The Speckled Monster (46 page)

The word rippled out in streams of fire and anger. She was dying, she was dead, her arms and legs had rotted to bags of jelly, she had been carried off by the plague. Crowds gathered and nipped once more at Cotton Mather: scuttled through the church doors, hounded him home.
It is the Hour and Power of Darkness on this miserable Town,
he scribbled in his diary, his eyes flashing.
I need an uncommon Assistance from Above that I may not miscarry by any froward or angry Impatience or fall into any of the common Iniquities of Lying and Railing and Malice: or be weary of well-doing and of overcoming Evil with Good
.

Dr. Boylston was similarly besieged. He did not ask for help, but whenever he stirred out of doors, a Langdon or a Webb somehow seemed to be riding his direction; if it were evening, there were often two or three of them.

 

On Monday, a new cry blended in with the other screams and calls that crisscrossed the marketplaces: Courant!
Get your
New-England Courant
here! New England's Newest in News and Wit!

A mere slip of a boy somehow managed to create quite a racket while staggering beneath loads of newspapers so freshly printed that they were still damp. Josiah Franklin's youngest boy, Ben. Fifteen and gawky with growth, but so enamored of a new scheme for eating a vegetable diet that he actually ate no meat: he'd made a bargain with his brother to pocket half the money that would have gone for his board and feed himself. Some said that he fed himself on less than half of it and saved the rest to buy books. Sometimes the curious thrust their noses against the windows of the printing house, just to see the wonder of a boy who ate no meat, and survived.

He'd been his brother's apprentice for three years, ever since James came home from England carting a printing press in 1717. Sometimes he thought that black-and-blue stripes on his back was all that he had to show for it, especially since business had been rocky after Mr. Musgrave had bought the
Gazette
and shifted the printing contract from James to one of his own relatives. Their odd-jobbing days looked to be over, though. Beneath his load, Ben gave such a great sigh of relief that he unbalanced himself and nearly toppled into a puddle.

A windfall had come their way, in the guise of a club of anti-inoculation physicians, mostly Scottish, who had sounded out James about setting up a new weekly paper. He had press, supplies, and skilled labor, James had said (Ben had made a face in the shadows). All he lacked was the writing, he said. And, of course, the financing.

Dr. Douglass had guaranteed both.

They had pulled it off in just over a week. The
New-England Courant
was not merely to be a list of official proclamations and a list of the comings and goings of ships, however. They dreamed grander dreams. The
Courant
was to be full of opinion and essays both humorous and educational; their model was nothing less than London's
Spectator
. Instead of the ghostly spectator who gave Addison and Steele's paper its name, the persona of this American paper was to be Jack-of-All-Trades.

So far, thought Ben, this Jack appeared to excel at only one trade— crushing inoculation—but surely there would be others with time. Meanwhile, this one gave wide scope for virulent cleverness.

Dr. Douglass had provided the first essay: “A Continuation of the History of Inoculation in Boston by a Society of the Practitioners in Physick.” To be truthful, there wasn't much in it that hadn't already appeared in the Philanthropos essay the
Boston News-Letter
had published; the sniping was nearly identical. But then, Dr. Douglass had written that piece too.

“Infatuation,”
he concluded in the
Courant's
lead essay,
“is like to be as Epidemic a distemper of the mind as at present the smallpox is of the natural body.”

Ben had his doubts. But he liked this new project for lightening James's temper.

 

Nothing about the
Courant
lightened Dr. Mather's temper. There were further hurried conferences among the clergy, deciding upon who should next take up the pen.

In fact, there was a needling flurry of feathers all over town as everyone who could wield a quill, it seemed, sat down to write somebody else in high dudgeon. The ministers, though, deemed it unseemly to answer such puppies themselves. Increase Mather solved the issue, declaring that his grandson Thomas Walter possessed just the combination of graceful wit, youth, and proper loyalty to the ministers (he was one) that was required. He would pen an
Anti-Courant;
they would hire Mr. Franklin to print it as well.

Mr. Walter was happy to oblige. So was Mr. Franklin, even as the anti-inoculators gathered at his printing house at the top of Queen Street, preparing to score their second blow.

