The Speckled Monster (40 page)

No one owned it, this notion that they might experiment on condemned prisoners. The idea was just suddenly in the air, in the messages and whispered conversations that crisscrossed the western fringes of London from Leicester Square to Covent Garden, from Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, where Sir Hans lived, to St. James's and Westminster.

At last, the princess did convene what she called a council of war, and a plan took shape. Sir Hans and several other physicians from the Royal College would approach the king; Lord Townshend would approach the lawyers, and the Princess of Wales would remain uncharacteristically quiet. This was not a battle in which she meant to score points in the public eye, by trumping the king. This was a battle in which all that mattered was to get her children inoculated—if, indeed, inoculation worked. She did not care who took the credit.

The obvious assumption that what was good enough for her children was by no means good enough for the royals irritated Lady Mary. All those physicians with their grave jowly shakes of the head that intimated that she was a rash mother made her cheeks flame. They would trust felons, God forbid, but not her!

She was not, however, so cross as to refuse any help they required of her. Up to and including sacrificing much of the time and attention of the man she had come to regard as her own private surgeon: Mr. Charles Maitland.

 

On June 14, Lord Townshend wrote to both the attorney general and the solicitor general, asking
whether His Majesty may by law grant his gracious pardon to two malefactors under sentence of death upon condition that they will suffer to be tried upon them the experiment of inoculating the smallpox?

By June 17, he had an answer:
The lives of the persons being in the power of His Majesty, he may grant a pardon to them upon such lawful condition as he shall think fit; and as to this particular condition, we have no objection in point of law, the rather because the carrying on this practice to perfection may tend to the general benefit of mankind
.

His satisfaction might have been complete, if he had not also attracted the attention of the press: someone had leaked a (thankfully) garbled story about two prisoners volunteering, out of the blue, to undergo the experiment, in return for pardon. It was preposterous, of course—
did the newspapers really imagine that a couple of felons in Newgate had somehow divined this possibility in the dark?
—but the press gleefully devoured it nevertheless, especially the Tory press, which was, as a matter of course, hostile to the Whig ministry.

At least the prince and princess had been left out of it. The mere thought of it made him sweat. Never mind that the prince had almost nothing to do with inoculation, except to follow Caroline's lead in believing it was a good idea. Should either of their names—especially the prince's—reach the king before he could be brought to think that the prison experiment was his own idea, he might well reject it out of hand, merely because his son was for it.

 

Sir Hans did his best to dangle the notion of a Newgate experiment like a bright lure before the king. George I was intrigued, but he did not snap at the bait. He did, however, ask his two Turkish servants, Mehemet and Mustafa, what they knew of this inoculation nonsense. Unfortunately, they had been captured from Turkey too young to remember anything of use.

Sir Hans did not concede easily. “His Majesty is thinking about it, Your Highness,” was the best he could report to the princess, however.

June veered into July, and still the king considered.

The weather warmed up, and the palace staff began packing for the annual summer trip west to the clean air of Kensington. Around St. James's, a flurry of farewell parties gathered, before everyone dispersed for the summer—though they were quieter than usual, due to the smallpox. Lady Mary was summoned to one last weekly supper party for the king in the countess of Darlington's apartments at St. James's. With the scrupulous formality for which the palace was famous, she was handed down from her carriage and ushered inside by a footman.

At one moment, they were following the route she could have followed blindfolded. The next, they were in passages she had never seen before. A door whispered open, and she was whisked into a small parlor with light from a small fire laughing as it skated off the polish of oak paneling. Only then did she realize that the servant she had been following was no mere royal footman but the Turk Mehemet, the king's most trusted personal servant. He poured her a goblet of wine soft as black velvet and left her staring up at a portrait of the countess of Rochester, whose ravaged beauty had once made Samuel Pepys weep. She had not drunk half her wine when behind her another door sighed open, in paneling in which she had not seen any door.

She froze. The scent was familiar, the voice even more so.

