"Oh, Matilda Bone. Why didn't you say so? Welcome, welcome," said the apothecary.
"Nathaniel, you old buffoon, do not vex the girl," said Sarah. "Why, I remember once when you—"
"Cease, my dear. You know you would talk until Judgment Day if you could, but Matilda has come to bring a soothing tonic for your legs, not to listen to an old woman's gossip."
Nathaniel smiled sadly at the girl. "Sarah," he said softly, "makes up with her tongue for the weakness of her legs, although talking makes her tired and her breath grows labored." He glanced at the seated woman with love and worry in his face. "I fear being helpless and unable to work, but if God must take something from me, better my sight than my wife."
Walter entered then, hidden behind the stack of rushes that he carried. At Nathaniel's word he dumped them onto the floor and lifted Sarah in his arms. "My lady, consider me your carriage. Where can I take you this day? The seashore? France or Italy? Or to London to see the King?"
"Just take me to my bed so Matilda can get about her work," Sarah said.
Matilda following, Walter carried Sarah into a small back room nearly filled with a straw mattress. Gently he put her on the bed. "Well, then, London will have to wait. Here, Matilda Bone. Ease our Sarah."
Matilda rubbed while Sarah dozed. "I will return tomorrow," she said to Nathaniel after she finished. "Peg says I am to come after dinner each day, so I will come. Leastwise while I am still here. Until Father Leufredus comes back for me," she added softly.
So Matilda came each day with tonic for Sarah's legs. Each day as she arrived, Nathaniel asked, "Matilda who?" and Matilda answered, "Matilda Bone, from Red Peg. Do you not remember me?" long after she understood it was but a jest, for she did not know how else to respond.
Day after day as she rubbed the lotion into the legs of the sleeping Sarah, Matilda peered through the doorway, watching what went on. The cats busied themselves hunting the spiders, moths, mice, and other creatures that had invaded the shop. Walter came and went, waiting on customers, fetching armloads of thyme and parsley and mushrooms, and delivering filled bottles and jugs to those in need of them. Nathaniel was always there—pounding roots and leaves, weighing and bottling chopped mice, hanging bat wings to dry.
One day, as he prepared an ointment from goose grease and borage, she asked, "How can you tell one bottle from another if you cannot see their labels?"
"I have enough reading so I was once able to recognize the shapes of letters or identify the contents by their looks—their stems and leaves and flowers. But now as my eyes fail," Nathaniel said, sticking his long nose into bottles and bags, running his fingers through the leaves and stems, "I must tell them by their smell. Ah, here is sweet marjoram ... bitterroot ... tansy."
One day after Sarah fell asleep, Matilda spent a few minutes watching Nathaniel at work. The apothecary pulled a bottle off the shelf and gave it to Walter. "Here," he said, "take this woodruff to Master Stark at the grocers' guild." Walter took the bottle and, when Nathaniel turned around, exchanged it for another. Matilda gasped at his presumption and wondered whether to tell Nathaniel, but Walter grasped her arm and whispered, "I saw you watching me. Sometimes Nathaniel makes mistakes, picking up the monkshood instead of the comfrey root or the berries of the mistletoe instead of the juniper bush, but I watch him carefully and make things right. Nathaniel has taught me well."
"If you know so much, why do you stay here?" Matilda whispered back to him. "Surely you could do better with a proper apothecary who has a busier trade?"
"Being an apothecary requires more than merely reading labels. There is still much he knows that I do not."
This reminded Matilda of what Peg had said about Tom, about different kinds of learning and knowing. She was no longer so sure it was not true.
"And I am fond of him," Walter continued. "I would never abandon him, no matter how much more 'proper' another apothecary might be." In spite of herself Matilda thought more kindly of Walter after this.
Frequently someone came to offer advice about Nathaniel's eyes. The daughter-in-law of Old Agnes the witch said she could do wonders with chicken blood and nail clippings. Peter Threadneedle suggested Nathaniel wash his eyes with onion juice and spit on a toad at midnight. Old Olaf applied a hemlock salve he had brought from the north and watched all night to make sure he had not used too much hemlock, thus killing Nathaniel instead of curing him. Still Nathaniel's sight grew no better.
