The Launching of Roger Brook (25 page)

Having worn his sword only for a day, Roger was somewhat loath to take it off; but he saw the sense of the Doctor’s remarks and felt that as he had never carried one in England, to go without it would be no great deprivation, so he removed it from its frog and stowed it among the baggage on the mule.

By ten o’clock they reached the still battlemented walls of Harfleur, made famous by King Henry V’s siege and reduction of it, but they did not pause there, and continued on along the main highway to the north-east, until an hour after midday they entered the village of St. Romain.

Hungry now, after their twelve-mile tramp, they went to the inn and for a
franc
, procured a meal of bread and cheese washed down by a coarse
vin du pays
. During the afternoon they rested in an orchard, then towards five o’clock when the peasants, their day’s work done, began to drift back from the fields, the partners proceeded to set about their business.

While the Doctor put up his stand outside the inn, Roger brought from the stable an assortment of bottles and pots which he set out on a small folding table beside the stand. The Doctor then mounted it and picking up a large handbell began to ring it loudly to attract the handful of people who were to be seen doing errands or gossiping in the village street.

In a few moments he had a dozen children round him and a few grown-ups, and Roger had to admire the cleverness with which he opened the proceedings. Producing a packet of the cheap sweets from his pocket he addressed himself to the children.

‘My little ones, you see in me a wise man skilled in all medicines. Many of you must have mothers, fathers, and other relatives who are suffering and in pain from one cause or another. Run now to your homes and tell them that the good Doctor Aristotle Fénelon has arrived here for the special purpose of curing their complaints, and that it will cost them no more than a few
sous
. But before you bear these good tidings to your folks look what I have here for you, a sweet a-piece as succulent as it is colourful. Forget
not my message; and those of you who have pretty sisters should add that for a trifle I have lotions and unguents here which will make red hands as white as alabaster and dull eyes sparkle like the stars.’

He then handed out the highly-coloured sweets amongst them and they scurried away to spread the news of his visit through the village.

After ringing the bell again for a while he had a crowd of some twenty people assembled and more were drifting up every moment. As Roger looked at them he greatly doubted if they could raise a
louis
between them, as they were mostly dressed in rags, and it struck him most forcibly how much poorer the people here appeared to be than would have a similar crowd in an English village. But his attention was soon distracted from the comparison as he endeavoured to follow the flowery phrases in which the Doctor now addressed them.

‘My friends!’ he cried, in a sonorous voice, ‘today is a day of good fortune for this ancient and populous township of St. Romain. Never, I make bold to say, since the good Saint who founded it passed to his holy rest, has such a unique opportunity been offered to its intelligent inhabitants to be swiftly relieved of their ills, both physical and mental.

‘I am the great Doctor Aristotle Fénelon, of whom many of you must have heard; since I spend my life administering to suffering humanity, and my name is reverenced from far Muscovy to even more distant Cathay for the miraculous cures and good works that I perform—yet I am also your most humble servant.

‘I was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, and also at the famous universities of Leyden, Oxford, Pavia and Heidelberg. At these great seats of learning I took all the degrees which it was possible to take, while still quite young, and my wisdom became so renowned that elderly professors travelled from such distant cities as Danzig, Palermo and Madrid to hold converse with me.

‘Having completed my studies I spent twenty years in travelling the world in search of medicines and remedies so far unknown in Europe. From the Moorish doctors of the Orient I learned the secrets by which the ladies of the Great Turk’s harem preserve their beauty from decay for almost unbelievable periods, so that at the age of sixty they are no
less desirable than when at seventeen they first attracted the notice of their munificent master. Journeying on to Hind, I traversed the empire of the Grand Mogul from end to end, studying the methods by which the fakirs prolong their lives to the span of three hundred years, as did the Patriarchs in holy writ, and are still capable of begetting a child upon a virgin when two hundred and fifty years of age.

