by Paul Doherty
‘Ignacio will bring you payment.’
The Alchemist waved his hand as if that was of little importance.
‘And you have been closely instructed on how to protect yourself at St Giles?’ he asked.
‘Take no food or drink touched by a leper. Avoid their fetid breath and any of their body fluids. That will be easy. I am a wealthy guest. I will be given quarters similar to those of a Carthusian monk. I can eat—’
‘The only real danger,’ the Alchemist broke in, ‘would be a scrupulous study of your body by a trained, very skilled physician. However, knowing what I do of Master Joachim, that will not happen.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Simon, why are you really going?’
‘I am a sworn man.’ Simon shrugged. ‘What I am, the Beauforts made me. There are other reasons, but every man has his secrets.’
‘God rewards such loyalty.’ The Alchemist rubbed his hands. ‘Now we begin. You will become a leper, a revolting disease that has no cure.’ He tapped his head. ‘You must adopt the attitude that you are joining the living dead from which there is no respite or pardon. So, let the alchemy begin.’
Over the next four days, Simon experienced a harrowing of the soul. The Alchemist shaved all the hair from his body, deliberately cutting the skin to draw blood. Simon was covered with a thick, oozing fat, its reek making his stomach turn; his teeth were blackened with a special juice, his eyelids clipped, his flesh rubbed with a paste made from iron rust and unslaked lime. Tinctures of ratsbane provoked great blisters. He was not allowed out of the cell. The Alchemist tried to distract him by describing how he had prepared all the great counterfeit men of the city. Small yellow, brown and red buboes appeared on Simon’s hands and face. The Alchemist trained him on how to walk and speak and instructed him to practise this throughout the day. The pain and soreness robbed Simon of sleep and rest, although the Alchemist was very pleased.
‘You must assume the look of a man,’ he advised, ‘in whom the silver cord has snapped, the golden lamp broken, the pitcher shattered. Your life is darkness and the shadows threaten to engulf you completely. Your coffin lies ready and the mourners await.’
Simon was left to reflect on such sombre thoughts, but other memories and images came drifting back. He thought of his wife Rohesia, buried beneath the cold slabs of All Hallows, and his secret love for Eleanor. Why had she cut herself off so suddenly? Did she fear him? Was it guilt over the death of his brother? Eleanor had sent him a message after the attack by the corsairs saying how she wished to see him. He had not replied. Regrettably, that would have to wait until this present business was finished. Once it was, Simon was determined to confront Eleanor and demand that she speak the truth about the night Edmund had so foolishly left the tavern. He wanted to discover if LeCorbeil truly had had a hand in his murder, and how that malevolence, rooted in some hideous massacre in France years ago, had provoked such hatred as to claim Edmund’s life and carry out the brutal, bloody attack on the Roseblood.
The pain and cruel discomfort of his disguise deepened, forcing Simon to pace his cell during the death watches of the night. He had no choice but to reflect on his life and the dangers pressing in on him from every side. He must do something about the hideous murders of those whores. Prostitutes, strumpets and streetwalkers came and went; sometimes they were spirited aboard ships for the flesh markets of France, Flanders or even further afield. But these gruesome murders? Simon, tired and weary, racked his memory. Similar outrages had taken place many years ago in Dowgate; a tailor, that was it, had been responsible. Moonstruck and of hellish soul, he had inflicted various forms of cruelty on whores and tavern maids to satisfy his own deep hatred against all women. Eventually the murderer had been caught and strangled at Smithfield, but had the demon that possessed him returned to haunt some other soul?
The Alchemist eventually took notice of how weary and dispirited his patient had become and began to feed him rich claret laced with a mild opiate. Even then Simon found it difficult to sleep, and would lie listening to the mysterious comings and goings at Quicksilver Manor. The Alchemist was certainly a busy man, responsible for dispatching along the alleyways and runnels of London a veritable legion of piteous-looking beggars whose suppurating sores and weeping wounds opened the purse strings of the charitable. Simon knew that the counterfeit men could earn in a week what a labourer or soldier would be paid over two years. The Alchemist always took a percentage. God help the cunning man who reneged! The Alchemist’s host of enforcers would ensure that all future wounds were real and lasting.
