Dark Waters (20 page)

‘But letting blood is an old-established practice. Didn't Dr Galen recommend it?'

‘That Roman windbag! For God's sake, Titus, he thought the heart was some kind of furnace! If he saw fever, he let blood because he thought it was overheating. If he found heartburn, he did the same. Now that we know the heart's a pump, the whole theory collapses.'

‘Tewksbury must have some reason—'

‘Reason doesn't come into it. It is the laziness of habit. Doctors like him are devoid of all reason, all ideas and all method.'

‘Old Parsonage says you yourself are recommending water, raw egg and warm milk. How do you know they will work?'

‘I don't. But I do know they will do no possible harm.'

I thought of poor Allcroft, and the milk I had spooned into his mouth.

‘Luke, you said earlier that you were on the track of this new illness, and you had to verify it. Have you?'

‘Yes, I am sure of it. It is something I discovered at the bedsides of the first patients I saw this morning.'

He drew from his pocket a medicine bottle, which he gave me to examine. I saw that the label was inked with exactly the words I had just read from the broken bottle in Sweeting's shop.

‘One or two people told me that they had purchased this so-called “Preservative” and dosed themselves with it, but it had been singularly useless. At first my only thought was, how could it be otherwise? But suddenly I realized I might have stumbled on a common factor in this outbreak. I have spent the afternoon revisiting all the patients I saw earlier and what do you suppose?'

‘Go on.'

‘Every one of them that's ill has been dosing themselves with it.'

‘You can see why, with this fear of contagion. They thought it would preserve them.'

‘But what if it should really do the opposite? What if it should ruin them?'

‘Ruin them? A quack medicine?'

‘Yes, if it happened to be the primary cause of the illness. Do you see?'

Then I remembered my visit to Oldswick, when the disease was at its height with him.

‘Old Parsonage did say something about dosing his master with some medicine he brought in on Friday. It must have been the same.'

‘It was. I told him to leave off, as I have now told everyone.'

I examined Fidelis's idea from every angle.

‘Well, it is certainly paradoxical. A salve to make you sick – a poisonous palliative.'

‘Ha! Yes, though whether it poisons by accident or knowingly I cannot say. Our only way to settle it is by interviewing Mr Shackleberry himself, which we must do anyway if we are to put a stop to any further mischief. Will you help me find him? I know this is not strictly coroner's business, but—'

‘It will be if anyone dies.'

‘That's right. So where shall we find him?'

‘We will start with Oswald Mallender. If anyone knows, it will be him.'

*   *   *

As town constable, Mallender was expected by his masters the burgesses to give regular reports on incomers, together with estimates of their wealth and the degree of nuisance they might present. His self-importance alone ensured that he enjoyed this task more than all his others, since it gave him the opportunity to lord it over people who did not yet know what a fool he was.

We found him at home, in his house in Tithe Barn Street, where he was being fussed about in front of his parlour fire by Mrs Mallender, a woman even fatter than himself. It was not an opulent dwelling: two rooms below and two above, with a cramped attic for the servant. Indeed, the whole house seemed cramped with these two filling every room they stood up in.

‘How can I be of service, gentlemen?'

‘Do you know the whereabouts of the mountebank Shackleberry that's been here in town doing card tricks and the like? He was selling a quack nostrum in Market Place yesterday before the May Queen's election.'

‘The Irish fellow? Yes, I know him, of course.'

‘He had an assistant with him, a feeble-minded fellow called Dickon. Can you take us or direct us to them?'

‘Let's see … why do you want this man?'

‘Because his so-called preservative is no such thing. It is noxious and suspected of being the cause of this outbreak of disease.'

Mallender looked from one of us to the other, smiling as in kindly tolerance towards the idiocy of others.

‘Oh, no, sirs. No, no. The corporation has met on this point and all agree that the sickness is a dangerous contagion. Those who have tried to combat the outbreak with extraordinary measures, such as this good man Shackleberry, have even been commended by the Mayor, and are to be treated with the greatest indulgence—'

‘Fiddlesticks,' broke in Fidelis, irritated beyond measure. ‘The man should not be indulged. He should be put in irons.'

