The Remedy (33 page)
The next day I was waiting in the same spot when the cart arrived and the Zany tripped forth. Quacks invariably revisit fertile grounds, for they can rely on one day’s gulls to bring friends and neighbors the next.
Again, I witnessed the singing and the capering, the declamations and the horror stories. When the crowd had been roused up to the previous day’s pitch of desire, to the point where Dottore Velena sought a victim, I pushed myself to the front. Using the skills of my former trade, I had made up my face to a deadly white with rosy spots of fever high on my cheeks.
At first Dottore Velena avoided me, for a truly sick person was of course the last kind of patient any quack wants to treat. His eye roamed the crowd, refusing to meet mine. When at last it did, dragged there by the hoarse scream I uttered, I winked at him.
Not for nothing do quacks live on their wits. In an instant Dottore Velena had the measure of me, had grasped my plan and was prepared to give me a try.
I performed a graceful faint, falling heavily against a robust butcher at my side. Through lowered lids I saw him kneeling above me, gazing with concern.
“Help me,” I moaned softly. “In God’s name, save my life.”
Dottore Velena leaned over the stage. “What’s this then? A poor woman who lies a-dying? Shall we see if we can hasten a painless end? Fetch her up here.”
There was a warning implicit in his words, and I was determined not to fail him.
I lay limp as I was passed hand over shoulder to the stage, where the Zany propped me up against the doctor’s stool. I allowed my eyes to open, blearily, and hung my head, the very picture of fast-fading life.
“Behold this tragical sight!” called out Dottore Velena, peering into my eyes, and feeling my pulse. “A young girl undone by the Caledonian Cremona. A thing I have seen all too many times, a promising creature doomed to be snuffed out imminently by the dread disease.”
He leaned down to me tenderly. “My dear, have you any last requests?”
In answer, I released one fat tear that rolled down my cheek.
Someone in the crowd yelled: “Can you not cure her, Dottore?”
Dottore Velena looked amazed, “But of course I can. It is the work of an instant! My softer sides were so overcome with the pity of this spectacle that the
scientist
in me lay dormant. Here, my dear, take a little of this.”
He lifted my chin and poured a few drops from his bottle, this time a green one, into my mouth.
This was the worst moment, for I knew not if I would be forced to drink some bitter decoction or whether I could stop myself from vomiting it up. Fortunately Dottore Velena had offered me succor from his own personal bottle, the one used for demonstrations, and I was relieved beyond measure to find that it contained nothing more unpalatable than watered Amsterdam gin.
Nevertheless I promptly screwed up my face with horror, for it is a known thing that the viler a medicine tastes the more potent its effects. Then I buried my face in my apron, and coughed violently for a few seconds, long enough to rub the
white powder from my skin and produce a heated glow in my cheeks.
Dottore Velena was explaining: “This Physic contains, among its parts, the chiefest Antepudenda Specifick in
Venus
Regalia, which infallibly cures the French Pox, with all its Tram of Gonorrhoeas, Bubo’s and Shankers, Carnosities, Phymosis and Ragades, all without Baths and Stoves …”
Meanwhile the crowd had grown anxious. They began to deride the quack. There were cries of “Look! You’ve killt her!” and “Pore little lamb, she were only a young-un.”
At this I rose to my feet, tearing off my apron and balling it up to hide the white and red stains of my cosmetics. I stood proudly, letting them see my strong posture, my high Italian color and my glittering eyes.
Then I threw myself at the feet of the quack, crying, “I am cured! ’Tis a miracle! Thank you, kind sir, for my very life!” And I embraced his knees, wiping my grateful tears on the coarse fabric of his breeches, despite their musty odor.
All the while Dottore Velena was declaiming with his usual aplomb, “And this is but a simple cure for this potent Physic. A mere sketch of what it may do. Why, if a man chance to have his Brains beat out, or his Head chop’d off, two drops, I say two drops, Ladies and Gentlemen, seasonably applied, will recall the fleeting Spirits, re-enthrone the deposed Life-force, cement the Discontinuity of the Parts and in six minutes restore the lifeless Trunk to all its pristine functions, as well, nay better, than before. For it shall cherish up any saddened spirits, and restore Virginity forthwith.”
I stood beaming and nodding. Presently, a roar arose from the crowd that had been stupefied by my recovery. They were in this moment absorbent of any claim that the doctor might make, and I feared that he would run to more extreme boasts, leading in the end to ridicule. But Dottore Velena had judged his victims to a nicety.
