The Devlin Diary

by Christi Phillips

  “Yes, an appointment.” Claire set her cup and saucer on the counter. “Goodness, look at the time! I’ve got a supervision back at my set in fifteen minutes.”

  She backed out of the lounge, smiling and offering a few words about how pleased she was to meet them, and made a rapid retreat down the stairs. An appointment. What a lame excuse. Of course she didn’t have an appointment that evening.

  She had a date with Andrew Kent.

  Chapter Six

  4 November 1672

  HANNAH WALKS THROUGH Louise de Keroualle’s suite until she spies Lord Arlington and Madame Severin taking wine in a small sitting room. How is she going to explain the mademoiselle’s illness? She knows of no delicate way to phrase it; perhaps she should remind them that the news could well be worse. At least she is a physician who understands the difference between the clap, as it is known in England, and its more virulent cousin, syphilis, commonly called the pox. Hannah has seen patients with both complaints and knows that a misdiagnosis can easily be made, even by experienced doctors. This misunderstanding sadly increases the sufferer’s anguish, as the treatments for the pox and the clap are quite different, and one does nothing to dispel the miseries and sad consequences of the other disease. Woe especially to he who has gonorrhea, or running of the reins (for it is believed that the unwholesome urethral discharge comes from the kidneys), and is recommended by some quack doctor to a course of treatment for the pox, which consists almost exclusively of preparations containing mercury: mercury lotions, mercury pills, mercury enemas, mercury steam baths. The metallic chemical has shown some efficacy in arresting the development of the pox, but its effects are loathsome: excessive salivation, nausea, fluxing, blackening of the gums, loosened teeth, hair loss, melancholia, frenzy, even mental derangement. And of course it does nothing to cure the clap, which, left untreated, can cause barrenness in women and, in men, strangury, an inflammation of the prostate—occasioning a discomfort even greater than that which was experienced at the beginning. The lengthy, expensive cures for the pox are often taken at private spas or baths on the outskirts of London, because in spite of the fact that the diseases of Venus are rampant in all classes of society, they are socially stigmatizing.

  Every physician in London is all too aware that venereal disease is epidemic, but no one knows how many Londoners die annually from the pox or from complications of the clap. The relatives of the dead often bribe the searchers, elderly women hired by the parish to record the cause of death, to overlook any sign of venereal disease upon the late beloved. In this way, the Bills of Mortality—published each week by the parish-clerks of London, and given in a monthly report to His Majesty the King—have included, along with the usual number of deaths from Fever and Consumption, fatalities of a strange and mysterious nature, such as Timpany, Rising of the Lights, and Vapors in the Head.

  Her father’s mentor, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, was one of the first physicians to make clear the distinctions between the two diseases. Charles Briscoe built upon Dr. Sydenham’s illuminating observations of the disease process and, like him, often set aside humoral theory in favor of his empirical findings. Both men believed that illness was caused not by an imbalance of humors but by an outside agent working on the body. The patient’s imbalance was simply another symptom of disease. This departure from traditional Galenic theory was controversial, but it had some impressive results. In the course of his years with the permissive English court, both in France and in England, Dr. Briscoe developed, by popular demand as it were, a special serum and a method of treatment for the clap that enjoyed a reputation for being as sure as it was secret. And Hannah is the only one who knows it.

  If she wasn’t so overcome by the manner in which Arlington chose to make off with her, she might have realized sooner why she was suddenly so necessary to him, why he chose her instead of one of the court doctors. Arlington knew, or at least suspected, what afflicted Louise before he abducted Hannah.

  When she enters the sitting room and informs him and Madame Severin of her diagnosis, he does not look surprised.

  “It is not the pox, then?” Madame Severin asks.

  “No, but there is still cause for concern,” Hannah replies. “She has an extreme exacerbation of the clap such as I have rarely seen. If she survives, she may no longer be able to conceive.”

  “If she survives?” Madame Severin turns reproachfully on Arlington, speaking angrily in French. “You told me that she had a secret cure, that it was infallible.”

