The Devlin Diary

by Christi Phillips

  “Mrs. Devlin,” he says. It’s both a greeting and a chastisement.

  She regards him warily. Lord Arlington, secretary of state, is the king’s most trusted minister and the most powerful man in England, after the king. His periwig has more gray in it than she remembers, but his self-important air and the black bandage across his nose, which covers a scar won fighting for Charles I, are the same as ever.

  “You carry your father’s medicine cabinet,” he comments dryly. “How sweet.”

  Arlington was once a friend of her father’s, but that was years ago, before they became enemies. He raps his gold-tipped walking stick on the ceiling and the coach lurches forward.

  “Where are you taking me?” Hannah asks.

  “To Newgate,” he replies, settling back. “You’re under arrest.”

  Chapter Two

  THE COACH SWAYS and bounces over the pitted London streets. Hannah steadies herself by gripping the seat, sticky with spilled wine from a past occupant. Like all hackneys for hire, it reeks of ale, human sweat, and stale tobacco. Two small tapers, smoking and smelling of pork fat, light the gloomy interior. The odors combined with the bone-jostling jolts of carriage travel have long cemented her preference for walking.

  Across from her, Lord Arlington appears complacent, accustomed or simply immune to any discomfort from the rattling coach. He was the most successful of courtiers, her father once told her, because he was born with the gift of a naturally congenial expression. Those who have dealings with him realize too late that he is not their friend and has no loyalty except to that which brings him power and profit. Even now, as Arlington nears fifty-five and his cheeks have become jowls, his face is boyish and bland, its most distinctive feature being the slender black bandage on the bridge of his nose. Hannah wonders if the king is impressed by this constant reminder of Arlington’s service to the Crown. He must be, seeing how high Arlington has risen in twenty-four years, from Lord Digby’s messenger to secretary of state. But aside from what looks to be a somewhat pretentious affectation, Arlington is no fop. He is referred to as charming, courtesy of a glib tongue and a knack for languages, but is known to be ruthless, his callous venality glossed over by a sophisticated nonchalance. His Parisian attire is the epitome of style—brocade coat, lots of lace at the cuffs—but unlike the younger court gallants, with their studied casualness and fashionable disarray, Arlington has a Castilian formality, a result of his time in Spain as English ambassador. His hands, sheathed in perfumed gloves, rest lightly on the gold head of the walking stick planted on the floor between his feet. Ragged lines of dried mud ring his high-heeled shoes, and a few related splatters have crept up his beige silk stockings. Hannah stares, momentarily fascinated by the evidence that occasionally Arlington must walk in the street like everyone else. And, apparently, he sometimes rides in a common hackney coach to conceal his activities, although the two dandified thugs just outside the doors, standing on the sideboards and holding fast to the coach like leeches, must attract a bit of attention.

  “On what charge am I being arrested?” she asks.

  “I should think it would be obvious,” Arlington replies. “For practicing physick without a license.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  A wry smile briefly raises his sagging cheeks. “Can’t I?” With a shrug he sums up Hannah’s current predicament: she is his captive, two of his personal ruffians guard her, and the coach is steadily progressing toward Newgate Prison and a squalid cell with no hope of escape. “A woman practicing medicine without a license from the College of Physicians? That is a crime punishable by fines, jail, or both.”

  “My late husband was a doctor, and as his widow I am entitled by law to adopt his profession.”

  “I see you have already prepared your defense for the courts. It sounds convincing, but I don’t believe that a widow’s right to carry on her husband’s trade extends to the practice of medicine. Widow or no, all practitioners of physick require a license.”

  “There are hundreds of unlicensed doctors in London, as you well know. I presume that the secretary of state is not planning on personally escorting each one of them to prison.”

  “No, I am not. But you are special, Mrs. Devlin. The only child of the great Dr. Briscoe, perhaps the king’s finest physician ever.”

  Is he serious? Hannah wonders.

  Arlington reads her expression easily. “You think I jest with you?”

  “It is strange to hear you praise my father, as you are the man who had him dismissed from court.”

  “His own stubbornness and pride brought about his downfall, not I. And he might still be alive today if he’d stuck to his own kind, instead of ministering to the lower classes and the indigent. I was quite distraught when I heard of his death.”

  “Why am I not convinced?”

  “Believe what you will, but your father and I were friends once. I have never forgotten that.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Too bad you were not born a man. You could have taken his place at court.”

  “I have no wish to be at court.”

  He snorts with derisive laughter. “You actually prefer treating the poor?”

  “The poor are as much in need of physick as the rich. I believe it is a worthy calling.”

  Arlington shakes his head. “Stubborn and proud, like your father.” He fixes her with a solemn regard. “Tell me, did he teach you well?”

  Why is the minister interested? It is all so strange. After making off with her in the manner of a scoundrel kidnapping an heiress for a forced marriage, then telling her she is under arrest, Arlington appears to want to talk about her education. “Why should that concern you, now that you are taking me to jail?”

  “Do not make light with me, young lady. You are hardly in a position to bandy about with your future.”

  “It appears there is little of my future left for me to bandy about with.”