“Give me some o’that!” rasped the man with the tumored throat.
“I’ll have three bottles!” screamed a woman far gone with the scrofula.
“I must have it now!” yelled another woman, clearly nearing her time for parturition.
But Dottore Velena held up a sorrowful hand. He had a new strategy to increase desire for the green bottle, so that even those who had bought yesterday’s blue one would feel themselves bereft without the newcomer.
“Stay, stay, good people, if only I could help you all. It breaks my heart to remind you that this particularrr preparation takes a good nine weeks in boiling to distil just one bottle …”
The Zany appeared with his tray of green bottles, which was emptied in a moment. Again and again he went back to his cupboard, so often that I began to fear that the supply might actually run dry.
Dottore Velena’s list of curable ailments rolled on interminably, twice as long as the day before. This meant that I had done well for him. It would put up my price. I listened to the list, hoping to catch him out in a repetition and was astounded that I could not.
“… Which is why,” he intoned, “it refreshes the Bowels and relieves the Spirits. After the good offices in the Ventricle, it deterges and opens the mouths of the Lacteals, that were almost baked up with slime; dilutes and refrigerates the blood, allays the fervent heat, and crispations of the Parboil’d Fibrillae, repairs all the wastes with Nutritious Chyle; cleanses the minutest passages and emunctories; and helps the whole mass to circulate freely, and duly, to nourish and cherish the parts; and to throw off its recrements by Urine, and (where there is an aptitude) by Sweat and Spittle.”
Only then did he pause to draw breath, and look with satisfaction on the crowd. But when his mantra ceased, so did the frenzied purchase of the drug. Men and women stopped with their coins held high in the air, waiting for him to go on.
He obliged: “When the Fermentation of the blood is grown low and languishing, this rouses it up again afresh—concocts and incides crude, and pituitose Juices. It removes Atrabilarious Humors stagnating in the Viscera. It opens the obstructions, and discusses the Tumors of the Spleen, quiets and suppresses
convulsive corrugations of Fibers. A few drops applied, cures all curable wounds in twenty-four hours; and old Ulcers, Fistulas, Cancers, Wolf in the Breast,
noli-me-tangere
, in fifteen days, using it daily It is also good against the Carbuncles, and extinguishes them in three hours …”
At this point he allowed his voice to weaken and trail away. He paused entirely to swig on a bottle himself, and then threw himself back into the fray, at a louder volume than before, his agonized whispers of the last few seconds replaced by a vigorous, loud tone.
“And I have known it do good service in Cutaneous Affections. By reason of its neurotic quality it comforts the Nerves, and restrains the raging Excandescence of the Spirits. It’s endowed with a mucilaginous, soft, and friendly sweetness. By incrassating the blood disposed for Fluxion, and correcting it when acrid, it’s also laudably used in Pleurisy, Rheumatism, Small Pox, Measles, and Stone. It retrieves the failing Tone of the Intestines, corrects their slipperiness, and represseth their continual bearing downward. It draws out watery and pituitous Humors, by irritating and vellicating the parts of the Mouth. It consenters Acrimony, appeaseth Gripes. It coats over the upper parts of the Throat and Larynx with a sort of Emplastic Slime, and so obtunds their exquisitely irritable sense. It also prohibits the extillation of too thin, sharp, and fluxile Serum from the Glands; corrects nidorous Belching. It does edulcorate, stop up, stringe, and ronorate; give ease in the Lumbago. It is Stomachic, Anticolic, Anthelminthic, Antapoplectic, Febrisic; and good in the bite of a mad dog …”
The Zany now produced from his waistcoat a most frightful wax model of a rabid dog with his foaming mouth clamped to the foot of a bellowing child.
At this point, knowing the inevitable and profitable conclusion, I withdrew, catching the eye of the quack and pointing at the Anchor Tavern. He nodded.
I went inside and ordered myself a gin. I believed that I had earned it, having carried off my part most handsomely.
Take Male Peony root 2 drams; Spanish Angelica root 1 dram; Florentine Orris, Lavender flowers, each half a dram; Arabian Stechas flowers 1 dram; Cloves, Nutmeg, Mace, each 1 scruple; Storax calamite. Laudanum, Amber, Balsam of Tolu, each 1 dram; Oil of Rosemary 5 drops; reduce it to a gross Powder; which being mix’d into Cotton, is to be quilted in a silk Cap according to Art. Every Night at Bed-time, let this Cap be fumed and warm’d with the smoak of Amber, Olibanum, Balsam of Tolu, or the like. Sprinkled upon Coals.