  “Madame Severin, you should be aware that Mrs. Devlin is fluent in the French tongue.” The minister’s voice is steady, though Hannah notes a strain of irritation underneath: he does not brook being spoken to in such a way. “Her mother is French and her father raised his family in France during the king’s exile, as any good Royalist, such as her father once was, would have done. I beg you to be more discreet.”

  Hannah senses Madame Severin’s cold fury at Arlington’s reprimand, but the mistress of the bedchamber is too experienced a courtier to show her displeasure. And what does the minister mean by that dig at her father: a good Royalist as he once was? She knows that her father became disillusioned with the king after the Restoration, but so did many others. What happened between him and Arlington?

  “Do you have knowledge of your father’s secret cure or not?” the minister inquires, keeping to the point. He is, as he said, a busy man.

  “I do, although I am hesitant to call it a cure. I don’t believe that he ever ministered to a woman as seriously ill as Mademoiselle de Keroualle, so I cannot guarantee its efficacy in all cases. I can only assure you that I will do my best to help her.”

  “Your best had better be perfect,” Arlington warns. “Excepting the king, Mademoiselle de Keroualle has no better friends than Madame Severin and I, and we intend that she shall receive the finest care, for her own sake as well as the king’s.”

  And for your own sake as well, Hannah adds silently.

  “Obviously,” Arlington continues, “we cannot conceal that the mademoiselle is ill, but we require discretion concerning the nature of her illness. We will put it about that she has a contagious ague and does not want to expose the court doctors and thence the entire court to her infirmity. Do not let it be known that you are your father’s daughter. We will say you are a childhood friend with knowledge of physick, here out of mercy.

  “We’ll expect you tomorrow morning,” he says as he escorts Hannah to the door of the mademoiselle’s suite. She is met there by his manservant, who leads her back along Whitehall’s shadowy paths through the privy gardens and to the street, where a carriage awaits: Lord Arlington’s own carriage this time, an ostentatious vehicle of gleaming black lacquer generously trimmed with gold. As the horses break into a canter, Hannah realizes that the poppy syrup has begun its merciful work. The coach bounces over a deep pothole, swerves and lists, and she hardly feels anything. The pain she does feel seems distant, almost as if it is happening to someone else.

  She turns her gaze from the window to look across the carriage at Arlington’s man, her unwanted chaperone. What is his name? Jeremy, he said, Jeremy Maitland at your service. As she intuited earlier, he isn’t a ruffian, he’s too thin and fine featured, but in spite of his appearance he sports a deep cut across the back of his left hand. She hazily wonders how it happened. More important, it’s poorly dressed; the tattered bandage is already blood-soaked.

  “Have you seen a doctor for that?” Hannah asks.

  “This?” He raises his hand as if he hasn’t noticed it before. “It’s only a scratch.”

  “People can die from scratches.” The coach rocks and the hood of her cloak settles around her shoulders.

  “Not me.” As if he feared he might have been rude, he adds, “I’ve never had much use for doctors. Most of them do more harm than good.”

  “Regrettably, that is too often true. Ars longa, vita brevis,” she says, then remembers that Maitland is a servant; he will not have any Latin. She tr
anslates Hippocrates’ adage: “‘The art of healing is long, and life is short.’ There is much I don’t know, but I can help with that if you like.”

  “You’re a doctor?” he inquires as if he does not quite believe it, but is impressed in spite of his stated dislike for the profession. It makes her want to boast a little, even to confide in him, but she remembers Arlington’s strict demand for secrecy and thinks better of touting her expertise.

  “I have some knowledge of physick,” she answers cautiously, “and have medicines right here in my case.” The coach shakes and the glass vials jiggle against the wood box as if on cue.

  “All right then.” He holds out his hand. She takes it and gingerly unwinds the bloodied bandage. The cut looks new, a few hours old at most. His hand is surprisingly strong and uncalloused. She opens a jar of ointment of yarrow, good for healing wounds and inflammations.

  “This may burn a little,” she warns as she dabs it over his injury. To her surprise he makes no outcry and does not jerk his hand away. She looks at his face, expecting to see the hurt registered there, but he is composed. “You weathered that well,” she says, using a linen cloth from her cabinet to bind his hand.

