The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman And Matters Of Choice Part 19

"He's a great physician. People come from afar to consult him and stay at this inn," the publican said proudly. "The priests speak against him, of course, but"-he put a finger to his nose and leaned forward-"I know at least two occasions when he was collected in dark of night and bundled off to Canterbury to tend to Archbishop Aethelnoth, who was thought to be dying last year."

He gave directions to the Jewish settlement and soon Rob was riding past the gray stone walls of Malmesbury Abbey, through woods and fields and a steep vineyard in which monks picked grapes. A coppice separated the abbey land from the Jews' homes, perhaps a dozen cl.u.s.tered houses. These must be Jews: men like crows, in loose black caftans and bell-shaped leather hats, were sawing and hammering, raising a shed. Rob drove to a building that was larger than the others, where a wide courtyard was filled with tethered horses and wagons.

"Isaac Adolescentoli?" Rob asked one of several boys attending the animals.

"He's in the dispensary," the boy said, and deftly caught the coin Rob threw to make certain Horse was well tended.

The front door opened into a large waiting room filled with wooden benches, all crammed with ailing humanity. It was like the lines that waited beyond his own treatment screen, but many more people. There were no empty seats, but he found a place against the wall.

Now and again a man came through the little door that led to the rest of the house and collected the patient who sat at the end of the first bench. Everyone would then move one s.p.a.ce forward. There appeared to be five physicians. Four were young and the other was a small, quick-moving man of middle age, whom Rob supposed to be Adolescentoli.

It was a very long wait. The room remained crowded, for it seemed that each time someone was led through the waiting room door by a physician, new arrivals entered the front door from the outside. Rob pa.s.sed the time trying to diagnose the patients.

By the time he was first on the front bench it was midafternoon. One of the young men came through the door. "You may come with me." He had a French accent.

"I want to see Isaac Adolescentoli."

"I am Moses ben Abraham, an apprentice of Master Adolescentoli. I'm able to take care of you."

"I'm certain you would treat me skillfully were I sick. I must see your master on another matter."

The apprentice nodded and turned to the next person on the bench.

Adolescentoli came out in a while and led Rob through the door and down a short corridor; through a door left ajar he glimpsed a surgery with an operating couch, buckets, and instruments. They ended in a tiny room bare of furniture save for a small table and two chairs. "What is your trouble?" Adolescentoli said. He listened in some surprise as, instead of describing symptoms, Rob spoke nervously of his desire to study medicine.

The physician had a dark, handsome face that didn't smile. Doubtless the interview wouldn't have ended differently if Rob had been wiser but he was unable to resist a question: "Have you lived in England long, master physician?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You speak our language so well."

"I was born in this house," Adolescentoli said quietly. "In 70 A.D., five young Jewish prisoners of war were transported from Jerusalem to Rome by t.i.tus following the destruction of the great Temple. They were called adolescentoli, Latin for 'the youths.' I am descended from one of these, Joseph Adolescentoli. He won his freedom by enlisting in the Second Roman Legion, with which he came to this island when its inhabitants were little dark coracle men, the black Silures who were the first to call themselves Britons. Has your own family been English that long?"

"I don't know."

"You yourself speak the language adequately," Adolescentoli said silkily.

Rob told him of meeting with Merlin, mentioning only that they had spoken together of medical education. "Did you, too, study with the great Persian physician in Ispahan?"

Adolescentoli shook his head. "I attended the university in Baghdad, a larger medical school with a greater library and faculty. Except, of course, we didn't have Avicenna, whom they call Ibn Sina."

They chatted of his apprentices. Three were Jews from France and the other a Jew from Salerno.

"My apprentices have chosen me over Avicenna or some other Arab," Adolescentoli said proudly. "They don't have a library such as students have in Baghdad, of course, but I own the Leech Book of Bald, which lists remedies after the method of Alexander of Tralles and tells how to make salves, poultices, and plasters. They're required to study it with great attention, as well as some Latin writings of Paul of Aegina and certain works of Pliny. And before I'm done with them, each shall know how to perform phlebotomy, cautery, incision of arteries, and the couching of cataracts."

Rob felt an overpowering yearning, not unlike the emotion of a man who gazes upon a woman for whom, instantly, he longs. "I've come to ask you to take me as prentice."

