The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  After a brief visit with his daughter, Tom came back to the main room and sat down next to Caroline. He put his hand gently on her forearm. “Maybe it’s a little early for this.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she said with a sniff.

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t mean to belittle what you’re feeling. But don’t make yourself crazy, at least not yet.”

  “God,” she said, hugging her own sides. “If we just had a radio or something…”

  “Yeah, it would be a lot easier, I know.”

  For a few more minutes they all sat quietly, each with private thoughts of how they would cope with the change in their order, should it come to that. Caroline finally went off to bed, and shortly thereafter the room began to empty out. Janie and Tom found themselves alone.

  Janie glanced toward Caroline’s closed bedroom door before saying, “So. What now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m beginning to think maybe we shouldn’t have sent Michael out there.”

  “He went for a good reason. We need to know about that bacterium. There’s no other way to find out.”

  They were silent for a moment, then Tom said, “Even if he went a little farther than we’d planned—and I don’t know why he would do that—he should still be able to leave wherever he is at daylight and get back here by noon tomorrow. The farthest gathering point was still easily within that time frame, even if he’s walking.”

  Janie considered that for a moment, then said, “If we need to go out and find him, it should be me who goes.”

  Her husband’s reaction was immediate and strong. “No way. I’ll go. Or one of the other men.”

  “And if something happens to you and you don’t come back, what are we going to do, with two less men? If Michael’s hurt, I’m the one who can take the best care of him.”

  “You’re not going. Don’t even think about it. You don’t have a suit—what about the hot spots? That’s why he went, remember? The hot spots.”

  “No one else would have a suit either! He would have gone in and out as quickly as possible. Whatever happened to him is more likely to have happened en route.” As if it would change his mind, she added, “I’ll wear the mask.”

  Tom said nothing but sat at the table for a moment with a dark and unhappy look on his face. Then he rose and spoke calmly, hiding the agitation that Janie knew would have colored the voice of a lesser man. He was once again the lawyer, arguing his point from a stance of authority. “With all due respect, my love, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. He could still be out there for a good reason. For all we know, he found something fantastic that will change our lives and he’s dragging it back here by the ankles.”

  Nine

  Night was nearly upon de Chauliac’s party. One soldier was lost, having taken an arrow to the heart, and the other, with the shaft now cut off barely a finger’s width above the skin of his neck, lay horribly wounded on a quickly fashioned travois. The town of Digoin was still a good hour’s ride farther. Alejandro was desperate to arrange a moment of private talk with de Chauliac, but the opportunity would not seem to present itself. Nor had he managed to speak with Philomène, the savior of the wounded man, since the fateful hour of battle earlier.

  They were all drained and exhausted. Guillaume clung tightly to Alejandro’s back, but he was nervous and fidgety, not at all the good rider he had been before.

  The body of the slain soldier lay draped over his own horse. We will bury him in Digoin, de Chauliac had announced, and as they made their way, Alejandro could not help but think that the man’s death had had no purpose. The free-company marauders had not taken so much as a sou from any of them.

  Philomène rode toward the head of the guard; Alejandro could see her plainly, just behind de Chauliac, who now and again would glance in the woman’s direction, as if to determine her condition. She was shaken, Alejandro knew; he had seen it in her face as the battle drew to a close. When she got up on her horse to resume the journey, her hands were trembling.

  The captain of the guard now kept the party riding at an exhausting pace; they had used up an hour of their travel time in fighting, and their wounded comrade required shelter as soon as it could be found. As the group neared Digoin, they came upon the occasional farmhouse, and more than once Alejandro saw the captain look to de Chauliac for what he supposed might be permission to bring the party to a halt. But they headed onward, and soon the little town became visible in a valley before them. A tall steeple stood out among the trees; Alejandro supposed it was their destination.

  But their arrival at the quaint and lovely abbey in Digoin lacked the pomp and ceremony of those they’d had in previous towns en route. De Chauliac himself saw to the care of the wounded man, who was carried into the abbey immediately by a troop of robed brothers under the Frenchman’s watchful eye. The dead man was brought down from his unhappy horse and carried off as well, but with less haste. As he took Guillaume down from the saddle, Alejandro caught the boy staring at the man’s body.

  It struck him that this was the child’s first sight of death. Alejandro let him watch as the body was taken into the abbey.

  “Where are they taking him, Grand-père?”

  “To be buried,” Alejandro answered. “First they will wash his body and then put him in a shroud, and then he will be buried in the ground. Soon he will meet the angels in heaven.”

  For a moment, the boy said nothing, then he posed a difficult question. “Have you ever seen an angel?”

  “No, Guillaume, they seem to keep to themselves.”

  “Then how do you know they are real?”

  Alejandro paused. “I do not,” he said quietly. “I only believe that they are. Knowing and believing can sometimes be two different things. I believe in God, but I have never seen Him either, so I cannot know that He is real. But I see His works all around me, so I must believe, logically, that He is. Do you understand what I mean?”

  The child nodded, almost gravely. Alejandro knew that it was perhaps not the answer he wanted, but it would have to suffice.