  “As I said, it’s only a scratch. I’ve suffered much worse. But you’ve done a fine job, I see,” he says, turning his cleaned, bandaged hand in front of his face. “And now, Doctor, what is my payment to be? What do I owe you for saving my life?”

  His questions are innocuous, but there’s an underlying impertinence in Maitland’s manner. Hannah looks away, suddenly self-conscious, aware of the plainness of her wool dress, her simple linen petticoats, her disheveled hair, how tired she must look. There was a time when she would have countered his youthful impudence with a smile and a riposte, but now it only makes her ill at ease.

  “I do not charge for such trifles. As you said, it is nothing.”

  Her cool, reserved manner is not lost upon him. “Have I offended you? Perhaps you think me too familiar.”

  “There is no harm done, Mr. Maitland. But you are quite young to be so bold.”

  “I will soon be twenty-one,” he protests.

  “And I am just turned twenty-five, and a widow.”

  They travel on in awkward silence for a few minutes before the coach comes to a stop outside her house. “May I see you inside?” he asks.

  “It isn’t necessary.” She hears the coach driver jump down to the street. As soon as he opens the carriage door, she pushes her way out. Maitland exits after her. “It is late, Mr. Maitland,” she says. “You should go home and sleep.”

  “I don’t sleep.” His eyes search her face. “Neither do you.”

  His behavior is so impertinent that it could get him dismissed from Lord Arlington’s service, though he does not seem like the sort who is forward with all women. The young Mr. Maitland appears instead to be naively passionate, sincere, and vulnerable, so she withholds her censure. But it is late; she is tired, although not sleepy; she is feeling the effects of the poppy syrup; and she fears that her impressions are not sound. How did he guess that she does not sleep? It’s unnerving. It creates an unwanted complicity with him, as if they share a secret. But to encourage this intimacy would be unkind, for she has no intention of allowing it to go any further.

  “Good night, Mr. Maitland.” She unlocks the front door and lets herself in, waiting there until she hears the sound of the coach fade away. How small and plain her dining room and parlor look now, after Whitehall, after Mademoiselle de Keroualle’s grand apartments. Yet she can’t help breathing a sigh of relief that she is gone from there and is home, if only briefly. These quiet hours of the night are her favorite time: no carriages rattling past, no cries from the water-sellers and the fishmongers and the assorted peddlers of food, drink, and coal who patrol the streets during the day. She has spent many nights alone in her bedroom, reading her medical books and recording her daily observations, listening to the shudders and sighs of the house as it settles. She likes the sensation that the house itself is slumbering, enfolding its inhabitants within its walls. She can tell, just by listening, that they are all in their beds: Mrs. Wills, Lucy and Hester, her mother. She would love to tiptoe up the creaking stairs to her attic room and try to sleep. Instead, she glances out the front window into the empty street, listens for the “All’s well” cry of the night watchman, and picks up her medicine case once more.

  Chapter Seven

  JENNY DORSET HAD good luck before in an alley off Fleet Lane, earning five shillings from a gent stumbling home after an evening in the White Hart Tavern. Not really a gentleman, more like a middling sort, she corrects herself. And then, because she is honest with herself even when it rankles, she admits that he wasn’t even a middling sort, just some poor bloke who’d won a few coins at cards and was too drunk to count when he put the money in her hands. But in the dark, standing up in the alley, what difference did it make, gent or bloke? No difference to her purse, at any rate. Money is money, the winter’s coming on, she’s got a new mouth to feed. As she looks for a dark niche near the tavern, she thinks of little Jack, her Jackie-boy, that tiny, red-faced, wizened little monster she grudgingly loves. Soon she finds the place she remembers, an alcove just beyond the light from the lanterns outside the White Hart. Not so out of the way that no one will walk by, but private enough that a man might be persuaded to satisfy a need before he goes home to bed. She looks up and down the alley for any sign of another petticoat or a folded fan, the wanton’s stock-in-trade. She’s the interloper here, a part-timer, and if any of the regular Fleet Lane whores find her on their turf, they’ll beat her and run her off.

