The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  Twelve, Alejandro judged from the look of the boy and from the squeak of his voice. At that age, Kate had been a wonder—so full of life and curiosity, despite their adversities.

  “Yes, young man, we have, and we thank you for your kind welcome,” Alejandro said. “What is the name of this village?”

  “Eyam,” the boy said.

  “Eyam,” Alejandro repeated. He glanced around the square, making sure the boy saw him do so. “A fair place, in my estimation. And what would be your name, boy?”

  “Thomas Blackwell, sir.” He bowed, with unseemly grace for his age and station. “The Younger.”

  For a moment, Alejandro said nothing. Thomas Blackwell danced in his mind, prodding some distant memory. Finally, it came to him:

  AND HERE LIE MY TWELVE CHILDREN AND MY WIFE OF MANY YEARS

  He had seen the name on a headstone when he and Kate fled from Canterbury. Alejandro let the dark image slip away and smiled at the boy, thinking that it could not be the same man, so far away. “And how many years do you have, Master Blackwell?”

  “Twelve,” the boy answered, puffing out his chest. “And my father’s name is also Thomas. He is called the Elder hereabouts.”

  “No wonder. One expects he is indeed older than his son.”

  This brought a chuckle from the boy. “Ah, kind sir, you are correct. My father is quite a bit older than I.”

  “And your mother?”

  The boy laughed gaily. “Also older than I, though a bit younger than my father.”

  “Ah,” Alejandro said. He appraised the boy with an up-and-down look. Kate stayed in his shadow, saying nothing.

  “We are passing through your town, but we are in need of lodgings for a short while. Are there any to be found nearby?” Alejandro asked.

  “There is a tavern, though they have no rooms to let,” Thomas Blackwell told them. “Missus Tarnoble has tossed the mister out again, and he has put himself in there. Missus says that it will surely be convenient for him, as the tavern is where he spends his time anyway. So you are short of luck.” Then his smile broadened. “But I venture that my father would welcome a paying boarder.”

  “So much the better,” Alejandro said. “I favor lodging with a household. It is so much more—friendly.”

  The boy grinned. “It will cost you a penny, I daresay,” he said.

  “So be it,” Alejandro answered. “I am tired, as is my daughter. A penny is a worthwhile expenditure for the comfort of a good home.”

  “Then follow me,” said Thomas Blackwell the Younger.

  “Allow us a moment first,” he said. He drew Kate away. “I know you were but a child, but do you recall, when we fled from Canterbury—we came upon a grave…”

  “It cannot be the same man.”

  “Daughter,” he said, loving the sound of the word, “I have come through experience to believe that there is no such thing as coincidence.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then said, “You may well be correct in that belief.”

  Their curiosity thus stirred, they followed the boy through a square full of people, all going about their daily business. Nowhere did they see any signs of affliction. A stone cross with ornate carving, the edges dulled by time and the elements, stood in the center of the village square, not far from the tavern. A stone church dominated the village center and was surrounded by smaller cottages. People stared at them, seemingly without shame, as they progressed through it all; Alejandro felt their judging eyes upon him. But after a while their expressions softened, one and all, as if something about their appearance proved tolerable. He found it strange indeed.

  All along the way, the boy Thomas Blackwell greeted the familiar people he passed with a marked jocularity that was not in keeping with the morose times in which he lived.

  Nor was it in keeping with a plagued town. Alejandro leaned back and said to Kate, “This is a remarkably affable village.”

  “I think so as well.”

  Each one knew what the other was thinking—that this was a place where none of their pursuers would dare to venture, and that a respite from flight might be a good and welcome thing.

  “Let us hope it can be arranged for us to remain here and rest a bit,” he said. He pondered anew his remembrance of the name Thomas Blackwell. There were surely many Thomas Blackwells in England; it was a common enough name. But to come upon a black-flagged village where plague had not taken its toll, and to come upon the name of a man who had once before escaped its grip—it was unnerving, at the very least.

