‘I had no want of it any more. I do remember regretting that.’
Beston’s face softens. He likes contrition. ‘You regret a moment of foolish rebellion?’
‘I regretted not being sober enough to think of selling it.’
Beston coughs behind his hand. He leans back to exchange whispers with his colleagues. Then he says, with a gentleness that surprises Nicholas, ‘This was because of your wife and unborn child, I presume. In a distempered rage?’
‘You could call it that.’
‘Because you couldn’t save them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you expect to save all your patients, Mr Shelby?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then why should you have expected – of all whom you treat – to have saved her?’
‘You weren’t married to her, Mr Beston.’
A veritable outbreak of august coughing.
‘And from thence you fell into a decline,’ suggests Frowicke. ‘We have a report here, from about that time, of you being taken up by the watch for brawling drunkenly in Blackfriars churchyard.’ He passes the papers from which he’s gleaned this information to Beston, who studies them intently.
‘Cut-purses,’ explains Nicholas wearily. ‘They tried to rob me while I was too cup-shot to resist.’
‘When Mr Frowicke says “a” report, he means several – on differing occasions, that is,’ says Beston sadly.
‘They’re a quarrelsome lot around Blackfriars.’
Beston sucks his teeth. ‘So it would appear, Mr Shelby.’ He smooths over the papers with the palm of his hand. ‘You come to our attention again a while later, as a temporary physician at St Thomas’s on Bankside.’
‘Dispensing physic to the poor,’ observes another of the Censors, a portly man named Hedgecoe, whose jowly expression of self-contentment hasn’t altered by so much as a twitch since Nicholas sat down. ‘From what we can make out, you appear to have been performing the functions of a barber-surgeon there, without being a member of that Company. And without seeking payment from your patients.’
‘As you’ve pointed out, Mr Hedgecoe, they were the poor.’
‘And what exactly was it that you were offering them so generously?’ Beston enquires.
‘Only what I could be sure actually worked: setting bones, mixing plasters, stitching wounds, that sort of thing. Meat work.’
‘What do you mean by “worked”?’ asks Hedgecoe, still almost completely immobile.
‘Anything that had a visible, lasting and repeatable effect. I didn’t consult a patient’s horoscope before treatment, and I didn’t regale them with lengthy diagnoses in Latin they couldn’t understand. And I didn’t charge them money they didn’t have.’
‘No astrolabe? No horoscope?’ asks the fourth Censor, McLaren, a thin Scot with a narrow collar of pimpled red skin between his beard and his ruff. ‘How then would you know if the treatment you were prescribing was propitious?’
Nicholas shrugs. ‘Do you really think casting his stars is going to help mend a Bankside labourer’s broken hand before he has to seek parish charity because he can’t pay his rent?’
‘Are you claiming you have no need of astrology when making a diagnosis?’ McLaren asks, with apparently genuine puzzlement. ‘Did you not listen to your professors at Cambridge, Mr Shelby?’
‘I don’t believe that if a night-soil man is suffering from melancholia, it can only be because Saturn is in the ascendant. Or that he needs to give you a bowlful of his blood to have his humours balanced. For all I know, he’s just sick to death of hauling away other people’s shit.’
‘You’ll be telling us next that uroscopy is a waste of time, too – that the colour of a man’s water is no guide to the condition of his health!’ says Beston, astounded.
‘Ah, the ancient art of studying urine,’ says Nicholas, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. ‘Paracelsus calls that “mere gazing at piss”.’
McLaren appears to be attempting to eat his ruff. ‘The late Paracelsus of Switzerland?’ he growls between bites. ‘Are you one of his ranting disbelievers, Mr Shelby?’
‘No, but I’ve read some of his writings. If you want to know, I think he was right about one thing at least: theory alone, no matter how ancient, cannot by itself cure. It has to be tested. Proven. Otherwise it’s worthless.’
‘I think we should determine what else Mr Shelby has so rashly chosen to question,’ says McLaren, eyeing Nicholas as though he were a dangerous madman.
And so the examination proper begins. As is customary, it’s conducted in Latin. Nicholas does his best, but it’s soon clear that if they hold him to it, they might be here all day. So Beston admits defeat and reverts to English. Another mark set down against Nicholas.
‘How does the physician determine the extent of damage to the ventricles of the brain, following apoplexia?’ Beston asks, as though he were standing in a pulpit.
‘The taught method is by the strength of the breathing,’ Nicholas replies. ‘The heavier the breathing, the worse the damage.’
‘From where would you drain the blood in order to ease the symptoms of epilepsy, Mr Shelby?’ asks Frowicke.
‘From the cephalic vein.’
‘In the human eye, how many types of cataracts may be found?’ Hedgecoe asks, still almost motionless.
‘Seven – only four are curable.’
‘How would you remove them?’
‘With a needle, of course. Then apply a plaster of turbith, aloe-hepatica, mace and quibbes.’
The questions continue relentlessly for an hour. Nicholas answers them concisely and with humility. As for the cures and procedures that he has not observed working with his own eyes, he qualifies each answer with “It is taught…” He is even able to let his mind wander a little. He recalls that it was in this very building, less than a year ago, that he attended the dissection of a crippled vagrant boy – then without so much as a name – that began a journey that led Bianca into the hands of a killer. He wonders if Beston and the others truly understand how their vaunted theories can be so easily put to dark purposes.
When the sound of a loud argument in the street forces its way to the Censors’ attention, Beston calls an end to the hearing. He stands up and gathers his gown around him, a judge considering a capital sentence.
‘Mr Shelby, it is clear to us you are no charlatan. You appear to be uncommonly proficient in your knowledge.’
Nicholas braces himself for the inevitable but.
‘Nevertheless, your recent conduct has been at best… shall we say, erratic?’ Beston gives him a vicar’s look of sympathy. ‘We are by no measure indifferent to your recent loss, Mr Shelby. But you are a young man. You will surely marry again.’
That’s your diagnosis, is it? thinks Nicholas.
‘And we cannot have members of this great College behaving like drunken vagabonds. I might add that answering our questions with the phrase “It is taught…” implies to me that you consider yourself above many of your more learned colleagues. The Censors will consider this matter further. We will summon you again to hear our findings. God give you peace, Mr Shelby.’
Returning to the Jackdaw after delivering a syrup of mustard, honey and pellitory for Aggie Wyatt, wife of a Rotherhithe waterman, whose stubborn head-cold has resisted all other attempts at a cure, Bianca pauses at the top of the lane. Ahead of her, the twin signs sway gently in the breeze on their iron brackets: the jackdaw and the unicorn. Until this morning, catching sight of them has caused her heart to swell with pride.