The Twylight Tower (36 page)

The forty-eight-year-old Peter Pascal was as severely dressed as if he were a cleric. Or as if he were still in mourning for, no doubt, his illustrious mentor, whom he managed to mention incessantly. Pascal was plump, to put it nicely, as rosy-cheeked as a milkmaid, and quite effeminate-looking depsite his total baldness. The man obviously shaved what hair he had for its outline was a faint shadow above his ears and on the nape of his neck. Beards and mustaches, trimmed or long, were the fashion of the day, which he seemed to be directly flaunting in favor of older, clean-cut styles. His blue eyes bulged slightly the way her father’s had, and that made her even more edgy around him.

Unlike his black-garbed friend, John Caius, aged fifty-two, was ornately attired to show his status with a scarlet and gray taffeta cassock buttoned to his chin and his wide sleeves trimmed with fur. The current president of the College was, in contrast to Pascal, rake-thin with sallow skin and a long, gaunt face, accented by a salt-and-pepper beard and long mustache. Wisps of gray hair peeked from
beneath his traditional physician’s circular cap. He moved deliberately and spoke portentously. His dark eyes darted, even when he addressed her, as if his mind were flitting elsewhere or he was afraid to look her in the eye.

“Indeed, your observations about our hall are precisely correct, Your Most Gracious Majesty,
Maxima Regina,”
John Caius said, grandly addressing the entire assembly. “This building was donated to the College in perpetuity by the brilliant Medieval physician Thomas Linacre after his death. I sometimes feel his spirit still lurks
inter nos
within these walls.

“Erecting edifices and libraries is a worthy goal,” the queen agreed. “But above all, we must work together to find new cures and elevate English medicinal practices to rival those on the continent. My people stagger under the burden of too dear a price for some of the new remedies to which they should have access.”

“Bread and circuses,
panem et circenses ad infinitum,
that’s what they’d like, Your Majesty,” Caius muttered with a shake of his head. “Give them one step and they will want a mile, to wit that raucous crowd out there.”

“I do not fear my people, but say on,” Elizabeth commanded.

“Life is naturally unhealthsome,” Pascal put in with a sharp sniff. “No utopias exist, as Sir Thomas More’s great book made eminently clear. Besides, it is not just the fees for our learned services that cause the prices to rise but the outrageous reckonings of the apothecaries.”

“Who,” Caius said, rolling his eyes in feigned disbelief, “are ever clamoring for more freedom, when what they need is a firmer hand.”

“But you already hold the power to place apothecaries who sell faulty stuffs in any prison but the Tower,” she protested. “And you can legally enter their shops and
search for defective and corrupted wares, which you can then destroy. I should think that would not only be enough to keep the herbalists in line but, sadly, to keep you from doing your duty to spend time learning and perfecting cures. I will not have my Royal College of Physicians waste their days being constables or bailiffs and not healers!”

“But, Gracious Majesty,” Caius argued with a nervous, ever-shifting smile, “we must keep control of not only the barber-surgeons and apothecaries but other quacksalvers, mountebanks, and runnagates which—”

“Do you mean to say,” the queen cut in, “that the shops in town which import and supply your cures are in the same category as quacks?”

“Indeed not,” Pascal took up the discussion, steepling his fingers before his broad face as if to hide his expression. “But, just as in the days of your father, Your Grace, each area of mankind’s expertise must be left to the experts and not encroached on by those who know not whereof they speak.”

She stared him down, unsure if he dared such a direct affront at her, to the apothecaries, or if he was throwing Thomas More’s so-called martyrdom in her face again. As the other fellows up and down the long table gaped and leaned out to listen raptly, Caius jumped into the moment’s silence.

“Id est,
there are certain apothecaries who are hardly trained as we by years of study and time abroad, et cetera. Why, madam, some who cannot even read or speak Latin and Greek but only cling to simple herbs dare to question the medical truths of humors within the body.”

“Truths, you say, and not theories?” she challenged. “Of a certain we all rely on the wisdom of great men of past ages, but did they not make errors too? We have learned the world is hardly flat.”