  “Can you not regain their trail?” Benoit said, with audible frustration.

  Sir John disliked the man for his grating voice as much as for any other reason. He wondered what de Coucy thought of Benoit’s blatant impudence in bypassing his higher-ranking cousin and demanding an answer for himself. He cast a glance at de Coucy but saw no evidence of annoyance in the baron’s expression.

  Ah, well, they are only French, the knight thought. He called out to the master of the hounds.

  “Count Benoit wishes to know why we cannot regain their trail,” he said as soon as the man arrived.

  “I do not know, m’lord. The hounds are confounded. This seldom happens, but with the ground wet from spring…”

  Now de Coucy spoke; his voice was shrill and angry. “Well, lead the beasts on until they find their noses again!”

  The houndsman bowed hastily and then rushed off with a worried look on his face, never having glanced into Sir John Chandos’s eyes again. The knight cursed under his breath as the man shambled away, though his anger was more at de Coucy. But the houndsmen would not answer to the king should the quest be futile, as he knew it might well be; it was Chandos himself who would have to explain, with careful decoration, why his best trackers had not been successful in finding a Jew and a young woman.

  He knew for certain that the king did not understand the skills his daughter possessed; he had never watched her stand before a target and place arrow after arrow in its center, after carefully adjusting the feathers to her own requirements.

  Goose feathers, Sir John heard her say with her lovely smile, serve best. Many favor hawk, but not I….

  Nor did King Edward truly fathom the depth of the Jew’s intellect, having no such depth himself. Chandos’s excuses would be well considered and believable, but they would not be entirely true.

  His thoughts on a plausible explanation for what might be failure were interrupted by the sound of barking, distant and well forward. It was not the ordinary sound of pursuit but something more definitive: The hounds were excited. He rode ahead and saw wagging tails, for the animals all had their noses to the ground. The houndsmen wore brighter looks than those he had last seen on their faces.

  Ducks and chickens pranced about the Blackwell yard as if they owned it—and by the odor, Alejandro guessed that they actually did. He stepped around their filth as best he could and followed the boy. As they passed by the simple cottage, they came to an outbuilding with a fenced corral of sorts. In it they saw a fine big hog. Perhaps in curiosity on hearing their arrival, a fat sow wallowed out from the small enclosure; she was obviously heavy with young, on the verge of delivering her litter. It was a prosperous household, to have separate lodging for the animals.

  “Father!” young Thomas Blackwell cried.

  After a few moments, a middle-aged man of some girth appeared in the doorway.

  “We’ve guests!” the lad cried. He gestured in the direction of the travelers. “Paying lodgers!”

  The father’s face lit up. He stepped out into the sunlight, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Welcome!” he said affably. He nodded slightly to Alejandro and Kate.

  “Thank you,” Alejandro said. “My daughter and I are in need of arrangements.”

  Thomas Blackwell the Elder eyed them suspiciously. It was not the first time that someone had looked upon the pair and judged that there was no possibility of kinship between the two. The expression that developed on his face was one o
f skepticism that gradually changed to humor. A smirk threatened to blossom, but the man held it admirably in check.

  “We’ve a comfortable loft above the house, if you don’t mind the noise,” he said. “I’ve four young ones,” he added.

  “I rather enjoy the sound of children,” Alejandro said. He touched Kate lightly on the arm. “It has been far too long since my own daughter was young.”

  “Ah,” Blackwell said. He looked Kate up and down, to Alejandro’s chagrin. “Indeed,” the man said, “I can see that.”

  He strode forward and extended his hand in greeting. “Thomas Blackwell, at your service, sir.” Alejandro took it as Blackwell asked, “And what would be your name?”

  “Alejandro,” he said.

  “A Spaniard,” Blackwell noted.

  To this assumption, Alejandro gave a nod. “And this is my daughter Katarina.”

  Kate glanced at him in surprise, though Blackwell did not see it, for he had been distracted by a squeal from the hog’s pen. There was a bit of jostling going on for a position at the fence.