  “A fraction of its value,” the cooper’s wife called out the door as her neighbor stumbled off under the weight of a large iron pot. “A bargain!”

  She stepped back into her home and walked through the small, empty rooms. The rest of her belongings were already dispersed among the Jews in the ghetto; the bargaining had been hard and protracted, but the weight of her purse had measurably increased. She would ride in a coach from Avignon to Paris and then on horseback in a traveling party to Calais—a far cry from the mule she rode, behind her walking husband, in the opposite direction more than a decade before. She would return to Eyam well dressed and well fed, and on seeing her apparent prosperity, all would be forgiven. They would welcome her back. She would buy their silence, if it was required, but it seemed doubtful to her that it would be necessary. After all this time, she reasoned, even a monarch with as long a memory as King Edward could not give a whit for the wife of a dead poacher.

  Her bags were packed and ready at the door. The carriage would come for her at dawn. She opened her one remaining coverlet—so decrepit that no one would give her a sou for it—and spread the ratty thing out on the dirt floor of her empty house. It would be her last night of hard sleep in a long while, for tomorrow and all the nights of her journey would be spent in comfortable inns along the way—at least that was what the gentleman from the conveyance concern had assured her.

  She pulled one side of the quilt over herself and settled in, hoping for sleep. It was only a matter of seconds before she felt the annoying bites of the fleas that had no place else to go for warmth but her own flesh. She leaped up from the floor and violently shook out the old coverlet, spewing curses as the dust flew around her.

  One last night, she told herself. She slipped between the layers of the coverlet once again, vowing to herself that she would never spend another night in the company of fleas.

  Philomène was nowhere to be seen; nor was de Chauliac.
Alejandro had hoped to keep an eye on her movements and discover where she might be quartered, so that he could call upon her later as they had agreed. Supper passed, and then the hour of vespers, without any sign of either. Guillaume fell asleep on Alejandro’s lap. He cradled the boy, who had experienced a sudden attack of homesickness. He was just tucking him into a blanket on the straw when he heard de Chauliac’s voice behind him.

  “Someone wishes to speak with you,” the Frenchman said.

  Alejandro rose and turned. “Someone,” he said, pointing to his own chest, “also wishes to speak with you.” He guided de Chauliac out of the small room in which Guillaume slept and pulled the door quietly closed. “Many events took place today that I do not understand. I would have an explanation.”

  De Chauliac remained quiet, saying at last, “You shall have one, in due time. All I can tell you right now is that things may not be what you think they are. Again, I ask for your trust. You have a long and grueling journey ahead of you, even after your time in Paris. Please, colleague, do not work yourself into a froth over things that should not concern you and have no influence upon you.”

  “The woman,” Alejandro said. “Why does she travel with us?”

  “I am taking her to Paris, for her own protection. There are those who would see her destroyed.”

  “For God’s sake, why? Has she committed some heinous crime?”

  “Some would say she has. If she is of a mind to do so, she will tell you why she is with us. If she is not of such a mind, well, I would challenge you or any man on this earth to make her speak.”

  “Tell me, and save me that effort! I have little time for such foolishness.”

  “None of us has any time for foolishness, my friend. Least of all me. But hers is not a foolish tale. Be patient. All will be revealed in time.”

  De Chauliac led him straight to Philomène’s room, then departed. When Alejandro entered, she seemed to be waiting for him. With her hair loose, the breeches and loose-fitting soldier’s shirt seemed out of place. Her boots were on the floor, still muddy from the day.

  She showed him a chair and asked him to sit. He complied, but his agitation would not let him stay still, so he rose up again. “This was not precisely my intent when I requested your company this evening.”

  “Nor mine in agreeing,” she said. “But after today, I understand there is much to be discussed. Please, sit. Your pacing will not accomplish anything, except to muddy the floors.”

  He flopped back into the chair. “A woman would think of such a consequence in times like these.”

  A perturbed look came onto her face, but in a moment it softened. “I will take that utterance as a compliment, and hope it was intended that way. Now, Father Guy said you wished to see me urgently, so—”

  “He told me that you wished to speak with me,” Alejandro interrupted.

  “Did you tell him that we had made arrangements to meet tonight?”

  “No, of course not. You asked for my discretion, which request I have honored.”

  “I said nothing to him either.”

  Alejandro rose again. “Then he did not know.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment; gradually, the tension began to resolve. Almost in unison, they each laughed softly. Their building suspicion evaporated, and they began to speak.

  “All the physicians yet alive in Avignon were summoned to the papal palace at the onset of the Great Mortality,” he told her. “It was 1348, and I had just arrived there. I wanted to prepare for my family to follow, so I had purchased a surgical practice from a widow. When I arrived to take possession, I found de Chauliac’s summons on the door. It was supposed to have been for the other fellow.

