THE JEW OF TETTENHALL
There was nothing left to do but wait for spring. New batches of the Universal Specific had been brewed and bottled. Every herb Barber had sought, except for purslane to fight fevers, had been dried and powdered or steeped in physick. They were tired of practicing juggling, weary of rehearsing magic, and Barber was sick of the north and jaded with drinking and sleeping. “I am too impatient to linger while winter peters out,” he said one morning in March, and they abandoned Carlisle too early, making slow progress southward because the roads were still poor.
They met the springtime in Beverley. The air softened, the sun emerged and so did a crowd of pilgrims who had been visiting the town’s great stone church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. He and Barber threw themselves into the entertainment, and their first large audience of the new season responded with enthusiasm. All went well during the treatments until, ushering the sixth patient behind Barber’s privacy screen, Rob took the soft hands of a handsome woman.
His pulse hammered. “Come, mistress,” he said faintly. His skin prickled with dread where their hands were glued together. He turned and met Barber’s gaze.
Barber whitened. Almost savagely, he pulled Rob away from listening ears. “Are you without doubt? You must be certain.”
“She will die very soon,” Rob said.
Barber returned to the woman, who wasn’t old and appeared to be in good estate. She made no complaint of her health but had come behind the screen to buy a philter. “My husband is a man of increasing years. His ardor flags, yet he admires me.” She spoke calmly, and her refinement and lack of false modesty gave her dignity. She wore traveling clothes sewn of fine stuff. Clearly, she was a woman of wealth.
“I don’t sell philters. That is magic and not medicine, my lady.”
She murmured regret. Barber was terrified when she didn’t correct his form of address; to be accused of witchcraft in the death of a noblewoman was certain destruction.
“A draught of liquor often gives the desired effect. Strong, and swallowed hot before retiring.” Barber would accept no payment. As soon as she was gone, he made his excuses to the patients he hadn’t yet seen. Rob was already packing the wagon.
And so they fled again.
This time they barely spoke throughout the flight. When they were far enough away and safely camped for the night, Barber broke the silence.
“When someone dies in an instant, a vacantness creeps into the eyes,” he said quietly. “The face loses expression, or sometimes purples. A corner of the mouth sags, an eyelid droops, limbs turn to stone.” He sighed. “It isn’t unmerciful.”
Rob didn’t answer.
They made their beds and tried to sleep. Barber rose and drank for a while but this time didn’t give the apprentice his hands to hold.
Rob knew in his heart that he wasn’t a witch. Yet there could be only one other explanation, and he didn’t understand it. He lay and prayed. Please. Will you not remove this filthy gift from me and return it whence it came? Furious and dispirited, he couldn’t refrain from scolding, for meekness hadn’t gained him much. It is such a thing as might be inspired by Satan and I want no further part of it, he told God.
It seemed his prayer was granted. That spring there were no more incidents. The weather held and then improved, with sunny days that were warmer and drier than usual, and good for business. “Fine weather on St. Swithin’s,” Barber said one morning in triumph. “Anyone will tell you it means we’ll have fine weather forty more days.” Gradually their fears subsided and their spirits rose.
His master remembered his birth day! On the third morning after St. Swithin’s Day, Barber made him a handsome gift of three goose quills, ink powder, and a pumice stone. “Now you may scribble faces with something other than a charcoal stick,” he said.
Rob had no money to buy Barber a natal gift in return. But late one afternoon his eyes recognized a plant as they passed through a field. Next morning he stole out of their camp and walked half an hour to the field, where he picked a quantity of the greens. On Barber’s birth day Rob presented him with purslane, the fever herb, which he received with obvious pleasure.
It showed in their entertainment that they got on. They anticipated each other, and their performance took on gloss and a keen edge, bringing splendid applause. Rob had daydreams in which he saw his brothers and sister among the spectators; he imagined the pride and amazement of Anne Mary and Samuel Edward when they saw their elder brother perform magic and pop five balls.
They will have grown, he told himself. Would Anne Mary recall him? Was Samuel Edward still wild? By now Jonathan Carter must be walking and talking, a proper little man.
It was impossible for an apprentice to advise his master where to direct their horse, but when they were in Nottingham he found opportunity to consult Barber’s map and saw they were near the very heart of the English island. To reach London they would have to continue south but also veer to the east. He memorized the town names and locations, so he could tell if they were traveling where he so desperately wanted to go.
In Leicester a farmer digging a rock from his field had unearthed a sarcophagus. He had dug around it but it was too heavy for him to raise and its bottom remained gripped by the earth like a boulder.
“The Duke is sending men and animals to free it and will take it into his castle,” the yeoman told them proudly.
