Shakespeare's Scribe (24 page)

“But … well, is there not some other treatment you could try? One that would build him up, rather than making him weaker?”

Dr. Harvey sighed heavily. “The patient has suffered a stroke. That means there's a surfeit of blood, and
that
means it must be let out.” He took hold of Mr. Pope's wrist and searched for a suitable vein to open.

I stepped closer to him. “But it would do him no dare, would it, an you left off bleeding for a week or so, to see what happens?”

The doctor turned to glare at me over the tops of his spectacles. “Do you have a university degree in medicine?” he demanded.

“Nay, of course not. I was only—”

“Well, I do. So stop trying to tell me how to do my job!”

Mr. Pope, who had lain quietly until now, somehow summoned the strength to sit up a little. His arm fell off the rim of the bowl. “Here,” he said, his voice thick, as though he had drunk too much ale, “you've no call to be harsh with the boy. He's simply asking.”

“Asking? What he is doing, sir, is questioning my ability.”

“Nay,” I said. “Only your methods.”

“You must admit,” said Mr. Pope, “the bleeding hasn't exactly been a great success. In fact, you might say it's been a bloody failure.”

Dr. Harvey stood rigid a moment, looking as though he were contemplating letting blood from both our jugulars. Then he nodded brusquely and threw the scalpel carelessly back into its case. “Very well,” he said, and untied the tourniquet so roughly that Mr. Pope winced. “Obviously, you don't want the care and advice of a physician. Go see an apothecary; he'll mix you up some fancy-sounding and foul-tasting concoction that is guaranteed to make you well. The catch is, you see, you can't ask for your money back if you're dead!”

“I wasn't—” I started to protest, but the doctor was already stalking from the room. I scrambled down the stairs after him. “I wasn't saying we should consult an apothecary. I only thought you might know of some other treatment.”

“Well, I don't!” the doctor said sharply over his shoulder.

Angry and ashamed in equal parts, I trudged back up to Mr. Pope's room. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'll find another physician.”

Mr. Pope waved a hand weakly, dismissively. “Sometimes common sense is the best doctor—and the cheapest, as well. Better we should spend what little money remains on food.”

“But what an ‘a's right? What an you've a surfeit of blood and something bursts?”

“Do I look to you as though I've a surfeit of blood?”

As I plumped up the pillows behind him, I studied his face, which was, as they say in Yorkshire, all peely-wally. “Nay. You look as though you're made up to play the ghost in
Hamlet
.”

“Well, I'm not a ghost,” he said. “Not just yet. Is there any meat in the house?”

“A little, I think.”

“Then have Goody Willingson make me a cullis of beef broth, will you? Suddenly I'm starving.”

The next afternoon, I went about the Bankside neighborhood again, asking after work and after Sander; I returned with little hope of finding either. To my dismay, I encountered Dr. Harvey coming from the opposite direction. I would have gone on by him without a word or a glance, but he stopped me. “I've something to tell you.”

“An it's about yesterday,” I said hastily, “I'm sorry I was—”

He held a hand up to silence me. “No, no,” he said impatiently, “I'm not here looking for an apology. I wanted to let you know that I've found your friend.”

“Me friend? Sander, you mean?”

Dr. Harvey nodded.

“Well … where is ‘a?”

“In the pesthouse in Kent Street.”

All the breath seemed to go out of me. With what little was left, I said, “The pesthouse? Where they take folk wi' the plague?”

“Yes. I look in there from time to time, and do what I may to ease their suffering. There's little anyone can do, except God.”

Though the weakest parts of me, of which there were many, cried out against it, some small courageous part said, “I've got to go see him.”

“If you do, you'll be in grave danger of infection yourself.”

“So are you,” I said. “Yet you go there regularly.”

“I take precautions.”

“Then so will I.”

Dr. Harvey gave me a cloth bag filled with arsenic and instructed me to bind it to myself beneath my shirt and doublet, next to my heart. The theory behind this was that one venom repels another.