Meanwhile, John Campbell wrote a rebuttal to the charge that his
Boston News-Letter
was stodgy. And up at the Salutation Inn, Joshua Cheever, John Helyer, and John and Joseph Webb gathered to defend Dr. Boylston:
Desperate diseases require desperate remedies,
they wrote. Mr. Musgrave snapped it up for his
Boston Gazette
.

 

On the eighth of August, Esther Webb's rash began erupting; by the ninth, it had thickened into the confluent smallpox. Not until the tenth did fever ripple through the rest of her fellow inoculees: just at the expected time. Dr. Mather had half hoped Dr. Boylston would begin scooping smallpox into hordes daily, but he was disappointed. Worried about Esther's fate, the doctor would not be hurried.

Nor would Sammy stop following his father with reproachful eyes. His friend Will Charnock was dying. Dr. Mather's own father didn't help; you've lost the one boy—
my namesake
—to dancing and whoring, he said. Will you lose the other to death?

On the thirteenth, still on cue, Esther Webbs's luckier fellows erupted. Still, Dr. Boylston would not be hurried.

 

Over cakes and ale in Mr. Franklin's printing house in Queen Street, the anti-inoculation club concocted a delicious satire.

Dr. Boylston was to be commissioned as the major general in command of the Indian-fighting troops being gathered to crush the Abenaki up in Maine. His weapon would be inoculation, with which he would wantonly sow smallpox among the Indians. The doctors roared with laughter, as Ben kept their tankards full and passed the tobacco. It was too perfect, chortled Dr. Douglass: what better place for a doctor who insisted upon riding his rounds, rather than decently being driven about in a carriage?

Ben had even dared a suggestion or two himself, though ever so quietly, in the ear of one gentleman or another, when his brother wasn't listening. James did not like him to be clever. But his cleverness always found a way out. Why not arm the inoculator with something specific? A lancet and nutshell perhaps? Soon that was zipping around the circle, and had been included. Instead of a bandage box, add Pandora's box, he whispered in another ear. That, too, was incorporated.

It was Dr. Douglass, though, who proclaimed that General Inoculator and his illiterate soldiers would be allowed £10 bounty for every infected Indian who spread the disease to others; £5 would be granted for those Indians who died too soon to make themselves party to killing their fellows.

To this piece, Dr. Stewart added his first column, a filigree of horror about the plague in France.

At the time, Ben enjoyed both the fellowship and, above all, the clever argument. Delivering the paper on the fourteenth, though, he also saw confusion, distaste, and downright disgust on many readers' faces.

A tiny, prematurely wizened voice whispered in his ear that such overeagerness for argument was a bad habit. So much contradiction soured conversation—and he could already see that it also produced enmity, where there might have been friendship. Men of sense, he noted quietly to himself, seldom fell into it—except, he observed, for lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that had been bred in Edinburgh.

 

On the evening of August 15, Cotton Mather sauntered north up Ship Street with his son, peering through glimmering mist and fog to look in shop windows. At the shop of Edward Langdon, barber and periwigmaker, the bow window was lined with faceless heads piled high with hair: chestnut, blond, gray, white. They paused for a desultory glance, and stepped inside.

Nothing could be more natural, nothing could be more innocent, thought Dr. Mather, than for a man and his son to duck out of a light rain into their accustomed barber shop, warm with musk-scented steam. The shelves were lined with still more wigs, along with tins of powder in various colors and scents, wig ties and ribbons, and stacks of stands and cases. Several comfortable chairs lined one wall, near a long table holding a gleaming array of basins and razors.

It was perhaps not so natural and ordinary for Mr. Langdon to whisk the two of them upstairs to the family parlor, but as no one else was in the shop, no one else was privy to that information.

Enthroned in Mr. Langdon's best armchair, Increase Mather was impatiently tapping his fingers together in a pyramid in front of his nose. He inclined his head slightly in greeting and beckoned all three of them to his chair. Dr. Mather, Sammy Mather, and Edward Langdon gathered in a tight circle around him, joining their hands in prayer.

