by Noah Gordon
Next day in Yeoville, to his mortification he dropped three balls during the performance, but Barber was comforting. “It’s bound to happen on occasion in the beginning,” he said. “It will occur less and less frequently and finally not at all.”
Later that week in Taunton, a town of hardworking tradesmen, and in Bridgwater, where there were conservative farmers, they presented their entertainment without bawdiness. Glastonbury was their next stop, a place of pious folk who had built their homes around the large and beautiful Church of St. Michael.
“We must be discreet,” Barber said. “Glastonbury is controlled by priests, and priests look with loathing upon all manner of medical practice, for they believe God has given them sacred charge of men’s bodies as well as their souls.”
They arrived the morning after Whit Sunday, the day that marked the end of the joyous Easter season and commemorated the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles, strengthening them after their nine days of prayer following the ascension of Jesus into Heaven.
Rob noted no fewer than five unjoyous priests among the spectators.
He and Barber juggled red balls, which Barber, in solemn tones, likened to the tongues of fire representing the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:3. The spectators were delighted with the juggling and applauded lustily, but they fell silent as Rob sang “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” He had always liked to sing; his voice cracked at the part about the children making “sweet hosannas ring” and it quavered on the very high notes, but he did fine once his legs stopped jiggling.
Barber brought out holy relics in a battered ash-wood chest. “Pay attention, dear friends,” he said in what he later told Rob was his monk’s voice. He showed them earth and sand carried to England from Mounts Sinai and Olivet; held up a sliver of the Holy Rood and a piece of the beam that had supported the holy manger; displayed water from the Jordan, a clod from Gethsemane, and bits of bone belonging to saints without number.
Then Rob replaced him on the bank and stood alone. Lifting his eyes heavenward, as Barber had instructed, he sang another hymn.
“Creator of the Stars of Night,
Thy people’s everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear thy servants when they call.
Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the medicine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruined race.”
The spectators were moved. While they were still sighing, Barber was holding out a flask of the Universal Specific. “Friends,” he said. “Just as the Lord has found the medicine for your spirit, I have found the medicine for your body.”
He told them the story about Vitalia the Herb of Life, which obviously worked equally well with the pious as with sinners, for they bought the Specific greedily and then lined up by the barber-surgeon’s screen for consultations and treatment. The watching priests glowered but had been sweetened with gifts and soothed by the religious display, and only one old cleric made objection. “You shall do no bleeding,” he commanded sternly. “For Archbishop Theodore has written that it is dangerous to bleed at a time when the light of the moon and the pull of the tides is increasing.” Barber was quick to agree.
They camped in jubilation that afternoon. Barber boiled bite-sized pieces of beef in wine until tender and added onion, an old turnip that was wrinkled but sound, and new peas and beans, flavoring all with thyme and a bit of mint. There was still a wedge of an exceptional light-colored cheese bought in Bridgwater, and afterward he sat by the fire and with obvious gratification counted the contents of his cash box.
It was perhaps the moment to broach a subject that lay heavy and constant on Rob’s spirit.
“Barber,” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“Barber, when shall we go to London?”
Intent on stacking the coins, Barber waved his hand, not wishing to lose count. “By and by,” he murmured. “In the by-and-by.”
9
THE GIFT
Rob mishandled four balls in Kingswood. He dropped another ball in Mangotsfield but that was the last time, and after they offered diversion and treatment to the villagers of Redditch in mid-June he no longer spent hours every day practicing his juggling, for the frequent entertainments kept his fingers supple and his sense of rhythm alive. He quickly became an assured juggler. He suspected that eventually he could have learned to manage six balls but Barber would have none of that, preferring that he use his time assisting in the barber-surgeon’s trade.
They traveled north like migrating birds, but instead of flying they wended their way slowly through the mountains between England and Wales. They were in the town of Abergavenny, a row of rickety houses leaning against the side of a sullen shale ridge, when for the first time he aided Barber in the examinations and treatment.
