The Quality of Mercy

by Faye Kellerman

  “You’ll not have a penny of inheritance!” Dunstan shouted.

  “I shit on your money!” Thomas shouted back.

  Rebecca said, “Spare the strife, for Miguel’s sake. We’ve no time to lose on useless bickering. Dunstan, pick up the knives and wash them clean.”

  There was an awkward silence, then Reina began to cry. Thomas rocked her in his arms, tried to coo the child back to sleep but the more he talked, the more distraught the little girl became.

  Shakespeare said, “Like lepers, we fall apart piece by piece.”

  “Sing to her in her Spanish,” Dunstan suggested.

  Thomas crooned an old Spanish lullaby, one that his mother had sung to him. His voice was melodious and deep and instantly quieted the little girl. Rebecca sighed and began picking up the knives herself. It took her about thirty minutes to set up for the basics—boil the water by placing a kettle in the hearth, then washing the knives. She asked Thomas to vacate the bed and lay clean sheets upon it. Holding the little girl in his arms, Thomas limped over to the fireplace, refusing help from his brother or Shakespeare. Warm and swathed in soft blankets, he rocked the little girl to sleep. Hopefully, she’d stay deep in slumber and Miguel’s screams would not wake and scare her.

  After the knives had been rinsed with boiling water, Rebecca sorted through the blades. A fish-gutting knife looked sharp enough for the job. And the tongs would make a good clamp. Two paring knives looked passable. She held them against the light in the fireplace and studied the blades, sorely missing her father’s surgery knives with their fine-honed edges and their solid ivory handles.

  She said, “I’ll have to sharpen these. Where’s the whetstone, Dunstan?”

  “Here.” Dunstan leaned over her shoulder, whispered, “I beg your forgiveness.”

  Rebecca said, “On my grave, never! May your death be slow and painful, your soul be sent to purgatory. May God not grant you redemption and may your eternity be spent in Hell.”

  Dunstan said, “Tis your spleen and not your heart that talks.”

  Though inwardly livid, Rebecca replied calmly, “I should have bedded your brother. At least he was able to rise when the occasion presented itself. But we shall not speak of such items, eh?” She paused, then stated, “These marks upon my brow, Dunstan, were made by the frustrated soldier who had arrived at many a battlesite without a pike.”

  Dunstan stiffened with embarrassment and anger but controlled himself.

  Rebecca shrugged. She picked up a knife and meticulously began to sharpen it, a stroke against the whetstone, a check of the angulation against the light. When she had finished with one blade, she went on to the next one. When all the knives were honed to her satisfaction, she spread them out at the foot of the bed along with the towels and strips of cloth, two large bowls of fresh water, and the needle and catgut thread. She washed her hands in one of the bowls, muttered last minute prayers, then said out loud,

  “Dunstan, you hold Miguel’s feet. You’ll also be in charge of passing me my tools.” Rebecca turned to Shakespeare. “You hold his arms and my light.” She handed him the candlestick. “Be sure to keep the flame over the wound, else I’ll see not where I’m cutting. Best to kneel at the head of the bed. Keep Miguel’s head cradled between your knees and thighs. Secure his wrists with one hand, the candlestick with the other.”

  Shakespeare did as she instructed. Rebecca repositioned Shakespeare’s hand in the air.

  “Hold the light here. Like this. Don’t move. Don’t drip tallow on him. Don’t get in the way of my field of vision. And keep Miguel firmly anchored no matter how strenuous his movements be. One slip and he’ll not walk again.”

  Shakespeare and Dunstan nodded.

  Rebecca said, “God give me strength and judgment.”

  Picking up a clean towel, she covered the green nodule of pus, then lifted a knife and placed the blade against Miguel’s skin. She’d shaped the blade’s edge razor thin. A fine job, thanks be to God. A well-honed instrument cuts cleanly and quickly. Rebecca positioned herself comfortably and incised the skin. Miguel came alive, jerking in the men’s grips, howling in pain.

  “Hold him, damn it,” Rebecca cursed, deepening the cut.

  Miguel screamed, panted.

  “I need a towel,” Rebecca said to Dunstan.

  “Which one?” Dunstan asked.

  “Any of them, you woodcock, just give me one. The cut has filled with blood and I can’t see beyond my initial incision!”

  Dunstan offered her a small one, and Rebecca snatched it from his hands. She dabbed the wound, deepened and widened the cut. Miguel sobbed.

  “Keep breathing,” Rebecca said. “Shakespeare, wipe his brow.”

  Rebecca asked for a bigger knife, enlarged the site. Miguel was exhaling rapidly, out of control.

  “Breathe with him, Shakespeare,” she ordered. “Exhale, inhale, exhale…slow it down, Willy. Inhale, exhale. Keep that rhythm. Inhale, exhale…Clutch the bedsheets, Miguel. Curse, my love! Just keep breathing. Inhale, exhale.”

  Rebecca dried the blood, began to slice into the fascia and underlying muscle. She told herself: at all cost, avoid lancing the green boil. She covered it with a rag and began to probe for the broken dagger blade.

  More blood. Rebecca blotted it away.

  “Inhale, Miguel,” Shakespeare ordered. “Exhale.”

  Miguel continued screaming. Rebecca said, “Dunstan, cover his mouth with a rag. He’ll become faint if you don’t and someone will hear us. Breathe slower, Miguel,” Rebecca said. “Slow it down. Clutch the bedsheets, my love. Thou will be well, I swear it on my grave. Inhale, exhale…The light, Shakespeare.” She jerked his hand and moved the candlestick directly over the open skin. “Keep it there! Dunstan, another rag!”

  “Aye,” answered Dunstan, reaching over to grab a towel.

  “Keep Miguel immobilized, damn you!”

  “I can’t hand your surgery tools and hold his legs!” Dunstan protested. By Pythagoras, he thought, she has been infused with her father’s spirit.

  He offered her the rag. She grabbed it and snarled,

  “You’re worthless!” Again she soaked up the blood from the wound. Now the exploration. Gods, how could Miguel be so pale yet so full of blood! She probed with the ice pick, felt a hard surface embedded in a layer of tissue. She brought the tip of the pick against the surface and scratched. Metal to metal. Thank God! She’d located the snapped blade.

  Dunstan noticed that Rebecca had broken into a smile.

  “We’re through?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Just do what you’ve been requested to do and molest me not with questions! Hold the light closer to the cut, Willy.” She blotted the blood from the wound and began to strip away tissue from the buried blade. Miguel groaned, screamed, bucked. Dunstan gripped his legs and held fast, his brow wet from exertion. Shakespeare’s arm began to shake, having been suspended in air for over ten minutes.

  Miguel screamed as he felt his flesh ripped apart. His fingernails tore at the mattress. He buried his head against Shakespeare’s upper thigh. Another stab of agony. He chomped down onto something—flesh—Shakespeare’s flesh. The player gasped but kept the light steady.

  “What happened?” Rebecca asked, not taking her eyes off her work.

  “Miguel just bit me,” Shakespeare said through clenched teeth. “No matter.”

  Rebecca sopped up more blood with a clean towel. All of the blade was nearly exposed, yet the most difficult part of the surgery was yet to come. The tip of the blade lay periously close to the gray nerve column. Rebecca took a deep breath and began to tease the remaining shreds of flesh away from the blade.

  A section of the spine was exposed, glistening white sheets of nerve.

  Steady! Delicately! She often heard her father mutter those words to himself. Dear God, her father! Think not about that now!

  Concentrate!

  A piece of tissue had coursed its way around the tip of the broken blade. Long and sin
ewy. Not tissue. A tendon? A nerve? A blood vessel? Elastic, shiny. A nerve. But leading where? She asked for the tongs, used them as a clamp to hold back tissue from the surgery site. Miguel howled.

  Rebecca felt her head begin to spin, the sickly sweet smell of blood overwhelming her nostrils. She closed her eyes and envisioned an intense sky of crimson. Reopening them, she took a deep breath. The same sky assaulted her vision.

  Calm! Steady!

  She took the ice pick and looped it around the nerve, tried to stretch it over the tip of the dagger.

  Too short. No success.

  Another approach.

  From the top.

  She dried the cut with a clean towel and began to peel away the broken blade from Miguel’s tissue. Shakespeare held his breath. Slowly, the blade loosened from the fascia and muscle. Inch by inch. Yet the tip of the blade remained stubbornly fixed to Miguel’s flesh, the nerve encircling the blade.