“Ah, ma très chère Marie,”
said the king as she turned and sank into a deep curtsey. The squabbling of the last few years had marked him, she thought; his face looked tired and lined. But his eyes still snapped a mischievous blue. “I can send you to the ends of the earth, my dear,” he said in his German-accented French, “but I cannot distance you from controversy, it seems. What is this we hear about you having hauled home from Turkey some strange—might I say revolting?—remedy for the smallpox?”

3

AN INFUSION OF MALIGNANT FILTH

 

JUST past noon, the doors of Representatives' Hall swung inward. Set like a lantern into the top two floors of the Town House, the place was sweltering, though all the windows were open.
Dr. Zabdiel Boylston,
thundered the steward, sending echoes spiraling heavily into the dome overhead, rousing a few sleepy doves.

Standing at a podium across the circular room, Dr. Douglass frowned. He had expressly instructed that infernal steward to announce Boylston correctly, as “Mr.”

The servant did not behave as desired, but at least Boylston did, jerking in a gratifying double-take as he registered Dr. Douglass in position as chief interrogator.

“Ah, Dr. Boylston,” said Elisha Cooke from the vicinity of Dr. Douglass's left elbow. “Have a seat.” He motioned toward something much less grand than his own chair—shabby, in point of fact—marooned alone in the empty center of the floor.

“I prefer to stand, thank you,” said Boylston.

“As you wish,” said Mr. Cooke, though the tone of his voice was at odds with his pleasantry. Mr. Cooke had assumed the second-best seat in the room, along with the controlling gavel. Next to him, John Clark was occupying the speaker's chair. It wasn't quite correct, Dr. Douglass sniffed to himself, since the governor had just yesterday dissolved the General Court, necessitating new elections—mostly to try and rid himself of the chronic irritation of Dr. Clark as speaker of the House. Dr. Clark, however, was glaring about as if daring someone to challenge him for the seat; he had probably lain awake all night concocting some brilliant answer to the governor's opposition, and now wanted nothing so much as an opportunity to unsheathe his speech like a sword of vengeance.

Dr. Douglass smiled inwardly. He had already gone a good way in redirecting Dr. Clark's overflowing anger toward his own foe.
Mr
. Boylston. Had he not accepted the stolen story of inoculation from Dr. Mather? And begun to try to pawn it off as his own? Had he not begun advertising—
advertising!
—the operation as safe, to boot, when clearly it was so malignant as to be nothing short of wicked? Well, Mr. Boylston was about to be made to pay.

He scanned the rest of the room. Curved around him in three tiers of seats lining the room's perimeter, nearly thirty grave faces peered out from the luxuriant curls of full-bottomed wigs. All the selectmen were there, their number recently restored to seven with the election of Captain Nathaniel Green—another of Cooke's yea-sayers—in the place of the hapless man who had died only two days after victory in the regular yearly election last March. Scattered among the politicians were five or six justices of the peace. Most important, Dr. Douglass saw every last man in town who might make any claim to practicing medicine, right down to part-time apothecaries. The hall was as dense with power, wealth, and intelligence as could be hoped in provincial Boston.

Furthermore, the men who mattered had recognized the seriousness of the situation by donning hues even more somber than their faces. With fastidious satisfaction, Dr. Douglass noted that despite the heat, most of the fabric was sumptuous and the tailoring stiffly formal. Boylston, on the other hand, was wearing the dun-colored everyday suit he probably practiced in. On his head was a lightweight tiewig of the sort meant for riding, its long dark hair drawn into a single queue at the back, where it would stay safely out of the way during even the most breakneck of gallops.

Mr. Cooke banged down the gavel. “Dr. Douglass, I believe we may proceed?”

Dr. Douglass bowed, first to Cooke and Clark, and then to the assembly. “We have gathered here today, gentlemen, to discuss the hazards of Mr. Boylston's newfangled operation of inoculation—”

“Oh, it's not mine,” Boylston cut in.

