Portrait of an Unknown Woman (20 page)

 
          
They nodded too. The mother pressed her son’s hand. He was maybe eight. They had no words. But John was giving them hope. He was giving me hope.

 
          
I should have wanted to cry inside. But I didn’t. Everything was too blurred and confused for that at this deathbed scene in the brilliant spring sunshine, with butterflies.

 
          
“Meg,” he said, in the same brisk tones. “How long can you stay?”

 
          
I nodded, drinking in the beauty of his taut, tense body, limbs poised for action, obscurely comforted by his presence. We both knew I meant “as long as I need to.” He nodded too. “And what have you got there?” He gestured at my bag.

 
          
“Cloths. Soap. Nothing much.” I had willow bark too, which the old wives said soothed fevers. But he’d think that superstitious. I didn’t want to tell him.

 
          
“I have leeches. If the crisis comes soon I can bleed her,” he said.

 
          
I was silent for a moment. If her blood was infected, any doctor would agree that bleeding her would restore its purity and the balance of her
 
humors. And John had had the best training any doctor could have; there was no one who could know more. He had the whole majesty of the Siena medical school behind him. Still, bleeding wasn’t a treatment I’d have favored, especially not in these filthy surroundings, with the stink of the trench so close and the dust getting into our faces and hair—a miasma of infection. I put a hand over my nose.

 
          
“We’ll see,” he said quietly, perhaps registering my reservation, “how it goes.” And he looked at me for a moment longer, a long look so exactly like the looks I’d spent this lonely spring imagining him giving me, that now I saw it, it pierced my heart, and added: “I want us to talk when this is over.”

 
          
I nodded again. My heart was beating fast. My face was as impassive as his. But the racing in my temples was reminding me that I felt more alive than I had for months.

 
          
I swabbed the child’s scrawny body through a soaking shift. I was sweating under the blanket tent her mother had set up. It was the middle of the afternoon. The mother was rocking her rhythmically and singing under her breath. She’d stopped noticing me long ago. She was too taken up with willing her daughter well. But I could see the whites of little Janey’s eyes flickering in panic. I could hear her choking breath, the gurgles in her chest sounding like a person drowning. On the outbreaths, she muttered, “No . . . no . . . no!” on a rising tide of terror. She couldn’t drink any more. The stench was terrible, and getting worse. It was the smell of rotten meat, of blackened blood.

 
          
I heard footsteps. I peered out from under the blanket.

 
          
“Turn her over and slit the back of her shift. We’ll bleed her now,” he said.

 
          
I didn’t question his decision.

 
          
“Mary,” his voice said. “Turn Janey over and hug her tight in your lap. We’re going to bleed her.”

 
          
The woman did as he said. She didn’t stop her dirge like singing for a moment, or her rocking. The child clung to her with the last shred of her strength.

 
          
I peeled back the shift and wiped at the bony little back. New drops of sweat glistened on it at once. It was hopeless.

 
          
“Move over,” John said, coming in under the blanket with his bag. He gave me the box of leeches to hold and drop, one by one, into the glass cups. And he began to place the filled cups in rows across the child’s back.

 
          
Several of the leeches refused to attach themselves to the child’s skin, but he tapped at them patiently with the knife until they bit. And when he ran out of leeches he began very tenderly making more small incisions on different parts of her skin. There was no room to move or breathe. I thought I’d pass out if it got any hotter. Finally, the child’s head slumped forward on her mother’s chest. The woman began crying, “She’s fainted, she’s fainted . . . what’s happening?” But John shushed her.

 
          
“It’s all right,” he said calmly, and he began to pry free the blood-soaked leeches and bind up the wounds with my clean cloths. “Don’t worry. Just keep singing to her. She can hear you.”

 
          
We cleaned her as best we could and turned her on her back again, with her mother propping her up and cradling her and a blanket over her nakedness. She was breathing better now—still noisily, but without panic—though she was still wringing wet and deadly pale.

 
          
“Meg,” John said. “Come out. Take a rest. Stretch your legs. Save your strength.”

 
          
I scrambled out, drenched myself and streaked with dirt and blood. It was almost surprising to see the familiar sight of the barn and the cauldron and the people cowering in the doorway. I hadn’t thought of any of them for so many hours. “We’ll bleed her again at sundown,” he said calmly. He looked hopeful.

 
          
“I’m out of cloths,” I said. I couldn’t think beyond simple details.

 
          
He put an arm under mine. He had courage enough for two of us. I felt some of his practical strength surging back into me.

 
          
“Don’t worry. I’ve sent a woman to the stream to wash the first lot out. They’ll be dry in no time in this sun.”

 
          
I walked up the lane in a daze. I’d already turned to come back, feeling the afternoon air freshen my mind, when I heard the wailing begin—the desperate, animal sound that meant Janey was dead.

 
          
I ran back. They were still in the same position—the child cradled in her mother’s arms. But now it was the mother shrieking, “No . . . no . . . no!” as if the air was being sucked out of her lungs, and shaking the motionless little body, as if to will life back into it. And John was sitting behind the mother, embracing her in the same way she was embracing the dead girl. I made as if to join them; but it was him she’d warmed to and obeyed from the start, not me. He shook his head at me. “Find the boy,” he mouthed.

