by Noah Gordon
And he reminded them of the biblical injunction, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. “They must be sought out and eradicated if each of you does not wish to burn in the terrible flames of Purgatory,” he exhorted them.
Bailey Aelerton died on Tuesday, his heart stopping as he hoed in the field. His daughter claimed she had seen needle holes on his skin. No one else had seen them for certain, but Thursday morning a mob came into Farrow’s barnyard just after the barber-surgeon had mounted his horse, preparing to visit patients. He was still looking down at Henry and giving him instructions for the day when they pulled him from the saddle.
They were led by Simon Beck, whose land abutted Farrow’s. “Strip him,” Beck said.
Farrow was trembling as they ripped off his clothing. “You are an arse, Beck!” he shouted. “An arse!” He looked older unclothed, his abdominal skin loose and folded, rounded shoulders narrow, muscles soft and wasted, penis shriveled small above a huge purple sac.
“Here it is!” Beck cried. “Satan’s mark!”
On the right side of Farrow’s groin, plainly seen, were two small dark specks, like the bite of a serpent. Beck nicked one with the point of his knife.
“Moles!” Farrow shrieked.
Blood welled, which wasn’t supposed to happen with a witch.
“They are smart as smart,” Beck said, “able to bleed at will.”
“I am a barber and not a witch,” Farrow told them contemptuously, but when they tied him to a wooden cross and carried him to his own stock pond, he began to scream for mercy.
The cross was flung into the shallow pond with a great splash and held beneath the surface. The crowd quieted, watching the bubbles. Presently they pulled it up and gave Farrow a chance to confess. He was still breathing, and sputtered weakly.
“Do you own, neighbor Farrow, that you have worked with the Devil?” Beck asked him kindly.
But the bound man could only cough and gasp for air.
So they immersed him again. This time the cross was held under until the bubbles stopped coming. And still they didn’t raise it.
Henry could only watch and weep, as if seeing them kill his father again. He was man-grown, no longer a boy, yet he was powerless against the witch-hunters, terrified they would take the notion that the barbersurgeon’s prentice was the sorcerer’s assistant.
Finally they released the submerged cross and recited the counterspell and went away, leaving it to float in the pond.
When all were gone, Henry waded through the ooze to pull the cross ashore. A pink froth showed between his master’s lips. He closed the eyes that accused sightlessly in the white face and picked duckweed from Farrow’s shoulders before cutting him free.
The barber-surgeon had been a widower with no family and therefore the responsibility fell upon his servant. He buried Farrow as quickly as possible.
When he went through the house he discovered they had been there before him. No doubt they were seeking evidence of Satan’s work when they took Farrow’s money and liquor. The place had been picked clean, but there was a suit of clothes in better condition than those he had on, and some food, which he put into a sack. He also took a bag of surgical instruments and captured Farrow’s horse, which he rode out of Matlock before they should recollect him and come back.
He became a wanderer once again, but this time he had a craft and it made all the difference. Everywhere there were ailing people who would pay a penny or two for treatment. Eventually he learned the profit that could be found in the sale of medications, and to gather crowds he used some of the ways he had learned while traveling with the entertainers.
Believing he might be sought, he never stayed long in one place and avoided use of his full name, becoming Barber. Before long these things were woven into the fabric of an existence that suited him; he dressed warmly and well, had women in variety, drank when he pleased and ate prodigiously at every meal, vowing never to hunger again. His weight quickly increased. By the time he met the woman he married, he weighed more than eighteen stone. Lucinda Eames was a widow with a nice farm in Canterbury, and for half a year he tended her animals and fields, playing husbandman. He relished her small white bottom, a pale inverted heart. When they made love she poked the pink tip of her tongue out of the left corner of her mouth, like a child doing hard lessons. She blamed him for not giving her a child. Perhaps she was right, but she had not conceived with her first husband either. Her voice became shrill, her tone bitter, and her cooking careless, and long before the year with her was over he was remembering warmer women and pleasurable meals, and yearning for surcease from her tongue.
* * *
That was 1012, the year Swegen, King of the Danes, gained control of England. For ten years Swegen had harried Aethelred, eager to shame the man who had murdered his kinsmen. Finally Aethelred fled to the Isle of Wight with his ships, and Queen Emma took refuge in Normandy with her sons Edward and Alfred.
Soon afterward Swegen died a natural death. He left two sons, Harold, who succeeded him to the Danish kingdom, and Canute, a youth of nineteen who was proclaimed King of England by Danish force of arms.
Aethelred had one attack left in him and he drove the Danes off, but almost immediately Canute was back, and this time he took everything except London. He was on his way to conquer London when he heard that Aethelred had died. Boldly, he called a meeting of the Witan, the council of wise men of England, and bishops, abbots, earls, and thanes went to Southampton and chose Canute to be the lawful king.
Canute showed his genius for healing the nation by sending envoys to Normandy to convince Queen Emma to marry her late husband’s successor to the throne, and she agreed almost at once. She was years older than he but still a desirable and sensuous woman, and sniggering jokes were told about the amount of time she and Canute spent in chambers.