‘But think not that my search for the secrets of healing, longevity, beauty and vigour have been confined only to Europe and the East. I have also visited the Americas, where I learned of the Redmen how to seal open wounds by fire almost painlessly, and to cure the pox by a decoction made from the bark of a tree that grows only on the tops of the Andes mountains. In short, I am the living compendium of all knowledge concerning bodily ailments and the satisfaction of physical desire.

‘Yet, lest you may think me boastful I will freely confess that there is one thing I cannot do. I am an honest man and would never seek to deceive so distinguished and critical an audience. Death is still the master of us all, and although I can prolong life I cannot do so indefinitely. It is your great misfortune, as it is also mine, that although I once possessed a rare parchment on which an Atlantian alchemist had inscribed the method of distilling the Elixir of Life, a rascally Egyptian priest stole it from me; and, alas! the recipe was too complicated for any human brain to remember.

‘But, even though I cannot offer you the divine gift of immortality, I can provide a panacea for a thousand ills. I draw teeth, set sprains and apply electric fluid after the principles of Doctor Mesmer, who, as you may have heard, is now all the rage in fashionable Paris, and, ’tis said, has even treated Queen Marie Antoinette herself. I can cure boils, warts, tumours, goitre, suppurating ulcers, irritant rashes, eczema, catarrh, lumbago, anaemia, a persistent cough, acidity, headaches, sleeplessness, sore nipples, affections of the eyes, deafness, night-sweats, wind, bad breath and foot rot.

‘There are too, those results of amatory imprudence which for some purpose of His own the good God has seen fit to inflict upon us poor mortals. I refer, in the first place, to those dangerous diseases which, praise be, are rarely met
with in the country, and particularly in towns of such high morality as St. Romain, but can be caught by even the best-intentioned during visits of curiosity to the dubious haunts of our great cities; in the second, to that process in nature which, as the result of a few moments’ indulgence, oft inflicts upon a girl or woman a burden that she is either unfitted or unwilling to bear. Finally, there are those distempers of the mind and brain which call for special treatment. Unrequited love is such a one, loss of sexual vitality and an inability to beget children are others. For all of these I have most efficacious remedies; but such are private matters, and should any of you wish to consult me on them I shall be at your service in my room here, at the inn, between eight o’clock and midnight. I make no extra charge for these confidential consultations and your secrets will be as safe with me as if made to your
Curé
in the confessional.’

As the Doctor finished this long and grandiloquent harangue, Roger would not have been surprised if the crowd had broken into cries of anger and derision. Never had he heard so many palpable lies rolled off in so few moments, and it seemed impossible that any collection of sane men and women would believe one-tenth of them. Yet, as he looked at the dull and stupid faces of the peasant audience he realised that their ignorance must be abysmal, and that it was doubtful if they even understood half the allusions the Doctor had made to his mythical journeyings. They just stood quietly and patiently there like a herd of animals. There was hardly a movement among them and their faces remained expressionless.

As no one came forward the Doctor went on: ‘Now, good folk, have no fears, but seize upon this all-too-fleeting opportunity, for by dawn tomorrow it will be too late. The world is wide and there are many sufferers in it, so I must be on my way to give the great benefit of my experience to others. But for this evening my encyclopædic knowledge is yours for the asking. To produce an example, and thus overcome your reluctance to voice your needs, I will give a free treatment to whoever first consults me.’

This offer produced an immediate reaction. The peasants were not so deaf and dumb as they appeared, and there was a little surge forward of the crowd as several people, all speaking at once, endeavoured to push their way to the front.

‘That’s better,’ purred the Doctor, as a lean, determined-looking woman gained first place. ‘Well, mother! What ails thee?’

It was the woman’s eyes that were troubling her. Stepping down from his stand the Doctor screwed a pocket-lens into his own eye, took a quick look at them, and gave her a bottle which Roger knew to contain plain salt dissolved in water; as he remembered the Doctor remarking when they made it up that no better eye lotion had ever been discovered, and that it was a pity they had to pander to their customer’s stupid belief that no medicine was ever efficacious unless it was coloured, since the colouring matter rendered it much less soothing than would have been an unadulterated solution.