Rob J. was afraid. He had more fear in him than the wooden balls had inspired.
The reasons people ailed were such a mystery. It seemed impossible for a mere man to understand and offer helpful miracles. He knew Barber was smarter than any man he had ever known, to be able to do that.
The people lined up in front of the screen, and he fetched them one by one as soon as Barber had finished with the preceding person, and led them to the partial privacy afforded by the flimsy barrier. The first man Rob took back to his master was large and stooped, with traces of black on his neck and ingrained in his knuckles and under his fingernails.
“You could do with a wash,” Barber suggested, not unkindly.
“It’s the coal, you see,” the man said. “The dust sticks when it is dug.”
“You dig coal?” Barber said. “I’ve heard it’s poison to burn. I’ve seen at first hand that it produces a stink and heavy smoke that doesn’t readily rise through the smoke hole of a house. Is there a living in such poor stuff?”
“It is there, sir, and we are poor. But lately there are aches and swellings in my joints, and it pains me to dig.”
Barber touched the grimy wrists and fingers, poked a pudgy fingertip into the swelling at the man’s elbow. “It comes from inhaling humors from the earth. You must sit in the sun when you can. Bathe frequently in warm water but not hot, for hot baths lead to a weakness of the heart and limbs. Rub your swollen and painful joints with my Universal Specific, which you may take internally with profit as well.”
He charged the man sixpence for three small flagons and another tuppence for the consultation, and didn’t look at Rob.
A stout, tight-lipped woman came with her thirteen-year-old daughter who was betrothed to wed. “Her monthly blood is stopped up within her body and never flows,” the mother said.
Barber asked if she had ever had a blood period. “For more than a year they came every month,” the mother said. “But for five months now, nothing.”
“Have you lain with a man?” Barber asked the girl gently.
“No,” the mother said.
Barber looked at the girl. She was slim and comely, with long blond hair and watchful eyes. “Do you vomit?”
“No,” she whispered.
He studied her, and then his hand went out and tightened her gown. He took her mother’s palm and pressed it against the small round belly.
“No,” the girl said again. She shook her head. Her cheeks became bright and she began to weep.
Her mother’s hand left her stomach and smashed across her face. The woman led her daughter away without paying, but Barber let them go.
In rapid succession he treated a man whose leg had been ill-set eight years before and who dragged his left foot when he walked; a woman plagued by headache; a man with scabies of the scalp; and a stupid, smiling girl with a terrible sore on her breast who told them she had been praying to God for a barber-surgeon to come through their town.
He sold the Universal Specific to everyone except the man with scabies, who didn’t buy though it was strongly recommended to him; perhaps he didn’t have the tuppence
.
They moved into the softer hills of the West Midlands. Outside the village of Hereford, Incitatus had to wait by the River Wye while sheep poured through the ford, a seemingly endless stream of bleating fleece that thoroughly intimidated Rob. He would have liked to be more at ease with animals, but though his Mam had come from a farm, he was a city boy. Tatus was the only horse he had handled. A distant neighbor on Carpenter’s Street had kept a milch cow, but none of the Coles had spent much time near sheep.
Hereford was a prosperous community. Each farm they passed had a hog wallow and green rolling meadows flecked with sheep and cattle. The stone houses and barns were large and solid and the people generally more cheerful than the poverty-burdened Welsh hillsmen only a few days’ distance. On the village green their entertainment drew a good crowd and sales were brisk.
Barber’s first patient behind the screen was about Rob’s own age, although much smaller in build. “Fell from the roof not six days past, and look at him,” said the boy’s father, a cooper. A splintered barrel stave on the ground had pierced the palm of his left hand and now the flesh was angry as a puffed-up blowfish.
Barber showed Rob how to grasp the boy’s hands and the father how to grip his legs and then he took a short, sharp knife from his kit.
“Hold him fast,” he said.