Even as the new king was hastening toward marriage, Barber was fleeing it. He simply walked away from Lucinda Eames’ shrewishness and bad cooking one day, and resumed traveling. He bought his first wagon in Bath, and in Northumberland he took his first boy in indenture. The advantages were apparent at once. Since then, over the years he had trained a number of chaps. The few who had been capable had earned him money, and the others had taught him what he required in a prentice.
He knew what happened to a boy who failed and was sent away. Most met with disaster: the lucky ones became sexual playthings or slaves, the unfortunate starved to death or were killed. It bothered him more than he cared to admit, but he couldn’t afford to keep an unlikely boy; he himself was a survivor, able to harden his heart when it came to his own welfare.
The latest, the boy he had found in London, seemed eager to please but Barber knew that appearances could mislead where apprentices were concerned. It was of no value to worry the issue like a dog with a bone. Only time would tell, and he would learn soon enough whether young Cole was fit to survive.
5
THE BEAST IN CHELMSFORD
Rob woke with the first milky light to find his new master already about, and impatient. He saw at once that Barber didn’t begin the day in high spirits, and it was in this sober morning mood that the man took the lance from the wagon and showed him how it should be used. “It’s not too heavy for you if you use both hands. It doesn’t require skill. Thrust as hard as you are able. If you aim for the middle of an attacker’s body you’re liable to stick him someplace. If you slow him with a wound, chances are good that I can kill him. Do you comprehend?”
He nodded, awkward with a stranger.
“Well, chappy, we must be vigilant and keep weapons at hand, for that is how we stay alive. These Roman roads remain the best in England, but they aren’t maintained. It is the Crown’s responsibility to keep them open on both sides to make it hard for highwaymen to ambush travelers, but on most of our routes the brush is never cut back.”
He demonstrated how to hitch the horse. When they resumed traveling, Rob sat next to him on the driver’s seat in the hot sun, still pla
gued by all manner of fears. Soon Barber directed Incitatus off the Roman road, turning onto a barely usable track through the deep shadow of virgin forest. Hanging from a sinew around his shoulders was the brown Saxon horn that once had graced a great ox. He placed it to his mouth and pushed from it a loud, mellow noise, half blast, half moan. “It signals everyone within hearing that we aren’t creeping up to cut throats and steal. In some remote places, to meet a stranger is to try to kill him. The horn says we are worthy and confident, able to protect outselves.”
At Barber’s suggestion Rob tried to take a turn at signaling, but though he puffed his cheeks and blew mightily, no sound emerged.
“It needs older wind and a knack. You’ll learn it, never fear. And more difficult things than blowing a horn.”
The track was muddy. Brush had been laid over the worst places but it demanded tricky driving. At a turn in the road they went directly into a slick and the wagon’s wheels sank to the hubs. Barber sighed.
They got out and took a spade to the mud in front of the wheels and then collected fallen branches in the woods. Barber carefully placed pieces of wood in front of each wheel and climbed back up to take the reins.
“You must shove brush under the wheels as they start to move,” he said, and Rob J. nodded.
“Hi-TATUS!” Barber urged. Shafts and leather creaked. “Now!” he shouted.
Rob deftly placed the branches, darting from wheel to wheel as the horse strained steadily. The wheels hesitated. There was slippage, but they found purchase. The wagon lurched forward. When it was on dry road Barber hauled back on the reins and waited for Rob to catch up and climb onto the seat.
They were spattered with mud, and Barber stopped Tatus at a brook. “Let us catch some breakfast,” he said as they washed the dirt from their faces and hands. He cut two willow poles and got hooks and line from the wagon. From the shaded place behind the seat he pulled out a box. “This is our grasshopper box,” he said. “It is one of your duties to keep it filled.” He lifted the lid only far enough to allow Rob to stick his hand inside.
Living things rustled away from Rob’s fingers, frantic and spiky, and he pulled one gently into his palm. When he withdrew his hand, keeping the wings folded between his thumb and forefinger, the insect’s legs scrabbled frantically. The four front legs were thin as hairs and the hind two were powerful and large-thighed, enabling it to be a hopper.
Barber showed him how to slip the point of the hook just beneath the short section of tough, ridged shell behind the head. “Not too deep or he’ll bleed molasses and die. Where have you fished?”
“The Thames.” He prided himself on his ability as a fisher, for he and his father often had dangled worms in the broad river, depending on the fish to help feed the family during the unemployment.
Barber grunted. “This is a different kind of fishing,” he said. “Leave the poles for a moment and get on your hands and knees.”
They crawled cautiously to a place overlooking the nearest pool and lay on their bellies. Rob thought the fat man daft.
Four fish hung suspended in glass.
“Small,” Rob whispered.
“Best eating, that size,” Barber said as they crept away from the bank. “Your big river trouts are tough and oily. Did you note how these drifted near the head of the pool? They feed facing upstream, waiting for a juicy meal to fall in and come floating down. They’re wild and wary. If you stand next to the stream, they see you. If you tread strongly on the bank, they feel your step and they scatter. That’s why you use the long pole. Stand well back and lightly drop the hopper just above the pool, letting the flow carry it to the fish.”
