as he allowed his memory to redraw the images of that night in the cottage, he remembered wondering about the strange scar he had seen on the man’s chest. But he had too many other competing thoughts to give the scar more than a cursory consideration at the time; men were dying, he himself was a hunted fugitive. “He turned away from me, the one time I saw him without a shirt. Now I understand why.” Then after a puzzled moment, he said, “But how is it that de Chauliac came to send him to England, then?”
“De Chauliac did not know. Père hid his identity. He took the name of a dead companion, a soldier with whom he traveled out of Spain.”
“Why?”
“Because he killed a bishop there.”
“A bishop? And he yet walks about, untortured?”
“I swear it is true—and you must believe, Karle, he was well justified in what he did.”
“But a bishop … truly, this is a burdensome sin.”
“And he is burdened by the memory of it every day. The cursed cleric had ruined him and his family, all for the exhumation of a body, a man Père tried to treat for a terrible affliction, and he needed most desperately to understand why the man died. So he took the body out of the grave—”
“Mon dieu!” Karle groaned.
“Karle—you must try to understand—when one seeks knowledge as passionately as Père does, one is often forced to take chances. And for his acts, he has paid dearly. His family was forced out of Cervere, their goods confiscated—they had to make the journey out of Spain during the worst of the Death.” She hung her head a bit. “He does not know if either his mother or father completed the journey—they were well on in age, and it was ten years ago.”
“It is right and fitting that he should have paid dearly for these crimes.”
Kate’s cheeks were flushed with building anger, but she held it back, with much effort. “Pere knows that he will be judged for these acts one day. But in his holy books, it says ‘an eye for an eye,’ and though he cannot be overtly devout he takes the words of his own prophets quite seriously.”
A quiet moment passed, then Kate continued. “In Avignon, he sought to establish himself in medical practice, and await his family’s arrival. But he was conscripted along with other physicians to be trained under de Chauliac. They were sent all over Europa to protect the health of the royal households, for the pope wanted to make mischief with royal marriages, and he could not do so were all the brides and grooms to perish before he got his hands on them. That is how Père came to be in England—otherwise, he would still be in Avignon. For many years he has hoped that his family was able to reach there, but he is afraid to return, lest he be recognized and captured. And despite his dearest hopes for them, he knows there is little chance that they survived both the plague and the journey from Spain.”
Karle sighed in deep amazement. “How cruel the hand of fate can be. He thought Paris safe, and yet it was here that his greatest danger lay.” He was thoughtful for a moment, then said, with a very grave expression, “It must have been terrible for you, all these years.”
Kate’s eyebrows furrowed. “Terrible? How do you mean?”
“You have traveled now for ten years as his daughter.”
“And why,” she said unhappily, “would this be terrible?”
“Bad enough that he should be a Jew, but also to be a robber of graves, a murderer … you have shown him remarkable devotion, consid—”
Without thinking, she reached out to strike him. He caught her hand before it hit his face, and held it tight. He saw the anger in her eyes, the wetness of tears about to flow, and he understood that she gave these considerations no weight. She loved the man as she would a true father.
After a few tense and motionless moments he whispered, “I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect.” He kissed her clenched and trembling fist with apologetic tenderness. “I spoke too quickly, and from ignorance.”
Kate yanked her hand away. Her cheeks were flushed, and when she finally spoke, her voice was dark. “Pere is the finest man I have ever known. He is far more noble in spirit than the one who sired me. I have never wanted for one moment in his care. He has given me the gift of knowledge, of language and reading, and the ciphering of numbers—I know medicine, and hunting, and all of the skills one needs to survive! Few men can make such claims, let alone women. And never once did he try to force his beliefs on me. But I know that he longs for it, I can see it in his face sometimes; he has an emptiness about him that no man should have to endure.”
Karle said, very quietly, “He has lost much.”
“He has lost everything that matters to him, save me.”
And when she spoke these words, Karle understood that he would, indeed, have to accept the father to have the daughter. “I swear that I shall do whatever is necessary to see that you are never separated again.”
“You will have to make your peace with him, then, if we are to be together.”
“Then peace it shall be.”
But the mind of the man in question would give him no peace, for it still swirled with the evening’s events. The nimble-minded young Chaucer, who might unwittingly be the key to his escape; the unexpected reunion with Karle; the thrilling news of Kate’s safety, and Karle’s troubling assertion that Kate had “chosen” him in some way. Of course there could be only one way in which a maid would choose a man—the very thought of it burned inside him and ate away at what little solace he had left.
It was all too confusing to comprehend, beyond the understanding of the simpleton he had come to believe himself to be. But understand it he must, for he was desperate to be out of de Chauliac’s control. At least in the Spanish monastery, he remembered silently, it was certain that his captors wanted him dead. De Chauliac inflicted upon him the torture of gross uncertainty. He despised being an unwilling intellectual accomplice, a plaything of the mind. And damn the man, he has an intellect that in better circumstances would make him the most welcome of companions.
By the light of a single candle, he stared at Abraham’s manuscript and wondered if he would ever feel the same about it again. This Flamel seemed to desire it like a man longs for a woman, as if by having it he could redeem himself from some great and disappointing failure. Now that the greasy alchemist had run through its pages and seen its secrets, Alejandro no longer felt like it was truly his own.
Fool! he chided himself. It belongs to the people for whose guidance it was written. Now it was his duty to see that it got to them.
Suddenly there was a soft knock, and in came de Chauliac himself. Gone were the formal robes of entertainment; the elegant Frenchman was now attired in a light robe of the finest indigo silk. Their eyes met, and for a moment Alejandro felt the stab of de Chauliac’s searching and probing; the man was trying to look into his very soul, it seemed. He looked away, which forced de Chauliac to speak.
“It was a fine evening, was it not?”
“It was interesting, I will admit. But why in God’s name did you invite the lord Lio
nel?”
“Why should my reason concern you?”
“But he might have come.”
De Chauliac smiled. “I suppose it was the potential for danger that made me do it, to see how you would react. I admit that it was enjoyable, to see you squirm with fear of recognition. But it turned out well, did it not? You seem to have enjoyed the company of his young page. Lionel was but a child when you were there, and unconcerned with the doings of his elders.” He grunted cynically. “He is still little more than a child. He certainly indulges himself childishly, to the point where he has managed to get himself afflicted with gout.”
Alejandro sat up straighter. Here is my chance to plant the next seed. “I would like to examine him, then, if you think he will not know me.”
De Chauliac’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Whatever for?”
“Because, as you have already said, he is too young to suffer from gout. Perhaps it is not gout that tortures him. Perhaps it is something else.”
“You would doubt my diagnosis?”
Be careful what you say. Remember his pride and use it against him. “This war has brought many new forms of misery, afflictions that yet defy classification, and I have seen many of them. Royals do not remain untouched simply because they are royals. Once I learned from you, because yours was the greater breadth of knowledge. Is it not possible that now, you could learn from me?”
De Chauliac shifted uncomfortably. “I suppose it is possible.…”
“This young Chaucer says that his lord suffers from pain of the extremities, in particular one foot, but that you will not give him laudanum. I think this is the correct course of treatment, because it may bind him up, and you are wise to recognize that the body must be able to rid itself of all its foul humors and wastes if he is to recover. But if gout is not his curse, then he may be suffering needlessly from pain that you might cure. He would be forever in your debt.”
The Frenchman was quiet and contemplative, but did not respond.
Finally, after a long and tortuous silence, he said, “You make a good point, Jew. Perhaps our combined wisdom will serve my prince better than mine alone.”