‘Not in the eyes of the corporation, sirs, and it is with the corporation's eyes that I must look. Their worships have also issued a slate of measures against this contagion—'

‘Say this poisoning! It is
not
a contagion.'

Mallender wagged one sausage-like finger.

‘Hold up, sir! Will you contradict the corporation? They will not have it! Against this
contagion,
they say again, measures are planned and will be enacted with dispatch in this emergency. You may read them.'

He produced a paper and handed it across. It was headed C
ontra Pestis
and contained a dozen numbered orders for such things as the establishment of a pest house, the control of laundry, the closing of the theatre and rounding-up of stray dogs. These methods had been used traditionally to combat the plague: the most extreme of them was the provision for people to be shut up forcibly in their homes.

‘God forbid that it should come to any of this,' intoned Mallender with sanctimony. ‘In the midst of all this election activity, and Lord Strange just arrived in town for his grand theatricals tomorrow. Yet we must be ready.'

‘This is so much rank shit!' said Fidelis passionately, throwing the paper aside so that it floated down and landed close to the fireplace at the feet of the seated Mrs Mallender. Seeing her, as if for the first time, he bowed and apologized for the word he had used.

‘Oh no, don't mind me, Doctor,' she tittered. ‘I like to hear a professional man swear, I do.'

Meanwhile with laboured breath, Mallender had stooped to retrieve the note.

‘You must have greater care, Doctor, with a fire in the room. This paper has corporational authority. If it had been burned that would have constituted a contempt. This paper is to go to the printer tomorrow, with a special dispensation to work the press on a Sunday. That is how serious the corporation takes this matter. And,
nota bene,
Dr Tewksbury attended them and was consulted.'

‘Dr Tewksbury!' snorted Fidelis. ‘They might as well consult a horse's arse.'

This conversation was leading nowhere, and I decided to put a stop to it.

‘Well, if you are acting under the advice of another medical man,' I put in smoothly, ‘there is nothing more to be done here. Mr and Mrs Mallender, we bid you a very good night.'

Out in the street Fidelis began to laugh.

‘“Corporational authority”! The man thinks he
is
the corporation. So, what do we do now? We are checked.'

‘Come back to my house and drink some wine. We will think of something.'

After Fidelis had greeted Elizabeth, I showed him into the library and slipped into the kitchen to fetch wine. I found Matty sitting at the table with a spoon in her hand and a small bottle in front of her, of a colour and shape that I knew well. She had already poured a dose into the spoon, and was now opening her mouth and holding her nose, ready to receive it.

Chapter Fourteen

I
THINK THE MIND
is a closely packed archive of impressions, memories and fears, tens of thousands of them, and every one tightly scrolled and tucked into its proper place ready to be consulted if necessary. But sometimes, for some reason, one of these bursts its ribbon and springs open quite spontaneously. Something like that happened to me then. Elizabeth and I had brought up this girl in our service, from a snotty child on a farm to the dignity of womanhood itself, and we had loved her and cared for her from the start. But now all at once I had a horrid vision of her death, lying in the same filth and degradation I had seen in that room in Stoney Gate.

With a cry I stepped forward and, in dramatic fashion, raised my hand and dashed the spoon from Matty's hand. It went flying across the room, rang like a bell as it struck one of our Delft jugs on the dresser, then came down on the floor. The spoon's contents spattered across the table. Matty screamed.

‘Sir! What did you do that for?'

‘That is a very dangerous preparation, Matty. Dr Fidelis believes it may be putrid.'

Matty blinked as her eyes filled with tears.

‘But I thought there was no harm, because they've been taking it all over.'

‘Precisely, Matty. And people have been falling ill all over – do you understand?'

I seized the bottle and went through to the stone sink outside the door, where I poured and flushed the contents away.

‘How much of it have you had?' I asked, returning to her.

‘None, not yet.'

‘Thank God!'

