Ken Follett - World Without End

Minnie was moaning, but half asleep. Caris looked anxiously at her complexion. Her face was flushed pink with strain. That was good – if she had been turning pale, it would have been a sign that the dose had been too strong.

Caris was always nervous about drugs. The strength varied from batch to batch, and she had no precise way of measuring it. When weak, the medicine was ineffectual; when strong, dangerous. She was especially frightened of overdosing children, though the parents always pressured her for powerful medicine because they were so distressed by their children’s pain.

At that point Brother Joseph came in. He was old, now – somewhere in his late fifties – and all his teeth had fallen out, but he was still the priory’s best monk-physician. Christopher Blacksmith immediately leaped to his feet. “Oh, Brother Joseph, thank God you’re here,” he said. “My little girl has a terrible burn.”

“Let’s have a look,” said Joseph.

Caris stood back, hiding her irritation. Everyone believed the monks were powerful doctors, able to work near-miracles, whereas the nuns just fed the patients and cleared up. Caris had long ago stopped fighting that attitude, but it still annoyed her.

Joseph took off the towel and looked at the patient’s arm. He prodded the burnt flesh with his fingers. Minnie whimpered in her drugged sleep. “A bad burn, but not fatal,” he said. He turned to Caris. “Make up a poultice of three parts chicken fat, three parts goat dung and one part white lead, and cover the burn with it. That will bring forth the pus.”

“Yes, brother.” Caris was doubtful of the value of poultices. She had noticed that many injuries healed well without bringing forth the pus that monks thought such a healthy sign. In her experience, wounds sometimes became corrupt beneath such ointments. But the monks disagreed – except for Brother Thomas, who was convinced he had lost his arm because of the poultice prescribed by Prior Anthony almost twenty years ago. However, this was another battle Caris had given up. The monks’ techniques had the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, the ancient writers on medicine, and everyone agreed they must be right.

Joseph left. Caris made sure that Minnie was comfortable and her father was reassured. “When she wakes up, she will be thirsty. Make sure she gets plenty to drink – weak ale or watered wine.”

She was in no hurry to make the poultice. She would give God a few hours to work unaided before she began Joseph’s treatment. The likelihood that the monk-physician would come back later to check on his patient was small. She sent Nellie out to collect goat dung from the green to the west of the cathedral; then she went to her pharmacy.

It was next to the monks’ library. Unfortunately, she did not have large windows matching those in the library. The room was small and dark. However, it had a workbench, some shelves for her jars and vials, and a small fireplace for heating ingredients.

In a cupboard she kept a small notebook. Parchment was expensive, and a text block of identical sheets would be used only for holy scriptures. However, she had gathered a stack of odd-shaped offcuts and sewn them together. She kept a record of every patient with a serious complaint. She wrote down the date, the patient’s name, the symptoms and the treatment given; then later she added the results, always noting exactly how many hours or days had passed before the patient got better or worse. She often looked back over past cases to refresh her memory on how effective different treatments had been.

When she wrote down Minnie’s age, it occurred to her that her own child would have been eight this year, if she had not taken Mattie Wise’s potion. For no good reason, she thought her baby would have been a girl. She wondered how she would have reacted if her own daughter had suffered an accident. Would she have been able to deal so coolly with the emergency? Or would she have been almost hysterical with fear, like Christopher Blacksmith?

She had just finished logging the case when the bell rang for evensong, and she went to the service. Afterwards it was time for the nuns’ supper. Then they went to bed, to get some sleep before they had to rise for Matins at three o’clock in the morning.

Instead of going to bed, Caris went back to her pharmacy to make the poultice. She did not mind the goat’s dung – anyone who worked in a hospital saw worse things. But she wondered how Joseph could imagine it was a good thing to put on burned flesh.

She would not be able to apply it until morning, now. Minnie was a healthy child: her recovery would be well advanced by then.

While she was working, Mair came in.

Caris looked at her curiously. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Mair stood beside her at the work bench. “I came to help you.”

“It doesn’t take two people to make a poultice. What did Sister Natalie say?” Natalie was the sub-prioress, in charge of discipline, and no one could leave the dormitory at night without her permission.

“She’s fast asleep. Do you really think you’re not pretty?”

“Did you get out of bed to ask me that?”

“Merthin must have thought you were.”

Caris smiled. “Yes, he did.”

“Do you miss him?”

Caris finished mixing the poultice and turned away to wash her hands in a bowl. “I think about him every day,” she said. “He is now the richest architect in Florence.”

“How do you know?”

“I get news of him every Fleece Fair from Buonaventura Caroli.”

“Does Merthin get news of you?”

“What news? There’s nothing to tell. I’m a nun.”

“Do you long for him?”

Caris turned back and gave Mair a direct look. “Nuns are forbidden to long for men.”

“But not for women,” Mair said, and she leaned forward and kissed Caris on the mouth.

Caris was so surprised that for a second she froze. Mair held the kiss. The touch of a woman’s lips was soft, not like Merthin’s. Caris was shocked, though not horrified. It was seven years since anyone had kissed her, and she realized suddenly how much she missed it.

In the silence, there was a loud noise from the library next door.

Mair jerked away guiltily. “What was that?”

“It sounded like a box being dropped on the floor.”

“Who could it be?”

Caris frowned. “There shouldn’t be anyone in the library at this time of night. Monks and nuns are in bed.”

Mair looked scared. “What should we do?”

“We’d better go and look.”

They left the pharmacy. Although the library was adjacent, they had to walk through the nuns’ cloisters and into the monks’ cloisters to reach the library door. It was a dark night, but they had both lived here for years, and they could find their way blindfold. When they reached their destination they saw a flickering light in the high windows. The door, normally locked at night, was ajar.

Caris pushed it open.

For a moment, she could not make out what she was looking at. She saw a closet door standing open, a box on a table, a candle next to it and a shadowy figure. After a moment, she realized that the closet was the treasury, where charters and other valuables were kept, and the box was the chest containing the jewelled gold and silver ornaments used in the cathedral for special services. The shadowy man was taking objects out of the box and putting them in some kind of bag.

The figure looked up, and Caris recognized the face. It was Gilbert of Hereford, the pilgrim who had arrived earlier today. Except that he was no pilgrim, and he probably was not even from Hereford. He was a thief.

They stared at each other for a moment, no one moving.

Then Mair screamed.

Gilbert put out the candle.