Alchemy (23 page)

Now the boy who had first spoken to me took a hand again. ‘He is no physician. His skin is soft as a girl’s. This is some ruse to be admitted sharer in our company.’

Another took my wrist as if he would feel my pulse. ‘Tell the
truth now. Are you seeking employment among us as some lovely boy in Diana’s shape? We have enough mincing maids already, and to spare.’

‘I look for no such sir. Indeed I have no skill in those ways. My little skill is in making of medicines and their use.’ And here I opened my bag and showed my wares. ‘These are all the tools of my trade. And if the gentleman will not let me tend him he must go untreated for there is none other, all being occupied with other sick persons among so many. But if his wound is not cleansed and anointed daily it will fester and grow rank and may endanger his very life.’

‘Come Nick,’ another joined in, ‘he says you will die if he does not treat you. Is it not worth the try?’

‘Already sir,’ I said taking the wounded man by his wrist, ‘your pulse is quick and shallow. The wound has brought on a fever. Your head throbs and you cannot sleep.’

He groaned a little and leant back against the saddle that was serving him as a pillow. ‘How did you know? Are you a necromancer as well?’

‘It is my occupation to know sir. I need no magic to divine the symptoms of your case. Inflammation attends such a wound. The body is weakened. Poison is engendered by the wound and flows through the veins.’

‘Should I be let blood then?’

‘My father believed in the quick letting of blood only if other means could not prevail. I follow his example.’

‘Come then. If there is no other, try your skill. Will it hurt? I am a player not a soldier hardened to pain.’

I thought then that he had done better to avoid the cause of it if he feared to suffer.

‘It must hurt as I cleanse it for the blood has dried and must be removed. But after I will give you a sleeping draught and when you wake you will begin to feel better. Some one of you hold his hands and press tightly while I work.’

Two of them came forward and took him on either side. I pulled out the bottle of arnica water and began to sponge the gash. He cried out when I first touched him until one of them gave him a wooden spoon to bite on. I worked as gently and swiftly as I could and when the flesh was clean I put ointment of burnet on a pad and laid it to his head, bandaging it firmly in place. Then I mixed opiate in wine and gave him to drink.

One of those who had held his hand now took mine and gazed at it. ‘So soft. It is indeed like a maid’s hand.’

‘My father said a physician should be known for gentle hands since in sickness the lightest touch may be as a blow to one in health. And indeed women may make cunning enough physicians if they are let, as witness many midwives. My lady herself helps in the healing of her house and the many poor who come to her.’

‘Midwives and witches too,’ another said. ‘I would not put myself under the hands of a cunning woman.’

‘Then you should not travel abroad to foreign lands,’ the first said, ‘for women there may play the physician if Boccaccio is to be believed. Meanwhile if you should lack employment in your father’s trade, master physician, you may repair to us and we will soon teach you to play a maid. Then you can physick us while we are on the road.’

I thought that his words were too close to the truth. A player who dealt in dreams and things imagined might see deeper into the heart and mind than other men and put me at risk of discovery. Therefore I bowed to them all and said that now I had other business I must attend to, that they should let the wounded man sleep and I would come again to dress his wound. I urged them to give him only broth with a little white bread when he awoke and to call for me if he should seem to grow weaker or the fever grow hotter.

The new steward who had succeeded the murdered Davys met me in the hall where the stage was now set up and the
players would perform next day. ‘You must go at once to the countess who has been calling for you.’

‘I was sent for to attend one of the players and was hard put to leave their company.’ I found my lady distracted with all the confusion and their majesties’ demands.

‘I have none to help me. My sons are constantly riding or hunting and I do not trust the new steward as I did Hugh Davys to smooth our path so that all things are in order as I like. My head throbs. Where have you been Amyntas? Dr Gilbert was here to tend me but his ways are too harsh. I do not need either to be purged or let blood now but only some soothing draught. Where were you?’ she asked again.

‘Madam I was sent for to tend a wounded man among the players and as they are the king’s servants I could not refuse. Then after I had treated his wound, the others would have discourse with me trying to bend me to be of their company and play the maid.’

I had hoped that this would cause her to smile and lighten her humour for I saw she was on the edge of a black melancholy which would serve her badly with a court that looked always for amusement and diversion, and where only princes or their favourites are suffered to indulge damp or dark humours.

‘And do you intend to leave me to become a mere player?’

‘My lady knows I will never leave while she has need of me. Let me bring you some special wine to calm your agitation.’ So I went to our laboratory and mixed a decoction of that plant called the melancholy thistle that grows in moist places, in wine, which together will expel superfluous melancholy which causes care and despair and agitation, and will leave the patient merry after a time.

When I returned with the cup I had prepared, my lady asked me to bring her commonplace book in which she was used to note all such things as it amused her to keep to look on again.

‘I remember,’ she said, ‘when the young earl my son was first
at Oxford he sent me some sonnets that were passed from hand to hand among his friends, asking me to compare them with the incomparable
Astrophel and Stella
of my dear brother. Some I copied into this book, not that they came near his in beauty, but that I might have to hand what passes for poetry in these degenerate days, being more sugared than my brother’s verses or those near to him in time as Mr Spenser his
Amoretti
or even my son’s tutor Daniel his
Delia.
Read this one to me.’

She handed me her book, all in her own delicate hand, open at the page.

A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou the Master Mistress of my passion. A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change as is false woman’s fashion.

‘They are hard on us women, the male poets, when I think it is not we who are fickle. Go on.’

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth…

My lady sighed, ‘yet more of our inconstancy. Even my dear brother might write so sometimes.’