‘I only just got it, you see. But I'd been that worried about this sickness, so I sent Barty out to get me a bottle. He said he knew where to find it.'

‘Did he? Well, that is very good news!'

Her tearful face turned into a puzzled one.

‘But you have just told me—'

‘Get Barty for me, please. I must see him immediately.'

I gave Fidelis the news as I poured out two glasses of port wine.

‘I should have thought of it myself, Luke. Young Barty goes everywhere, and his eyes and ears are as keen as a cat's.'

We had had time for just two glasses when Barty appeared. I asked him if he had been tempted himself to sample Shackleberry's potion and he denied it.

‘Let people spend their money how they like,' he said. ‘But I think that's a naughty old man.'

‘That does you credit, boy. What did I tell you, Luke? Now Barty, we need to see the fellow. Will you take us to him?'

Barty led us to a tumbledown house on Sprit Weind, occupied by Hugh Scratch, an old sailor so congested in the lungs that he could no longer go to sea, nor do any but the lightest work. I knew Scratch to be always desperate for money, and he would take the Devil himself as lodger so long as he was paid his due.

Mrs Scratch, who opened the front door, was a small woman with restless, birdy eyes. I asked after Shackleberry and she gave us a taut smile.

‘He's here. But you'll not get a splinter of sense out of him.'

‘Can we see him?'

‘Of course you can
see
him. It's talking to him that you won't be able to do.'

‘Why is that?'

She stood back from the door to make way.

‘Come in. You'll hear for yourself.'

The kitchen fire had a single smouldering log, giving minimal cheer. Scratch sat beside it, leaning slightly forward, as if in the expectation of an imminent event. I said how-do, to which his only reply was to hunch his shoulders and surrender to a spasm of retching coughs. When this had passed his wife cocked her head and pointed upwards. A tearing sound was penetrating the ceiling from the room above. It sounded like a rusty bucket being dragged across a gravel beach.

‘That's him,' said Mrs Scratch. ‘Drunk every night, he is. When he's awake there's no shutting him up either, but that's his talking. Asleep he only snores, and Scratch and me, we're lucky to get a wink of sleep.'

‘May Dr Fidelis and I go up to him? Perhaps we can bring him to his senses?'

‘Good luck to you.'

The room in which we found the mountebank was sparsely furnished: two wooden beds covered in rough straw mattresses, a table and chair, a washstand, and a hat-and-coat stand were all the furniture. Shackleberry was sprawled across one of the beds, his chin bristled, his brow greased with sweat and his gap-toothed mouth as wide as an opera singer's in full spate. But Shackleberry was singing only one note, and less musically than a blacksmith's rasp.

I called his name and, when he didn't respond, went to the bedside and shook his shoulder.

‘Wake up, man, wake up.'

But though I continued to shake him for half a minute, he could not be roused. I looked over the table, on which lay writing materials, some books and a sheaf of foolscap paper. I noted the titles of the books:
The Alchemist
by Ben Jonson,
Works
by Lord Rochester and
Penkethman's Jests: or, wit refin'd, containing witty sayings, smart repartees, apothegms, surprising puns, with other curious pieces on witty and diverting subjects
 …

‘Take a look here,' said Fidelis, just as I was turning Penkethman's pages to see for myself whether there was any real wit in them. My friend had gone down on his haunches to examine a collection of objects that lay together on the floor beneath the vacant bed. He began pulling them out: a brass-bound chest, a copper pan, some implements and various bowls, bottles, jars and packages.

‘I recognize that box,' I said. ‘That's what he stood on in Market Place to give his speech about Paracelsus and his universal cure. And he kept stocks of the preservative inside, to sell.'

‘I reckon he made the mixture right here,' said Fidelis. ‘This is the pan he mixed it in. And if I'm not mistaken these are the ingredients he used.'

He picked from the floor the shell of a hen's egg, and a bowl containing some brown granules. He licked his finger and dabbed for a sample, which he tasted.

‘Sugar. Eggs. And here's the dried-out remains of some milk.'