It’s of signal use in Humid, Pituitose Affections of the Head, in cold, customary, rheumatic Pains of the same. And it’s believ’d to recreate the Spirits, and roborate the Brain.
The Zany bent over his food and flung large particles of it in the direction of his mouth.
“There’s no need to gollop it like that, in front of a lady,” reproved Dottore Velena. With his handkerchief, he wiped the worst of the dirt off a chair close to his own and offered it to me with a flourish.
“Lie-dee? ’Er? She’s nuffin but a hairy, she’d do it wiv anywan’.”
For emphasis, the Zany spat vehemently against the window-sill. He tore another mouthful of meat from the bone with his teeth and slammed the cutlet back on the plate. With a great spraying of masticated gristle in my direction, he snarled, “Whar you staring at me lek I was a monument?”
I lowered my eyes. Not wanting to be unfriendly, I moved from my own chair to the seat of honor offered by the Dottore.
We were in the filthy dining room of the Anchor. I was still wondering where the elegant diners were to be found. Perhaps on the upper floor? I told myself it was better to be down in this room, despite its savory wallpapering of grease, for the last person I wished to meet today was Valentine Greatrakes, who no doubt took his refreshments upstairs with the other aristocrats.
The Dottore raised his voice to a stage whisper and loomed over the Zany: “No more of your snash, shut it, or you’re in for a light bruising,” he hissed. “I’m just about heart-roasted with you already.”
His Italian had dissolved in two pints of Russian stout. I believed that I knew his accent: I had once been engaged to extract information from a Scottish laird. Though more refined, there had been something in the Milord’s warbling vowels that now reminded me of Dottore Velena, who continued to berate the Zany for his “aggravatious” table manners, to no avail.
The Dottore smiled at me as he called over a sweat-stained waiter. “You look proper famished, my dear. We must supply you with some brute necessities.” He ordered me what he termed “a spitchcock of eels and a plate of buttered crabs.”
“And another gin,” I added.
When the food arrived, grim and greasy, he advised me, kindly but inexplicably, to put myself “outside of that.”
I did my best to eat it while the men ate, belched, drank, and gossiped in their impenetrable way.
At last the Zany announced conclusively, “There was ructions and then the two of them got beasted into each other. Arry was mollocated.”
This meant very little to me. And now that the men were fed I thought it was time to talk about business. I leaned over and boldly pulled the bottle out of Dottore Velena’s top pocket.
“What’s in it?” I asked, holding the emerald glass to the light and jiggling the liquid. “I mean the bottles you sell the clients?” I was sure they would not be deceived by gin.
“Now that would be telling, lassie,” said the quack, winking and thumbing his nose roguishly.
I added, “And how ill shall it make them?”
The quack laughed heartily, “Not at all. When I sell it in the country, the farmers buy it to exterminate their plaguey rats, and they find it does the beasts a favor, for they thrive noticeably upon it.”
“And where do
you
get it?” I asked, carelessly.
His reply teetered my world on its axis.
“We all round here get it from Dizzom at Bankside.”
“Dizzom, who works for Valentine Greatrakes?” I gasped.
“Ark at ’er, sitting lek a craw in da mist,” observed the Zany, highly diverted by my discomfort.
“The same,” said Dottore Velena approvingly. “I see you know a thing or two, young lady. It’s teeming with brains, you are: It’s clear the education’s been at you, dearie. Aye, it’s Dizzom that fills our bottles and prints our handbills, and supplies our quilted caps and what-you-will, all on behalf of his master, naturally.”
“But … but, I thought Mr Greatrakes was a … gentleman.”
“Indeed, a very great gentleman, of his kind!” Both the Dottore and the Zany were smiling broadly. There was no disguising the mockery in the quack’s voice. “The very greatest patron of all quacks, whores, thieves, and beating-boys. The very pinnacle of a gentleman, at least on this side of the river, the one who has an interest in every glassblower in Bankside, for only he can replenish their bottles with free-traded liquors just as fast as they can blow em. Not bad for the bastard brat of a Corktown maid, brought up by the Angel-Makers, and who’s served his time up chimneys and down drains mudlarking before coming to his present great estate.