He watched critically as Rob swung the grasshopper where he had directed.
With a shock that traveled along the pole and sent excitement up into Rob’s arms, the unseen fish struck like a dragon. After that it was like fishing in the Thames. He waited patiently, giving the trout time to doom itself, and then raised the tip of the pole and set the hook as his father had taught him. When he pulled in the first flopping prize they admired its bloom, the gleaming background like oiled walnut wood, the sleek sides splattered with rainbowy reds, the black fins marked with warm orange.
“Get five more,” Barber said, and disappeared into the woods.
Rob caught two and then lost another and cautiously moved to a different pool. The trouts hungered after grasshoppers. He was cleaning the last of the half dozen when Barber came back with a capful of morels and wild onions.
“We eat twice a day,” Barber said, “mid-morning and early evening, same as all civilized folk.
To rise at six, dine at ten,
Sup at five, to bed at ten,
Makes man live ten times ten.”
He had bacon, and cut it thick. When the meat was done in the blackened pan he dredged the trouts in flour and did them crisp and brown in the fat, adding the onions and mushrooms at the last.
The spines of the trouts lifted cleanly from the steaming flesh, freeing most of the bones. While they enjoyed the fish and the meat, Barber fried barley bread in the flavored fat that remained, covering the toast with husky slices of cheese he allowed to melt bubbly in the pan. To finish, they drank the cold sweet water of the brook that had given them the fish.
Barber was in better cheer. A fat man had to be fed to be at his best, Rob perceived. He also realized that Barber was a rare cook, and he found himself looking toward each meal as an event of the day. He sighed, knowing he wouldn’t have been fed like this in the mines. And the work, he told himself contentedly, wasn’t at all beyond him, for he was perfectly able to keep the grasshopper box filled and catch trouts and place brush beneath the wheels whenever the wagon became stuck in the mud.
The village was Farnham. There were farms; a small, shabby inn; a public house that emitted a faint smell of spilled ale as they passed; a smithy with long wood piles near the forge; a tanner’s that exuded a stink; a sawyer’s yard with cut lumber; and a reeve’s hall facing a square that wasn’t really a square so much as a widening in the midsection of the street, like a snake that had swallowed an egg.
Barber stopped at the outskirts. From the wagon he took a small drum and a stick and handed them to Rob. “Bang it.”
Incitatus knew what they were about; he lifted his head and neighed, raising his hooves as he pranced. Rob pounded the drum proudly, infected by the excitement they were causing on both sides of the street.
“Entertainment this afternoon,” Barber called. “Followed by treatment of human ills and medical problems, great or small!”
The blacksmith, his knotted muscles outlined by grime, stared after them and stopped pulling his bellows rope. Two boys in the sawyer’s yard left the lumber they had been stacking and came running toward the sound of the drum. One of them turned and hurried away. “Where are you bound, Giles?” the other shouted.
“Home to fetch Stephen and the others.”
“Stop and tell my brother’s lot!”
Barber nodded in approval. “Spread the word,” he called.
Women emerged from the houses and called to one another as their children merged in the street, jabbering and joining the barking dogs that followed after the red wagon.
Barber drove slowly down the street from one end to the other and then turned around and came back.
An old man who sat in the sun near the inn opened his eyes and smiled toothlessly at the commotion. Some of the drinkers came out of the public house, carrying their glasses and followed by the barmaid wiping wet hands on her apron, her eyes shining.
Barber stopped in the little square. From the wagon he took four folding benches and set them up joined together. “This is called the bank,” he said to Rob of the small stage thus formed. “You’ll erect it at once whenever we come to a new place.”
On the bank they placed two baskets full of little stoppered flasks that Barber said contained medicine. Then he disappeared into the wagon and pulled the curtain.
* * *
“Good day and good morrow,” he said. “I’m comforted to be in Farnham.” And he began to juggle.
He juggled a red ball and a yellow ball. His hands seemed scarcely to move. It was the prettiest thing to see!
His fat fingers sent the balls flying in a continual circle, at first slowly and then with blurring speed. When he was applauded, he reached into his tunic and added a green ball. And then a blue. And, oh—a brown!
How wonderful, Rob thought, to be able to do that.
He held his breath, waiting for Barber to drop a ball, but he controlled all five easily, talking all the while. He made people laugh. He told stories, sang little songs.
Next, he juggled rope rings and wooden plates and after the juggling performed feats of magic. He caused an egg to disappear, found a coin in a child’s hair, made a handkerchief change color.
“Would you be beguiled to see me cause a mug of ale to vanish?”
There was general applause. The barmaid hurried inside the public house and appeared with a foaming mug. Placing it to his lips, Barber downed its contents in a single long swallow. He bowed to good-natured laughter and applause, and then asked the women in the audience if anyone desired a ribbon.
“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed the barmaid. She was young and full-bodied, and her response, so spontaneous and artless, drew a titter from the crowd.
Barber’s eyes met the girl’s and he smiled. “What is your name?”