With her prayers each night Matilda requested God's assistance for Nathaniel's eyes. She felt sorry for the kindly old man, and she liked the sound of "When but fourteen years of age, the holy Matilda effected the cure of a blind apothecary." Dear Lord, she prayed, just as You miraculously provided leather so that Saints Crispin and Crispinian could make shoes for the poor, please provide a miracle so that Master Nathaniel may see well again. And while you are about it, could You please think about helping Sarah?
And O Saint Leger, who suffered the removal of your saintly eyes and tongue, please ask God to help Nathaniel. Saint Lucy, you who plucked out your own eyes and had them miraculously restored, please help Nathaniel's sight. Good Saint Clarus, whose name means clear, please help one whose vision isn't. Clear. Thank you.
Amen, said the saints, for once neglecting to talk back to her.
A week of this had gone by when Sarah said, "My Nathaniel, an old donkey has an old eye. You must accept it. Well, we know it happens to many, and it has become clear that there is nothing to be done for it."
Matilda wondered if perhaps she had not been praying properly. Surely if she was doing it right, God would heed her. But God did not.
Chapter Twelve: Consulting Master Theobald
After Easter Day the earth began to warm and grow again. The winds blew soft and sweet. Peddlers offered rosemary and bay, fresh green parsley, and young white radishes.
For many days Matilda had been thinking about Nathaniel. Prayer was not helping him. Was God not listening?
The talk in the market was all of Master Theobald, who had cured Martha Threadneedle of excessive melancholy by a compound of viper's flesh and other ingredients known only to him. Maybe here was a cure for Nathaniel.
"Have you consulted the master physician, Theobald?" she asked Nathaniel. "He is famous and learned. Perhaps he knows of something more to do."
Sarah said, "The master physician does not bother with the likes of us."
"I would not know how to approach him," added Nathaniel. "Nor would we have coins enough."
Nathaniel's and Sarah's faces took on a look of overwhelming sadness that touched Matilda to the heart. "I know someone who lives in his house. Mayhap she can help."
At dinner Matilda said, "Can you do without me for a time tomorrow, Mistress Peg? I am thinking of going to Master Theobald to seek help for Nathaniel's eye troubles."
Peg shook her head and said, "I am not at all certain that anyone can help Nathaniel, but I would not tell you not to try."
So on a damp, green morning Matilda went again to the master physician's house. This time she walked right up to the house—gabled and garlanded, timbered and tiled—and found herself facing a thick oak door studded with iron, banded with brass, and fitted with a huge, heavy door knocker in the shape of a fiend from Hell with a man struggling in his mouth. It was the knocker that discouraged Matilda. How could she ask something of a man who had such a knocker? She hoped Tildy would have an idea.
Going round by the kitchen, Matilda found Tildy alone, scrubbing down the big cook table with river sand. "I am sorry to come here after your warning, but I need to talk with you."
"It is all right," said Tildy, stopping for a moment. "Fat Annet is at her sister's for a wedding."
Matilda told her about Nathaniel and his eyes. "Do you think Master Theobald might be able to help? Will he see me?"
Tildy thought for a moment, chewing on a fingernail. Finally she said, "I believe I can persuade him."
Tildy dished up Master Theobald's dinner of stew
ed hare. Her bare feet whispered on the stone floors as she carried it down the hall, Matilda following. "Wait here," Tildy said as she entered Master Theobald's study.
"Master Theobald," Matilda heard her say, "there is a person here to see you. She seeks a cure for her employer's eye troubles. He has talked to everyone in town, but no one has been able to help. Now they think Master Theobald is the only man who could solve this problem. Theobald the Wonderworker you are called, great sir. That is why she is here."
Matilda could not hear the words of Theobald's rumbling response from where she stood, but she knew the way of it when Tildy came back. "He will see you," she whispered.
