Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (38 page)

‘Thomas,’ she says. ‘Will you pluck some hair from the tail of your horse? About twenty strands perhaps. As long as you can find them, good and strong and not likely to break.’

She asks Goodwife Popham for some hot wine.

‘We’ll need plenty of it, in a copper dish, as well as linen and candles and a flask of oil of roses. And the whites of five of your freshest eggs.’

Up in the bedchamber Sir John is awake but only just. His eyes are slots and his tongue is thick. With the treatise by her side, Katherine begins going through Fournier’s instruments, picking out those she will need.

She finds the
spongia somnifera
, soaked in the anaesthetic Fournier uses to stupefy his patients. There is an inch or so left in the flask, but is that a lot? Or not very much? She will have to wait to see how powerful it is.

After a moment Goodwife Popham brings a large copper dish of steaming red wine. Thomas shuffles in behind her with the horsehair. Behind him come Dafydd and Owen, then Black John, then all the others. Only Walter remains downstairs.

‘You can put the dish on the floor,’ Katherine tells Goodwife Popham. ‘And can you bring some blood-warm water in a ewer? And a dish of salt. And as many candles as you have? And, Geoffrey, will you get those damned dogs out of here.’

While Geoffrey shoos the dogs, she curls the horsehair into the wine and places the instruments on them to hold them down. Then she dips the sponge into the flask. She has no idea what is in it, but the scent is heady, almost overpowering the sweet reek that rises from the sheets whenever Sir John moves. She places the sponge under his nose. He looks at her over it, his eyes like a pug’s.

‘Courage,’ he whispers, placing a damp hand on her wrist. ‘Have courage, Kit. It is God’s will, and He will be at your shoulder, guiding your hand.’

She nods. Sir John’s pupils swell as the fumes take effect. Then the lids come down. His breathing eases. He begins to snore.

Everyone relaxes.

‘Help me roll him, will you?’

Richard and Geoffrey gently rock the old man around so that he lies face down on the side of the bed, his legs hanging over the edge with his knees among the rushes on the boards of the floor. His bulk is impressive.

‘Get a cushion, will you?’ Katherine says. ‘One that is not too valuable. And some rags, and warm water.’

Dafydd goes off in search and comes back with them and the ewer of blood-warm water. They slide the cushion under Sir John’s knees, and then swaddle them with rags. Katherine nods at Richard and he eases the bloodstained braies down past his father’s thighs to reveal a pair of pink buttocks covered in a white furze. Just then he farts, a soft wheeze that ends in a rapid blurt. A splash of dark blood stains his pale calf.

‘You’ll have to spread his legs,’ Katherine says.

Geoffrey has finished lighting candles in lamps. He looks at Richard, who swallows.

‘All right,’ he says. Each bends to take one of Sir John’s heavy thighs and they haul them apart. She can hear the gasps of the men behind her. Between Sir John’s legs, just above the flopping sack of his testicles, is a dark wound the size of a thumbnail, weeping a pink-tinged, foul-smelling discharge. Buried under the powdery skin on his buttock, she can see a ribbed, slightly nubbled filament of scar tissue.

That must be the fistula.

Sir John moans.

‘Thomas,’ Katherine says. ‘Be ready with the sponge should he stir.’

Thomas climbs on to the bed from the other side, relieved not to have to watch.

‘Arderne recommends a clyster first,’ she says, talking mostly to herself. She takes the copper funnel from the dish of wine and holds it up. Under it hangs a dog-legged tube, as thick as a thumb, the end of which is punctured with numerous small holes. She fills it, lets the wine run out into the dish and then lets a thin line of the rose oil run over the funnel’s end before, taking it gently in both hands, she coaxes it into Sir John’s rectum.

He stiffens.

Thomas dips the sponge into the flask.

‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Not too much. Not yet. It can’t be good for him.’

Thomas nods.

‘Dafydd, pour the water in will you? Steady now.’

Dafydd steps forward and pours some from the ewer into the funnel. It gurgles down the tube.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘More.’

He pours more and water streams out on to the rushes below. She watches the dark head of the fistula bulge as if a worm were trying to escape the skin, and then the wound begins to weep a pale liquid. Small lumps of matter follow, and then uneven rivulets of bloody water dribble down his legs. When the flow slows she removes the copper and more water rushes from his anus.