  “You’ll be waiting a bit more for your feed if you keep that up,” he said to the swine. Then he turned back to Alejandro. “They’re a right greedy pair.”

  “One can see that, judging by their size.”

  “There’ll be a fine slaughter one of these days,” Blackwell added. “Enough to keep the whole of Eyam in bacon for a good long time. We have a fondness for bacon fat around here. ’Tis a cure for plague.”

  For a moment, Alejandro said nothing. Finally, he said, “We have seen by your flag that plague has visited this place.”

  Blackwell spat into the hog pen, then wiped his face on his sleeve. “It has,” he said, “though it was last year. A man came through the town, just as you do now, but he stayed at the tavern. None of us liked the look of him, truth be told—he was sallow and thin when he arrived. First this visitor took ill, then the landlady. She died right quickly, within a day. The landlord’s daughter was stricken as well, but she recovered.” With one meaty hand, he made a quick sign of the cross on his chest. “She’ll not recover her beauty, I fear. The scourge has left a mark on her.”

  “And no more were afflicted?”

  “No, thank Christ and all the saints. The girl took to her loft and drank her bacon grease until she was well cured, and by that action stopped the spread.”

  Kate stepped forward and said, “I heard a tale from a traveling beggar, who spoke of plague being presently in the north. That was a mere fortnight ago.”

  “You have come upon old Will, have you? He’s been spreading that story for the better part of a year. We don’t pay him any mind. We leave out food for him now and then, and he makes his way, God alone knows how, but he manages.”

  “But it was well south of here.”

  “The man has naught to do but ride,” Blackwell told her.

  “Then what he said was untrue.”

  “Not entirely.” He reached into a sack and withdrew a handful of grain, which he threw at the hogs. They squealed in delight and began rooting in the mud with their noses immediately. “We are of a mind to keep it out, and the best way to do that is to tell anyone who will listen that it already lives here. Then it will not come, at least not by way of a traveler.” He wiped his hands unceremoniously on the legs of his breeches. “I’ll wager a night’s lodging that you felt a few stares as you passed through.”

  Alejandro nodded.

  “There are many who bemoan the lack of both commerce and congress, myself among them. There were some who thought it wise to flee, to avoid the pest altogether. But flee where, I say—anywhere you go it can come upon you. I know.” He pointed his finger downward and said, in a bitter voice, “I put all of my children by my first wife and the lady herself into the ground. There is nowhere to flee.”

  So there it was. This was the very same Thomas Blackwell. And now he had a twelve-year-old son.

  God is indeed good.

  He put his supposition to the test. “Nowhere to flee—this is a strong statement you make, Mister Blackwell.”

  “Indeed it is, Monsieur l’Espanol.” He grinned momentarily, awaiting a response from Alejandro, whose nod of acknowledgment was reason enough to continue. “I buried them, one on top of the other, in one grave, not far south of Canterbury.”

  After a decent interval, Alejandro said, “Please allow me to express my sincere condolences to you. But I must confess—many years ago, when I traveled in that region, I saw the grave you made for them.”

  Blackwell stared at him, as if he were lying.

  “It is the truth, Alejandro said. “You wrote an inscription: And here lie my twelve children and my wife of many years. I wept in grief for them and—perhaps more deeply—for you.”

  Blackwell looked toward the house in which he lived with his current wife and their children. There was an expression of desperate love on his face, but at the same time, there was a longing. Alejandro could guess what the man longed for—the return of the departed. It was a dream that would not be realized.

  “Often in my own dreams,” he said, “I have seen you laying all the children in the grave, and then their mother, with her arms outstretched to protect them. I pray for your family.” He forgot de Chauliac’s warning to him in the emotion of the moment. “I am a physician, and I have seen too many die of this scourge.”

  For a moment Blackwell stared at him. “I thank you for your dreams, kind sir. Your prayers are most welcome and appreciated. But I must tell you, that is not how it took place.”

  Alejandro did not really understand. “How, then, did it happen?”

