The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (9 page)

The balls went over his head and fell to the ground.

“Observe. The red ball rose higher, because you have more strength in your right arm than in your left. Therefore you must learn to compensate, to use less effort from your right hand and more from your left, for the throws must be equal. Also, the balls went too high. A juggler has enough to do without having to pull back his head and peer up into the sun to see where the balls have gone. The balls should come no higher than here.” He tapped Rob’s forehead. “That way you see them without moving your head.”

He frowned. “Another thing. Jugglers never
throw
a ball. The balls are
popped.
The center of your hand must pop up for a moment so that the cup disappears and your hand is flat. The center of your hand drives the ball straight up, while at the same time the wrist gives a quick little snap and the forearm makes the smallest of motions upward. From the elbows to the shoulders, your arms shouldn’t move.”

He retrieved the balls and handed them to Rob.

When they reached Hertford, Rob set up the bank and carried out the flasks of Barber’s elixir and then took the two wooden balls off by himself and practiced popping. It hadn’t sounded hard but he found that half the time he placed a spin on the ball when he threw it up, causing it to veer. If he hooked the ball by hanging on to it too long it fell back toward his face or went over his shoulder. If he allowed a hand to go slack, the ball traveled away from him. But he kept at it, and soon he grasped the knack of popping. Barber seemed pleased when he showed his new skill that evening before supper.

The next day Barber stopped the wagon outside the village of Luton and showed Rob how to pop two balls so their paths crossed. “You can avoid collisions in midair if one ball has a head start or is popped higher than the other,” he said.

As soon as the show had begun in Luton, Rob stole away with the two balls and practiced in a small clearing in the woods. More often than not, the blue ball met the red ball with a small clunking sound that seemed to mock him. The balls fell and rolled and had to be retrieved, and he felt stupid and out of sorts. But nobody watched except a woods mouse and an occasional bird, and he continued to try. Eventually he was able to see that he could pop both balls successfully if the first one came down wide of his left hand and the second one went lower and traveled a shorter distance. It took him two days of trial and error and constant repetition before he was sufficiently satisfied to demonstrate it to Barber.

Barber showed him how to move both balls in a circle. “It looks more difficult than it is. You pop the first ball. While it is in the air, you shift the second ball into the right hand. The left hand catches the first ball, the right hand pops the second ball, and so on, hop, hop, hop! The balls are sent into the air quickly by your pops, but they come down much slower. That’s the juggler’s secret, that’s what saves jugglers. You have plenty of time.”

By the end of a week Barber was teaching him how to juggle both the red and the blue from the same hand. He had to hold one ball in his palm and the other farther forward, on his fingers. He was glad he had large hands. He dropped the balls a lot but finally he caught on: first red was tossed up, and before it could drop back into his hand, up went blue. They danced up and down from the same hand, hop, hop, hop! He practiced every moment that he could, now—two balls in a circle, two balls crossing over, two balls with the right hand only, two balls one-handed with the left. He found that by juggling with very low pops he could increase his speed.

They held over outside a town called Bletchly because Barber bought
a swan from a farmer. It was scarcely more than a cygnet but nevertheless larger than any fowl Rob had ever seen prepared for table. The farmer sold it dressed but Barber fussed over the bird, washing it painstakingly in a running stream and then dangling it by the legs over a small fire to singe off the pinfeathers.

He stuffed it with chestnuts, onions, fat, and herbs as befit a bird that had cost him dear. “A swan’s flesh is stronger than a goose’s but drier than a duck’s and so must be barded,” he instructed Rob happily. They barded the bird by wrapping it completely in thin sheets of salt pork, overlapped and molded snugly. Barber tied the package with flaxen cord and then hung it over the fire on a spit.