Folk fall prey to all manner of illness, of course, and as we made our way to the pesthouse I held on to the hope that Sander might not have the plague at all, but some other disease of similar symptoms. Perhaps, like Sam, he only suffered from the ague.

But when we entered the pesthouse and I saw him, that hope vanished. It took several moments for my eyes to find him, among the dozens of patients who lay about the room on straw mats. Even then, I was not certain it was he, so altered was his appearance.

The attendants at the pesthouse had burned his garments; he was covered only by a linen sheet pulled up to his chest. His arms were spread out at right angles to his body, like those of Jesus on the cross, so as to keep any pressure off the grotesque black pustules on their undersides. There would be similar painful swellings, I knew, on the insides of his
thighs. His face was not pale and drawn like Mr. Pope's, but dark and contorted, as though he were slowly strangling.

“He's experiencing severe cramps,” said Dr. Harvey dispassionately. “That's a mortal sign.”

I gave him an angry glance, as though, by speaking of Sander's approaching death, he were helping to hasten it.

“I'll leave you alone with him,” said the doctor. “It's best if you don't get too close.”

What would have been best, I thought, was never to have gotten close to Sander to begin with. If I had not let myself come to regard him as my nearest friend, perhaps I would not feel now as though the arsenic in the bag I had bound to me were eating away at my chest and at the heart within it.

I knelt down next to his mat; the bay leaves and lavender and rose petals that were strewn about to purify the air gave off a scent that was spicy and sweet but not nearly strong enough to overcome the sour smell of sickness. “Sander?” I said.

He turned his head to the side with obvious effort; when his dull gaze fell upon me, he gave me a faint semblance of his old smile. “Widge,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You came.”

I swallowed hard. “Aye.” Though I had given up lying, I made an exception, knowing that it would ease his mind. “I've brought money wi' me—enough to provide for the household.”

“Good. Good. I knew you'd manage it somehow. I hoped you wouldn't manage to find me, though.”

“Why?”

“I didn't want you to see me like this. I wanted you to remember me as I was.”

“I will, I swear.” I fought back tears, wanting him to remember me, too, as I was in better times. I tried to think of something cheerful to say, but the question that was in my mind forced itself to the fore. “How did this happen? No one else in the household has come down wi' the contagion.”

So faintly that I could scarcely hear, he said, “I had to get work, to keep the boys fed. It was all I could find.”

“What was?”

“Carting the dead away for burial.”

“Oh, Sander,” I said.

He shrugged slightly, apologetically. “I followed your advice. I kept a kerchief soaked in wine over my face.”

“Nay, nay, I never said it was certain proof against the plague!” I cried. “You should not ha' listened to me!”

With much effort he raised one hand, as though to clap me on the shoulder in his old familiar fashion, but then stopped himself. “It's not your fault, Widge. It was my choice. I'm certain that all of them”—he waved his hand weakly to indicate the other patients in the pesthouse—”tried the best they knew how to ward off the plague, and it claimed them anyway. There's nothing anyone can do. There are no rules to follow. It's all a game of chance.”

I did not dispute him. I had heard other folk say the same thing about the plague and about other sorts of ill fortune. I think it gave them some comfort to believe it was so. It is far easier to accept one's lot in life as inevitable, a whim of fate, than it is to struggle and rail against it.

But I was not certain it was so. I suspected that, like every other disease, the contagion had a cause, and if that cause could be discovered the plague could be contained, perhaps even cured. Surely, someday someone would uncover its secrets. But it would be too late for Sander.

I longed to do something to ease his suffering but, as Dr. Harvey had said, there was nothing to be done. I had seen Dr. Bright drain the pustules of plague victims and apply ashes and quicklime to them, but the treatment had seemed only to cause the patient more pain, and it made no difference in the end.

I took my mother's crucifix from about my neck and placed it in his outstretched palm. His hand closed tightly about it, and he smiled faintly one last time. I fetched water to slake his constant thirst, but beyond that all I could do was to sit by and watch him fade farther and farther from me, as gradually and as surely as the evening sun was fading from the sky.