  “Your wit may make your friends merry, but be assured it is not welcome here, Mrs. Devlin. A woman should comport herself with greater modesty. Especially a woman such as yourself, who presumes to take on a man’s role.”

  “When did medicine become solely a man’s province? I follow my mother’s recipe book as often as the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, and I have often found it superior. I shall save my modesty for when I am in jail.” She holds Arlington’s gaze, daring him to make good on his threat, though she is already beginning to suspect that he will not. There is another reason for this complicated show he’s putting on, one that has nothing to do with laws, licensing, or prison, and sooner or later he will tell her. The coach rattles violently. Hannah swallows hard, gulping back the pain. Her headache has settled in and stretched out, working itself into the remote recesses of her brain. Each time the coach joggles and shakes—a regular occurrence, given the condition of the streets—knifing pains radiate from the center of her head. Without thinking she lets her eyes rest on her wood case. The medicine is there, one she has created herself from a variety of herbs, roots, and flower extracts, and, its most vital ingredient, the distilled juice of red poppies.

  “Are you feeling ill?” Arlington’s ability to sense weakness in others is as sharp as ever.

  “Indeed, I am quite well.”

  His eyes search her face. She can see him adding up the sum of the parts: her sallow skin, sunken cheeks, the dark half-moons under her eyes. “You are in need of a particular remedy, perhaps?” Arlington doesn’t wait for an answer. “I have heard—and note well, it is my job to hear everything—that you often purchase poppy syrup from the apothecaries.”

  “I am not unusual in that.” Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, is used in medicines in a variety of ways. Most commonly, poppies are made into a syrup: the blossoms and pods are boiled and the decocted liquid is mixed with sugar water. Less common is the use of opium, the dried sap of the poppy pod, but it is becoming increasingly popular. A few years ago Dr. Sydenham created a preparation of opium dissolved in wine which he christened lau
danum, from the Latin verb laudare, meaning “to praise,” for he considered it the most useful of all medicines. Laudanum has found its way into the London Pharmacopoeia and into many of the city’s apothecary shops. Either as syrup or as laudanum, the opium poppy is the only thing that allays her agony.

  “I have also heard,” Arlington continues, “especially from those who have spent time in Constantinople, that the pleasures of the poppy are difficult to forgo, once one has savored them. Could it be you have a secret vice? You can be open with me. It’s a debauched age—everyone I know has at least one secret vice, and most don’t even bother keeping them secret.”

  “I believe that opium has more uses than those to which it is presently put.” She wants to cite Dr. Sydenham’s views on the subject, as he is an esteemed physician, but he is also a notorious anti-Royalist whose political views and modern medical opinions keep him at odds with the College of Physicians. Her father’s own association with him was considered, by some, a mark of disloyalty to the king. Her father didn’t see it that way, but she knows better than to bring up Sydenham’s name with Arlington, so she mentions only her own observations. “I find it especially helpful for my patients with griping of the guts or with consumption.”

  “So says you, Mrs. Devlin, so says you.” Arlington sighs and studies the floor for a moment. “I may regret it, but I’m going to offer you an alternative to Newgate,” he says. “I require your services at Whitehall.”

  “Are you asking me for a favor?”

  “Not at all. I am offering you a reprieve, and a temporary one at that, if you do not suffice.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Not so fast, my girl. First you have a decision to make: Whitehall or Newgate.”

  As she understands him, she’s only one misstep away from jail, even if she does his bidding. What would it mean to be Arlington’s puppet for the rest of her life? She can escape him only if he is disgraced and toppled from power, always a possibility for anyone close to the king, but she can’t count on that. She restrains a desire to press her fingertips against her throbbing temples. Pain is a great leveler, she finds; it makes her fierce and careless. “I would rather go to Newgate than be forever subject to your whim.”

  Arlington’s affable expression disappears, and he leans forward angrily. “So you’d rather be in jail? Need I remind you that I’m a very busy man, with many important affairs to attend to. I might forget something as inconsequential as your imprisonment for months, even years. I’m told your mother is grown worse since your father died—that she is insensible, that she wanders the streets. Who will provide for her and take care of her if you don’t? She’ll end up in Bedlam. Only a selfish, headstrong girl such as yourself would make such a choice.” He sinks back into his seat, chin up, triumphant. The coach shudders and creaks to a halt. Arlington snaps open the leather window shade: outside is Newgate’s humbling façade, a patchwork of impregnable stone and iron.

  The minister is well aware that there is no one else to take care of her mother. Her father always said that Arlington was formidable. Now she sees why. “You have no charity in your heart.”

  “I have charity, Mrs. Devlin. I just never make the mistake of allowing it to interfere with solving the problem at hand.”

  Chapter Three

  WHITEHALL FEELS DESERTED. The coach has deposited them at the far end of the palace, past the King Street gate, away from the main entrance where Arlington is sure to be recognized and his companion remarked upon. The secretary’s brutish bodyguards have departed along with the carriage, no doubt on another of Arlington’s egregious errands. Hannah and the minister stand in an archway of the high stone wall that edges the street, just outside a circle of flickering brightness cast by a wall-mounted torch. She assumes they are waiting for someone. She assumes. Arlington has revealed nothing.