Adolescentoli inclined his head. "I guessed that is why you're here. But I won't take you."

"Can I not persuade you, then?"

"No. You must find yourself a Christian physician as master, or stay a barber," Adolescentoli said, not cruelly but with firmness.

Perhaps his reasons were the same as Merlin's but Rob wasn't to know, for the physician would speak no more. He rose and led the way to the door, and nodded without interest as Rob left his dispensary.

Two towns away, in Devizes, he put on an entertainment and dropped a juggled ball for the first time since he had mastered the knack. People laughed at his banter and bought the physick but there came behind his screen a young fisherman from Bristol, roughly his own age, who was p.i.s.sing blood and had lost most of his flesh. He told Rob he knew he was dying.

"Is there naught you can do for me?"

"What is your name?" Rob asked him quietly.

"Hamer."

"I think perhaps you have bubo in your insides, Hamer. But I'm not at all certain. I don't know how to cure you or ease your pain." Barber would have sold him more than a few bottles. "This stuff is mostly spirits, bought cheaper elsewhere," he said without knowing why. He had never told that to a patient before.

The fisherman thanked him and went away.

Adolescentoli or Merlin would have known how to do more for him, Rob told himself bitterly. Timorous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, he thought, refusing to teach him while the b.l.o.o.d.y Black Knight grinned.

That evening he was caught out by a sudden wild storm with fierce winds and drenching rain. It was the second day of September and early for fall rains, but that didn't make it less wet or chill. He made his way to the only shelter, the inn at Devizes, fastening Horse's reins to the limb of a great oak in the yard. When he pushed inside he found that too many others had preceded him. Every piece of floor s.p.a.ce was taken.

In a dark corner huddled an exhausted man who sat with his arms around a swollen pack such as merchants used for their goods. If Rob had not gone to Malmesbury he wouldn't have given the fellow a second glance, but now he saw from the black caftan and pointed leather cap that this was a Jew.

"It was on such a night that our Lord was slain," Rob said loudly.

Conversation in the inn dwindled as he went on to speak of the Pa.s.sion story, for travelers love a tale and a diversion. Someone brought him a stoup. When he told of how the populace had denied that Jesus was King of the Jews, the weary man in the corner appeared to shrink.

By the time Rob had reached the part about Calvary, the Jew had taken his pack and slipped out into the night and the storm. Rob broke off the tale and took his place in the warm corner.

But he found no more pleasure in driving away the merchant than he had gained from giving the Special Batch to Barber. The common room of the inn was full of the reek of damp wool clothing and unwashed bodies, and he was soon nauseated. Even before the rain had ceased, he left the inn and went out to his wagon and his animals.

He drove Horse to a nearby clearing and unhitched her. There was dry kindling in the wagon and he managed to light a fire. Mistress Buffington was too young to breed but perhaps she already exuded female scent, for beyond the shadows cast by the fire a tomcat yowled. Rob threw a stick to drive it away and the white cat rubbed against him.

"We are a fine lonely pair," he said.

If it took his lifetime, he would search until he found a worthy physician to whom he might apprentice, he decided.

As for the Jews, he had spoken to only two of their doctors. No doubt there were others. "Perhaps one would apprentice me if I pretended to him that I were a Jew," he told the cat.

Thus it began, as less than a dream-a fantasy in idle chatter; he knew he couldn't be a Jew convincingly enough to undergo the daily scrutiny of a Jewish master.

But he sat before the fire and stared into the flames, and it took form.

The cat offered up her silken belly. "Could I not be a Jew well enough to satisfy Muslims?" Rob asked her, and himself, and G.o.d.

Well enough to study with the greatest physician in the world?

Stunned by the enormity of the thought, he dropped the cat and she sprang away into the wagon. In a moment she was back, dragging what appeared to be a furry animal. It proved to be the false beard he'd worn during the Old Man nonsense. Rob picked it up. If he could be an old man for Barber, he asked himself, why could he not be a Hebrew? The merchant at the inn in Devizes, and others, could be imitated ...

"I shall become a counterfeit Jew!" he cried.

