The Devlin Diary

by Christi Phillips

  She goes directly to Louise’s bedside. The mademoiselle accepts her presence without a word, her heavy-lidded eyes glancing up once in recognition, then closing again. She seems little changed from the night before. Her lips are so dry that they are cracked and bleeding. On the nightstand is an empty glass but no pitcher of beer or any other potable liquid. Has no one been tending to her? The maid returns with more wood for the fire and Hannah asks her to fetch some small beer. She returns with it as Hannah is turning out her pockets, unloading the various potions and powders she has brought for Louise’s care. She pours a glass of beer and holds it to the mademoiselle’s lips, rousing her from her febrile sleep, urging her to drink. Louise looks at the glass, then at Hannah, and turns her face away.

  “Madame,” she whispers, along with a few words that Hannah can’t make out. “Madame…,” Louise says again, followed by a barely audible murmur in French. What was it? It sounded like madame…try to…poison.

  “What did you say?” Hannah leans closer. “Mademoiselle—”

  “What are you doing?” Madame Severin has entered the room and is striding toward her. “Give me the glass,” she demands.

  “Pardon?” The forcefulness of Madame Severin’s manner takes Hannah off-guard.

  “Give me the glass.” Madame Severin holds out her hand.

  Hannah reluctantly hands the glass to her. She isn’t certain about what the mademoiselle just said; indeed, it could be fever-induced madness, but it has made her wary of Madame Severin nonetheless.

  “Why will the mademoiselle not drink?” Hannah asks.

  “She drinks from no one’s hand but my own.”

  “Why have you not been giving her beer as I instructed last night?”

  “She did not wish to drink as often as you said she would.”

  “You must make her drink, even if she does not wish to. She must take in enough liquid to quench the fever that rages within her. And what of the decoctions I left here? Did you put them in the beer?”

  “No. I am having them tested.”

  “Tested for what?”

  “For poison.”

  “I am a doctor. I am here to heal her, not to poison her.”

  “I will take no chances with the mademoiselle’s life.”

  “If you mean to save her, I must begin her treatment at once. Your delay has caused her more harm than you realize.”

  Madame Severin continues to gaze at Hannah as if trying to take the measure of her. “I’m not sure that you understand what it is like to be a Catholic in your country, Mrs. Devlin,” she says. “Although the king has graciously created the Declaration of Indulgence, which allows us freedom of worship, there are many who are resentful that we follow our faith, especially that we do so here in Whitehall.”

  “My mother is a Catholic and my father was an adherent of the Anglican Church. I myself am a physician first. I do not concern myself with my patients’ beliefs, only with their bodies.”

  “You do not believe that it is through God’s grace that we are healed?”

  “Not entirely, no. No more than I believe that we die because we have provoked God’s wrath. I have seen too many innocents die to believe that.”

  Madame Severin still seems unsure.

  “I suggest that you trust me,” Hannah says, “and allow me to do what I was brought here to do.”

  “Then tell me about these.” Madame Severin points to the array of medicines on the nightstand.

  Hannah holds up each medicine as she gives instructions for its use. “This tincture and this powder must be mixed in with the beer—three drops and two grains to every pint. The mademoiselle will need more blankets and fresh linens every few hours. She should begin perspiring a great deal. It is beneficial for her to do so, but try to keep her dry and warm. These are herbs for an immersion bath as soon as she is able. She must be given one spoonful of this syrup every four hours until she is well, starting now.”

  Madame Severin takes the bottle containing the electuary, removes the cork, and sniffs. She tips the bottle over and cautiously tastes the sticky drop that appears on her fingertip. She savors it a moment and, apparently finding nothing that arouses her suspicion, returns the bottle to Hannah. “Very well, Mrs. Devlin. But you should be aware: if any harm comes to the mademoiselle, harm will come to you.”