Tildy showed Matilda into Theobald's study. Matilda looked about her in awe. The high-pitched roof was webbed with scarred, black beams, held up by carved creatures with hair of fire and great swollen tongues. The walls were covered by woven hangings where they weren't pierced by real windows, tall and narrow, the glass so thick and green that the outside looked as if it were underwater. Between the windows were shelves, with rows upon rows of clear flasks filled with liquids of lovely colors, from amber to pale pink. A red-cushioned chair carved with filigrees and curlicues was pulled up to a table where stood scales of gleaming gold, charts of the stars, and, wonder of wonders, books with green leather covers. Bright Turkey rugs covered the stone floor here and there. The room was considerably grander than Peg's shop and Nathaniel's, even grander than Lord Randall's hall which did after all have but rushes on the floor.
With the sound of an impatient throat clearing, Master Theobald made his presence known.
"I am here, great Master Theobald," Matilda said in a small voice, "but it is not I who am ailing. It is the apothecary Nathaniel Cross. Shall I go and fetch him?"
"Any physician who cannot diagnose at a distance is not worth the name of wonderworker," said Master Theobald, taking the little book from his belt and licking a finger to turn the page. "Tell me where and when exactly was this Nathaniel of yours born?"
"I do not know, but I can discover it," Matilda said.
She ran back through the drizzle to Nathaniel's shop to ask the day and place of his birth and back again to Theobald's, where she dripped water on his stone floors as she repeated the information.
Theobald checked this chart and that chart, made some calculations, and licked his finger again. "Since the man was born under the sign of Gemini with Capricorn descending, it is no wonder the trouble is in his eyes." Theobald licked another finger. "At what time of year did the trouble start?"
"I must go again to Nathaniel," said Matilda.
"Hmm, a time of malign conjunction of Saturn and Mars," Theobald muttered on Matilda's return, licking more fingers and turning more pages. "What dreams has he had lately, especially those about toothaches or floods?"
Matilda confessed she did not know. "How can I succeed in curing him if you run away every time I ask a question?" Theobald grumbled.
When a breathless Matilda returned with what information she could get, Theobald handed her a basket that cradled a wondrous clear glass flask. "I need a sample of his urine, passed before the sun reaches the meridian."
Matilda complained silently as she took the basket and trudged again to Nathaniel's shop. Nathaniel once again gave Matilda what she asked, and the girl ran back to Theobald's.
"I cannot continue if you persist in running in and out," Theobald said.
"Great master," Matilda interrupted, wringing her damp kirtle out, "if you could please tell me everything you need from Nathaniel at one time, I would not have to run..."
Theobald glowered at her.
"I beg your pardon for interrupting," she said softly.
Master Theobald held the flask of urine to the candlelight. "Hmm," he said, and "Hmm" and "Hmm."
"What?" asked Matilda. "Hmm what?"
Theobald slapped the flask down on the table so hard that the liquid in the glass container splashed and sloshed like a small storm on a tiny sea. "According to Gilles de Corbeil's De Urinis, there are twenty-nine observations I must make of this: Is it ruddy or pale? milky, clear, or dark? thick or thin? frothy or flat? does it taste sweet or salty? and so on—and I cannot do it with a gnat buzzing in my ear."
Matilda sat down and pressed her lips together tightly. Theobald held up the flask again, tilted it this way and that, smelled it, and then held it next to several of the flasks lining the walls of the room. Matilda was startled. All those lovely, sparkling, jewellike liquids were urine? Who would have thought it so beautiful?
"Hmm," Theobald said again, and consulted his book. "Did this vision problem come on suddenly?"
"No," said Matilda. "Nathaniel says it has long been coming on but now is worse than ever."
"Ah, then it is most likely not noxious gas in the stomach. Has he recently had a fever of any sort?"
"No, but for his eyes, he seems marvelously well. Except that he is sad and troubled. And discouraged."
"Good. It is not then a brain abscess brought on by overly hot bodily humors. Is he plagued by mental oversensitivity?"
Matilda was not exactly certain what that meant but told Master Theobald she was certain Master Nathaniel was plagued by nothing but poor eyesight.
"Ah, then since I have eliminated the other possibilities, the problem must be one of the visual spirit. When a man grows old, he tends to develop moisture in the visual spirit as it pours out of the brain, and his sight fails. Your apothecary must do this: Avoid all oil and moisture-making foods. No beans, no fish, no milk. I don't suppose he could afford crushed pearls in wine or the boiled rags of an Egyptian mummy?"