Rob practiced his juggling near enough to the fire so that the smells were a sweet torment. The heat of the flames drew the grease from the pork, basting the lean meat while the fat in the stuffing melted slowly and anointed the bird from within. As Barber turned the swan on the green branch that served as a spit, the thin skin of pork gradually dried and seared; when finally the bird was done and he removed it, the salt pork crackled and broke away. Inside, the swan was moist and delicate, slightly stringy but nicely larded and seasoned. They ate some of the flesh with the hot chestnut stuffing and boiled new squash. Rob had a great pink thigh.

Next morning they rose early and pushed hard, buoyed by the day of rest. They stopped for breakfast by the side of the track and enjoyed some of the swan’s breast cold with their toasted bread and cheese. When they had finished eating, Barber belched and gave Rob a third wooden ball, painted green.

They moved like ants across the lowlands. The Cotswold Hills were gentle and rolling, beautiful in their summer softness. The villages nestled in the valleys, with more stone houses than Rob had been accustomed to seeing in London. Three days after St. Swithin’s Day he was ten years old. He made no mention of it to Barber.

He was growing; the sleeves of the shirt Mam had sewn purposely long now ended well above his knobby wrists. Barber worked him hard. He performed most of the chores, loading and unloading the wagon at every town and village, hauling firewood and fetching water. His body was making bone and muscle of the fine rich food that kept Barber massively round. He had become quickly accustomed to wonderful food.

Rob and Barber were getting used to each other’s ways. Now when the fat man brought a woman to the campfire it was no novelty; sometimes Rob listened to the sounds of humping and tried to see, but usually he turned
over and went to sleep. If the circumstances were right, on occasion Barber spent the night in a woman’s house, but he was always at the wagon when morning came and it was time to leave a place.

Gradually there grew in Rob an understanding that Barber tried to cosset every woman he saw and did the same to the people who watched his entertainments. The barber-surgeon told them the Universal Specific was an Eastern physick, made by infusing the ground dried flower of a plant called Vitalia which was found only in the deserts of far-off Assyria. Yet when they ran low on the Specific, Rob helped Barber to mix up a new batch and he saw that the physick was mostly everyday liquor.

They didn’t have to inquire more than half a dozen times before finding a farmer with a keg of metheglin he was happy to sell. Any variety would have served, but Barber said he always tried to find metheglin, a mixture of fermented honey and water. “It’s a Welsh invention, chappy, one of the few things they’ve given us. Named from
meddyg,
their word for physician, and
llyn,
meaning strong liquor. It is their way of taking medicine and it is a good one, for metheglin numbs the tongue and warms the soul.”

Vitalia, the Herb of Life from far-off Assyria, turned out to be a pinch of niter, stirred well into each gallon of metheglin by Rob. It gave the strong spirits a medicinal bite, softened by the sweetness of the fermented honey that was its base.

The flasks were small. “Buy a keg cheap, sell a flask dear,” Barber said. “Our place is with the lower classes and the poor. Above us are the surgeons, who charge fatter fees and sometimes will throw the likes of us a dirty job they don’t wish to soil their own hands on, like tossing a bit of rotten meat to a cur! Above
that
sorry lot are the ruddy physicians, who are full of importance and cater to gentlefolk because they charge most of all.

“Do you ever wonder why this Barber doesn’t trim beards or cut hair? It’s because I can afford to choose my tasks. For here’s a lesson, and learn it well, apprentice: By mixing a proper physick and selling it diligently, a barber-surgeon can make as much money as a physician. Should all else fail, that is all you would have to know.”

When they were through mixing the physick for sale, Barber got out a smaller pot and made some more. Then he fumbled with his clothing. Rob stood transfixed and watched the stream tinkle into the Universal Specific.

“My Special Batch,” Barber said silkily, milking himself.

“Day after tomorrow we’ll be in Oxford. The reeve there, name of Sir John Fitts, charges me dear in order not to run me out of the county. In a fortnight we’ll be in Bristol, where a tavern-keeper named Potter always
utters loud insults during my entertainments. I try to have suitable small gifts ready for men such as these.”