  Hannah brings a chair closer to the bed and takes up her post. The mademoiselle’s illness is a type that is slow to release its hold and requires careful vigilance. If she had thought that the king’s mistress, with her staff of servants, with her “dear friends” Lord Arlington and Madame Severin, would not be assiduously attended, she would have stayed longer last night. Madame Severin’s behavior is very odd. Hannah can’t decide if she has been overly protective or negligent. Her fear of poison seems exaggerated. But is it really? Mademoiselle de Keroualle is the king’s current favorite: that alone could create enough envy and malice for a hundred poisoners.

  The minutes and the hours go by slowly, unheralded. Even though the king is known to be fond of them, there are no clocks in the mademoiselle’s room. The passing of the day is marked by Madame Severin’s punctual return every half hour, to give Louise drink and medicine at Hannah’s instruction. Although Hannah would never describe her as amiable, Madame Severin seems to have grudgingly accepted her authority.

  Hannah has little to do but watch the slow-moving river barges and the placid features of Mademoiselle de Keroualle. Surely this is the most unusual sickroom she has ever been in. High-ceilinged, well-kept, and well-aired, the mademoiselle’s Whitehall bedchamber lacks odor, or, more specifically, bad odors—the pungent, sweet smell of sickness and death, which is one of soiled linens and close-stools and mortifying flesh, so thick and ripe you can choke on it. The places where Death creeps in are nothing like this: perfumed sheets, sachets of lavender and rosemary, the faint, pleasant hint of wood smoke. Even Louise’s skin smells good, like clover honey and nutmeg. No wonder the king enjoys spending time here.

  By the afternoon the mademoiselle has not improved, so Hannah calls for a basin and lets a few ounces of blood from a vein in her ankle. Not enough to affect her much, but enough so that if anyone asks, she will be able to say that she did so, just as any doctor licensed by the College of Physicians would do. Soon after, the diaphoretics begin to take effect, and Hannah calls for the maid to change the silk sheets.

  “She is still ill,” Hannah tells Madame Severin as she prepares to leave. “It could be days or weeks before the mademoiselle is completely well. If she takes a turn for the worse, you should send a coach for me. Otherwise, I will return tomorrow.”

  “Has Lord Arlington given you leave to go?” Madame Severin asks.

  “I believe he trusts I will do whatever is necessary,” Hannah replies. If not, he certainly knows where to find her.

  “You have been with the mademoiselle?” a man calls out to Hannah as she walks through the withdrawing room.

  She stops and looks back over her shoulder to see the source of the inquiry: a large man stuffed into a small armchair. His bland pudding of a face is dominated by a bulbous red nose; his right hand has a death grip on a wineglass. When he sees that he has her attention, he enthusiastically slurps the remaining contents of the glass and struggles to his feet. Although he is too advanced in years to be mistaken for one, he is dressed as grandly as any gallant, with a towering periwig of shining black curls and a richly embroidered waistcoat that strains against his ample stomach. His ceruse-whitened skin is accented by two black patches, one on his chin and one just above his left eyebrow. As he walks over to Hannah, he ogles her with unabashed curiosity, such as he might display toward a contortionist’s exhibit at Bartholomew Fair. “You have been in to see her?”

  Hannah looks around helplessly. She hoped to leave without being noticed, and more particularly without being questioned.

  “I thought no one was allowed to visit her,” he continues loudly, capturing the attention of another courtier nearby.
“She is very ill, you know.”

  Hannah scrambles for a reply. “I have recently been afflicted with the terrible ague from which the mademoiselle now suffers and am therefore in no personal danger.”

  The courtier frowns, perplexed. “How can you be sure?”

  “Sir Granville,” the other courtier says as he joins them, saving her from the necessity of a reply, “who is this you’re interrogating?” He is an attractive man of thirty or so. Hair lighter than her own, with darker, cocoa-colored eyes. His clothes are unmistakably French, but his open, intelligent expression marks him as a man of good judgment.

  “Why, she is a young lady!” Sir Granville replies.

  “I am pleased to see that your university education has not undermined your ability to discern that which is obvious.” He wears an ironic smile and has the merest suggestion of amusement in his eyes—enough for anyone with perspicacity to notice but not so much that his target will take offense. She likes him in spite of her general wariness toward courtiers. Her father had no good opinion of most of the courtiers he met, but she’s willing to give this one the benefit of the doubt for coming to her rescue. Hannah sizes him up more carefully. He wears a wig, of course—no man of quality would appear at court without one—but it’s not so big as to be absurd. No makeup or patches. And his attire, while fashionable, well-tailored, and, no doubt, expensive, is subdued and sophisticated.

