This reminder to Edmund that if God mysteriously went missing from him, he could start to find him again in the Scriptures seemed to cheer and comfort him somewhat. I thought that the Meeting might end then, but it was Eleanor's request that we should spend five or ten minutes each seeking out some verse of the Gospels that was and always might be of particular comfort to us. And so we each went to fetch our own Bibles and then sat round in our semi-circle and made little readings from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All the Quakers, including Edmund, found passages most appropriate to what had happened during the Meeting about Jesus loving especially the poor and the childlike and saying, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden" and, "Suffer the little children" and so forth. But when it came to my turn, I chose the verse from Luke, Chapter Two, which describes the mortal fear of some common shepherds at the sight of God's messenger angeclass="underline" "And lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid…"
I do not really know why I chose it, except that I seem to have known it by heart all my life and that I wanted to say to Edmund that God surely frightens us and makes us feel lonely just as often as he comforts us. Such fear, as in the case of the shepherds, may be a prelude to a revelation of great importance, but then again it may not be. In my own case, it is usually fear of suffering and death and a prelude to nothing at all.
I bade goodnight to all the Keepers. I went to my linen cupboard and lit my lamp and I took this with me to Pearce's room, so that we had two lamps by which to work. I also took with me my surgical instruments, cleaned meticulously these days, with their silver handles polished.
As Pearce sat down on his narrow bed, I said: "I'll wager you have caught a summer chill and this is all."
"No," said Pearce, "I have had chills before and this is not one."
"Well, let us see…"
I began by taking up a tongue depressor and looking down Pearce's throat, which did not appear inflamed though I noted that his tongue was a little swollen and coated and that his breath was foul. I then examined his neck for swellings and found none. Then, guided by his hand, I put my hand on that part of his head that felt cold to him and through his thinning hair felt it to be moist, as if there was a sweating there.
This done, I asked him to take off his coat and shirt and to lie down on his bed, so that I could listen to his heartbeat and his breathing.
While he undressed, I made notes about the strange moistness of his head, the cause of which I could not at first fathom. Then I looked up.
Pearce stood before me, folding his shirt into a bundle, wearing only his frayed black breeches and stockings. I thought back to the last time I had seen his arms and chest unclothed, which was during my vigil at his bedside in the Olive Room at Bidnold. He had been as thin then as he always was as a young man, but now the change in his appearance was distressing beyond words to behold, for he was like a veritable skeleton, with his chest quite concave and every rib visible to me, seeming to have no covering of soft warm flesh on him at all, rather his bones appearing held together by his white skin.
"Pearce…" I stammered, forgetting in my shock at the sight of him, his constant entreaty to me to call him John.
"Yes," he said, "I know. I am grown a little thin."
"A little!" I blurted out. "What has happened to you? Have you been fasting?"
"No, I eat what is put before me. I do not know how this weight has been lost."
"Lie down!" I snapped.
Obediently, Pearce set aside his bundle and lay on his back on his bed. I brought the two lamps as near to him as I could and looked down at him and, truly, I wanted to cuff him about his head for allowing his body, invisible to us all inside his baggy clothes, to waste away to this degree.
I took up his wrist and felt his pulse and was relieved to find it quite strong. Then I bent over him and put my head on his chest and heard his heartbeat against my ear.
"It is the lung you should be listening to," said Pearce.
"I know," I said crossly. "Inhale deeply and exhale as slowly as you can."
The intake of breath was not smooth. It had a kind of spasm to it, as if there was a sobbing in the body.
"Inhale again and keep on with slow breaths until I tell you to stop," I instructed.
I listened for several minutes, moving my listening position a little after every second breath, then I told Pearce to turn over and I put my ear to his back, which is a most wretched part of the man, being very scabby with pimples, and all of what I heard made me afraid, for I was in no doubt that the lungs were in distress, having in them a quantity of mucus or phlegm which, if it is not got out, will in time fill all the lung tissue and bring the sufferer to a cruel death like a slow drowning.
"It is a poisonous congestion, is it not?" said Pearce, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, which I now saw were very heavy with tiredness.
"Yes," I said.
"And the sweating and coldness in my head?"
"Probably a beneficial evacuation. A means by which the matter is endeavouring to come out."
"And if it does not come out?"
"We will bring it out. But you must rest, Pearce."
"John."
"John, then! But you will be neither one nor the other and no name will matter one whit, if you allow yourself to die!"
"I cannot stay in my bed, Robert, when there is so much work to do here."
"You must stay in your bed, or the remedies I shall prescribe will have no help from you, only hindrance."
"No, I cannot. For we must reveal nothing of this to Ambrose or the others."
"Pearce," I said crossly, "please do not make me lose my patience! Have I not, a hundred times since we met at Caius, allowed you to command me and let you be wise and done this or that thing at your bidding? I have! So do not even consider contradicting me on this score. For I am determined you will do this one thing that I am ordering you to do, and that is to stay here in your bed and let us care for you and not to stir from this room till you are well. And if you do not do this, John, you will no longer be my friend or any true Friend to Whittlesea. You will be in your grave!"
Pearce then allowed his head to fall back on his pillow and he nodded. "Very well," he said, "but only for a little time. What will you prescribe?"
"Syrup of roses to warm your blood and soothe your coughing. A burdock poultice or a bread poultice for your head."
"And for the slime in the lung?"
"Sal Ammoniac."
"And a balsam?"
"Yes. We shall try several, dissolved in boiling water and inhaled."
"Good. It has all returned to you then, Robert?"
"What has returned?"
"The right knowledge for the right time."
"Perhaps."
"As of course it had to. For we can never truly unknow what we have known or unsee what we have seen, can we?"
"Probably not, John," I said. "Now please do me the favour of taking off your breeches and putting on your nightshirt."
Two weeks passed, during which I wished to turn all my thoughts and all my strength to the cures I was trying upon Pearce. But they were weeks in which I found myself subjected to a great clamouring from the people of George Fox and Margaret Fell who, whenever I went among them, begged me to let them come out and dance once again, informing me that dancing was the only cure for them and that all their madness was caused in the first place by the absence of music.
I laid the problem before the Keepers, but none had any solution. That the tarantella had had some beneficial effect on those allowed out that afternoon seemed certain; what was also certain was that, in those we had kept chained up, the music and clapping and shrieking had engendered feelings of rage and despair that took many days to subside.