There was an inscription in the coarse white-grained marble: DIIS MANIBUS. VIVIO MARCIANO MILITI LEGIONIS SECUNDAE AUGUSTAE. IANUARIA MARINA CONJUNX PIENTISSIMA POSUIT MEMORIAM. “‘To the gods of the underworld,’” Barber translated. “‘To Vivius Marcianus, a soldier of the Second Legion of Augustus. In the month of January his devoted wife, Marina, established this tomb.’”
They looked at one another. “I wonder what happened to the dolly, Marina, after she buried him, for she was a long way from her home,” Barber said soberly.
So are we all, Rob thought.
Leicester was a populous town. Their entertainment was well attended, and when the sale of the physick was finished they found themselves in a flurry of activity. In quick succession he helped Barber to lance a young man’s carbuncle, splint a youth’s rudely broken finger, and dose a feverish matron with purslane and a colicky child with chamomile. Next he led behind the screen a stocky, balding man with milky eyes.
“How long have you been blind?” Barber asked.
“These two years. It began as a dimness and gradually deepened until now I scarce detect light. I am a clerk but cannot work.”
Barber shook his head, forgetting the gesture wasn’t visible. “I am able to give back sight no more than I can give back youth.”
The clerk allowed himself to be led away. “It’s a hard piece of news,” he said to Rob. “Never to see again!”
A man standing nearby, thin and hawk-faced and with a Roman nose, overheard and peered at them. His hair and beard were white but he was still young, no more than twice Rob’s age.
He stepped forward and put his hand on the patient’s arm. “What is your name?” He spoke with a French accent; Rob had heard it many times from Normans on the London waterfront.
“I am Edgar Thorpe,” the clerk said.
“I am Benjamin Merlin, physician of nearby Tettenhall. May I look at your eyes, Edgar Thorpe?”
The clerk nodded and stood, blinking. The man lifted his eyelids with his thumbs and studied the white opacity.
“I can couch your eyes and cut away the clouded lens,” he said finally. “I’ve done it before, but you must be strong enough to endure the pain.”
“I care nothing for pain,” the clerk whispered.
“Then you must have someone deliver you to my house in Tettenhall, early in the morning on Tuesday next,” the man said, and turned away.
Rob stood as if stricken. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone might attempt something that was beyond Barber.
“Master physician!” He ran after the man. “Where have you learned to do this … couching of the eyes?”
“At an academy. A school for physicians.”
“Where is this physicians’ school?”
Merlin saw before him a large youth in ill-cut clothing that was too small. His glance took in the garish wagon and the bank on which lay juggling balls and flagons of physick whose quality he could readily guess.
“Half the world away,” he said gently. He went to a tethered black mare and mounted her, and rode away from the barber-surgeons without looking back.
Rob told Barber of Benjamin Merlin later that day, as Incitatus pulled their wagon slowly out of Leicester.
Barber nodded. “I’ve heard of him. Physician of Tettenhall.”
“Yes. He spoke like a Frenchy.”
“He’s a Jew of Normandy.”
“What’s a Jew?”
“It’s another name for Hebrew, the Bible folk who slew Jesus and were driven from the Holy Land by the Romans.”
“He spoke of a school for physicians.”
“Sometimes they hold such a course at the college in Westminster. It’s widely said to be a piss-poor course that makes piss-poor physicians. Most of them just clerk for a physician in return for training, as you are apprenticing to learn the barber-surgeon trade.”
“I don’t think he meant Westminster. He said the school was far away.”
Barber shrugged. “Perhaps it’s in Normandy or Brittany. Jews are thick as thick in France, and some have made their way here, including physicians.”
“I’ve read of Hebrews in the Bible, but I had never seen one.”
“There’s another Jew physician in Malmesbury, Isaac Adolescentoli by name. A famous doctor. Perhaps you may glimpse him when we go to Salisbury,” Barber said.
Malmesbury and Salisbury were in the west of England.
“We don’t go to London, then?”
“No.” Barber had caught something in his apprentice’s voice and had long known that the youth pined for his kinsmen. “We go straight on to Salisbury,” he said sternly, “to reap the benefits of the crowds at the Salisbury Fair. From there we’ll go to Exmouth, for by then autumn will be on us. You understand?”
Rob nodded.
“But in the spring, when we set out again we’ll travel east and go by way of London.”
“Thank you, Barber,” he said in quiet exultation.
His spirits soared. What did delay matter, when finally he knew they would go to London!
He daydreamed about the children.
Eventually his thoughts returned to other things. “Do you think he’ll give the clerk back his eyes?”
Barber shrugged. “I’ve heard of the operation. Few are able to perform it and I doubt the Jew can. But people who would kill Christ will have no difficulty in lying to a blind man,” Barber said, and urged the horse to go a bit faster, for it was nearing the dinner hour.