“Ah, but we do continually re-examine the old ways, though one out-of-town doctor, we’ve heard,” Pascal said, shaking his head, “has been spreading the heretical belief that disease is caused not by warring humors, governed by the planets, nor by bad air. He—and he is not alone,” his voice rang out and he pressed fingers fat as sausages on the tabletop as if to prop himself up, “claims that the airborne seeds of disease fall upon open pores of the skin and infect the person. Such a one claims that a man must be most careful shaving or his open pores will allow in certain harmful vapors! So much for new-fledged ideas!”

There was general nodding, head-shaking, or smothered sniggering down the length of the table. Elizabeth’s ire rose, and she did too, partly to make everyone stand. Men scrambled to their feet, and she heard her two ladies’ skirts rustle as they stood behind her.

“But like all my people,” Elizabeth said, “I am plagued by worry that I or those I love, God forbid, may be one of the persons who needs your expertise and wisdom someday, gentlemen. Ergo,” she added, staring now directly at the Latin-spewing John Caius, “the next time I send for help, I would expect some of you to be in London healing and not wandering hither and yon to attend meetings or chasing down apothecaries like a wayward constable-of-the-watch or harassing someone who has a new theory which you choose to mock without testing its good first. Never say something cannot be done without trying it, learned and yet-learning doctors.
I
am a new theory, a queen ruling alone, and it can be done, indeed!”

“But, Majesty,” Peter Pascal dared to rattle on, after that speech with which she had hoped to make her exit, “about your Lady Katherine Ashley’s recent illness. We all know disease is a gift from God to gild a martyr’s crown, so each must suffer some in his or her turn in this life.”

“And I say”—here she switched to speaking Latin with an occasional phrase in Greek—”that I hate to be ill, and I think illness is a personal affront which a kingdom’s doctors must and will spend their precious time to battle. We have yet the small pox and the great pox and the Black Death and numerous other maladies, and there must be something, some way we can discover what the Lord God has given us to fight such. The status quo is not acceptable, and I expect occasional and detailed explanations of how you will strive to improve upon your past performance. Good day to you, Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians.”

She smacked her goblet down for effect and started for the door. Caius—even the portly Pascal—raced to keep up.

“Your Grace,” Caius cried, “you have put our
credo
so perfectly, has she not, Doctor Pascal?”

“Ah—indeed. We care deeply for all ill persons in our charge and care.”

“As I care for and keep a good eye on all, even physicians, in my kingdom,” the queen concluded and strode down the escutcheon-hung hall toward the street door. She wanted the final word, the fine exit, and these doctors clung like their own blood-letting leeches.

“Then, Your Gracious Majesty,” Caius went on as he reached the door with her, “there is one request that would help us to fulfill your every desire for our work.”

“Which is?” she snapped.

“I—we humbly request that we might have bodies,” Caius said, “corpses here for dissection to learn the things you would have us to do.”

“Corpses?” she cried, her hand flying to her bodice when she tried never to show dismay in public. “Corpses to dissect? I’ll no thave bodies so abused. Whose?”

The man dared to shrug. “I know not, Your Gracious
Majesty, as the human body is all the same. The poor found dead in the streets. Prisoners or executed felons. Country rabble. Whoever.”

“I shall think on it,” she declared, raising her voice to its ringing tone, “for quite a long while. You may shrug, Fellows of the College, at the earthly remains of your fellow human beings so abused, but I do not. And now,” she concluded again, irked she had to find yet another closing line, “I shall take my leave and, next time I want to see you in the palace or here or anywhere, I warrant you will not be so busy.”

Her guard on the front door barely pulled it open before she got to it. On the stoop, watching the crowd, Robin saw her and swirled open her cloak he’d evidently been holding. He offered his arm to escort her out, but she kept going on her own. Furiously blushing and wanting no one to see so in the light, she made for her coach. It waited for her but one house away, behind the line of unmounted horses, as they had obviously expected her to ride back. Coachmen and grooms alike scrambled from their lolling stances and grabbed for reins and bridles. Boonen, the burly coachman, swept open the door for her and banged down the folding, metal steps.

Robin haphazardly settled her cloak about her shoulders, and Mary and Anne tried to help control her voluminous skirts for her climb up and in. But she was too quick even for them. Though her cloak spilled back into Robin’s hands, she felt him give her a hoist up, one hand on her waist and one under her left elbow.

And then she nearly stepped on the horrid thing lying on the floor of the dim coach. Gaping at it, despite her long-tended command of herself, the queen screamed.