I could not even arrange for a funeral, for at sunset all the day's dead were carted away at once and buried in hastily dug graves outside the city. I went along so that Sander would have someone to mourn him, and I marked the site with a small pile of stones, vowing to replace it someday soon with a proper headstone.

29

A
fter the burial, I hurried home, knowing that Mr. Pope and Goody Willingson would be worried about me. To lessen the chance that I might carry the plague with me, I stripped off my clothing and burned it, and scrubbed myself all over with lye soap before I went inside. There was, unfortunately, no way I could avoid carrying to the others the sad news about Sander. I waited until the boys had gone to bed, wanting to spare them a while yet. I had hoped that, in telling Mr. Pope and Goody Willingson, some of the weight would be lifted from me, but it was not.

“I suppose I must let his parents know as well,” I said. “Can you tell me where to find them?”

Mr. Pope shook his head. “In one of the shabby tenements along the south bank, I believe. Sander never told us much about them. It was my feeling that he was rather ashamed of them.”

“I do recall him saying once,” put in Goody Willingson, “that his mother made a bit of money taking in washing, and that his father turned around and spent it all again on drink.” She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “Imagine such a good boy as Sander coming from such sorry stock.”

“Mr. Armin said to me not long since that it mattered naught what sort of heritage a wight had; the important thing, ‘a said, was what you did wi' ‘t.” I thought of Jamie Redshaw, and of my still unknown mother, and of myself. “Perhaps ‘a was right,” I said.

I had not yet spoken to them of Jamie Redshaw or of my reasons for leaving the Chamberlain's Men. I knew that, soon or late, I must, just as I must reveal to Mr. Pope that I had come to them almost empty-handed. But it would have to wait. We had all had enough dreary news for one day.

As I left Mr. Pope's room, I heard the sound of footsteps retreating along the darkened hall, and a door latch clicking shut. Someone had been
listening in as I told of Sander's sad end. I had a strong suspicion who it was.

I opened the door to the room that Goody Willingson shared with Tetty. Though the young girl lay still in her bed, I could hear how harsh and rapid was her breathing. I sat on the edge of the bed and hesitantly laid a hand on her shoulder. “You overheard.”

After a pause, she nodded. “I told you,” she said.

“Told me? Told me what?”

“Every time I come to like someone, they die.”

I shook her shoulder firmly, as though to dislodge this notion. “Nay. Don't think that. You had naught to do wi' Sander dying, I promise you.”

She turned to face me, her dark eyes accusing. “You're a good doctor. Could you not have done something to make him well?”

“Nay. There was naught that could be done.”

“I suppose you'll be leaving us now, too.”

“I—I don't ken,” I said.

“If you do stay, I won't like you. I'm never going to like anyone again. It hurts too much.”

I could not come up with a reassuring reply to this, for the truth was at that moment I felt much the same way. Yet I had to say something. I could not bear to sit helplessly by as I had with Sander. I cleared my throat. “It doesn't matter,” I said softly. “I'll still like you.”

Beneath my hand the tense muscles of her thin back slowly relaxed. It seemed to me that for once I had managed to say the right thing. Perhaps it was not just what Sander would have said, or Julia, or Mr. Armin, or any of the others by whom I had measured myself in the past, but it was what I felt and that, I supposed, made it the right thing.

In the morning Goodwife Willingson sent me off to the market in Long Southwark to see if I could prevail upon one of the vendors there to let me have a bit of food on the promise of future payment. She had exhausted her own credit with them, she said. She hoped, however, that they might be open to an appeal from a new face. But the merchants were no fools; they knew me as a member of Mr. Pope's household, and knew that we were not likely to settle our account with them anytime soon. A fishwife did suggest that, if I returned late in the day, she might let me have those fish that had grown too fragrant to sell.

I shuffled home, feeling myself an utter failure. I had done nothing at all to aid Mr. Pope and the boys. All I had given them was yet another mouth to feed. I told myself that it would surely be better for everyone if I did not return to Mr. Pope's and, in fact, when I came to the house I
walked on by it—to test myself, I suppose, to see if I could bring myself to leave.