The next applicant was a man with a horrid suppurating ulcer on his forearm, for which the Doctor sold him a pot of ointment; the third a woman who complained of splitting headaches; the fourth, another carrying a child that had croup: and so it went on for an hour or more. After a brief examination of each patient the Doctor pointed out the bottle or pot that Roger was to hand them and told him how much to charge. The fee was generally three
sous
and rarely more than six, while for drawing a tooth or extracting the core of a malignant boil by the application of the neck of a heated bottle, the Doctor charged only half a
franc
, so Roger, greatly disappointed in this collection of half-pence, began to fear that they would not even make enough clear profit to pay for their night’s lodging.

Yet his pile of greasy little copper coins gradually grew, and presently the young men and girls of the village began to mingle with the afflicted, having raided their savings to buy the vigour-inducing tonics and beauty preparations which the Doctor had mentioned in his opening address.

For each he had some special name and story. ‘Paris drops’ were the very same elixir which had enabled the hero of antiquity to rape one hundred virgins in a night and yet remain with his desire unappeased next morning. ‘Helen’s cream’ was the secret of the beauty which had made the knees of old men turn to water as they watched her pass by on the battlements of Troy. ‘Cleopatra’s ointment’ was that same kohl with which the Egyptian Queen had painted her black eyebrows when she went out to meet and ensnare Caesar, and so on,
ad infinitum
.

As Roger handed out these nostrums, balms and potions, he was amazed that the village wenches among his customers should be so far removed from the score or so of elegant ladies he had seen shopping in the
Rue François ler
two afternoons earlier, and even from the shop girls of Le Havre, as to appear almost of a different race. They were bedraggled, dirty and slovenly, with their hair unkempt and their ugly feet thrust naked into wooden
sabots
. Yet it seemed, as they carefully counted out their hoarded
sous
, they were as anxious to obtain some little aid to beauty as their more fortunate sisters in the city.

At length, as twilight deepened, the crowd dwindled and the last customer was served with a little phial of ‘Oil of Hercules’, that the Doctor assured him would enable him to win the village ploughing contest in the coming spring; and having packed up their goods and chattels they went into the inn.

It was a poor place but the simple food was well cooked and, after they had eaten, the partners received three visitors, at intervals, in the room they were sharing. Dr. Aristotle had been averse to his young companion being present at these interviews but Roger, still a little suspicious from his sad experience of the previous day, thought it possible that the old man might secrete a portion of the fees wherewith to buy brandy on the sly, so he insisted.

The proceedings made him feel slightly sick in all three cases, as the first two patients were suffering from advanced stages of venereal disease, and the third was a bent but lecherous-looking old man who wanted a potion that would make him capable of deflowering a girl who worked on his holding. But the Doctor took a
franc
a-piece off the two former and a
crown
off the latter, so Roger felt that he had been wise to remain.

Next morning they struck away from the high road and walked at an easy pace for five miles down by-lanes until they came to the smaller village of Tancarville, at the mouth of the Seine. Here the performances were repeated with still more meagre results and at a penalty of having to sleep in a miserable inn where the beds were alive with fleas; but on the following day they turned north-east again and, arriving at the township of Lillebonne by midday, spent the following three nights there in reasonable comfort. On the first two they did good business and the third day of
their stay being Sunday they rested from their labours.

On the Monday they set out again, zig-zagging eastward through the villages of Candebec and Duclair to another little township called Barentin, which they reached on the Wednesday. Thursday, Friday and Saturday they slept in the nearby adjacent villages of Le Houlme, Maromme and Deville, and on the Sunday morning they walked into the ancient city of Rouen.

By this time Roger had picked up the game, and on entering a place where they intended to pass the night was able to form a fair estimate of what their takings in it were likely to be. Any village, however small, seemed good enough for a night’s bed and board with a few
crowns
over, but in the small towns they had made much bigger profits. For one thing the crowds they attracted were considerably larger and, for another, the general run of the inhabitants being somewhat better off, the Doctor was able to charge more for his wares. So on entering Rouen Roger had high hopes of their garnering a bumper harvest.