  She sets her medicine case on the cobblestone walk and peers into the moonless night, sensing the emptiness of her surroundings. She sometimes visited Whitehall with her father when she was younger, before Nathaniel, before Sarah. It seems a lifetime ago, but she has not forgotten the general arrangement. Behind the stone wall, a fathomless darkness conceals the bowling green and the privy gardens. On the opposite side of this darkness is a jumble of two-and three-storied palace buildings ranged along the Thames, where only a few scattered windows glow with light. With lodgings for fifteen hundred courtiers, Whitehall Palace is a city unto itself, with coal-yards and wood-yards, blacksmiths and drapers, kitchens and cofferers, jewelers and hatmakers, guards’ barracks and chapels and stables. Typically alight with thousands of candles that blaze nightly for the king’s entertainments and the courtiers’ parties, tonight it has none of its usual bustle and brightness. Only once before has she seen it so forsaken: in 1665, when plague terrorized the city and the entire court removed to Oxford.

  She leans back against the stone arch. Being out of the coach is a great relief, but her head still hurts with a vengeance. If she can hold very still, without speaking, without moving, the pain might retreat enough to give her a respite of sorts. But that is not possible and will not be for some hours, she is sure. She finds herself craving the medicine. A few drops would suffice, but she will not reach down, open the case, and expose her weakness to Arlington.

  She glances at the minister’s impassive face. Why has he brought her here—and why in such a way? Could it be that the plague has returned and he is trying to conceal it? But why her? She is no better at treating the plague than any other doctor. There is no such thing as a cure, not here, not on the Continent, not even in the Orient, from whence it came. Her curiosity gets the better of her. “Why is no one here?” she asks.

  “The king is gone to Hampton, and many of the court have followed him,” Arlington says. He does not appear to be dissembling.

  “For what purpose?”

  Her question is met with a tired laugh and a look of incredulity. “Purpose? No purpose is necessary. He is the king. He may do as he pleases.” As he speaks, a spot of light materializes in the garden. Silently, they watch it grow steadily larger. Soon it resolves into a man carrying a lantern. “It’s about time,” Arlington mutters.

  Bearing the lantern shoulder-high, the manservant appears like a single flame emerging from the darkness, his shining boots and copper-colored hair ablaze with the fiery light. He draws near, and Hannah observes his face: clear-skinned and olive-eyed, with a fair brow and scant beard. He can’t be much older than twenty. He has a haughty nose and a firm, even defiant, mouth—a face she would find aristocratic if he were not in livery. His expression is bereft of emotion, the blank deference preferred by those who wait upon the high and mighty. Or perhaps it is preferred by the high and mighty themselves: surely Lord Arlington is no easy master.

  “You’re late,” Arlington says by way of greeting.

  “Forgive me, my lord,” he replies, picking up Hannah’s case without being asked.

  “Do you know where you are to lead us?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The three walk along a path through the privy gardens guided by the lantern’s small sphere of light. Without the usual clouds of coal and wood smoke belching from Whitehall’s countless chimney stacks, the air is so fresh that she can smell the plantings of thyme and lavender that brush against her skirts. As they get closer to the water, a low, swirling mist carries with it the dank odors of the river: rotting moss and mud and sewage. It creeps between the buildings, into the gardens and into the stone gallery, an enclosed walkway with flagstone floors that connects the long string of royal apartments along the riverbank. Far ahead, at the very end, a curtained doorway leads to the king’s suite of semipublic rooms. Larger-than-life portraits of England’s past kings, queens, and important ministers line the walls, appearing as huge, humorless ghosts that gaze down sternly upon them as they walk past. An average day would find the stone gallery filled with scheming courtiers, each trying to find a way into the king’s good graces fo
r the titles, land, offices, and preferments that are his to bestow. Tonight’s tiny parade must seem insignificant to the noble spectators: a minister with a secret, a manservant with a lantern, and a young woman following closely behind, still in the dark.

  Arlington’s man sets Hannah’s case down in front of a large mahogany door. He raises his fist and pounds twice, then bows briefly before he turns and leaves them.

  A young maidservant welcomes them inside, meekly scuttling away before they can announce themselves. Lord Arlington doesn’t appear to apprehend anything strange in this, but Hannah feels uneasy from the moment they enter. The enormous drawing room is frugally lit, only a few candles here and there, just enough so one can pass through without crashing into the walls or falling over the furniture. But even in the dim light the gilded paneling gleams, the chairs bristle with expensive brocade, the tall mirrors shimmer darkly. Intuitively Hannah knows it’s a woman’s apartment, but she rules out the queen as a possible tenant. It is common knowledge that the king has provided the pious and sickly Queen Catherine with lodgings at Somerset House a good distance downriver, a convenient arrangement for a monarch whose peccadilloes are public knowledge. The drawing room is certainly fit for a queen, however, and reminiscent of a fairy tale, except that the castle-sized fireplace is cold and the chandeliers are stripped of candles and hoisted up to the lofty ceiling. A suffocating somnolence, suggestive of death or an evil enchantment, permeates the air.