They broke up with a hasty amen as they heard Dr. Boylston greet the servant at the door and make his way up the stairs. Increase pointed his grandson to a chair, though Sammy could hardly sit still; Cotton stalked solemnly about the room. Mr. Langdon stood by the window, as if the room had suddenly become suffocating.

Dr. Boylston registered a flash of curiosity when he walked in, but not yet suspicion. Even for a doctor accustomed to working with ministers, thought Cotton anxiously, three generations of Mathers might seem overkill for anything less than a governor's deathbed. The doctor made no comment, however, inoculating Mr. Langdon so quickly and deftly that Sammy barely had time to pale as he watched.

Dr. Boylston had already tucked his vial of poison back into his shirt and was packing up the rest of his instruments when Sammy darted out of his seat. Snatching Dr. Boylston's arm, he blurted, “Wait, sir, please.”

Dr. Boylston froze; so did everyone else. Cotton did not dare glance at his father, who was no doubt pinched with displeasure at the boy's interference.

“Please, sir,” said Sammy, “inoculate me.”

Dr. Boylston looked to Cotton and Increase. “What do your father and grandfather say?”

Cotton began to reply, but his father cut through his stammer. “I have been hoping sir, that such an opportunity might present itself,” said Increase. “There is not a moment to be lost.”

Dr. Boylston's whole face radiated with sudden pleasure. He bowed. “I am honored, Reverend, by your trust. And I cannot tell you what a relief your support will be, to me and to all those who have braved the operation, and who are considering it.”

His words fell like pebbles into a deep well of silence.

Mr. Langdon cleared his throat. “The Mathers, Doctor, are in an unusual position, due to their ministry. I am sure you will understand that they require an unusual degree of discretion.”

Surprise blanked Dr. Boylston's face, followed by consternation and a flash of anger, quickly controlled. “Surely you cannot mean that you wish me to inoculate the boy in secret?”

Anxiety knotted around Cotton Mather's heart. Again he opened his mouth, and again his father stole the speech from his throat.

“Discretion, sir, is paramount,” the elder minister pronounced.

Dr. Boylston resumed putting his things away. “I do not operate in the dark,” he said. “For anyone.”

Sammy dropped to his knees; his eyes were huge and dark. “Please, sir.” His voice sank to a harsh whisper. “My best friend died this morning.”

Dr. Boylston glared down at the boy. Cotton Mather started forward, but his father held up a hand, and he stopped.

After a long moment, Dr. Boylston looked back up, not at Increase, but at Cotton. “I will do it for the boy's sake, Reverend. As I did with my son, you must put him at grave risk daily by your visiting so many rooms thick with the contagion's poison.” He shifted his eyes to Increase. “Do not ask this of me again.”

Increase nodded, and Dr. Boylston drew the poison out once more, and wiped his lancet clean.

For all his desire, Sammy was not a good patient. At the first scratch of the skin, he went white and began to tremble. Watching his son, Dr. Mather, too, began to quiver. Dr. Boylston worked fast, but not fast enough. Just after he had bound up the wound on Sammy's arm, the boy fainted dead away, and his father staggered back into a chair.

“He is a delicate child,” said Increase as Dr. Boylston and Mr. Langdon lifted his grandson onto the sofa. “One cut will do.”

“I cannot answer for that,” said Dr. Boylston tersely, waving smelling salts under the boy's nose. “If you will not follow the procedure properly, I cannot say it will work.”

“It is enough,” declared the elder Mather as the boy came to, moaning.

Dr. Boylston bowed. “I will send my bill in the morning,” he said as he gathered up his things and took his leave; Mr. Langdon showed him out.

The two elder Mathers pretended they did not hear the voices raised in the passage as the doctor told his host exactly what he thought of that evening's subterfuge.

 

G.D.
Cotton Mather wrote later that night.
My dear Sammy is now under the Operation of receiving the Small-Pox in the way of Transplantation. The Success of the Experiment among my Neighbours as well as abroad in the World and the urgent Calls of his Grandfather for it have made me think that I could not answer it unto God if I neglected it. At this critical Time, how much is all Piety to be press'd upon the Child!