Rob could feel the hands trembling. The boy screamed as his flesh parted under the blade. A greenish-yellow pus spurted, followed by a stink and a red welling.
Barber swabbed the wound free of corruption and proceeded to probe into it with delicate efficiency, using an iron tweezers to pull out tiny slivers. “It’s bits from the piece that damaged him, you see?” he said to the parent, showing him.
The boy groaned. Rob felt queasy but held on while Barber proceeded with slow care. “We must get them all,” he said, “for they contain peccant humors that will mortify the hand again.”
When he was satisfied the wound was free of wood, he poured some Specific into it and bound it in a cloth, then drank the rest of the flask himself. The sobbing patient slipped away, happy to leave them while his father paid.
Waiting next was a bent old man with a hollow cough. Rob ushered him behind the screen.
“Morning phlegm. Oh, a great deal, sir!” He gasped when he talked.
Barber ran his hand thoughtfully over the skinny chest. “Well. I shall cup you.” He looked at Rob. “Help him to disrobe partially, so his chest may be cupped.”
Rob removed the old man’s shirtwaist gingerly, for he appeared fragile. To turn the patient back toward the barber-surgeon, he took both of the man’s hands.
It was like grasping a pair of quivering birds. The sticklike fingers sat in his own, and from them he received a message.
Glancing at them, Barber saw the boy stiffen. “Come,” he said impatiently. “We mustn’t take all day.” Rob didn’t seem to hear.
Twice before Rob had felt this strange and unwelcome awareness slip into his very being from someone else’s body. Now, as on each of the previous occasions, he was overwhelmed by an absolute terror, and he dropped the patient’s hands and fled.
Barber searched, cursing, until he found his apprentice cowering behind a tree.
“I want the meaning. And now!”
“He … The old man is going to die.”
Barber stared. “What kind of poor shit is this?”
His apprentice had begun to cry.
“Stop that,” Barber said. “How do you know?”
Rob tried to speak but couldn’t. Barber slapped his face and he gasped. When he began to talk the words poured, for they had been roiling over and around in his mind since before they had left London.
He had felt his mother’s impending death and it had happened, he explained. And then he had known his father was going, and his father had died.
“Oh, dear Jesus,” Barber said in disgust.
But he listened carefully, watching Rob. “You tell me you actually felt death in that old man?”
“Yes.” He had no expectation of being believed.
“When?”
He shrugged.
“Soon?”
He nodded. He could only, hopelessly, tell the truth.
He saw in Barber’s eyes that the man recognized this.
Barber hesitated and then made up his mind. “While I rid us of the people, pack the cart,” he said.
They left the village slowly but once out of sight drove as fast as they dared over the rough track. Incitatus pounded through the river ford with a great noisy splashing and, just beyond, scattered sheep, whose frightened bleating almost drowned out the roar of the outraged shepherd.
For the first time Rob saw Barber use the whip on the horse. “Why are we running?” he called, holding on.
“Do you know what they do to witches?” Barber had to shout above the drumming of the hooves and the clattering of the things inside the wagon.
Rob shook his head.
“They hang them from a tree or from a cross. Sometimes they submerge suspects in your fucking Thames and if they drown they are declared innocent. If the old man dies, they’ll say it is because we are witches,” he bawled, bringing the whip down again and again on the back of the terrified horse.
They didn’t stop to eat or relieve themselves. By the time they allowed Tatus to slow, Hereford was far behind, but they pushed the poor beast until daylight was gone. Exhausted, they made their camp and ate a poor meal in silence.
“Tell it again,” Barber said at last. “Leaving nothing out.”
He listened intently, interrupting only once to ask Rob to speak louder. When he had gotten the boy’s story he nodded. “In my own apprenticeship, I witnessed my barber-surgeon master wrongfully slain for a witch,” he said.
Rob stared at him, too frightened to ask questions.