  Damn!

  Rebecca cleared her throat, her eyes and head throbbing. Miguel was whimpering, his breathing shallow and choppy. Again she retracted the nerve, eased away bits of flesh from the blade. So close to his spine. God help her.

  The tip would not budge.

  Miguel was growing paler by the second, his breaths nothing more than pitiful puffs.

  No choice!

  Rebecca picked up a knife and cut the nerve. Quickly, she dislodged the rest of the broken dagger blade and removed it from Miguel’s back. Shakespeare and Dunstan let out audible moans of relief.

  “That’s it,” Rebecca said wearily. She dried the wound and doused it with a special potion formulated by her grandam. Miguel cried with agony when she applied it gently to the open sore. Rebecca examined the tissue and reapplied the potion.

  “Almost done, my love,” she said to Miguel.

  Minutes later Rebecca was sewing up the ripped seam of skin, each stitch tiny and done with precision.

  “You don’t tent the wound?” Shakespeare asked.

  “No.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. The Gentile surgeons placed cloth inside the incision site to allow scarring to take place. But Grandmama’s way was to mend the skin together as if it were torn material. Her father learned the procedure from the old woman, and his wounds always healed the cleanest of any doctor in London.

  After she’d finished the stitching, she coated the incision site with a salve she’d prepared on Krabbey’s ship, then dabbed Miguel’s forehead with a rag. She said to her betrothed, “You’ll recover faster than a peregrine’s flight.”

  His breathing was still very weak.

  Rebecca opened a vial and said, “Miguelito, chew on this. It’s moldy cheese.”

  Miguel’s lids fluttered, opened for a second, then closed.

  “Grandmama swears by it. It wards off the evil vapors that invade the weakened body,” Rebecca said.

  Miguel didn’t respond.

  Rebecca placed a small bit of blue cheese in his mouth. His cheeks were hot, burning with fever. “If thou art too weak to chew, allow it to melt in thy mouth. Twill serve the same purpose.”

  Miguel nodded almost imperceptibly. The cutting and probing upon his body had ended, and he allowed the poppy syrup Rebecca had administered to overcome him. He fell asleep.

  Rebecca rinsed and dried the knives. She ordered Dunstan to take the knives back to the inn’s kitchen.

  “Now?” Dunstan asked.

  “Yes, now,” Rebecca said. “They’ll want them for the gentlemen’s dinners tomorrow.”

  Dunstan gathered the supplies and slammed the door shut.

  “Bastard,” Rebecca muttered. Marry, the room stank. Blood, sweat, seed, urine. Miguel had pissed on the sheet. But she said nothing. She looked at Shakespeare, at Thomas.

  “Do you need some poppy syrup for your leg?” she asked her cousin.

  Only sleep, was Thomas’s answer. He placed Reina on the floor, stretched out and closed his eyes. Rebecca began to apply salve to the cuts above her eyes.

  “I’ll do that for you,” Shakespeare said, taking the salve.

  “Much thanks,” Rebecca said.

  “Are your cuts tolerable?” Shakespeare asked.

  “Aye, they’re tolerable,” she answered. “It’s hard to discern between pain and exhaustion.” She glanced down at Reina. The little girl had curled into a ball.

  “She has the proper idea,” Shakespeare said. “We’ll all do better in the morning.”

  Rebecca covered the child’s exposed shoulders and kissed her good night.

  Shakespeare dropped to the floor in front of the hearth. Rebecca smiled at him, cocked her head to the left. Shakespeare felt his heartbeat quicken. Rebecca’s lips were puffy, her eyes as well, yet the look she gave him sent shivers down his spine.

  He said, “Come, my lady. Let me give thee sweet succor.”

  Rebecca blew out all the candles and fell into Shakespeare’s arms.

  Dunstan returned a few minutes later, aching with weariness. But once he saw Rebecca with Shakespeare, he became revitalized with jealousy. Yet he could say nothing, do nothing, even as Rebecca boldly caught his eye and smiled. He lowered his sore body onto the floor, next to the child, and forced himself to stay awake until he was sure that Becca and the player had fallen asleep, that nothing beyond kisses had passed between them. Only when he heard them breathe rhythmically did he let slumber’s soothing arms rock him into blackness.

