Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

I nodded, much relieved.

‘Though clearly troubled in his mind,’ the doctor said.

We were in the courtyard behind the George, and clouds had killed the sun. The air was warmer than London but still had the knife-edge of February. Yet the doctor carried her cloak over one arm and the other had its sleeve rolled to the elbow, and the arm was speckled like a hen’s egg.

‘Troubled, mistress?’

‘Oh.’ She shrugged lightly. ‘He mumbles words that are… anguished. But not clear,’ she said hastily. ‘Not at all clear.’

‘Words?’

…wishing… that she might quietly succumb, in the deep hours before dawn, to some swift Maybe I’d gone pale.

‘Anyway,’ the doctor said brightly, ‘he’s not the only one I’ve seen with the fever this week. ’Tis sent from France or Spain, I reckon. Where did you lie before arriving here?’

I told her Bristol and she nodded, as if this explained everything. Across the yard, one of Cowdray’s boys carried hay into the stables. The doctor saw me looking at her bare arm and, frowning, rolled down her sleeve.

‘I’ll need to see him again in two days. He must needs lie in his chamber till then.’

‘And how would you suggest I make him do that?’

She smiled, her front teeth slightly crooked. She was younger than I’d thought her in the dimness of the inn. Especially for her trade – in London I knew of no women of any age who were qualified doctors, only wise-women working in the shadows, and I’d not imagined it being so different out here.

‘Am I to assume,’ I said, ‘that you’ve aided his sleep?’

‘A harmless potion, that’s all.’

‘Containing?’

‘Mostly valerian and hops.’

I nodded. Jack Simm would approve.

‘The other constituents I’ll keep to myself,’ the doctor said. ‘Be assured that sleep will do most to make him well. Meat is not necessary – not that he’ll want any – but you should see to it that he has as much fresh water as he can drink. And a bigger pot to piss in may also be required, for he must piss away the fever. Oh… and it would do no harm if some of his drinking water was from the holy well.’

‘Oh?’ Why some water should be held sacred is something that’s long interested me. ‘Would prayer not suffice?’

‘The well’s renowned for giving strength. Its water runs red, like… blood.’

‘Or iron?’

‘Or iron. The holy well,’ she said, with a heavy patience, ‘is just its name.’

‘And this well is where?’

‘Master Cowdray’s boy will show your servant.’

‘I think,’ I said, not quite knowing why I spoke thus, ‘that I’d like to see it for myself.’

‘Well…’ She paused. ‘I suppose I could take you. It isn’t too far from here.’

No doubt the time spent on guiding me to this holy well would be added to her charges. But I was sensing that it might be worth it in other ways, for it was beginning to seem that this young woman was not such an orthodox piss-sniffer after all.

‘Thank you. Mistress…?’

‘Borrow.’ She shook out her cloak, spun it about her shoulders. ‘Eleanor Mary Borrow. Do you wish to call your servant to accompany us?’

‘He’s not my servant.’

Martin Lythgoe had gone up to check on his master, leaving me to pay the doctor. I’d get the money back when Dudley was well enough to undo his purse.

Mistress Borrow bent to pick up her cloth bag, but I’d reached for it first.

‘Might I… carry this for you?’

She shrugged.

‘If you wish.’

In London it would be considered unseemly for a man to walk in such isolation with a young woman he’d barely met, but it seemed to worry this one not at all. Being a doctor, I supposed.

The bag must have had pouches inside for the potions and the leeches or whatever she carried around, for it didn’t rattle when I slung the strap over my shoulder.

‘I’ve nothing in there to hide,’ she said. ‘if that’s what you were thinking.’

‘No, no, I didn’t…’ Even my attempts at crude chivalry were ever misinterpreted. ‘Where did you train, mistress?’

‘Oh…’ She was walking swiftly across the yard towards the rear gate. ‘I’ve studied for many years.’

‘You don’t look old enough’ – catching up with her – ‘to have studied for many years.’

She stopped at the gate, a hand on the bolt, and looked up at me, her eyes widening.

‘I don’t look sixty years old?’ Her head on one side. ‘What a marvellous thing is my father’s elixir of youth.’

‘Little short of miraculous. How old’s your father?’

‘Oh… he must be near to ninety years, now. Though looks barely fifty.’

Turning quickly away, Mistress Borrow drew back the bolt with a clank which almost, but not quite, obscured what I thought might be laughter.

‘You’re following your father’s trade?’ I said.

‘And my mother’s,’ she said. ‘Though my poor mother’s been dead for…a while.’

The gate had opened on to a patch of greensward, grazed by half a dozen geese, behind the high street. I followed Mistress Borrow onto an earthen path alongside it.

‘Both your parents were doctors?’

‘My father still is – he’s the finest doctor in the west. Would have come with Master Cowdray to your friend but had been summoned to the bedside of an old woman about to quit this world. No, my mother grew herbs. My father uses them.’

‘And you grow them still?’

‘I borrow them – from the land.’

Oh, these clearly were not physicians as I was used to them in London. This sounded to me like a cunning man married to a wise woman. Which was like a breath of air to me, but Mistress Borrow could not know that.

Ahead of us, pale as ash, rose a high and elegant tower. The church of St John the Baptist, I imagined, having read of it in my research. Leland calls it fair and lightsome.

‘A proud tower,’ I observed.

‘Built by Abbot Selwood a century ago.’

‘And who cares for it now?’

‘Who cares for anything?’

She walked on, head down, dark brown hair flowing behind her, unrestrained by cap or coif. We passed through the churchyard, emerging at last on to the high street, where I saw a baker’s shop doing good business and a man having less success selling sheep fleeces from a cart. I followed Mistress Borrow along the street, which wound uphill past a building site backing onto the abbey wall – doubtless the plan was to use this as a supporting wall for new homes, but nobody was working on the site, and I recalled Cowdray:

If you takes a stone from the abbey and puts it into your wall, you should kneel and do penance every morning for seven weeks. Or ’tis likely your house will not be at peace.

But back at the inn Mistress Borrow had sounded sceptical. I caught up with her again.

‘The ghost of Abbot Whiting… do you not believe he’s seen?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said that such rumours might be employed to deter people from stealing stone.’

‘Then do you believe that he’s seen?’

‘It doesn’t surprise me. The poor man has little cause for rest. But as I don’t go in there it isn’t my business.’

‘You don’t sound afraid.’

‘Because I remember the abbot. From… when I was a small child. I remember him walking through the town, not far from here. He stopped to talk to us, my mother and me. His face… I remember his wrinkly smile, and his eyes had a kindness, like…’ She looked up at me. ‘For a long time, I thought I’d seen the face of God.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Three or four years.’

People passed us, entering the pale Church of the Baptist. Outside, on the edge of the street, a young man was plucking discordantly upon a patched lute, another slapping at a goatskin drum, chickens pecking in the mud around them. It seemed to me, for a curious moment, as if the people were behaving as though in a play and feigning ordinary life. That the real life here happened on some other level.