It was fortunate no one was pa.s.sing, to hear him speak aloud and at length to a cat, for it would have been declared that he was a wizard addressing his succubus.

He had no fear of the Church. "I p.i.s.s on child-stealing priests," he told the cat.

He could grow a full Jew's beard, and he already had the p.r.i.c.k for it.

He'd tell folk that, like Merlin's sons, he had been raised isolated from his people, ignorant of their tongue and customs.

He would make his way to Persia!

He would touch the hem of Ibn Sina's garment!

He was excited and terrified, shamed to be a grown man and trembling so. It was like the moment when he'd known he would pa.s.s beyond Southwark for the first time.

It was said they were everywhere, d.a.m.n their souls. On the journey he would cultivate them and study their ways. By the time he reached Ispahan he would be ready to play the Jew, and Ibn Sina would have to take him in and share the precious secrets of the Arab school.

PART TWO.

The Long Journey.

22.

THE FIRST LEG.

More shipping left London for France than from any other port in England, so he made for the city of his birth. All along the way he stopped to work, wanting to set out on such an adventure with as much gold as possible. By the time he reached London he had missed the shipping season. The Thames bristled with the masts of anch.o.r.ed vessels. King Canute had drawn upon his Danish origins and built a great fleet of Viking ships that rode the water like tethered monsters. The fearsome war craft were surrounded by an a.s.sorted a.s.semblage: fat knorrs converted to deep-sea fishing boats; the private trireme galleys of the wealthy; squat, slow-sailing grain ships; two-masted merchant packets with triangular lateen-rigged sails; two-masted carracks from Italy; and long, single-masted vessels, the workhorses of the merchant fleets of the northern countries. None of the ships held cargo or pa.s.sengers, for frigid windstorms already had begun. During the next terrible six months on many mornings salt spray would freeze in the Channel, and sailors knew that to venture out where the North Sea met and merged with the Atlantic Ocean was to ask for drowning in the churning waters.

In the Herring, a mariners' hole on the waterfront, Rob stood and thumped his mug of mulled cider against the tabletop. "I'm searching for snug, clean lodging until spring sailing," he said. "Is anyone here who knows of such?"

A short, wide man, built like a bull dog, studied him as he drained his cup and then nodded. "Aye," he said. "My brother Tom died last voyage. His widow, name of Binnie Ross, is left with two small ones to feed. If you're willing to pay fair I know she would welcome you."

Rob bought him a drink and then followed him a short way to a tiny house near the marketplace at East Chepe. Binnie Ross turned out to be a thin mouse of a girl, all worried blue eyes in a thin, pale little face. The place was clean enough but very small.

"I have a cat and a horse," Rob said.

"Oh, I would welcome the cat," she said anxiously. It was clear she was desperate for the money.

"You might put up the horse for the winter," her brother-in-law said. "There is Egglestan's stables on Thames Street."

Rob nodded. "I know the place," he said.

"She is with young," Binnie Ross said, picking up the cat and stroking her.

Rob could see no extra roundness in the sleek stomach. "How do you know?" he asked, thinking her mistaken. "She's still a young one herself, just born this past summer."

The girl shrugged.

She was right, for within a few weeks Mistress Buffington bloomed. He fed the cat tidbits and provided good food for Binnie and her son. The little daughter was an infant who still took milk at her mother's breast. It pleasured Rob to walk to the marketplace and buy for them, remembering the miracle of eating well after a long time with a rumbling-empty belly.

The infant was named Aldyth and the little boy, less than two years old, was Edwin. Every night Rob could hear Binnie crying. He had been in the house less than a fortnight when she came to his bed in the dark. She said not a word but lay down and put her slender arms around him, silent all through the act. Curious, he tasted her milk and found it sweet.

When they were finished she slipped back to her own bed and next day made no reference to what had happened.

"How did your husband die?" he asked her as she was dishing out the breakfast gruel.

"A storm. Wulf-that is his brother, who brought you here-said my Paul was washed away. He could not swim," she said.

She used him one more night, grinding to him desperately. Then her dead husband's brother, who doubtless had been marshaling his courage to speak to her, came to the house one afternoon. After that Wulf came every day with small gifts; he played with his niece and nephew but it became clear he was paying court to their mother, and one day Binnie told Rob that she and Wulf would be married. It made the house an easier place in which Rob could do his waiting.