  Chapter 40

  Blessed be God, Miguel was strong and young and his fever broke within twenty-four hours. Two days later, able to sit upright as long as he wasn’t required to move, Miguel insisted that they head back for London. Pedro needed to be buried religiously, alongside the other conversos. Rebecca implored him to rest, explaining that the young boy’s body could be brought home by Thomas and Dunstan while she and Shakespeare waited for him to recover. Miguel wouldn’t hear of it. Three days later, at dawn, they began their long journey back to London.

  The unrelenting rain made the first part of travel ponderous. The horses moved tentatively, faltering at each yank of the reins. The paved roads were heavily pocked, the cracks overflowing with mud and slush. The nautical tarpaulin they’d purchased from Krabbey kept Miguel and the little girl dry, Rebecca thanked God for that, but she and the others had no protection from the unmitigating downpour. Wet, cold, stiff, they plodded through the rain, their bodies parting the sheets of water like curtains.

  In the afternoon the rain let up slightly—enough to make out the vast gray landscape before them. The highways remained treacherous—rivers of mud. The horses sloshed through the dirty water, the muck splashing onto the men’s boots and hose. A few pools proved deeper than had been thought. Once it was necessary for Dunstan and Shakespeare to dismount and pull Rebecca’s stallion out of knee-deep sludge.

  Onward.

  Nightfall.

  Another inn.

  The morning on the road again, the weather had grown worse. Cold winds nipped at their faces, bit the tips of their noses. Rebecca shivered until her body gave up and allowed the chill to invade her bones, feeling as if she’d been dipped in icy starch.

  Reina constantly cried for her mother, her father. Dunstan comforted the little girl, sang her Spanish songs of his youth. Rebecca thought of her own parents, prayed that her father had been released and was home safe, that he was worrying about her instead of the other way around. Her father had not been a paradigm of patience when she was a child, always quick with the reprimand and the back of his hand. Yet, more than anyone, it had been he who had noticed her achievements, who had bestowed upon her lavish praise when she had accomplished something of value.

  Mother had been more balanced. She was kind, but had been heavily involved with Father’s business, occupied with running a household that seemed always in a state of flux. Jews coming in and out, traveling to the Low Countries, to Mytilene, to the Rhineland and the New World. Never time to answer Rebecca’s questions. Never, never time for play.

  Nurses had been strict�
��lessons in needlepoint and music, instructions on how to maintain the stillroom and the knot garden. Her tutor, John Cherry, had been a nervous twit, leaving her to learn most of her Latin and handwriting on her own. There had been Emmanuel, her oldest brother, and he’d eased the boredom by telling her tales, but he had died too soon, leaving Mother behind a barrier of sadness. Sarah Lopez had retreated inward, giving Rebecca occasional wistful smiles as she related to her bits and pieces of the old ways in Spain—the old religion.

  Everybody always on the go.

  Twas Grandmama who had comforted her when she had skinned her knee, when Benjamin had hit her, when her father had slapped her, when Mother hadn’t had the will or the time to utter proper words of solace.

  Rebecca ached from cold and fatigue, but it was loneliness that lay so heavily on her heart. She missed her family, missed her home. Then she thought, how much more so did this little orphaned girl miss her home and family. Rebecca needed to be strong, and knew that she would be. Witnessing the mission firsthand had changed her. Her hands, just like the men’s, had been needed for survival. And just like the men’s, they, too, had become cut and blistered as they’d pulled upon rigging. They and God had also saved Miguel’s life. Rebecca had gone from observer to participator. And a small toddler and her dead little brother had taught her the word sacrifice.

  She prayed. With God’s help, tomorrow would find them home.

  They reached Holborn the following nightfall. Upon their entrance into the Lopez manor, Rebecca’s mother fell to the floor and prostrated herself. Martino rushed to his mistress’s side and eased her back into her chair.

  Rebecca knelt before her mother, let her head rest in her lap. She glanced up at the worn face, shocked by the rapid deterioration in Mother’s normally fastidious appearance. Her gray strands were greasy and loose, carelessly streaming out of her coif and bun. Her nightgown was dirty, spotted with food stains, as if she hadn’t dressed in days. Her breath was foul, her nails dirty. Her face was chalky white. She seemed so frail. Rebecca hugged her mother’s knees and cried. How much pain had she suffered these past few weeks?