Timewatch (21 page)

From her bundle, the woman drew out a small vial and a piece of cloth. She carefully unwrapped a large needle and a shell.

“Come, my little man. This only a scratch—not hurt.”

Edward shrank from the beckoning woman with the gap-toothed smile and hid his face in Geraldine's skirts.

Poor little soul, he was so frightened. Stooping down, Geraldine put her hands gently on Edward's shoulders and said, “I remember how sick I felt from the smallpox. But you will never have to go through that. In days to come when you remain strong and healthy, you will bless me for this. Now hold out your arm.”

He drew back from her and cautiously extended an arm. The woman expertly opened a vein with the needle so that only a few drops of blood oozed out and then dipped the head of the needle into the smallpox pus in the nutshell. With great care, she applied the needle to Edward's arm. To protect the wound and keep it clean, she put a small shell over it. Working methodically, she bound up the wound and then repeated the procedure with the other arm.

Tears that she did nothing to hide were running down Emma's face.

Edward looked as though he was ready to start blubbering, too.

Geraldine rounded on her maid and chided, “How many of your friends in England have died already of the pox, Emma? Ingrafting the boy against the disease may save his life one day. The worst that will happen will be that he will come down with a fever. When that happens, he will be put to bed for two or three days with a mild form of smallpox. He will not necessarily have any spots on his body. Within eight days after that, he will be recovered from the illness.”

Information from the mind of Lady Mary told Geraldine that female Turkish children who had been ingrafted in this manner—whose skin remained clear and unscarred—would be possible candidates for the sultan's harem.

Turning to the old woman, who was gathering up her supplies, Geraldine said, “Thank you for coming.”

So it wasn't the English who had been the first to inoculate people against smallpox and not even the Turks; it had been the Chinese a century earlier. Interesting as that was, there were some big questions to be answered: Why was it important that Edward not die? His was certainly not a household name, no one important that she knew of. So what was the point of her coming here?

Still puzzling over these questions, Geraldine felt her consciousness spiral out of her body, no, Lady Mary's, and …

CHAPTER 22

She was in a dressing room. Ladies in full-skirted dresses, looking like a bunch of brightly colored tulips, were powdering their faces and wigs and carrying on nonstop conversations centering primarily on their lovers and admirers.

“Lady Mary, are Turkish men better lovers than Englishmen?” asked a young woman who might have been beautiful if her face had not been pitted with scars.

“I would hardly know,” murmured Geraldine.

“Oh, la, we have heard that the sultan was quite overcome by your charms,” said another woman, giving her a roguish look as she tapped her on the arm with a fan.

Sultan?
Then the memories began flowing once again.

Tartly, Geraldine said, “Achmed the Third is too good a Mohammedan to value any woman who belongs to another man. With five hundred women in his harem he is not lacking, but must rather be suffering, from a surfeit of carnal relations.”

The ladies tittered at this sally of hers.

“I should not wish to live in a harem,” Geraldine added. “One of the harem women told me about the eunuchs, especially chosen for their deformed bodies and repulsive faces, to guard the sultan's women, and about the constant and bitter fighting among the women. With my own eyes, I saw the prison-harem where every three years after a review of the sultan's women they shut up the old, sick, and barren women.

“Other eunuchs enforce strict discipline among the pages, who are taught by tutors in the palace school. These pages, according to their abilities, later serve the sultan in various ways, looking after his personal needs, his valuables, and some even ascending to high office to become governors of his provinces. Of course, in all things they must obey the sultan.”

A lady whose mouth was drawn into a permanent sneer by a multitude of scars said, “In your letters you wrote that Turkish ladies bathe naked together. They must be a lewd lot.”

“It is true that they go to the baths together, where they drink coffee or eat sherbet and converse while slaves braid their hair, but I saw not one wanton smile or immodest gesture among them while we sat together. On the contrary, they were as moral as any of us.”

“Then they must be veritable satyrs!” said one thin matron with a disagreeable laugh.

“They have more liberty than English ladies and go about the streets disguised with long, shapeless clothes over their bodies and faces so that none can tell who they are.”

“I should not be able to endure a husband who took four wives, as I believe the Turks do,” observed another woman.

“No man of quality would do such a thing, nor would any woman of rank suffer it. I look upon Turkish women as the only free people in the empire. Wealthy ladies keep their money in their own hands and, if they divorce, take their wealth with them.”

“Now would not that turn society upside down!” exclaimed the woman with the permanent sneer. “Perhaps that is what you are trying to do, Lady Mary, with your inoculations.”

“For shame, she is but endeavoring to be of service,” cried another, a beauty with fine, clear skin.

The pockmarked woman turned on her and cried, “Do you think, young lady, that inoculation will save you? When it is your time, you will be struck by the pox even as we were!”

The beauty went pale and fingered the ruby-encrusted cross at her throat.

The other, gesturing to the cross, said, “And much good that will do you whilst half of London is falling prey to the disease.”

“‘It is said that several thousands have died of it, and 'tis certain that many other thousands have been disfigured by it,” observed the thin woman with relish.

Silence fell. It was smallpox, Geraldine realized, that had scarred most of these women's faces. They tried to cover up their scars with cerule, a thick substance, which produced a masklike appearance. She had been vaguely aware that the disease had been rampant in Europe but had not realized how it had ravaged those individuals who survived.

Sighing, she turned to the mirror in front of her and received a rude shock. Staring back at her was the reflection of a woman with pitted skin and the remnants of what had once been a fine pair of eyebrows.

Reluctant to face the women anymore, she left the dressing room and entered an immense room. Geraldine headed immediately for a small alcove between two tall windows where she could enjoy a moment or two of privacy.

