The Queene's Cure (26 page)

Evidently emboldened by his defiance, Pascal reached for his timepiece, but she snatched it away and dropped it back in the bag. “Your timepiece is sullied, and your testimony may be, too, doctor. But let us examine one thing more together.”

She drew out the leather, plaited scourge that she had seized from his study and shook it once at him. The little pieces of bone at the end of the thongs clicked together. He gaped at it as if it were a sheath of serpents.

“And your house steward inadvertently mentioned,” she went on, “that you wear a hair shirt like that relic of Sir Thomas on the altar in your privy shrine to him.” She fixed him with her narrowed gaze. “Will you deny using that and this, too, so I must have my men bare your back to testify against you? For what misdeeds or secret sins does a learned, wealthy physician punish and flagellate himself, Dr. Pascal?”

“I—I …” He staggered back into the wall, then righted himself. “For not being worthy of him—Sir
Thomas. I live my entire life morally, helping others to be more worthy. But I swear I am innocent of harming the Wyngate girl—or you.”

Their eyes met and held. She had given John Caius another chance, and her proof was yet tenuous against Dr. Pascal too. Nor could she afford to gut her Royal College of Physicians by sacking its leaders, not yet, not before the ceremony tomorrow. And not when she was determined to advance the estate of medical arts in her realm.

But it was this man's pitiful admission from the depths of his soul that had softened her rage at him. Each mortal, she well knew, however brilliant, blessed, or powerful, carried dark faults and failures within. It was a bloody, brutal struggle to try to cure the plagues of one's past.

“Swear not to me, nor by your Sir Thomas,” she said, her voice quiet now. “If Lord Cecil says you speak the truth about telling him you lost your timepiece by early Saturday, I will see you at the ceremony tomorrow morning, where you will do your duty under the watchful eye of those I can trust. I do not wish to let your patients nor my people down.”

“I—yes, of course, Your Majesty,” he said, blinking back tears with a sniff. “Dr. Caius and I will do our duty. We will be certain everything goes well at—at the Queen's Evil ceremony.”

“I tell you flat out,” Elizabeth said, enunciating every word, “and you may pass this on to Dr. Caius. As to duty,
you shall both be removed from yours and have your licenses revoked should anything go even slightly askew tomorrow or hereafter. And while I am away at Hampton Court, you will have men with you to observe your every move, moves which must be your striving for the good of my people's health.

“Harry,” she said, turning away from the wide-eyed doctor, “hold Dr. Pascal here until I speak with Lord Secretary Cecil, then have one of your men escort him either to prison or the physicians' hall. Your other man will find Dr. Caius and remain with him.”

In a change of heart, she handed Pascal the sack with the timepiece, but threw the scourge at his feet. With Jenks and Clifford in tow, she headed for her privy quarters.

“A moment, Your Grace,” Jenks said as he followed her into her apartments for a Privy Plot meeting. No one else was in the presence chamber yet. Jenks went down on one knee though he looked up at her.

“Your Gracious Majesty,” he began, his face so in earnest, “I've protected you for years and would give my life for you.”

“I know that, my man. Say on.”

“I do not like the tactic of allowing those we suspect to keep close to your person, guards or not.”

“I have had Katherine Grey and her lord sent to separate rural exile, and word of that will be a warning. Everyone else is under watch, whether they know it or
not, even my Lord Dudley. But,” she added, wringing her long fingers, “I yet hope those behind this effigy plot are so desperate that they will make another rash move and so be snared.”

“But they are getting more desperate in their deeds,” he argued. “First just that poxed dummy, but now corpses.”

“I do the work of our blessed Lord's healing touch tomorrow,” she assured him, wishing she could likewise comfort herself as she bent to touch his shoulder. “All will be well, for He has put me on the throne of this realm and, no doubt, means to keep me here a good while.”

“Hmph,” Kat said, making them both jump as she came into the room from the queen's bedchamber. “Wish I hadn't heard your brother and sister say the same in their youth, then both ruling but a few scant years apiece.”

“But neither was healthy as I am!” Elizabeth shouted, throwing up her hands. “Is no one on God's green earth, not even my intimates, on my side?” She stomped into her bedchamber and slammed the door.

T
RUMPETS ANNOUNCED THE QUEEN'S ARRIVAL AS SHE
walked the long aisle of the Abbey's nave toward the altar. Gowned in black and gold, wearing the traditional embroidered apron for the ceremony, she pulled a long velvet train her ladies held for her. Courtiers, including the Stewarts, awaited her arrival. Pikemen lined
the way to hold back those in the pews or standing in the crowded church; her Gentlemen Pensioners followed, interspersed with ladies-in-waiting, also all bedecked in ebony hue. Before the altar awaited the black-garbed physicians, those of the college and the queen's household, fourteen in total number. Only the afflicted, waiting their turns off to the side, were clothed in white.