 
          
I nodded. I went toward the crowd at the barn door, realizing exhaustedly that I didn’t even know his name.

 
          
I didn’t have to. He was waiting, empty-eyed, standing alone. The other boys were scared to go near him. Falteringly, he stepped toward me. I had some idea of what he was about to feel.

 
          
“Your mother needs you,” I said, as gently as I knew how. “I’m sorry.”

           
We walked toward the house together in the last light. There were men behind us digging at the edge of the churchyard. I ached with fatigue and failure, though not enough to weaken my confused sense of wonder at being alive so close to death or my admiration for John’s valiant efforts to save that small stranger’s life. I was too tired to turn my attention to the specific reason that had brought John back. I was just glad he was there.

 
          
“There was nothing else we could have done,” I said, trying to comfort him.

 
          
He shook his head. “However much I’ve learned since Ammonius died, it wasn’t enough,” he said. “It’s never enough, what we know. Half of those people could be dead in days.”

 
          
His voice was so bitter that I turned to stare. He was angry with himself for not saving that child. I’d never seen him angry before. But he was deep in his own thoughts. He didn’t notice.

 
          
“And the rest of them will be calling it the curse of the Tudors. The hand of God, punishing the usurpers. As usual,” he said, perhaps to himself, much farther up the lane. His voice was bitterly contemptuous. “The same old superstitious claptrap. If only they remembered how much worse things were before.”

 
          
“Father’s calling it an act of God too,” I said, panting slightly as I half trotted along beside him, trying to keep pace with his furious stride. “But he says it’s a divine punishment for heresy.”

 
          
“I doubt that poor girl was to blame for either thing,” he snapped, and relapsed into angry silence. Feeling his defeat.

 
          
It was many more steps before I found breath to speak again.

 
          
“Are you coming to the house with me?” The thought seemed surprising. There’d been no prior agreement. We’d just both started walking that way. It felt the natural thing to do. But my question jogged him back into the present.

 
          
“Yes,” he said, and he turned his face toward me with the beginning of a smile. “Your father invited me. The court is leaving Greenwich. London is so full of disease that the king is frightened. Your father thought I could be useful here, since Chelsea is getting so full of displaced people. He thought it would be helpful to have one of the elect of the College of Physicians on the spot.” The phrase was no sooner off his lips than he began to scowl again.

 
          
“Though it didn’t do that child much good to be treated by one of the elect,” he said, and redoubled his speed, as if to punish himself further.

 
          
But I pulled at his arm until he stopped, and stared until he was forced to meet my astonished gaze. “You’ve done it?” I mouthed, feeling the world spin around. “You’ve actually got in? And he’s said you can come to us?”

 
          
He stopped scowling. Suddenly he smiled with almost unbearable sweetness and the sky came back into his eyes and he looked straight at me. “Yes. I have. I set out here this morning so proud,” he said, in a softer voice. “I couldn’t wait to tell you what a great doctor I’d become—truly worthy of you.” He grimaced and shrugged, but his rage had passed; there was just wistfulness on his face now. “Well, it seems I’m not such a great doctor as all that after all. But yes, I’ve passed the test your father set.”

 
          
And he put two trembling hands on my shoulders and his face softened into something like love. “So if you still want me, Meg, I’m yours.”

 
          
There were so many ways I’d imagined responding to this news. But there was no place on this day, when the disease had touched us, for excesses of joy. I nodded my head, still filthy and aware of the stigmata of death on us both, but comforted by his seriousness. “Yes,” I said quietly. “I want you. Let’s go home.”

           
“Ah—a new arrival,” Father said calmly when John walked through the door behind me, as if there were nothing odd about the sudden appearance of this guest at the house. He didn’t seem to have noticed our sweaty, dusty clothes either. “Welcome back, John.”

 
          
I stared at him, wondering at the complex thought process that must lie behind that calm welcome, wondering whether he guessed that I knew the deal he’d struck with John, wondering whether he’d think it necessary to mention it to me, and if so when, but he was too busy embracing his visitor to meet my eye. I stared at Dame Alice too, who was bustling around in the background, supervising a pair of maids carrying a bundle of linen upstairs and not really concentrating on us. “You’ll need more things for the east bedroom now too,” she was saying to them, very matter-of-factly. “And put a bowl of water in there too.” She didn’t have time to look at me either, but she wasn’t the same quality of blank-faced diplomat as Father, and I guessed from the quietly pleased look in her eye that John’s arrival wasn’t as much of a surprise to her as it had been to me.

 
          
“There will be supper in about an hour,” she said, “or are you hungry now, John? I could get something cold brought out to you if you’re famished from your journey?”

 
          
John shook his head, unable to think of food after what we’d spent the afternoon doing. “Are there other guests?” I asked, wondering why the maids were carrying around so much linen and water. She smiled more broadly, waving the maids away. “Master Hans has sent word he’ll be here within a day, and Will has just arrived with Margaret from London,” she told me happily.

 
          
“We’ve been at the barn,” John was saying to Father, not paying attention to our domestic chitchat. “I met Meg there. And I’m afraid there’s bad news.”