During a blizzard he delivered Mistress Buffington of a fine litter: a white female miniature of herself, a white male, and a pair of black and white toms that presumably resembled their sire. Binnie offered to drown the four kittens as a service, but as soon as they were weaned Rob lined a basket with rags and took them to public houses, buying a number of drinks in order to give each of them away.

In March, the slaves who did the brute work of the port were moved back to the waterfront, and long lines of men and drays again began to crowd Thames Street, loading the warehouses and the ships with exports.

Rob asked innumerable questions of traveling men and determined his journey was best started by way of Calais. "That is where my ship is bound," Wulf told him, and took him down to the slip to see the Queen Emma. She was not as grand as her name, a great old wooden tub with one towering mast. The stevedores were loading her with slabs of tin mined in Cornwall. Wulf brought Rob to the master, an unsmiling Welshman who nodded when asked if he would take a pa.s.senger, and named a price that seemed to be fair.

"I have a horse and a wagon," Rob said.

The captain frowned. "It will cost you dear to move them by sea. Some travelers sell their beasts and carts on this side of the Channel and buy new ones on the other side."

Rob did some pondering, but at length he decided to pay the freight charges, high as they were. It was his plan to work as a barber-surgeon during his travels. Horse and the red wagon were a good rig and he had no faith that he would find another that pleased him as much.

April brought softer weather and finally the first ships began to depart. The Queen Emma raised her anchor from the Thames mud on the eleventh day of the month, sent off by Binnie with much weeping. There was a fresh but gentle wind. Rob watched Wulf and seven other sailors haul on the lines, raising an enormous square sail that filled with a crack when it was barely up, and they floated into the outgoing tide. Laden low with its metal cargo, the big boat moved out of the Thames, slipped heavily through the narrows between the Isle of Thanet and the mainland, crept along the coast of Kent, and then doggedly crossed the Channel before the wind.

The green coast became darker as it receded, until England was a blue haze and then a purple smudge that was swallowed by the sea. Rob had no chance to think n.o.ble thoughts, for he was pukingly ill.

Wulf, pa.s.sing him on deck, stopped and spat contemptuously over the side. "G.o.d's blood! We are too low in the water to pitch or roll, it is the kindest of weather and the sea is calm. So what ails you?"

But Rob couldn't answer, for he was leaning over in order not to sully the deck. Part of his problem was terror, for he had never been to sea and now was haunted by a lifetime of tales of drowned men, from the husband and sons of Editha Lipton to the unfortunate Tom Ross who had left Binnie a widow. The oily water onto which he was sick appeared inscrutable and bottomless, the likely home of every evil monster, and he rued the recklessness with which he had ventured into this strange environment. To make matters worse the wind quickened and the sea developed deep billows. Soon he confidently expected to die and would have welcomed the release. Wulf sought him out and offered dinner of bread and cold fried salt pork. He decided that Binnie must have confessed her visits to Rob's bed and this was her future husband's revenge, to which he hadn't the strength to reply.

The voyage had lasted seven endless hours when another haze lifted itself out of the heaving horizon and slowly became Calais.

Wulf said a hasty goodbye, for he was busy with the sail. Rob led the horse and cart down the gangway and onto firm land that appeared to rise and fall like the sea. He reasoned that the ground in France could not go up and down or he would surely have heard of this oddity; indeed, after he had walked for a few minutes, the earth seemed firmer. But where was he bound? He had no idea as to destination or what his next action should be. The language was a blow. People around him spoke in a rattle of sound, and he could make no sense of it. Finally he stopped and climbed onto his cart and clapped his hands.

"I will hire somebody who has my language," he shouted.

A pinch-faced old man came forward. He had thin shanks and a skeletal frame that warned he wouldn't be of much use in lifting or carrying. But he noted Rob's pale complexion and his eyes twinkled. "May we talk over a soothing gla.s.s? Apple spirits do wonders to settle the stomach," he said, and the familiar English was benison to Rob's ears.

They stopped at the first public house and sat at a rough pine table outside the front door.

"I am Charbonneau," the Frenchman said above the waterfront din. "Louis Charbonneau."