At Matilda's murmured "No," he continued, "Then he must, twice a day, inhale dried marjoram and purify his system with purgative pills and my special bitter mixture." Master Theobald swept up a pen and a sheet of parchment and wrote in a flowing hand.
He held the sheet above Matilda's reach and said, "This will without fail restore his sight. My fee is sixty pence."
Matilda was shocked. "Sixty pence? I do not know if Master Nathaniel has that much. Why, I doubt he earns sixty pence in a month."
"Then he needs to charge more. De nihilo nihil— nothing comes from nothing. Sixty pence."
Matilda shook her head.
"It is no wonder all the great physicians have required payment before treatment," Theobald said, pointing to his door. "Go."
Matilda left the room. He had written the prescription in Latin, not troubling to hide the page, never thinking the bonesetter's little maid could read what was written there: One part pounded earthworm, one part ants' eggs, two parts bull urine, the fat of a medium-sized viper, and a pinch of asses' dung.
Matilda found Tildy again in the kitchen and told her what had transpired. "I know the remedy, Tildy! It was written in Latin and I could read it. It appears my Latin will help cure someone after all! Master Nathaniel will have his first dose before nightfall."
Tildy looked sharply at Matilda. "Do you not think that is cheating Master Theobald?"
Matilda felt a pang of guilt. It was cheating. Was it also a sin? Would she have to do penance? Mayhap. But later. First she would cure Nathaniel.
Peg, when Matilda told her what happened, said, "By the bones of Saint Polycarp, seems your reading is good for something."
Sarah was impressed that the mighty physician had sent a remedy for her Nathaniel. Nathaniel had enough faith in the physician to try the mixture. Everything but the asses' dung was available in the shop. A grumbling Walter took a shovel and soon supplied what was lacking, with enough left over for ten or twelve years of treatments.
While Matilda boiled the brew, a rag tied across her nose to mask the smell, Walter carried Sarah away from the stink. Nathaniel held his nose and drank the potion. He gagged and shouted, drooled and spat. But he kept it down.
After three days of doses, his eyes were no better. Herb and spice sellers would not enter the reeking shop, customers bypassed the entire alley, and Sarah refused to kiss Nathaniel goo
d night. Nathaniel threw the remaining ants' eggs and asses' dung into the alley, whereupon he was cited by the Beadle of the Ward for contributing to the foulness of the city and had to pay a sixpence fine.
Matilda wanted to try again. She did not doubt Master Theobald's remedy. Perhaps she had remembered the recipe wrong or mixed it badly.
"No more," said Nathaniel. "I will try no more."
"There is nothing more to try," said Sarah.
Matilda continued her chores in silence, praying as she worked, trying to pierce the heavens with her prayers and reach the heart of God. God, she knew, must have good reason for not helping Nathaniel, but she was fond of him and he was a good man and she could not just leave him and Sarah to suffer and to starve. There must be something more she could do, but what? Matilda worried until her head hurt, but Saint Denis, when called upon for aid, said only, Your head aches? I had no head, and Nathaniel dosed her with a tincture of dropwort and birch.
Chapter Thirteen: Talking to Effie
Early one morning as Matilda was emptying the chamber pot into the gutter outside, she heard an uproar. Tucking the pot under her arm, she followed the noise around the corner, where Blood and Bone Alley met Frog Road. A crowd had gathered around a blond-bearded giant in a plaid kilt who was grabbing at folk and shouting, "Is there no' a doctor in this wee town? Is there no one to help?" as his horses milled about him, packs askew and spilling onto the road.
The enormous scissors advertising Tomas Tailor's shop hung from one chain, dented and bent. On the ground lay a woman, a gash on her forehead and a look of pain on her face. The giant shouted again, "Is there no one to help?"
Of the wrong kind of help there was plenty. Beggars helped themselves to what fell from the packs, a wandering friar offered his prayers in exchange for pennies, merchants presented for sale linen cloth for bandages and wine for dulling pain, and Tomas shrieked about the bloody dent in his sign.