Simon was kept hidden away. Three days after his treatment began, Ignacio paid a secret visit. The henchman’s surprise immediately told Simon how the Alchemist’s preparations had transformed him into some loathsome victim of leprosy. In fact he forgot the pain, laughing at Ignacio’s haunting, muted questions. Fingers moving swiftly, Simon assured his henchman that it was all mummer’s play. He then sat quietly as Ignacio reported on life and business at the Roseblood. Raphael had cleared all signs of the French attack, whilst trade was prospering due to the arrival of more war cogs at Queenhithe. Apparently the Queen and Beaufort were stripping Calais of its garrison, as well as moving ships and troops from the defence of the Cinque Ports. A great mustering was to take place at Blackheath. The royal commissioners of array were even offering pardons to prisoners in the Fleet, Newgate and Marshalsea. York was ready to strike. Handbills proclaiming the justice of the duke’s cause had been posted on the cross at St Paul’s churchyard and the Standard in Cheapside. The lords of the soil were choosing their sides, and some of London’s leading citizens had already slipped away to York’s camp. Sheriff Malpas was busy summoning up as much support for his master as he could, though his failure in the matter of the Tower silver and his humiliation over Candlemas had cost him dearly. Proclamations had also been issued to determine the whereabouts of Master Ramler, but that had only deepened public amusement at the sheriff’s expense.
Another whore, Florence of the Four Corners, had been murdered; her mutilated corpse had been crammed into a filthy laystall on Snakes Lane, close to the river. No one could say who had killed her, though according to rumour, she had been hurrying to meet a customer somewhere in Queenhithe on the evening she disappeared. Simon could only cross himself, murmur the requiem and ask about Sevigny. Ignacio smiled. The clerk had visited the Roseblood for a black jack of ale. He’d sat supping his drink in a corner before leaving as swiftly and silently as he had arrived. Mistress Katherine had been informed, and appeared very cross that she had not been there. Indeed, Dorcas openly declared how the girl seemed either moonstruck or love-smitten, spending hours in the orchard or alone in her chamber.
Simon smiled thinly at that before Ignacio went on to give more details about the attack on Sevigny at St Mary-le-Bow. Some claimed it was the work of friends of the late Candlemas, but, Ignacio added, Candlemas had no friends. His next item of news was more interesting. How Sevigny’s archer companion Bardolph had disappeared from the Golden Harp and was last seen securing passage on a cog bound for Hainault. Simon wondered if there was some link between Bardolph’s sudden departure abroad and that attack on Sevigny. From the little Ignacio had told him, the archer was from York’s camp, a hard-bitten veteran. Was Ramler correct? Did Sevigny enjoy the duke’s favour, but not his duchess’s? Had she and Bardolph had a hand in that mysterious attack at St Mary-le-Bow? Perhaps he could entice Sevigny into an honest conversation. The clerk had been dispatched to London to destroy Roseblood or even to subvert his allegiance. Could he be turned? Had he become so alienated from the duchess that he was looking for a new master? Times were changing, and so were loyalties, though that too would have to wait until Simon had dealt with Argentine. If Bray was correct, York too was hunting for this mysterious physician. Was that another task secretly entrusted to Sevigny?
Simon rubbed his face and concentrated on the matters in hand. He gave Ignacio instructions as to how Raphael was to visit his brother Gabriel at Greyfriars to e
nsure all was well. Ignacio and others must also mount a keen watch over the Roseblood, and alert the scavengers, babewyns and gargoyles and the Fraternity of the Doomed to discover anything they could about the murdered whores. The Alchemist joined them. Simon fell silent. He did not want this master of charades to know all his business. They agreed that Simon would be ready in two days. The taverner insisted that when he left Quicksilver Manor after the bells rang for Lauds, Ignacio would follow discreetly to ensure that no mishap occurred.
