Alchemy. Maureen Duffy

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СКАЧАТЬ we took our places with the whole household gathered together and the mummers began on their play of St George and the Turkish Knight that was such a piece of flummery, with its quack physician, Dame Betty, and mock fights between the two knights, that my lady was soon laughing. Then they fell to a morris with pipe and tabor, with fool and hobby horse and finally to the wassail: ‘God bless the mistress of the house’, which pleased my lady so much she clapped her hands to it and rose up to dance herself with me.

      After, Mr Samford led them away to be feasted and given their Christmas box and we too went to our supper. That night it began to snow and in the morning it lay a carpet six inches deep. Nevertheless we took coaches and with my lady’s chaplain rode into Salisbury to be there for public prayer for the Nativity with great solemnity and excellent singing of the cathedral choristers. Then we returned to dine in great state off many dishes of fish, meat and fowl brought in with a flourish by the servingmen accompanied on the fiddles. Many healths were drunk to her majesty, the countess, the country of Wiltshire, Wilton and the gentry present, for there had come several from roundabout with their wives to celebrate with my lady. There we drank also to absent friends, the young earl and other of the countess’ children as Master Philip who stayed with his tutor in Oxford and the Lady Anne who lay with her aunt at Penshurst so that my brains swam, for as a man I dare not refuse to drink as the ladies might.

      At last feeling my head begin to sink towards the trestle I staggered to my feet, bowed to my lady and left the hall as if going to piss. Unsure of finding my way to the jakes, I went out into the frosty night under the Great Bear hanging above, and hid myself behind a bush to lower my slops, hoping that no other would come out with the same intention and find me half squatting with my slops around my ankles. I had thought the cold air would clear my head but it had an effect quite otherwise. I feared but longed to lie down in the snow and sleep, yet forced myself back into the house where I found my own straw pallet, lay down and at once fell into a kind of swoon.

      The next morning I found myself suited as I had lain down with much relief that none had tried to undress me. My head still swam, but after a manchet of bread and some ale I was able to go to my lady who was still in her bed. I was afraid that she would be angry with me but instead she laughed and held out her hand for me to kiss.

      ‘Well child, there were those who wished to wake you for some sport but I saved you from them, for I thought you slept so sweetly with your mouth open. They would have thrown you into the horse trough.’

      ‘My lady is very kind.’ I had put on a clean shirt and hose and was relieved that I had not soiled my slops while I slept or rather lay in my drunken swoon.

      I had seen no more of Dr Gilbert since our first meeting. He was gone again to Devon to lie with his friends there, being of those parts. Now however when the feast was over he returned to the countess. I had determined not to quarrel with him but to keep my counsel if he should ask me anything. Only in matters touching my father I knew I could not be silent so I heard of his return with some trepidation.

      My lady had let it be known that the next day she would take up her care of the sick again that morning. There came a great press of poor persons to be cured, the weather being foul and winter sickness about. Some had fallen in the snow and gashed themselves. Others wanted for potions and medicines to take back to those too sick to go abroad themselves.

      All morning we were viewing and anointing and binding up, and after they were sent by my lady to the kitchen for bread, ale, broth and broken meats from her own table for many ailed more from hunger than any other sickness. My head cleared as I was kept running, fetching and carrying, grinding and mixing for the poor wretches who sought our help.

      At length when we had but one man more to cure that had slipped and broken his head, to which my lady laid self-heal as an unguent and bound it with a clean rag, came in Dr Gilbert to us.

      ‘You are too good madam in treating these wastrels. No doubt the man was drunk when he fell and came here in search of more ale to mend his head.’

      ‘I do not doubt it Dr Gilbert. Yet it must be mended or he cannot work and he and his family will fall as a charge upon the parish which we must all bear.’

      He had no answer to this except to bow his head in acceptance of her reasoning.

      ‘Amyntas,’ she went on, ‘fetch here the book that was sent to your father. I would have Dr Gilbert’s opinion on it.’

      Most unwillingly I went for it but yet I dare not disobey her.

      ‘This is scarcely new,’ he said when he had opened it. ‘This was out a year almost before your lord’s death.’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ she answered. ‘Matters do not reach us here so swiftly as in London. And it has lain in a neighbour’s house for some months, she not knowing where to send it. But this William Gilbert is he not of your family?’

      ‘Indeed no madam for he comes from the eastern parts, Suffolk or Essex as I believe though I have seen him often at court.’

      ‘But the matter of the book?’

      ‘I have spoken of it with Mr Francis Bacon. He believes there may be some use in it to find out latitude in navigation but he thinks little of such theories when they do not tend to the practical. He believes that only experiment or chance can discover useful truths, not idle speculation upon causes.’

      ‘What do you think Amyntas?’

      I saw that I trod on dangerous ground. ‘I have not yet had the chance to read it madam so can have no opinion.’

      ‘Come you must do better than that.’

      ‘If the world is a magnet madam and as some say, and my father believed, in perpetual motion about the sun, would we not be flung off among the other planets if there were not some force to bind us to the earth, as a lodestone draws and holds metal? And since knowledge gives rise to more and we can sometimes build as an arch from one part of knowledge to another by taking thought, then I think theory may be of good use when purified in the fire of practice.’

      ‘Ingenious boy. What do you to that Dr Gilbert?’

      ‘I think I may stick upon the wisdom of her majesty’s counsel rather than a mere boy. When were you at the university Master Boston?’

      ‘Never sir. My tutoring was all from my father. He too believed in the virtues of experiment, like Mr Bacon, as you say sir.’

      ‘And how came he to know her majesty’s physician?’

      ‘I believe they met sir at the Royal College of Physicians when my father had gone there about some business while Dr Gilbard, as he often writ his name, was treasurer. And he was often also wont to seek my father’s opinion, saying that he was uncorrupted by the court or the quest for money or position.’

      ‘Yet he looked to turn base metal into gold.’

      ‘He looked only for the truth sir not for private gain. He would have made his knowledge available to all the world had he come by it, and not hoarded it like a miser.’

      ‘So he may have said but we do not know how his resolution would have kept.’

      I was silent then for I knew from my father that Dr Gilbert’s pursuit of truth had been often directed towards gain and the filling of his own pockets as in his brother’s settling of Newfoundland and quest for the Northwest Passage, in which Dr Gilbert was a mover but not to the hazarding СКАЧАТЬ