The light from a myriad of candles played over lavish gowns and reflected off priceless jewels worn by both men and women who stood, bewigged and powdered, holding drinks in their hands and chattering. Except for the costumes, it might have been a cocktail party in Mayfair. The information in Lady Mary's consciousness told her that this was the home of the Prince and Princess of Wales, who had set up a separate establishment after quarrelling with the king over the latter's choice of a sponsor to the princess's latest baby.

Geraldine rubbed her hands, damp with anxiety, on her gown and then regretted doing so as she looked down at the pale silk with crimson stripes.

“Good evening. Lady Mary, I believe?”

Bowing to her was a portly man with grease stains on his green velvet coat, a man who carried himself with an air of assurance.

“You have the advantage of me, sir.”

“Morley Wagstaffe of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, at your service, my lady. We have heard of your efforts to introduce the practice of ingrafting against smallpox. Why, I wonder, are you endeavoring to introduce into one of the politest nations in the world a custom employed by a pagan people?”

“I think, sir, that we might learn much from other nations.” Such as using stoves to heat their houses as the good burghers of Hanover did
.
Geraldine shivered a little from the damp chill of the room.

Dr. Wagstaffe raised his bushy eyebrows and said, “I have heard a sermon denouncing the practice as ‘an impious interference with the just and inscrutable visitations of God.' What say you to that, madam?”

Why the pompous old fool! She'd like to wipe that smirk right off his face, but what would Lady Mary do? She had to stay in character, so Geraldine said only, “Would you have innocent children die rather than treat them with a method that would guarantee their survival?”

“Only an atheist would try to circumvent God's will.”

It was no use arguing with a man whose mind was encased in the prejudices of his time. He had probably been upset when they'd stopped burning witches in England.

“I regret, sir, that we will never be of the same mind in this matter.”

“Mary, what are you doing here, hiding in the corner?”

Richly dressed in a brocaded dress stitched with pearls, the stately woman bearing down upon her ignored Wagstaffe, who bowed low and beetled off to the other side of the room.

“Was he being a bore, my dear?”

The neck, ears, and arms of the Princess of Wales were loaded with a careless array of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies that did nothing to relieve the plainness of her features, but her smile was welcoming and her eyes kind.

Mary certainly traveled in the most elevated of social circles.

“The gentleman was no more of a bore than many others, Your Highness.”

“I hope you turned some of that justly celebrated wit of yours upon the wretched fellow,” said Princess Caroline. “I have no idea how he got in here. But come—Handel is going to play one of his new anthems for us. Oh, and there is your great friend, that clever little Mr. Pope. I hear he has written some new verses that are very complimentary to you.”

She was pointing to a short little man, misshapen and plain featured. This dwarfish little fellow was the author of
The Rape of the Lock
and other poems and essays? Geraldine immediately felt ashamed that she expected the famous poet to look like Lord Byron. What did his appearance matter? This man had turned the lens of his wit upon the court scene and summed up the perpetual gossip with an incisive, “At every word a reputation dies.”

The princess was taking her arm and saying, “After the music we shall play at cards. You shall partner Mr. Steele, who observed to me only last week that your memory will be sacred to future ages because of the great work you are doing in helping to rid England of a terrible disease.”

As Geraldine recalled, Steele was another wit who had given the name
Tatler
to a newspaper—in honor of the fair sex, as he put it.

No wonder Mary, a very bright and well-educated woman, who had written poetry, too, and critiqued that of Pope's, had later fallen out with Pope. He, like Steele, praised women, but subtly put them down.

Distracted, a rush of images came then: mothers with great sores running with pus from smallpox, lying in bed and beseeching her to ingraft their children; scores of her rich friends rushing to the country where they hoped to escape the worst of the disease.

“Mary,” said the princess, turning and looking her fully in the face, “I would like to protect my children from the pox, but I must be sure that I am making the right decision.”

She was looking for reassurance, realized Geraldine. However, she would have to be careful with the princess, a strong-willed woman who liked to make up her own mind about things.

“I will ingraft my own little daughter—who is but a baby now—when she is older.”

The princess fanned herself with a painted ivory fan. “Quite so, but I would like some more proof that the smallpox venom will protect against the disease.”

What could she say to the princess? What would she accept as proof? In the 20th century, scientists did experiments for years before they came to conclusions, but here in 1719 there wasn't time for that. Inoculating the princess's pet monkey wasn't an option, either.

The princess was beginning to look around her, smiling graciously at Pope making his way with some difficulty through the dense crowd.

She was losing the princess's attention. Then she had it. “May I suggest, Your Highness, that my surgeon Maitland, who learned the process from a Turkish surgeon, be given permission to ingraft a few criminals under sentence of death at Newgate. If they recover, then you might with perfect assurance ingraft your children.”

The princess brightened and turned her attention fully upon Geraldine. “My dear Mary. A wonderful idea! Instruct Maitland to carry out this procedure at once. I shall await the outcome with the greatest of interest.”

The reason for her coming here walked away. If the experiment worked and the princess had her children ingrafted, then the rest of England would follow suit. People who would have died from the disease would live, including certain individuals who would play key roles in the formation of the United States of America.

CHAPTER 23

Laney was sure that she was going to puke right then and there over the sick woman lying half-conscious in a bed reeking of pus and vomit. The woman, who had been her personal maid, had to be dying. The woman's face, including her eyelids and even her lips, were covered with huge sores oozing pus. And the smell! It was totally gross.

“Madame, you should not be here!” said a scandalized maid, wringing her hands as she hung back in the doorway.

“Isn't anyone looking after this woman?”