The morning in question broke dry after a night’s drizzling rain. Simon, who felt pain and soreness from head to toe, shuffled out of the postern door of Quicksilver Manor, up a covered alleyway and on to the main thoroughfare. He was cloaked and cowled in the regulation light grey with a white mask covering his face. On his feet were stout marching sandals, in his right hand an iron-tipped stave. Over his shoulder bulky leather panniers fastened with straps carried all his worldly goods. He paused and, with his left hand, freed the wooden clapper from his cord belt. He had perfected a shuffling, shambling gait, and as he moved forward, he hoarsely murmured his lament: ‘Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, and all is vanity. The sun rises, the sun sets. What was will be again, for there is nothing new under the sun…’
Rattling the wooden clapper, Simon made his way up Cheapside. Ignacio, hooded and masked, stood in a nearby doorway. Simon shook the wooden clapper in recognition and passed on. The morning was cold. The streets were not yet busy. Heavy-eyed, yawning apprentices opened shopfronts. Streetwalkers and whores found soliciting beyond Cock Lane were herded down to the great cage on the Tun. A songster tried to recite a poem, only to be scoffed at by a group of beadles, whilst the prisoners they guarded mockingly imitated him. A shabby preacher was describing a vision he’d received: how devils gathered in the steeples of London churches, so wicked had the city become. All these fell silent as Simon made his clattering approach. People swiftly turned their backs, terrified lest they be infected by his breath. A few shouted curses. The cook shop and pie stall owners stopped their chants offering strips of bacon or a farthing’s worth of sausage. Even the deep-dissembling rogues with cozening tongues and sinister eyes slipped back into their narrow bolt-holes. The alley creepers and wall sliders searching for quarry retreated into the shadows. Street cries faded. The tinkers and smiths, their hammers beating tubs and pots, paused to cross themselves.
Simon was now walking up the centre of Cheapside. Despite his raw discomfort, he secretly smiled at the contrast between what was happening now and his last triumphant procession along this same thoroughfare. He passed the closed gates of the Guildhall, where the city archers on guard pulled up the folds of their mantles to cover nose and mouth, and reached the great fleshing market. Cows, pigs, geese and birds of every kind were being slaughtered; here the misty haze became tinged with spraying blood, whilst the cobbles beneath were soaked in scarlet juice and slimy globules of entrails and other offal. He skirted the stalls, hurrying past the forbidding mass of Newgate. The executioners, garbed in black with yellow face masks, offered him a ride to a swifter death at Tyburn. Simon ignored them, trudging along the gibbet road, past the Last Bowl, where the execution carts always paused so that the condemned could be given a stoup of ale by the Fraternity of the Hanged before being turned off the great scaffold, which rose like a bleak monster through the morning mist. He glimpsed the long execution ladder, the hanging nooses and the scavenger birds clustered on the cadavers left to dangle above the yawning execution pit.
At the double-gated entrance to St Giles, he pulled on the chain that hung from its coping carved in the shape of a grinning skull. A lay brother, dressed like a Carmelite in a cream-coloured robe with a brown mantle over it, invited him into the visitors’ parlour, a bleak lime-washed chamber where he was told to sit on a bench just inside the door. A short while later, Master Joachim, his shaven face all oiled, blond hair cut in the neatest of tonsures, swept into the room. The master was dressed like the lay brother, though his robes were of pure wool, whilst his gloves were of the costliest deerskin and studded with miniature pearls. He was prim and pert, with a smug face and eyes constantly flickering. Simon took an instant dislike to him, as he did to Brother Gervaise, the prior, who boasted the protruding features of a mastiff. Simon suspected that Gervaise was the master’s bully boy. The third person present was a nonentity; silver-haired, with a narrow, dusty face, Brother Gratian was the lazar house scribe and clerk.
At the prior’s request, Simon took off his face mask. Joachim studied him, and sniffed noisily.
‘There is no cure for leprosy, short of a miracle. Mercury and viper’s flesh do more harm than good. Whilst I,’ the master smiled falsely, ‘search for the true remedy.’ He let this enigmatic remark hang in the air as he took and studied the letters of accreditation and recommendation.
Joachim and his two companions seemed to have little interest in Simon, and indeed, why should they? Leprosy was a living death. St Giles was no more than a sanctified tavern where people came to die, the only difference being that some of the residents would end their days in one of the very comfortable cells named after a benefactor; Simon was given ‘The Mortimer’, on the east side of the cloister garth, a two-storey cell set in its own garden plot, comprising a monastery in miniature, with sleeping chamber, chancery and prayer cell. The less affluent were housed in the great dormitory, where they were provided with a curtained bed, a table, stool and small coffer.
