“I am sure I can.”
“Can you give me two potions? One to make my husband loathe me; the other to make my lover continue in such love for me that he cannot rest until I am his wife?”
Mrs. Turner was thoughtful. “It is not so easy to help a married lady to another marriage,” she said.
“But why not?”
“Because it is always a little more dangerous when there is an unwanted husband.”
“I do not understand.”
Jennet said quickly: “My lady does not wish to harm her husband.”
“Of course not. But the difficulties are there. I think in such a delicate situation I must call in the help of the wisest man in London.”
“Who is that?” demanded Frances.
“My father, Dr. Forman.”
“I have never heard of him.”
“You will soon. He gave me the little knowledge I have; but he is well known for his genius. When you have refreshed yourself I propose that we leave for his house. I have told him that he might expect us.”
Jennet glanced anxiously as Frances, but Anne Turner had so won her confidence that Frances was ready to go wherever she suggested.
The room in which he would receive them had been made ready; the Countess of Essex would be by no means the first highly born client he had welcomed here. Often ladies of the Court, having heard of his fame, came to beg favors of him; and he sold them dearly.
He rubbed his hands gleefully; it was pleasant to think that a member of the noble family of Howard was coming to consult him.
On the walls hung the skins of animals; there was a stuffed alligator on a bench, and ranged about it bottles of colored liquid. Painted on the walls were the signs of the Zodiac; and a chart of the heavens was propped up on the bench. Hangings were drawn across the one small window; and candles in sconces had been placed about the room.
Dr. Forman was pleased with this room; he considered that it had a desired effect on the applicant before the talk began.
He had a sharp, clever face; he had lived almost sixty years and a great many experiences had been packed into those years. He had always thirsted after knowledge; and it had become clear to him, at a very early age, that he was an extraordinary man. As a child he had been tormented by the strangest dreams; and he had quickly discovered that, by telling these dreams and putting a plausible construction on them, making a guess at what had a very good chance of happening to some of his acquaintances, he very soon earned a reputation for having supernatural knowledge. He decided to exploit this.
Simon Forman was born at Quidhampton in Wiltshire. His grandfather had been governor of Wilton Abbey but, with the suppression of the Monasteries, was robbed of that post and given inferior employment about the Park.
One of Simon’s early occupations was to compile a genealogical tree which, he insisted, revealed that the Formans were a family of some gentility and that several of his forbears had been knights.
His pride had been deeply wounded in his childhood, for poverty was humiliating to one who was certain that he possessed unusual powers. But he never lost sight of the need for education, and when William Riddout, an ex- cobbler turned clergyman who had fled from Salisbury on account of the plague, came to live near the Forman family, Simon was allowed to take lessons with him.
Simon’s father had the same respect for learning as his son, and had in fact imbued Simon with this desire to improve himself; and when it seemed that Riddout could teach him no more, Simon was sent to a free school in Salisbury.
He had suffered there under a master named Bowle, who had beaten him severely on more than one occasion, so under him Simon lost a little of his desire for learning; but he was a sharp lad and managed to elude whippings more successfully than his fellow students.
Simon was pleased when his father decided to take him from this school and put him into the care of a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral. This man, whose name was Minterne, lived very austerely, and life in his household was sheer misery. There was never enough to eat and in winter the cold was almost unbearable.
Canon Minterne did not believe in self-indulgence and would not have coal in the house, although he did permit a little wood to be used—but not for burning. “Exercise,” he told Simon, “brings more comfort to the body than sitting over fires. If you are cold, boy, do as I do. Take these faggots and carry them up to the top of the house at great speed. When you have reached the top, come down again; repeat this until you are warm. That is the way to enjoy comfort in cold weather.”
The boy had been sorry for himself during his stay in the Canon’s house; but he had to suffer greater misery than that of austere living when his father had died and his mother, harassed by poverty, declared that she had not patience with a boy wasting his time on learning, and Simon must earn his keep now.
What humiliation! He, Simon Forman, the possessor of special powers, to be apprenticed to a dealer of Salisbury; moreover one with a wife who thought it her right to lay about her husband’s apprentices with a stick when the mood took her. He had no intention of giving up his dream of becoming a scholar though, and found a means of doing this. Lodging in the house of his master was a schoolboy, and Simon cajoled this boy into teaching him by night all that he had learned by day.
When he considered himself sufficiently learned to teach others, he ran away from the merchant’s house and became a schoolmaster; he then had a stroke of luck. He made the acquaintance of two lighthearted young men
