The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  “’Twas a long journey you took to reveal yourself,” he whispered to her spirit.

  This good lady was Père’s lover when he was here before, and more than a friend to me; it was she who stood by him as he nursed me back to health when I lay sick with plague in the time of the Great Mortality, and she who shielded me from the wrath of my cruel sister. He wept bitterly as he stood before her grave; there was little I could do to comfort him. But when we slipped out of

  Canterbury, he seemed more at peace, as if a burden had been lifted from him. When we came to Dover, we inquired as discreetly as possible about conditions in Calais; we came to understand that there were many English troops there still, just as there had been when Père crossed over in April, and we decided that it would be wiser to pass over to Bretagne in Normandie instead of Calais. My heart was heavy when we took this decision, for the voyage over sea was a great deal longer and would land us at more of a distance from Paris. But Père convinced me that we would stand a far better chance of success if we did not have to pass through an English stronghold; in view of our circuitous route, there had been plenty of time for news of our escape to cross la Manche before we could do so ourselves.

  And so we went by ship, south through the channel to Bretagne, and I suffered mightily from seasickness. When at last we stepped ashore, I fell to the earth and kissed it! After buying decent horses, we made our way to Nantes, which we found to be quite a charming place. The Bretons do not consider themselves French, nor do they give their allegiance to England, which lays claim to that region just now. They are Bretons, first and last, with a language and a spirit all their own, and for that I admire them. Therein lies the rub for the king, I suppose; he had hoped through Benoit to gain something of a foothold there against the famille de Rais. He has lost it, may God be blessed.

  I daresay I found that place so appealing that I would consider going to live there, if Père will agree, once our business in Paris is settled. We could make a good life, with little fear of betrayal, for no one has any love for those who would claim us.

  We rode overland for what seemed an eternity. We stayed on the last night before reaching Paris in the little village of Versailles….

  “Tomorrow,” Kate said with longing. She laid her head on her rolled-up cloak. “Tomorrow I shall see my son. My heart is so full that I can barely contain myself! Père, you must tell me—how shall I act when I see him? He does not know me, nor I him.”

  Alejandro reassured her as much as he could. “Every night since he was a baby, I have told him about his wonderful mother. I have told him how you look and spoken of the sound of your voice; I have described your character, all in great detail.”

  “But he has never seen me,” she repeated.

  “And his love for you will be no less for it. I have kept you in his mind every day; there must be an image in there that he goes to for comfort and reassurance. The very first thing he asked me when I told him I would go to England was whether I would bring you back.”

  He saw no evidence in her expression that his words had brought her any comfort.

  “You have never seen him either,” he said. “Will that change how you feel about him when that happy event finally comes to pass?”

  She shook her head. “But what shall I do if he does not like me?”

  Alejandro laughed softly and stroked her hair. “Of that there is no possibility. He will love you as I do, I promise.”

  He did not speak of his own fears, of what might happen when Philomène saw him again after so many weeks of separation. Would she welcome him into her arms and her bed again, or would time have allowed doubts to enter her heart?

  Soon enough, he would know.

  They entered by nightfall, passing quietly through an open gate on the western side of Paris. There was no post of soldiers to question them, as there was little for the king of France to fear from the English with their princess so newly wedded to the Baron de Coucy. The monarch’s biggest worry, Alejandro knew, would be his own people’s discontent. The respite in the English war meant that his soldiers could spend their time in quashing the small rebellions that rose up from time to time in the countryside, those dim, heartbreaking echoes of the failed rise of the Jacquerie.

  They followed the road that ran alongside the bank of the Seine, knowing that there was little chance of interception by any authority—they looked all too common, a traveling man and woman, riding peacefully. There was no need to cross the river, for they were already to its south. They came upon l’hôtel de Chauliac through the same road where Kate and Guillaume Karle had stood on the night, long ago, when they first began to plot Alejandro’s escape.

  As they neared the spot where the handsome young couple had stood, Alejandro turned to Kate and said, “If it will not upset you, daughter, I would have you wait here.”

  The request took her by surprise. “But why, Père—”

  “For your son,” he said. “Please.”

  “All right…”

  He left her quickly and entered the courtyard. After the groom took his horse, he ran into the house. He stood in the foyer for a moment and looked around; no one was about. He could feel Philomène’s presence in his bones, tugging at him, but he ignored the urge to find her and instead went quickly up the stairs.

  His manservant rose up immediately with effusive greetings. Alejandro gave the man a quick embrace.

  “The boy?”

  “Asleep, and dreaming happily, one hopes.”

  “Happier soon,” the physician said with a wide smile. “I have brought his mother.”

  He left his manservant in fervent prayers of thanksgiving and entered the room where Guillaume lay peacefully asleep.

  His heart soared in anticipation of the happy reunion.

  “Guillaume,” he said, gently shaking him. “Wake up!”

  The boy turned in the bed and looked up. Then he sat up on his elbows, his eyes wide in disbelief. “Grand-père! You are back!”

  Alejandro embraced the boy fiercely, then led him to the window. “Look,” he said, “down below.”