“Several times during my lifetime, patients have died while I treated them. Once in Durham an old woman passed away and I was certain a priestly court would order trial by immersion or by the holding of a white-hot iron bar. I was allowed to leave only after the most suspicious interrogation, fasting, and almsgiving. Another time in Eddisbury a man died while behind my screen. He was young and apparently had been in health. Troublemakers would have had fertile ground but I was fortunate and no one barred my way when I took to the road.”
Rob found his voice. “Do you think I’ve been … touched by the Devil?” It was a question that had plagued him all through the day.
Barber snorted. “If you believe so, you’re foolish and a twit. And I know you to be neither.” He went to the wagon and filled his horn with metheglin, drinking it all before speaking again.
“Mothers and fathers die. And old people die. That’s the nature of it. You’re certain you felt something?”
“Yes, Barber.”
“Can’t be mistook or fancying, a young chap like you?”
Rob shook his head stubbornly.
“And I say it was all a notion,” Barber said. “So we’ve had enough of fleeing and talking and must gain our rest.”
They made their beds on either side of the fire. But they lay for hours without sleeping. Barber tossed and turned and presently got up and opened another flask of liquor. He brought it around to Rob’s side of the fire and squatted on his heels.
“Supposing,” he said, and took a drink. “Just suppose everyone else in the world had been born without eyes. And you were born with eyes?”
“Then I would see what no one else could see.”
Barber drank and nodded. “Yes. Or imagine that we had no ears and you had ears? Or suppose we didn’t have some other sense? And somehow, from God or nature or what you will, you’ve been given a … special gift. Just suppose that you can tell when someone is going to die?”
Rob was silent, terribly frightened again.
“It’s bullshit, we both comprehend that,” Barber said. “It was all your fancy, we agree. But just supposing…” He sucked thoughtfully from the flask, his Adam’s apple
working, the dying firelight glinting warmly in his hopeful eyes as he regarded Rob J. “It would be a sin not to exercise such a gift,” he said.
In Chipping Norton they bought metheglin and mixed another batch of Specific, replenishing the lucrative supply.
“When I die and stand in line before the gate,” Barber said, “St. Peter shall ask, ‘How did you earn your bread?’ ‘I was a farmer,’ one man may say, or ‘I fashioned boots from skins.’ But I shall answer, ‘Fumum vendidi,’” the former monk said gaily, and Rob’s Latin was equal to the task: I sold smoke.
Yet the fat man was far more than a peddler of questionable physick. When he treated behind the screen he was skillful and often tender. What Barber knew to do, he knew and did perfectly, and he taught Rob a sure touch and gentle hand.
In Buckingham, Barber showed him how to pull teeth, having the good fortune to come upon a drover with a rotting mouth. The patient was as fat as Barber, a pop-eyed groaner and womanly screamer. Midway, he changed his mind. “Stop, stop, stop! Set me free!” he lisped bloodily, but there was no question that the teeth needed pulling, and they persevered; it was an excellent lesson.
In Clavering, Barber rented the blacksmith’s shop for a day and Rob learned how to fashion the lancing irons and points. It was a task he would have to repeat in half a dozen smithies all over England during the next several years before he satisfied his master he could do it correctly. Most of his work in Clavering was rejected, but Barber grudgingly allowed him to keep a small two-edged lancet as the first instrument in his own kit of surgical tools, an important beginning. As they made their way out of the Midlands and into the Fens, Barber taught him which veins were opened for bleeding, bringing him unpleasant memories of his father’s last days.
His father sometimes crept into his mind, for his own voice was beginning to sound like his father’s; its timbre deepened, and he was growing body hair. The patches weren’t as thick as they would become, he knew, for through helping Barber he was quite familiar with the unclothed male. Women remained more of a mystery, since Barber employed an enigmatically smiling, voluptuous doll they called Thelma, on whose naked plaster form females modestly indicated the area of their own affliction, making examination unnecessary. It still made Rob uneasy to intrude into the privacy of strangers, but he became accustomed to casual inquiry about bodily function:
