Paul Doherty: The Cup of Ghosts

Uncle Reginald was critical of the claims of other physicians. He bitterly attacked Lanfranc of Milan’s Science of Surgery and openly mocked physicians’ obsessions with urine, faecal matter and purgation. He was appreciative of the Arab commentators Averroes and Avicenna, deeply interested in Galen and, above all, in the writings of Bernard de Gordon of Montpellier, whose Regimen Sanitatis he would swear by. Uncle Reginald was fascinated by the beat of the blood in the wrist or throat, the odour of his patients, their eyes, tongue and the texture of their skin. ‘Observe,’ he would bark, ‘examine, then reflect.’ He was pessimistic on what he could achieve and was always downcast if he felt tumours or lumps within the body. On herbs and potions, however, he was most skilled, arguing that that was one field of knowledge where he could both sow and reap the harvest. I became equally proficient in the mixture and effects of different plants: what proportion should be given, what results expected.

‘We must be humble,’ Uncle Reginald argued, ‘and recognise our limitations. Herbs are our weapons, the arrows in our quiver, the one thing we can control; that, and the cleanliness of what we do. Mathilde,’ he would lecture as he walked up and down some chamber, ‘the cause of infection I do not know, but its effects are all around us. So wash your hands, clean a wound, apply a pure poultice, and always remember that dirt and death walk hand in hand.’

For eight years that was my life, my being, my very soul; from its first blossoming to the full ripening. Uncle Reginald! Whether I trotted beside him down a row of beds or was sent like some herald into the city to buy this or that. Other young women married, but my life was Uncle Reginald. God rest him. God knows, I have spent most my life, at least in physic, obeying him.

My life, at least with Uncle Reginald, ended as I have said on Thursday 12 October 1307, when Philip of France, Philip ‘Le Bel’, he of the light blue eyes and silver hair, struck like a hawk and destroyed the Temple. My uncle and I had been visiting a farm the Temple owned just outside Paris, the fields around it being rich in herbs. We unexpectedly returned to the city. My uncle decided to stay in a small tavern close to the Porte de St Denis. From its cobbled yard I could see the soaring gallows of Montfaucon and the red-tiled roof of the Filles de Dieu, the Good Sisters, who always gave the condemned criminals, hustled up to be hanged from the great gibbet above its deep pit, a final cup of wine. On that heinous day my uncle acted like a man condemned to those gallows. He was troubled, agitated and ordered me to keep close in my chamber just beneath the eaves of the old tavern.

I, of course, was desperate to return to Paris: a farmer’s daughter, I had become bored with the beauties of nature, its open fields, lonely meadows, brooding granges, rat-infested barns and silent, twisting track-ways. I was only too pleased to forsake them all and plunge into the city of Paris, as eagerly as any miser would a horde of silver coins. I’d grown to love the city, with its various markets: the Place Mordare for bread, the Grand Chatelet for meat, Saint Germain for sausages, the Petit Pont for flour and eggs, the great herb market on the quayside of the Ile de Cite, or Le Marche aux Innocents where you could buy anything you wanted. Noise and gaiety were my constant companions. People shoving and pushing, whispering and shouting:

‘Dieu vous garde!’

‘ Je vous salue! ’