A man in hue all hues in his controlling

Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created

Till nature as she wrought thee fell adoting,

And by addition me of thee defeated

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

‘There Amyntas you may hear the coarseness that my brother
was never guilty of in that “pricked”, an effect of young men’s idle wit that seeks praise for itself above that it would seem to praise. Yet are not you in the opposite case to this, Amyntas, being indeed not pricked out for women’s pleasure?’

‘Madam, I often forget in what form I was made and then I remember and wish to be other than I am.’

‘But then I could not take you into my bed and pass the time with you in innocent games.’

I could not answer my lady.

The play was to be given the next day. In the afternoon while there was still a little grey light lingering outside the house I crossed to the barn where the sick player lay to tend his wound. This time when I entered a few looked up to salute me but none challenged my presence. I saw at once why this was, for the wounded man was sitting up on his straw pallet, his face cheerful and not flushed with fever, his eye bright but not extremely so.

‘Here is my little physician. Truly I must speak as I find and I find you the very master of physick. If I had had the king’s physician himself I could not have been cured more quickly. If they could find a part for me as a wounded soldier coming from the wars in this bandage I would strut my part on stage tomorrow.’

Going close to him I took his wrist. ‘Sir you must be quiet a little yet or you may cause the fever to return by overheating of the blood. Your pulse is still too quick and shallow for all your wound is recovering. I will dress it again and then prescribe you a draught to make you sleepy for fear you should excite a hot vapour in the brain or should stumble and inflict a new contusion on your broken head.’

‘If you promise me such a sweet drink as yesterday I will be good and he still.’

I unwrapped his head and found the wound clean, with just a little weeping I could wipe away without causing him such
pain that he had to be held down by his fellows. Then I applied fresh burnet ointment and bound him up again. Although I was as gentle as I could be, by the time I had finished he was content to lie back while I mixed his potion and raised his head to drink. The smell of his breath was rank in my face as I bent over him so that I was hard put not to turn away until he had emptied the cup, and the stench from his body and clothing almost caused me to let his head drop.

‘Tomorrow you should wash a little and shift your shirt and slops.’

‘Will you not come and do it for me master physician? Those hands of yours would be kinder to my flesh than my own.’

‘Now Nick,’ one of the players said, ‘he is not for you. Let one of the hirelings wash you. They will do well enough. But not they that are to play the maids tomorrow. Keep them fresh for their parts. You should be gone master physician, unless you want the work. He stinks because he has pissed himself in sleep.’

‘He will sleep again soon,’ I said returning my things to my bag. ‘It is an effect of the draught that it gives some men imaginings.’

‘He needs a potion for excess heat in the loins and privities, master physician. But he would not thank you for it.’

I had never been at a play apart from seeing the mummers in the inn yards at the fair and at Easter and Christmas feasts in the great house. I was therefore determined to find a place where I might hear and see all. This was not easy for everyone was of the same mind so that there was a great press of people behind the seats provided for their majesties, my lady herself and the first among the courtiers. Her two sons lay on either side of their majesties propped upon their elbows in the appearance of pages or esquires.

At length I was obliged to stand upon a stool to get above the heads of the listeners, leaning against the jamb of the door so that I might not fall off. The room was lit with a thousand
candles, or so it seemed, and a painted cloth hung in the hind part of the stage showed a house of columns and a portico of steps in stone with beyond a prospect of the sea and shore and a painted ship asail on the waters. I had never seen the sea yet I knew what was represented to my gaze and might almost hear the distant waves of the prospective.

Their majesties had entered with the court and taken their places. There was a murmur of voices, then a fanfare from an unseen trumpet. Music began to sound and the players came up on the stage before the painted columns, attired in such rich silken clothes they vied with the court that watched them. The noblest of them began to speak and I leant forward to hear. He spoke of love and music.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh.

His words pierced into my breast and I felt as if a cord binding up my heart had snapped, letting the blood flow through my veins up into my bursting brain. From where I leant on the door jamb I could see the countess dressed in all her finery, the noblest lady of the court as it seemed to me.

The lord said that he would go hunt the object of his love.

O when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.
That instant was I turned into a hart,
And my desires like fell and cruel hounds
E’er since pursue me.

Then there entered a messenger come from his lady who said she would see no one, being in deepest mourning for her dead brother. I saw my lady start at this so close it seemed to her own affections that I wondered if he who writ it had knowledge of her grief. The noble and his attendants retired and now
came on new players, one of whom I recognised through his maid’s clothes as he who had accosted me when I first entered their barn. Yet he acted the maid so truly that after few words only I no longer saw the boy from the barn. The captain told her and us too that they were in Illyria which seemed to me with its fair prospect that it must lie close to Elysium. She too was mourning for a brother drowned. She would seek service with the duke’s lady Olivia but the captain who had rescued her advised otherwise, saying the lady would see no one. Then she said she would personate a youth and seek service with the duke. ‘Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him.’

Next came two clownish knights whom I had also seen in the barn in undress but now they too were dressed in the finest silks and velvets with feathered bonnets on their heads. I marvelled at the rude words from their lips yet the king and queen laughed heartily, though my countess was silent, and then again was the duke returned, this time with the maid in boy’s attire to be sent on a mission to woo his lady for him.

And now for the first time came on the lady Olivia herself as finely arrayed as my countess at her richest so that it was as if we spied upon ourselves and eavesdropped on our own words. First was the sour steward of her company with a licensed fool who tried to bring the lady out of her grief for her brother. Then entered one of the foolish knights deep in his cups although it was not yet noon. I thought that she was surrounded by fools, apart from her waiting woman who had more sense than the rest together, yet their clowning seemed to please the watchers.