  Confident that she’s alone, she settles back into her chosen spot and fends off the cold with a few cherished fantasies. Jenny Dorset is still young enough to believe that it’s only a matter of time before a gentleman comes along and takes her away from her life of never enough—never enough food, never enough warmth, never enough amusement—and away from her despised and servile drudgery as a seamstress’s assistant. It’s not such an outlandish idea: she’s always been pretty, everyone says so, even since the baby was born, and she is not yet eighteen. She knows that gentlemen are sometimes seen slumming ’round here, swords clattering at their hips as they make their merry way from tavern to tavern. And why shouldn’t she dream? The king himself has taken an actress as one of his mistresses and put her up in a grand house in Pall Mall with servants and coaches and every manner of luxury. Everyone knows that the only difference between an actress and a common strumpet is that actresses have the advantage of strutting their wares upon a stage.

  Jenny is thinking about how this fine gentleman will be so overcome by her beauty that he will forgive her for her youthful indiscretion, the result of which was little Jackie, when three men exit the tavern. It must be packed to the rafters inside: when the door opens, Jenny hears a riot of booming voices, clattering dishes, raucous laughter. The door shuts heavily behind them. The sounds of the tavern fade, and tobacco smoke laced with the sour smell of beer wafts through the alley. As the men stand together under a dim lantern light, Jenny takes their stock. Disappointingly, they’re not grandees: no lace, no swords, no bigwigs. Roundheads, she decides, Parliamentarians who wish to take power away from the king. Not that Jenny cares much: men are men. Even the most pious Protestant can’t resist a bit of twang now and then.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, Osborne,” one of them says to another. The man he addresses has a wicked birthmark upon his brow, larger than a crown and so dark it’s nearly the color of blood.

  “I have an unrestricted charter to travel between England and France signed by Arlington himself,” says he. “Not to mention my patroness in France.” The two other men—one portly and one thin, both older than the one called Osborne—share a cautious glance.

  “But they’re Catholics,” the thin one says with distaste.

  “All the better to cover our activities. I tell you, gentlemen”—Osborne lowers his voice—“ever si
nce the princess made me a party to this Devil’s pact I have had more freedom than ever before. Why should we not use it to further our own ends?”

  They talk some more, their voices so low Jenny can’t make out the words, then the men split up without so much as a by-your-leave. Osborne walks toward her. He’s better dressed than most men hereabouts, but somber-like, and not, by the looks of him, much of a tippler. He is old, at least thirty. Not exactly what she had hoped for in the way of custom, but just as she makes up her mind to tap his cheek with her fan and give him a sly wink, another whore steps out of the shadows.

  She stands between Jenny and her mark, and she is tall enough that the hood of her cloak obscures the lower half of his face. Even so, Jenny can see him—light falls on the pair from the tavern’s upstairs windows—and in Osborne’s eyes she sees a surprise that equals her own. He’s so befuddled by the harlot’s sudden appearance that Jenny nearly laughs out loud, stifling herself when she remembers what will happen to her if the old bawd discovers her. “I’ve got something for you, Mr. Osborne,” the whore says in a sultry, dulcet-toned voice.

  Osborne tries to shake her off, but she turns with him so that they remain face-to-face, his back angling toward the alley wall. His voice rises enough for Jenny to hear his anger: “I’m not going to—,” he cries, but then the whore makes a sudden lunging movement and he breaks off in the middle of the sentence. Jenny very nearly laughs again—she’s never seen a man so rattled by a whore—as he staggers back a few steps and bumps into the wall. Osborne’s hands clutch at his stomach just below his left breast. A black liquid gushes through his fingers. Jenny sees the terror in his eyes as he looks at his hands and then into the harlot’s face, and catches a glimpse of the shining blade flashing from the folds of her cloak. Osborne continues to stare at his attacker, his mouth open in mute horror. He manages to stutter, “I know you…” just before she stabs him again, low in the belly this time, then rips the knife up through his abdomen to his chest. His eyes roll back, blood spills from his lips.