  “At first de Chauliac did not remember me,” he told Philomène. “I stood in line with a dozen other men, and he walked before all of us. He did not recognize me as having been one of his students in Montpellier. Of course, being a Jew, I stayed as far toward the back of the study rooms there as I could, so as not to expose myself to the vitriol of the other students. But sometimes I had to come forward, for there were things taught that I was loath to miss. In my time there, it was de Chauliac himself who would dissect the one body that the pope would permit in each year.”

  After a thoughtful pause, he said, “I have always been grateful that de Chauliac was in such a close position to the pope, else we should have had no dissections at all in Montpellier.”

  For a few moments, Philomène was very quiet. “Myself as well. There is a part of me,” she said finally, “that agrees with such restrictions against the dissection of the body. It is, after all, a divine temple that God has provided for our souls to dwell in while we are here on earth, and we must not desecrate it lightly.”

  He trod carefully on these waters. “Please forgive me—I do not wish to offend you, but how are we to care for the temple if we know nothing of its structure?”

  “Some believe that God will guide us. I say that He does so by granting us the will and the intellect to discover the structure of the temple for ourselves. In that way we preserve it for His adoration.”

  “So we agree,” Alejandro concluded. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “It would seem that we do.” She smiled, and leaned toward him a bit. “Now, I would hear of what followed.”

  He found that his recollections were still clear, and she set him at such ease with her manner that the words seemed to flow effortlessly. “He trained me in ways of protecting against plague, mostly with isolation as he had done with the pope called Clement. I was sent to Windsor Castle to protect King Edward and his family. My efforts were successful, despite some resistance, and when my work was done, I thought to remain in England.”

  This seemed to surprise her. “But your family was in Spain.”

  “No. They had been banished from our town and sent to Avignon.”

  “Why?”

  He sat back, taking her measure one more time. Already there was a camaraderie growing between them; they had much in common, it seemed, beyond their shared protection by de Chauliac. To have a companion to whom he could speak from the deepest parts of his heart seemed an unattainable dream to him. He wanted so much to tell her what had happened in Cervere, he could fairly feel the words bursting forward.

  But no matter how trustworthy Philomène seemed, the story of his crime and subsequent flight to Avignon would have to wait until he knew, first, that she would not betray him and, perhaps as important, that she would not reject him. He settled on what seemed the best explanation. “For the most part,” he told her, “it was because we are Jews. There were other intrigues—my father was a moneylender; one Spaniard or the other was always trying to cheat him out of his legitimate profits.”

  Most especially, a Spaniard who happened to be a bishop.

  She was respectfully quiet for a moment. “Yet, you thought to remain in England, despite their notable hatred for the Jews….”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice quieter. “You see, there was a woman.” He fell silent for a moment and lowered his gaze. “We were to be married. I thought perhaps I might find a way to locate my father and bring him there to live with us. But it was not to be.”

  When he looked up again, Philomène was gazing at him with a deeply sympathetic expression. He thought, for a brief second, that he saw tears in her eyes. “Thank you for your candor,” she said. “I have heard of what followed in France from Father Guy. Your story fascinates him. He thinks you the most remarkable man and counts himself privileged to know you.”

  “That is my opinion of him as well.” He straightened up a bit. “Now I have spoken, and my tale is a sad one…. I have great hope that yours will be more cheerful. But before anything else, you must tell me about de Chauliac’s priesthood. It seems so unlike the man; he is rational to the point of annoyance.”

  “Faith and reason are not necessarily contradictory forces,” she said. “You are a man of science and equally a man of faith. De Chauliac is no different
. It is just that one thinks of a priest as someone who has given himself over to God entirely.”

  “I have known few priests who exhibit any signs of cogent thought.”

  “Not so Father Guy. We are from the same region in Provence,” she told him. “I was a very small child when he came home to our parish, before he resumed his studies in Montpellier. He was beloved among us for his exuberance in tending to our spiritual needs, and yet we all feared him when it was time for confession. The penances he would dole out could wear one down. My mother told me many years later—after he went to Montpellier—that he seemed never to be satisfied with his life in the clergy, that his intelligence drove him to seek more.”

  She paused for a moment, then said, “In this way, Father Guy has guided my path. He protects me now, I think, because he feels responsible for what I did.”

  He waited for the confession, and when it did not come, he said, “And you did what, dear lady, that should inspire him to look after you?”

  “I disguised myself as a boy and enrolled in Montpellier to study medicine.”

  “But it is forbidden for women to practice medicine. Now, I do not agree with that edict—”

  Before he could finish, she interrupted him with a light laugh, though it was laden with bitterness. “I have heard those words a thousand times. They have become like gnats to me—I swat them away.” Then her demeanor grew sober. “My mother and father were horrified,” she said. “They refused to acknowledge me; many times I felt that I had no family at all. We were not wealthy but comfortable—my father was a silversmith, and he earned a good living. He had among his customers some of the best families in all of Provence. Of course, they had hopes for a strong marriage for me. ‘You are virtuous and intelligent, graceful and polite,’ my father would say, ‘and you come from a family of decent means. Yet, no offers of marriage have come forth.’ It was all he could think to do, to see me well married. He cared not one whit for my great accomplishment.”