Then she takes the probe. It is about eight inches long, beaded at both ends, made of fine malleable silver. She shakes the wine from it and then mutters a paternoster before she slowly screws one blunt end into the mouth of the fistula.

Again Sir John flinches and Katherine nods at Thomas. He wafts the sponge under Sir John’s nose.

Katherine guides the probe along the canal of the fistula, forcing the corrupt flesh before it, feeling the soft give of rotten tissue until it meets a different sort of resistance, spongy and unyielding.

The probe has travelled perhaps three inches and she guesses it is now in Sir John’s rectum. This is the thing she has been most anxious about, the actual slipping of the fingers into the anus. She dips her hand in the wine and then asks Richard to pour a few drops of oil of roses on her fingers. Then she guides them between the cleft of his spread buttocks and into the swirl of hair that marks his anus.

It is startlingly hot, almost burning hot. She nearly pulls them out. She presses on though. She slides her two fingers up to the second knuckle until she can feel the probe pressing through a hard puckering in the rectum wall. This must be the start of the fistula. Blood that is almost black oozes down between her fingers and snakes down her wrist. She puts her fingertips on the end of the probe and pushes from the other side, until something gives, and she can feel the probe’s nub against her fingertips. She breathes out.

Then she takes hold of the probe and levers it down, bending it, running it against her fingers so that it pushes its way out of Sir John’s anus with a gobbet of thickened blood and other corrupt matter.

Sir John mews in his sleep. Thomas twitches the sponge towards him. Katherine shakes her head. She sits back and looks at what she has done. She shudders, wishes she could give up, wishes herself elsewhere, but now she has started—

She twists a few strands of the horse’s hair into a loop and wraps it around the bead at the end of the probe that remains sticking out of the fistula. Then she pinches the anus end of the probe and gently tugs it all the way through, so that it takes with it the horse’s tail hair, just as if she were making a stitch in the cheek of his buttock.

She hears the men behind her leave the room one by one. The blood has drained from Richard’s face and Geoffrey is green.

‘No man should have to see his father like this,’ Richard says.

Katherine, on her knees behind Sir John, has a far worse view.

‘No man should have to see anyone like this,’ she says.

The smell of disease and corruption is powerful and Katherine cannot stop herself softly gagging. She uses a rag to wipe the blood from around the old man’s buttocks. His testicles are heavy, bald; the sack is like a pear, the skin whorled.

‘What next, Thomas?’

Despite having read Arderne’s work three or four times, she cannot remember everything.

‘Knot the two ends of the ligature, and then tighten them using the tendiculum, so that you obtain a straight line between the fistula’s opening and the anus.’ He coughs as he finishes.

Katherine fiddles the horsehair over the brass screw on the tendiculum and attaches it to the other end. Then she winds it tight over its polished rosewood point. The hair bites into the inflamed and crusted flesh around the puckered mouth of the fistula.

She asks Geoffrey to come around and hold it still while she finds the snouted needle, about a foot long, with a groove running its length. She slips this into the hole, following the line of the horsehair. Blood and something else leak out and run on to her shoes.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘This is it. Thomas, be ready. Richard, can you bring that sponge? And Geoffrey, hold the candle steady.’

All three nod, Richard clutching a sponge stained red with wine, thickened by rose oil and egg albumen.

‘When I have made the cut,’ she says, ‘we must first mop the blood. We need to clean the channel as far as is possible. Then we must sit him up so that he presses down on the wound and we must wake him and feed him meat and wine.’

Sir John is still snoring. Drool stains the sheet under his mouth.

She feels in the dish of wine for the scalpel. It is bone handled, beautifully made, the sharpest thing she has ever seen. She touches it to the needle and then slides its blunt edge into the groove.

She gives Thomas a nod and then begins.

Thomas reminds her to insert the cochlea.

She stops.

The cochlea. Of course. She finds the little ivory spoon in the wine, and inserts it carefully into Sir John’s anus. She turns it and then takes the snouted needle and taps it against what she hopes is the cup of the spoon. This will stop her cutting too far, cutting into the rectum.