  “I beg your pardon?” Sir Granville says.

  “Have you not introduced yourself, Sir Granville? Oh, the manners of the young people at court these days.” He arches his brow for Hannah’s benefit. “Allow me. Young lady, this is Sir Granville Haines, and you are—?”

  “Mrs. Devlin.”

  “Mrs. Devlin,” he repeats with a short bow. “I am Ralph Montagu, His Majesty’s most loyal servant—”

  “And veritable scoundrel,” Sir Granville adds.

  “—and, until recently, our country’s ambassador to France. Please excuse Sir Granville’s impolite behavior. As he is one of the king’s physicians, I fear he is overcome with his concern for Mademoiselle de Keroualle’s health.”

  “I am indeed,” Sir Granville says. “I have heard she is in grave need of a doctor.”

  “But not you, certainly, Sir Granville. I’m sure you would not like Mademoiselle de Keroualle’s need for a grave to be increased?”

  “Well, I…I don’t…indeed, sir!” he stammers. “You make no sense. As for the mademoiselle, I have it on good authority that only three days ago she was completely given over to madness and hysteria. There can be only one possible cause, of course: fits of the mother.”

  The former ambassador looks delighted with the diagnosis. “Do go on,” Montagu says encouragingly.

  “Fits of the mother,” Sir Granville intones, eager to enlighten them, “whereby a woman’s womb rises through her body”—he demonstrates with a slow rise of his hands—“and lodges in her head, thereby occasioning episodes of hysteria and fainting, such as were witnessed in the mademoiselle only recently.”

  “Sir Granville.” Hannah knows she should remain silent, but she cannot. “Have you ever found this amazing condition in a patient you have yourself examined?”

  “Examine a patient!” Sir Granville snorts. “A real physician has no need to examine a patient!”

  “But even a short perusal of medical literature reveals that there is no evidence that a womb has ever detached itself from the surrounding organs and traveled through a woman’s body to her head. Surely, if this had ever occurred, a body with a womb in a place where it did not naturally belong would have been discovered and recorded at some point in history, yet this has never happened. Moreover, Dr. Sydenham himself has noted the same type of hysteria in both men and women, by which he deduces there must be some other cause. Or do you suppose there are wombs within men’s heads too?”

  Underneath the white maquillage, Sir Granville’s face turns an alarming shade of pink. “Well, I never! Wombs in men’s heads! Dr. Sydenham, of all people!”

  Hannah regrets her outburst as soon as it is finished; she is hardly accomplishing her goal of going unnoticed. Even the worldly Montagu looks a little surprised at her opinionated speech, but he politely intercedes and smoothes the elder physician’s ruffled feathers.

  “Sir Granville, will you not tell us about your new medicine? I believe I heard you mention it only recently.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sir Granville says, recovering his composure. “It cures wind, gout, agues, and all pestilential fevers, the great pox, the smallpox, the plague, rheumatisms, the bloody flux, fits of the mother, frenzy, fanaticism, disturbed dreams, and any other discomfiture of the mind. Sir Granville’s Clyster and Julep, I call it.”

  “So it is both an enema and a beverage?” Montagu inquires.

  “Quite right,” Sir Granville says.

  “How convenient.” Montagu’s expression is one of barely suppressed mirth. Hannah avoids meeting his eye, for fear of behaving shamelessly; she can barely keep her countenance as it is. Luckily, Montagu has the situation well in hand. “Mrs. Devlin, did I hear you say that you must be leaving?” he breezily inquires.

  “What?” Sir Granville says.

  Montagu bows his head slightly and winks at Hannah. “Please allow me to escort you,” he continues.

  Hannah can’t think of a time when she’s witnessed—or worse, been a party to—such frank impertinence, but she can’t deny she’s very grateful for it. “Thank you, Mr. Montagu.”