Dr. Douglass glanced over sharply. Boylston was resting one hand casually on the back of the chair he should have been sitting in; an impudent smile hovered around his mouth. “Give credit where it's due,” he said. “If inoculation belongs to anyone, it is to the Royal Society.”

“But you admit, sir,” countered Dr. Douglass, “that it is you who have put this hazardous theory into practice?”

“I'll own having put it into practice,” said Boylston. He straightened and shifted his gaze to the men assembled around them. “Whether it is hazardous, however, is surely not an established premise, gentlemen, but one of the central questions we've come together to debate. I hope to convince you that far from being a hazard, inoculation is a blessing for which we owe the Royal Society our deepest thanks.”

“Since you have begun by citing the Royal Society,” said Dr. Douglass, “perhaps we could begin by investigating your sources.” Boylston nodded, and Dr. Douglass went on. “The
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
sir, is a most illustrious and learned journal. Are you in the habit, may I ask, of reading it?”

“No,” said Boylston.

Dr. Douglass had hoped for consternation or a little defensiveness. But the man actually
grinned
at him.

“Not at all,” Boylston continued. “Even in this instance, I cannot claim to have read the original, but only Dr. Mather's transcription. The original, you know,” he went on, “isn't so easy to come by.”

Smiles rippled around the room. Everyone knew that Dr. Douglass was the only man in town with a subscription, and that he had recently put his copies under lock and key.

Dr. Douglass grimaced. By hinting that he, Dr. Douglass, was out of line in protecting his own property, Boylston had eviscerated the argument of theft before he even had a chance to deliver it. Boylston, he thought, might have to be given credit for rather more cleverness—perhaps
cunning
was a better word—than he had originally supposed. Cunning, however, was not the same as learning. “Perhaps you are not aware, then, that this journal is often full of
jeux d'esprit,
” he said, savoring the French.

“Glad to hear it,” said Boylston comfortably. “I'm sure even great scholars deserve to amuse themselves now and then. But as for the two articles in question, Dr. Mather does not regard either one as a jest. Since he is a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as the most learned man in the province, I trust his judgment.”

More than I trust yours
. The implication shimmered in the air between them.

Dr. Douglass bristled. This perpetual awe accorded Mather's learning irritated him no end. “Dr. Mather's erudition,” he said, “is not in question. He did not, however, write the articles. It is their sources I wish to examine.”

“If you mean their authors, it's my understanding that Emanuel Timonius and Jacob Pylarinus are physicians of high standing in Turkey and the Levant.”

“Italians!” sneered Dr. Douglass. “Exiled in infidel territory and letting themselves be led into folly by a gaggle of old Greek women.”

“The Romans and the Greeks,” said Boylston, “have been counted wise before now. In any case,” he added, “Dr. Timonius may be Italian by birth, but he's part British by training. He possesses a degree from Oxford, I believe, and he, too, is a Fellow of the Royal Society.”

Dr. Douglass drew every inch of his dignity together. “Every other medical practitioner in this town, sir, has rejected the operation as a dangerous bit of Oriental quackery. Are we to understand that you regard your judgment as trumping such a heavy weight of opinion?”

Boylston folded his arms and considered Dr. Douglass. “I regard it the right of every doctor in this town,” he said at last, “to weigh the evidence and draw his own conclusion.”

“And on what did you base your conclusion?”

“Experience,” said Boylston.

“What experience?” challenged Dr. Douglass.

“There's a small army of people right here in Boston who've undergone the operation in Africa—”

“Africans!”
snorted Dr. Douglass. “Idiots!” He snapped his fingers. “The greatest race of liars on the earth.”

Chuckles sputtered around them. “Anyone who can talk may lie, sir,” said Boylston quietly, and the amusement dropped out of the air like lead. Somewhere in the brightness, a bee buzzed. “I have made it my business to speak to as many of these African inoculees as I could discover, and I am satisfied that they are not lying.”