When they reached Oxford, Rob didn’t disappear to practice with his colored balls. He waited and watched until the reeve appeared in his filthy satin tunic, a long, thin man with sunken cheeks and a perpetual cold smile that seemed prompted by some private amusement. Rob saw Barber pay the bribe and then, in reluctant afterthought, offer the bottle of metheglin.

The reeve opened the flask and drank its contents down. Rob waited for him to gag and spit and shout for their immediate arrest, but Lord Fitts finished the final drop and smacked his lips.

“Adequate tipple.”

“Thank you, Sir John.”

“Give me several flasks to carry home.”

Barber sighed, as if put upon. “Of course, my lord.”

The pissy bottles were scratched to mark them as different from the undiluted metheglin, and kept separate in a corner of the wagon; but Rob didn’t dare to drink any honey liquor for fear of making a mistake. The existence of the Special Batch made all metheglin nauseating, perhaps saving him from becoming a drunkard at an early age.

Juggling three balls was wickedly hard. He worked at it for weeks without great success. He started by holding two balls in his right hand and one in his left. Barber told him to begin by juggling two balls in one hand, as he had already learned. When the moment seemed right, he popped the third ball in the same rhythm. Two balls would go up together, then one, then two, then one … The lone ball bobbing between the other two made a pretty picture, but it wasn’t real juggling. Whenever he tried a crossover toss with the three balls he met with disaster.

He practiced every possible moment. At night in his sleep he saw colored balls dancing through the air, light as birds. When he was awake he tried to pop them like that but he quickly ran into trouble.

They were in Stratford when he got the knack. He could see nothing different in the way that he popped or caught. He had simply found the rhythm; the three balls seemed to rise naturally from his hands and return as if part of him.

Barber was pleased. “It’s my natal day, and you have given me a fine gift,” he said. To celebrate both events they went to market and bought a joint of young venison, which Barber boiled, larded, seasoned with mint and sorrel, and then roasted in beer with small carrots and sugar pears. “When is your birth day?” he asked as they ate.

“Three days after Swithin’s.”

“But it is past! And you made no mention of it.”

He didn’t answer.

Barber looked at him and nodded. Then he sliced more meat and heaped it on Rob’s plate.

That evening Barber took him to the public house in Stratford. Rob drank sweet cider but Barber downed new ale and sang a song celebrating it. He had no great voice but he could carry a tune. When he was finished there was applause and the thumping of mugs on tables. Two women sat alone in a corner, the only women there. One was young and stout and blond. The other was thin and older, with gray in her brown hair. “More!” the older one cried boldly.

“Mistress, you are insatiable,” Barber called. He threw back his head and sang:

“Here’s a merry new song of a ripe widow’s wooing,

She bedded a scoundrel to her sad undoing.

The man he did joss her and bounce her and toss her

And stole all her gold for a general screwing!’”

The women shrieked and screamed with laughter and hid their eyes behind their hands.

Barber sent them ale and sang:

“Your eyes caressed me once,

Your arms embrace me now …

We’ll roll together by and by

So make no fruitless vow.”

Surprisingly agile for one so large, Barber danced a frenzied clog with each of the women in turn, while the men in the public house clapped their hands and shouted. He tossed and whirled the delighted women easily, for under the lard were the muscles of a dray horse. Rob fell asleep soon after Barber brought them to his table. He was dimly aware of being awakened and of the women’s support as they helped Barber to lead him, stumbling, back to the camp.

When he awoke next morning the three lay beneath the wagon, tangled like great dead snakes.

He was becoming intensely interested in breasts and he stood close and studied the women. The younger had a pendulous bosom with heavy nipples set in large brown circles in which there were hairs. The older was nearly flat with little bluish dugs like a bitch’s or sow’s.

Barber opened one eye and watched him memorizing the women. Presently he extricated himself and patted the cross and sleepy females, waking them so he could rescue the bedding and return it to the wagon while Rob hitched the animal. He left them each the gift of a coin and a bottle of Universal Specific. Scorned by a flapping heron, he and Rob drove out of Stratford just as the sun was pinking the river.

7

THE HOUSE ON LYME BAY