“Your doctor is old and superstitious, the kind who is no use in the plague. I have discharged him and will personally assume your care, Monsieur. If you survive, you will find it in your heart to pay me, I am sure. If you do not, you will be added to my account in heaven. Now, let us get to work. This chamber is squalid and will not do!”
Edgar drifted in and out of consciousness. This red angel was a talker, and every time Edgar became sensate, he heard a torrent of words and exposition.
The only way to defeat the plague, the man was explaining, was to remove filth and effluents and administer apothecary medicaments. When the plague struck, he said, the streets had to be emptied of bodies and washed with fresh water, the corpses buried deep in quicklime, the trash burned, the houses of the victims cleaned with vinegar and boiled wine, the sheets kept clean and laundered, the servants to the dead and dying made to wear leather gloves and masks. He had no need to fear for himself, he chattered, as he had survived a mild case of the plague in Toulouse and was thus protected from future affliction.
But he insisted that nothing was as important as his medicines, and Edgar, scrubbed and clean, felt pleasant-tasting lozenges being pushed into his mouth followed by small mouthfuls of fresh, diluted wine. He heard the man telling him he’d return later with soup and bread, and Edgar was finally able to form some words and speak just above a whisper, “What is your name, sir?”
“I am Michel de Nostredame, Apothecary and Physician, and I am at your service, Monsieur.”
Chapter 23
TRUE TO HIS WORD, the physician later returned to Edgar’s bedside and for that, the sick man was grateful. More lozenges were administered and small chunks of bread soaked in a potage of vegetables. Edgar remained feverish and in pain, his body wracked by paroxysms of coughing, but the sight of his red angel soothed him and gave him a respite from despair. The bread stayed down in his stomach, and before long he felt his eyes growing heavy, and he let the blackness come.
When he awoke, it was night, and the room was dark except for a single candle burning on his table. His red angel was sitting in a chair staring down with a glazed look in his eyes. There was a copper bowl on the table, filled to the brim with water. It was this bowl that commanded the man’s full attention and every so often, he made the water move by wiggling a wooden stick into it. The candlelight played on the water’s surface and cast a fractured yellow glow up onto the man’s dark face. There was a soft humming emanating from his mouth, a low chant? He seemed fully absorbed, unaware he was being watched. Edgar thought he should ask what he was doing but before he could, fatigue overcame him again, and he drifted back to sleep.
In the morning, the light poured through his open window, and a refreshingly cool breeze wafted in. By the bed, there was a plate of salted cod carefully broken into little pieces, a chunk of bread, and a vessel of light ale. He had just the strength to take a few bites, then lift the chamber pot into service. He listened for any sounds in the house and, hearing none, found himself able to call out. There was no reply.
He lay awake waiting for the hopeful sound of footsteps on the stairs. Before the morning had fully passed, he was elated finally to hear them.
The red angel was back, with more lozenges and cloves of garlic. He seemed pleased with Edgar’s progress, and cheerfully told him that it was a good sign he was not yet dead. He quickly inspected the hen’s eggs in his armpits and groin but agreed to Edgar’s panicky pleas not to put pressure on them as they were fiery hot and agonizing. He made it apparent he intended it to be a flying visit because he kept his cloak on and moved about the room quickly, cleaning and freshening.
“Please do not leave so soon, Doctor,” Edgar said weakly.
“I have other patients, monsieur.”
“Please. Just a little company, I pray.”
The doctor sat and folded his hands on his lap.
“Was I dreaming?”
“When?”
“The night I saw you staring into a bowl of water.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. It is not for me to say.”
“Are you using witchcraft to heal me?”
The doctor laughed heartily. “No. I only use science. The critical elements are cleanliness and my plague lozenges. Would you like to know what they contain?”
Edgar nodded.
“They are my own formulation, one I have been refining since my doctoral years in Montpelier. I pluck three hundred roses at dawn and pulverize them with sawdust from the greenest cypress wood and mix in a precise blend of iris of Florence, cloves, and calamus root. I trust your mind will be too feverish to remember this list as it is a secret! I am counting on my lozenges to make me very rich and very famous!”
“You are ambitious,” Edgar said, managing a smile for the first time.
“I have always been so. My maternal grandfather, Gassonet, was an ambitious fellow, and he had a profound influence on my thoughts.”
Edgar tried to prop himself up. “Did you say, Gassonet?”
“Yes.”
Edgar was jolted. “That is not a common name.”
“Maybe so. He was a Jew. Lay yourself back down! You look flushed.”
“Please continue!”
“He was a great scholar from Saint Remy. From a young age he taught me Latin, Hebrew, mathematics, and the celestial sciences.”
“You are an astrologer?”
“I most certainly am. I still have the brass astrolabe that Grandsire bequeathed me. The stars have a present influence on all things on earth, including the diagnosis of the body’s ailments. Give me your birth date, and I will draw your chart tonight.”
“Tell me, can your stars tell me the date I will die?” Edgar asked.
Nostredame looked at his patient suspiciously. “They cannot, sir, but that is a very curious question, if I may say. Now, I advise you to chew three more lozenges, then go ye to sleep. I will return in the afternoon. There is a woman sicker than you on the rue des Ecoles who told me in her pitiful state this morning that if I did not come back to her soon, she would have to sew up her own shroud.”
For two more days, the doctor visited his patient and administered his prescriptions. Edgar was anxious to talk to the man and weakly pressed him to stay longer, but the doctor would protest and complain about the number of poor souls afflicted in the district. Then, one evening, when Nostredame flew in with lozenges and a pot of soup, he found Edgar sobbing uncontrollably.
“What troubles you, Monsieur?”
Edgar pointed to his groin, and cried, “Look.”
The doctor lifted the sheets. Both his inguinal folds were covered in bloody pus. “Excellent!” the doctor shouted. “Your buboes have ruptured. You are saved! If we keep you clean, I promise you, you will make a full recovery. This is the sign I have sought.”
He took his knife from his satchel and cut one of Edgar’s good linen shirts into bandages and cleaned and dressed the suppurating abscesses. He fed the man some soup and sat down wearily on the chair.
“I confess, I am tired,” Nostredame said. The setting sun was casting a golden glow into the room, which made the bearded, red-robed man look beatific.
“You are an angel to me, Doctor. You have delivered me from death.”
“I am gratified, sir. If all goes as expected, you will be restored to health within a fortnight.”
“I must find a way to pay you, Doctor.”
Nostredame smiled. “That would be most appreciated.”
“I have little money here, but I will write my father, tell him what you did, and ask him to deliver a purse.”