  The boy gave him a questioning look, but after Alejandro’s encouraging nod, he glanced out onto the street.

  There below he saw Kate, still on horseback. She raised her arms up and waved at him, almost frantically, and blew kisses through the air to him.

  The boy could scarcely speak. “Is that…is she—”

  “Yes!” she cried from below. “Yes! Wait there, Guillaume—I will come to you!” She kneed her horse in the side and disappeared in the direction of the courtyard.

  Guillaume ignored her order and ran down the stairs, skipping steps, with Alejandro close behind. The boy tugged the heavy door open and fairly flew out into the courtyard. When he saw Kate dismounting from her horse, he stopped abruptly and stood still.

  She faced him, and said, “Hello, Guillaume, my son.”

  He turned around and looked to Alejandro.

  “Go, child, and give your mother a kiss.”

  He ran, his feet barely touching the cobblestones, and leaped into her waiting arms.

  Alejandro took Kate and Guillaume upstairs to their turret room, where they talked for many hours. The kissing and weeping and hugging continued well into the night; miraculously, the rest of the household did not come awake. In time, Guillaume began to doze in his mother’s arms. With the reluctance that comes from too long an absence, she laid him down in his own straw and pulled the covers up over his shoulders.

  “Sleep here, beside him,” Alejandro told her. He pointed to his own bed. “I shall find a place to lay my old bones.” He looked out the window. “’Tis nearly dawn, in any case.”

  He left them in the room and closed the door behind him, then headed immediately to Philomène’s room.

  For a moment, he stood there with his heart racing. Finally, he summoned the courage to tap lightly on the door.

  He waited. No one came. He tapped again, a bit louder, but still no one came. He
pushed the door open slowly and saw, to his horror, that the room was empty.

  In a panic, he went down the stairs and searched for her in the library. Each failure drove the fear that she was gone deeper into his soul. Eventually he made his way to the kitchen, where the scullery maids were already at work on the day’s bread. He spoke urgently to one of the older maids, a woman named Mathilde, who he knew had been in the household for some time.

  “Please,” he said, “the mademoiselle? Is she gone?”

  Mathilde gave him a knowing smile. “En bas,” she said, pointing toward the stairs. “In the surgery.”

  He had been thrown down the same staircase, eight years before, by de Chauliac’s guards, and now he nearly threw himself down in his eagerness, but this time there would be no bent ankle for him at the base of the steps. A candle burned in a sconce against one of the sweating walls; he took it from its resting place and, by its light, he found Philomène’s cot.

  He saw that de Chauliac had made a comfortable place for her, with a table and chair and a small commode. Alejandro stood over the table and saw several pages of de Chauliac’s manuscript, far more neatly stacked than he himself would have done.

  And then he stood over the woman herself. Alejandro was stunned once again by her loveliness; she seemed even more beautiful than he remembered. With one light breath, he blew out the flame of the candle, then pulled aside her coverlet, and as she opened her eyes, he slipped into the linens beside her.

  She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, and clung to him with all her might.

  “Oh…” she breathed. “Oh, my love, you are here. I can hardly believe it….”

  They were speechless with joy; their hands were upon each other, frantically touching, to be sure it was not a dream.

  “But why are you down here, and not above in your own room? I took a fright when I found it empty.”

  “By choice,” she said. “I often awake in the night, with dreams of you, and the work helps me to keep my mind occupied.”

  And then Philomène took his hand in hers and drew it to her waist. She placed it upon the slight rise that had formed in the place where once the hollow of her belly had been. “But let us speak of other things now.”

  Alejandro rose up on one arm and hovered over her; his expression was one of utter disbelief.

  “Are you—that is, I mean to ask—”

  She laughed lightly and kissed him. “I am.”

  They were surrounded by their little family—Kate, Guillaume, and Avram Canches—but Alejandro saw only Philomène. He barely heard the words of the sacrament that Guy de Chauliac read from a book of Christian rituals held open before him. Kate and Guillaume stood next to them and witnessed the marriage with wide smiles upon their faces.

  The servants and maids stood by, dabbing their eyes, for it was an occasion of much happiness, and there was great affection among them for the man and woman being united by the master of the house. There was great cheer when the ceremony was completed; footman and scullery maid alike were there to offer congratulations to the happy couple.

  And though it was just a formality, the pair was sent to their bedchamber in a shower of good wishes, for their first night as husband and wife.

  Philomène’s labor began one afternoon as the December sun was just slipping away. Ignoring her husband’s admonishments, she had refused to confine herself well in advance of her labor as other women did. But on that morning she had felt quite agitated, and though she knew her time was near, she could not explain the uneasiness that took hold of her. When in mid-afternoon her waters broke, she sent Kate to summon Alejandro away from his work with de Chauliac.

  The pains began in earnest two hours after the sun had fully set, when the household was nearly all abed. All through the long, cold night, Philomène struggled and pushed, with Kate at her side and Alejandro pacing nervously outside the door.

  But the child would not be born.

  For a short while, Philomène managed to rest. In the brief quiet interlude, Alejandro said to de Chauliac, who had joined his vigil, “Does it not seem strange, colleague, how you and I—both physicians—have found ourselves once again waiting outside the door while a woman moans within?”