  “Well, it was a very curious turn of events, I must say. My wife died first—Janet was her name, rest in peace. She was a good woman.”

  “By how long, might I ask?”

  “I cannot recall exactly how long. There is a part of my mind that will not allow it.”

  “It is God’s way of protecting you, sir, from the pain of your memories.”

  “Ah,” Blackwell said. “Of course, that makes perfect sense. I do remember that Janet died on a Sunday eve—we had all gone to chapel that morning, and those of us who could took the blood and body of Christ. I have often thanked God that He provided grace for my family just before He called them to Himself. But my gratitude did not last long. You cannot imagine, unless you have lived a week like that one, watching all that you love die slowly before you.”

  Alejandro recalled the day that Adele died. The pain had almost been unbearable. She had died in his arms, but so had the children and wife of Thomas Blackwell—thirteen souls, whereas he had known the death of but one. The man’s grief would have been immeasurable.

  “You are correct, sir,” he said. “I cannot imagine.”

  He said nothing to Thomas Blackwell for another moment or two; the poor man had rivulets of tears running down his cheeks, though Alejandro did not think that Blackwell was aware of it, since he made no attempt to wipe them away. He waited—more patiently than he would have thought possible—until Blackwell finally sensed the wetness and wiped his cheeks dry.

  “I laid Janet’s body out in the far end of the longhouse until I could dig a proper grave for her,” Blackwell said. “I had the children to care for…”

  In his mind’s eye, Alejandro saw twelve children, each one a bit taller than the one who preceded him, each one running toward a pit in the ground. As Blackwell’s sorrowful tale droned in the background, the physician saw each child morph from pink health to pale ashes and then leap into the pit, only to burst into a shower of gray dust.

  “…but the grave was a good deep one, thank God, else their toes would be sticking up out of the soil.”

  The ignominy of that notion brought Alejandro back to the present; Alejandro tried to imagine Adele’s toes sticking up out of the soil, or those of Hernandez, a giant of a man, who had helped him in so many ways.

  “It was a week of pure hell,” Blackwell said quietly.

  A week,
Alejandro thought. It seemed uncanny. “Kind sir,” he said, “I shall pray anew for the souls of your loved ones.”

  “For that I thank you. A prayer is always appreciated.” He crossed himself and closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his gaze was directed toward heaven. “Holy Father, please cast Thy blessings upon us, Your faithful servants who stand here without support, on the rough and unforgiving earth.”

  Alejandro let a brief moment pass in deference to the man’s memories, then said, “Tell me, Blackwell. Just out of curiosity, have any of your children of this union succumbed?”

  Blackwell crossed himself again, but this time he fell to his knees. He put his hands together and faced his God. “Heavenly Father, I give thanks to Thee that none has been taken.” He rose again and said, “There are some families in the farms on the outskirts of town who have had their brush with the pest, but none in town here.” Blackwell leaned closer and said, with a grin, “God has answered our prayers, plain and simple.”

  Alejandro kept his skepticism to himself and simply said, “There are many remarkable occurrences in this world. This is perhaps just one of them.”

  “Bloody right,” Blackwell said emphatically. “We are a fortunate lot here, I would say—more fortunate than most, because the king’s men will not venture in here while we purport to be afflicted. And for this we are most grateful.”

  Kate and Alejandro exchanged a silent understanding. They would stay in the haven of Eyam, perhaps for a few days, to plan the rest of their escape.

  It was a sickly-looking fox at best, but de Coucy put an arrow into the poor thing anyway. He ordered one of the houndsmen to take the pelt, but even the most desperate furrier would not consider putting it into a cloak. The animal seemed almost to lay itself in the path of danger and put up little fight when the hounds cornered it. The houndsman displayed the bloody thing by holding it up in one hand. De Coucy’s triumph was greeted with only lukewarm praise.

  The houndsman hung the carcass over the back of his saddle. His horse did not seem to appreciate the smell, which was disturbingly more vile than one might expect from a fresh kill.