  Montagu takes his leave of Sir Granville, Hannah honors him with a small curtsy, and they quickly make for the door. Once outside, they burst into laughter.

  “You were most impolite,” she chides him.

  “Not me! It’s my business to be polite. As you shall see. Please allow me to escort you to your carriage.” They begin walking along the stone gallery in the direction of the palace courtyard and Whitehall’s main entrance.

  “I have no carriage.”

  “Then please allow me to see you home.”

  “It isn’t necessary.”

  “At the very least, you must allow me to walk you to the gate.”

  “If you must.”

  “A reluctant acquiescence.” Montagu puts his hand to his heart, but he is grinning. “I am wounded. Women so seldom understand the great harm they do, just by their lack of regard for men’s finer feelings.”

  Hannah laughs. “I think you are not so easily wounded.”

  “But you do believe I have finer feelings, don’t you? That’s a good start. Tell me,” he says with a half smile, “what did you think of Sir Granville?”

  “I cannot believe that that man is a physician,” Hannah answers vehemently. “And the king’s physician as well! Please tell me it isn’t true, or our entire country is in grave danger.”

  “I’m afraid it is true,” Montagu replies with a resigned laugh. He looks at her quizzically. “Do you always speak your mind in such a forthright manner?”

  “I suppose I do, yes.”

  “That isn’t a healthy habit for a courtier.”

  “I’m not a courtier.”

  “But here you are at court. So you must be, at least for now. You are absolutely right about Sir Granville, of course. He’s one of the stupidest men I have ever met, but he is very wealthy and has long been a staunch supporter of the Crown. Therefore his position is secure. But do not fear. Even the king realizes what a buffoon he is. The last time he was ill and called for a doctor, he specifically asked for anyone except Sir Granville.”

  “‘Even the king…,’” Hannah repeats. “You say that as if the king is less discerning than other men.”

  “Have you ever been in His Majesty’s presence?”

  “The King? Why, no. My fa—” She stops herself in time. “I saw him walking with his ministers in St. James’s Park once years ago, but that is all.”

  “Perhaps you will discover for yourself the depth of His Majesty’s understanding.” He pauses and, less jovially t
his time, asks, “What do you think of the black widow?”

  “Madame Severin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was told that she mourns her husband. Surely that is not something to ridicule.”

  “In most cases, no. But Madame Severin did not love her husband; she hated him.” He laughs heartily at the look of surprise on Hannah’s face. “You must never forget, Mrs. Devlin, that this is the court of Charles Stuart and nothing here is ever what it seems to be.”

  “If she hated her husband, why is she still in widow’s weeds?”

  “’Tis all vanity. In her youth, Madame Severin was one of the most beautiful women to grace this earth. The reason she still wears black is that she wants no one to forget that she was once the most stunning woman in France, and that men fought and died for her.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “What I say is true. Madame Severin’s story is a fascinating one. Her family, though aristocratic, wasn’t wealthy, and her dowry was small, but she was so beautiful that no one cared. There were many suitors for her hand. Her parents, being mercenary like all the French, married her off to the richest. She was sixteen, and he was more than twenty years her senior.

  “The marriage was never happy. Severin was a man of passionate temper, quick to anger and given to frequent rages. A man like that does not so much love as possess. Madame Severin made him suffer in return, in the way she was most able: she made him jealous at every opportunity, and there were many opportunities. Monsieur Severin was forced to become a capable swordsman. When word got round how good he’d become, it put a damper on Madame Severin’s love life. But then she caught the eye of the finest duelist in France—and Monsieur Severin was dead within a month.”

  “He was killed in a duel?”

  Montagu nods. “Madame Severin was not yet nineteen. She rejoiced in his death, but she was not to be a merry widow for long. Severin’s riches turned out to be a sham, and the creditors gathered like packs of dogs at her door. They took everything she owned. Her new lover, the man who had killed her husband, was even more jealous than Severin. One night, after he’d seen her with another man at a party, he decided that the only way to stop her flirtations was to make her less beautiful. So he sliced off her ear and cut her cheek with a rapier.”