She returns to the scalpel and nudges it towards the flesh. After a moment’s hesitation, the skin splits. Blood wells into the cut. She slides the scalpel down, parting the skin and the layer of pale waxy fat below. Blood fills the cup of her hand. She can see no detail of what she is cutting.

‘The sponge! Clean the blood away.’

Richard wipes it away and the wound is clear for a moment. She finishes the cut. Feels the tap of the scalpel against the cochlea. The tendiculum comes free in her hand.

‘The sponge.’

Richard applies the sponge, smearing the blood. Katherine drops the needle and the scalpel back in the wine.

‘Give me that,’ she says and takes the sponge. She holds it against the wound, wiping away shreds of black corrupted flesh, cleaning the scar of the fistula.

She discards the old sponge and finds a fresh one to press against him.

Sir John is twisting on the bed.

‘Quick,’ she says. ‘Sit him up.’

She holds the sponge in place as the three men roll Sir John over and sit him up. His head lolls as if he is drunk. Thomas holds him. Sir John’s face is very pale and she can feel his breath on her blood-damp hand. He is wheezing, but is still alive – for the moment, at any length.

‘Get his trunk,’ she says. ‘Put it on the bed and sit him against it.’

Richard and William lift the old chest on to the bed and set it behind Sir John.

‘How did it go, do you think?’ Geoffrey asks.

‘The cutting was easy. Now is the hard part. To stop the bleeding and hope for no putrefaction. It is why I put all the instruments in hot wine.’

Geoffrey nods.

‘And what does that do?’

It is a good question.

‘I don’t know,’ she answers.

Geoffrey grunts.

They wrap a blanket around Sir John and put his hat on his head so that he does not catch a chill. His eyelids are blue, his pouchy cheeks chalky, each bristle catching the candlelight.

‘Poor old bugger,’ Geoffrey says.

Time passes. The shadows deepen. The dogs come back and are chased away. Sir John’s breathing flutters. Katherine bites her lip. She can feel his heart beating and a surge of fear comes with every irregularity.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Roll him back.’

They carefully let him down on to his back and then turn him. She dares not peel away the sponge though she wants to. She stares at it. Though it glistens, nothing moves. She thinks the blood has stopped coming.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Let’s get him comfortable.’

When he is lying on his front with his head canted to one side, the sheets pulled up to his ears and two blankets across his back and legs, she wipes her hands on a strip of linen.

Goodwife Popham arrives with more candles, some wine and a cut of beef, and leaves them on a sideboard while Geoffrey gathers together the blood-soaked rushes. Neither can look at Katherine.

‘We’ll have to watch him,’ she says. ‘Someone’ll have to be with him all the time now. And keep that sponge handy. The pain will be bad.’

‘He can stand the pain,’ Richard says. He is staring down at his father with the linen bandages piled in his hands. ‘He’s a tough old bird.’

Katherine nods.

‘Thank you for what you’ve done, Kit,’ he says. ‘You are a natural leech. You should be out making your fortune, instead of wasting your time here looking after us.’

‘We’ll see,’ she says. ‘If he can get through the next few days without putrefaction, then, well. We’ll see.’

‘You need a wash,’ Richard says, and nods at her legs. Her hose are sodden, baggy at the knee, heavy with the enema water and blood. She peels the wool from her thigh. Then she lets it go and tries to stifle her cry.

‘What is wrong?’ Richard demands.

‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Nothing.’

She feels her face flame. The blood is not all Sir John’s. Some of it is Katherine’s. Her time has come to flower.

THE DAYS PASS
slowly. To begin with they take turns to sit with Sir John, wafting the soporific under his nose whenever he begins to twitch in his sleep, taking turns to lift his sheets and smell for the signs of putrefaction. On the fourth day the soporific runs out, or he becomes immune to its effects, and he begins to surface. He babbles and murmurs and flinches in his sleep like someone in the grip of a nightmare.

Goodwife Popham brings a dwale of poppy seed, hemlock and henbane, lettuce heart and the root of a mandrake plant, bound together with the bile of the pig and sweetened with wine to mask its bitterness. It is an old recipe of her mother’s, she tells them, and her mother’s mother before her. To get Sir John to drink it, they use the same funnel with which Katherine gave him the enema and afterwards he sleeps like a dead man.