  De Chauliac barely had time to agree before her moaning began again.

  “How long has it been now since her waters broke? It seems an eternity.”

  “It is, quite nearly,” de Chauliac said. “More than twelve hours now.”

  Alejandro lowered his head. There was shame in his voice when he said, “We have put you to so much trouble. I am sincerely sorry if you have lost any of your influence with Avignon….”

  “Do not give it a thought,” de Chauliac said. “If I have, which I doubt, I will not miss it much. This pope is not the man that Clement was. Clement, may he rest in peace, was far more—beneficent. Oh, he had his moments of jocularity, and God knows he was fond of his secular pleasures, but for the most part he was a devout fellow with the good of his flock at heart. This one sits in his chambers and counts God’s money, with which, I truly believe, God does not concern Himself.”

  “That is, I think, why He made man in His image, to count His money.”

  De Chauliac smiled. “That is a unique point of view, colleague.”

  At that moment a long and woeful moan arose from beyond the door. When the stressful contraction was finally over, Alejandro let out the breath he had held—quite unknowingly—for its duration. “I cannot stand to see her in pain,” he said. “Is there nothing we can give her?”

  “Not in my pharmacopoeia,” de Chauliac said.

  Two hours later, as Philomène lay exhausted in her own sweat, Kate came out, looking defeated and pale.

  “No matter what I do, I cannot manage to bring the child forth. I have not the experience—we must have a midwife who has seen enough births to know what is required. Send Mathilde—she is known to be wise in such matters.”

  De Chauliac hurried off to find the most senior of the maids, so she might be sent on the required errand.

  Less than an hour later, the midwife arrived, bustling with urgency. She was followed by a strapping lad who struggled up the narrow staircase with the stout and heavy birthing chair. Alejandro stood just beyond the door to the birth room with de Chauliac behind him and watched the woman as she moved her large girth down the hallway. She stopped just outside the door and removed her shawl, revealing her face fully.

  He nearly gasped but held it back. She looked into his eyes for a moment, and he saw the same look of recognition on her face.

  But in a marvel of containment, the midwife did not show her surprise either; instead, she said simply, “We meet again, Physician. Do I attend to your daughter this time as well?”

  “No,” he said, his voice even and controlled. “My wife.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Mathilde tells me that she has been at her pains for the best part of this day and part of the last. Is that true?”

  “It is. But she has been well attended, for my daughter has—”

  The midwife interrupted him. “You ought to have summoned me sooner. Let us hope we do as well this time.”

  Shaken, the Frenchman and the Jew slipped downstairs to the library. De Chauliac ordered wine to be brought, and they drank it down quickly, to numb the shock of what had just transpired upstairs.

  “We ought to have considered this possibility that we would come upon someone from Lionel’s household,” de Chauliac said. “What fools we are!”

  “She was only known to us as a servant there,” Alejandro said, “a maid with skills in birthing. Not specifically as a midwife! One assumes that she has taken up the trade, now that the household is empty and she has lost her employment there, and she did well enough with Kate in birthing Guillaume, but still…” He downed the wine in one long gulp, then placed his hands flat on the table. “She must not be allowed to leave this house until we have made arrangements to leave ourselves.”

  “Bu
t it would be madness to travel with an infant, and with your wife weak from childbirth….”

  With steel in his voice, Alejandro said, “I will do what must be done to protect my family.”

  “We cannot keep her here; she is a free woman, and someone will surely miss her!”

  “Was I not a free man when you kept me here? And was Kate not a free woman when Lionel and Elizabeth stole her from me?”

  For a moment the bitterness of that time hung in the air.

  “If we cannot detain her,” de Chauliac said quietly, “then we shall bribe the woman, buy her silence.”

  “For how long? Such a one as she cannot keep silent about her triumphs—you must recall her from Guillaume’s birth: She is boastful and loud—”

  “—and she is common. A sack of gold will close her mouth. Just long enough.”

  Alejandro did not seem convinced. “One hopes.”

  Alejandro heard desperation in Philomène’s voice.

  “I am spent,” she told him. “I can do no more on my own.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “You must take the child from me, by cutting me open, as I took the child from that poor woman.”

  Instantly, Alejandro said, “No, this will not be done. Not by my hand.”

  She drew in a long breath and clenched her teeth together in a grimace. When the pain finally subsided, she said, “Would you have me lay here in my own filth and die in pain, knowing that I leave you with no child to show for it? God’s mercy, Alejandro, do to me what was done to Caesar’s mother, so that the child might survive.”

  His voice trembled. “No, my love, if I do this, you will die—”

  “Beloved fool,” she whispered, “I know what may happen. You must cut the child out of me, or both of us shall die.”

  He turned away, his heart beating so rapidly that he could hardly breathe.

  “Please, husband, I beg you; had I been a bit more diligent, a better physician, the woman and her child might have lived…. And had I had the knowledge I now have—that you can have before you by virtue of de Chauliac’s drawings—it would have worked. But I cut too deep, I know that now, but you can do it better….”