The scrofula, or Queen's Evil disease, was similar to the small pox in that it could cause facial disfigurement and blindness, but unlike the pox, it was not often fatal. Instead of sunken pits on the skin, neck tumors were its dreaded signature and legacy. But for salvation by the royal touch, which the English and French had long sworn by, the disease was treatable but not curable.

Pitying the waiting victims, Elizabeth darted surreptitious looks at those she would be touching: forty-some folk, as many men as women and several children. Her gazed snagged Dr. Caius's then Pascal's. Both looked wary, watchful. Mayhap, she thought, she had put—if not the fear of God—the fear of queen into them.

Turning carefully while her women draped her train behind her, Elizabeth Tudor sat on the throne and steadied herself for the ritual that would precede the touching.

W
OULDN'T TOUCH THIS WEIRD RUBBISH WITH A PIKE-MAN'S
staff,” Harry Carey whispered to his companion as he lifted their lantern toward the glass
jars on the shelves in the cellar of the Royal College of Physicians. “Looks like a damned butcher's shop. Wait till she hears about this.”

“But it could all be part of their trade,” Jason Nye, one of Cecil's scriveners, muttered. Two of Cecil's other secretaries were keeping the doctors' servants busy upstairs with questions. They'd gone to the front door while Harry and Nye, like foul footpads, had sneaked in the back.

The two men stood, Harry in disgust, Nye in awe, of things floating in what appeared to be—smelled to be— vinegar. An eyeball, an ear, a hand, a woman's breast, and things unnameable.

“They could have gotten those through accidents or necessary amputations,” Nye said, as if defending the doctors. “Or on a hunt. But for the hand and breast, they could be animal parts.”

“Could be,” Harry agreed, mesmerized as he squinted at the organs. He had seen such when deer were gutted but not pickled and put on display. “How about these then?”

They moved on to shelves of bones—obviously hu-man—a rib cage, even a grinning skull which Harry was tempted to turn to the wall.

“When the sextons bury new folk in city graveyards, you know the older bones are put in charnel houses or sometimes tossed aside, least of the poorer sort,” Nye said.

“Still, this kind of thing will give her reason to pursue them further, though I think she was wondering if we'd find corpses or at least effigies here. Look, you're the scrivener, so why don't you go through that stack of papers quick while I rummage about a bit more.” Harry pointed to a pile of paper impaled on a thick pin, the kind the doctors employed for bleedings if they didn't want to use a lancet.

“I'll need our light then,” Nye informed him and moved away with it.

Harry didn't like the idea of poking into the shadows down here, but they were both armed. There was absolutely nothing to fear, he tried to buck himself up.

E
LIZABETH FOUGHT BACK THE PANIC SHE OFTEN FELT
when she faced those who were so grievously afflicted that it made others stare. She tried to look only into the eyes of each scrofula victim as various doctors ushered them forward. Most of the ill women seemed awestruck and the men resigned; tears tracked down several cheeks. The children shuffled forward trustingly, and the queen squeezed each of their shoulders to stay them. One poor man, evidently a patient of Dr. Pascal, got a coughing jag and flecked her apron and hands with his saliva before Pascal pulled him away.

With each touch, her chaplains took turns reciting, “He shall lay hands upon the sick, and they shall
recover.” Another intoned the Lord's Prayer as the sufferers continued to come two at a time to kneel before her. The queen placed her hands on the head of each and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads. The latter was a part of the ritual that rattled both the Protestants and Puritans, but, in this instance, she didn't wish to tamper with tradition.

Each time, she repeated, “I touch thee and God heals thee,” then hung a newly minted gold angel coin on a ribbon around the patient's neck. The coins bore the image of the archangel Michael, and she knew a fierce underground trade in them abounded. People believed that, if they could not be touched for the Queen's Evil by their monarch, perhaps owning an angel coin, called a touch piece, could heal them.

C
AN'T BEAR TO TOUCH, LET ALONE SMELL SOME OF
these healing herbs down here either, like they're moldy or rotten,” Harry told Nye as the man skimmed through the papers stuck on the spike. “I'd be a night soil man afore I'd be a doctor.”

“Mm,” Nye said, bent over one parchment for a long while. “They do smell horrid, so you'd best tell Her Grace that. Physicians are supposed to buy herbs fresh from the apothecaries.”