Brother Gratian pushed across a small book, its parchment leaves sewn tightly together; this was the Regula, or Rule of St Giles. He pattered through its contents, describing the daily routine from Matins and Lauds to Compline after sunset. He explained that St Giles possessed a refectory, kitchens, a water house to draw on underground streams and an inner court where the granary, kitchens, stables and storerooms were situated. He gave details of how food and all the necessities would be served. He spoke in a monotone; the only time he and the other two showed any interest was when Simon opened his purse and counted out the silver to cover his first year. An indenture was drawn up, signed and sliced as if it was the prime goose at a Christmas feast. Wine suddenly appeared. Goblets were filled, toasts exchanged, then both wine and silver abruptly vanished. Simon now had the measure of Joachim and his coterie: they were no better than Minehost in some Southwark alehouse.
Once the meeting was over, Simon was given a tour of the men’s side of the sprawling lazar house, its gardens, fields and courtyards. Eventually, as the bells tolled for the noonday mass, he was taken to the Mortimer cell, a carving on the door proclaiming that noble family’s insignia. He was quite surprised at his comfortable quarters, which fronted the great cloister garth. The door contained a hatch through which food could be delivered. There was an entry passageway and a small hall that served as kitchen, buttery and dining place. Next to this was a narrow chancery office and, on the second floor, a bedchamber and oratory. The windows were glazed with diamond-shaped quarters of plain glass. A door in the hall led out to a small garden, with a patch of grass bordered by ill-tended flowers and herb beds.
Simon made himself at home as best he could. Gervaise instructed him on what he could and couldn’t do, naming a high price for attempting to alleviate the infection, the cost being incurred by buying a red adder with a white womb whose venom had been drained off, tail and head removed and the remaining flesh soaked in moss. Simon recalled what the Alchemist had told him and remained silent in the face of such an offer. All he wanted to do was merge swiftly and silently into the daily life of the lazar hospital. Time was precious. Reginald Bray had given him a week. Moreover, the Alchemist had warned how the painted sores, imitation buboes, shorn hair and powder rubbed into Simon’s skin were only a disguise; without constant attention, they would begin to fail and fade.
Simon kept himself hooded and masked, stockings on his legs, gloves on his hands. He took food from the kitchens, simple fare: lentil stew, a mix of onions and almonds thickened with cru
sts soaked in white wine. He attended Divine Office when he could, though this proved to be a macabre event. Master Joachim, Prior Gervaise and other officials stood in the carved stalls of the lazar church, the patients in the choir benches either side of the chancel. A ghastly sight, as if ghouls had gathered to chant the psalms. Masks and gloves were removed and the full horror of the malignant disease was plain to see in the light of candle and taper: suppurating eyes in rotting faces, where nose, lips, eyelids and ears looked as if they had been gnawed by some rabid animal. Hands too weak for anything clung to the wooden rails. Mouths and tongues, horribly disfigured, tried to voice praise to God. The inmates would shuffle into church, leaning on sticks, canes and staves. The thick incense smoke and the sweetness of beeswax could not hide the rank, fetid smell of their corrupting bodies.
Simon found attendance in the refectory even more distasteful. Eventually he decided to eat only in his cell, though he would use all common occasions and public ceremonies to study and scrutinise. He suspected that Master Joachim would keep his errant kinsman in comfortable lodgings hidden well away from any searcher. He carefully studied the thirty or so inmates who lived in the cells around the cloister garth, but quickly concluded that none of these truly sick men could be a healthy physician in disguise. He wondered if Argentine was hiding in the master’s household or with the lay brothers, who had their own dormitory and buttery, but he could not detect any such subterfuge.
Simon took to wandering the precincts, or at least the male quarters of the great lazar house. He chatted to servants and was most generous in slipping these a few coins, but failed to detect any conspiracy to conceal. Indeed, by the end of the third day of his stay, he was more concerned by the heavy, oppressive atmosphere of St Giles: walking, breathing and eating amongst the living dead. He had wandered battlefields in France searching for the bodies of wounded or slain comrades. He had sifted amongst shattered flesh, chunks of limbs, the slimy entrails of horse and rider mixed together. He had seen faces smashed, heads staved in, arms, legs, hands and feet severed by slicing steel. St Giles was more heinous; a fog-bound Purgatory hanging between Heaven and Hell. The sun shone down on cornices, ledges and fretted stonework. Light shimmered in stained glass or on the surface of carp ponds and fountain bowls. Gardens lush with flower beds and rich herb plots exuded heavy scents. Birdsong rang through the massy greenery of the orchards. Nevertheless, the brooding shadows of sickness and death clustered heavy and close.