I’d been my uncle’s messenger to this place or that, coursing like a hare through the city. By my twentieth summer I was still fascinated by the chestnut-sellers from Normandy, the cheese-hawkers, the plump apple-sellers with cheeks as red as the fruit they sold. My uncle had taught me all about the tricks of the market. Innkeepers and wine merchants who mixed water with wine, or bad wine with good. Women who thinned their milk and, to make their cheeses look richer and heavier, soaked them in broth. Drapers who laid their cloths out on the night grass so in the morning they weighed heavier. Butchers who soaked their meat or fish-mongers who used pig’s blood to redden the gills of stale and discoloured fish. Clothiers who had one yardstick for selling and another for buying. He also advised me to be wary about those who sold goods in dark streets to deceive the unsuspecting, and made me memorise all I learnt and observed about the city I loved. Each trade had its quarter. Apothecaries in the Cite. Parchment-sellers, scribes, laminators and book-sellers in the Latin Quarter. Money-changers and goldsmiths on the Grand Pont. Bankers near the Rue Saint Martin and mercers in the Rue Saint Denis. The colour and hurly-burly of city life never seemed to die. Richly brocaded burgesses sweeping down to picnic by the Seine. Knights in half-armour riding by on fine palfreys or noble chargers. Lavishly dressed gallants posing with falcons and sparrowhawks on their wrists. It was like visiting a church and going from one wall painting to the next. So much to see! I took to it with all the vigour and curiosity of youth.

I loved the city! I was well protected. My future ran like a broad, clear thoroughfare before me. When I wasn’t at my studies or in the hospital, I’d wander from quarter to quarter, observing the beggars in the church doors or by the bridges; the peasants coming in from the country with their carts and wheel-barrows; the artisans and craftsmen shouting and gesticulating from behind their stalls; the wandering jongleurs, monks and friars in their dark gowns and pointed hoods; the canons of the cathedral with all their pomp and ceremony; the ermine-clad professors of the Sorbonne and their motley retinues of students and scholars. Royal couriers beat their way through the crowd with their white wands of office. Heralds in resplendent tabards, trumpets lifted, shrilled out harsh music to draw the attention of the crowds before a proclamation was read out. Harness jingled like bells as nobles from their great houses rode down past the bridges and gates of the city to hunt in the fields beyond. Ladies lounged in their litters, taking the air. Judges in their bright scarlet, surrounded by royal men-at-arms, processed down to the law courts. Pilgrims off to Saint Genevieve or Notre Dame chanted their prayers or sang sweet hymns. Prisoners, manacles held fast, were driven under the whip to the Grand Chatelet. Clerks and scribes scurried along to the great palace and castle of the Ile where Philip ruled France as a hawk does its field, ever-watchful, ever-menacing.

I was impatient to visit these city sights again. I couldn’t understand my uncle’s harshness. He towered over me in the tap room of that tavern, grasping me by the shoulder, pushing me towards the stairs.

‘Go up to your chamber, girl!’

He very rarely called me that. It was always ‘Mathilde’, or ‘ ma fille ’. Uncle Reginald’s face looked strained, a haunted look in his eyes, he kept glancing over his shoulder towards the door.

‘What’s the matter, sir?’ I demanded.

‘Nothing,’ he whispered, then he quoted a line from the Gospels: ‘ Tenebrae facta . Darkness fell.’ I recognise that phrase now, the description given to the night Judas left to betray Christ. Again, I tried to reason. I was hoping to go into the city, perhaps visit one of the taverns near the hospital, mix with the scholars, dance a jig or indulge in some other revelry. My uncle lifted his hand and glared at me.

‘I have never struck you. I will if you do not obey my order. Go to your chamber, small as it is, rat-eaten and mouse-gnawed, it’s the safest place for you. Stay there until I come.’

I hurried up the stairs, my feet drumming on the wooden steps. I pulled aside the battered door and flung myself into the chamber, blinking furiously, trying to quell the tears of fury stinging my eyes. The chamber was narrow and dirty though the bed was comfortable, its sheets clean — my uncle would insist on that — whilst the servant who brought my food up had covered it with a wooden bowl against the mice which scurried in the corners. Cobwebs hung like sheets from the rafters. I moved to the window, a small wooden casement door filled with horn, and pushed it open. At least I could look out over the city. The sky was a dullish grey, a cold wind had risen. It was that dying time as autumn fades and winter with icy touch makes its presence felt. The room was cold. I closed the window and noticed the wine just within the door, a battered pewter pot next to a small bowl. I filled the bowl to the brim and drank quickly, then went across and lay on the bed.