However Ned wasn’t the Divine Julius. Nor could one equate this collection of drunken clerks and law apprentices to the steady dependable legionaries of Imperial Rome. So he’d offered the survivors the promised pence and praised their commitment if not their acts. His daemon though noted the most taken in drink for a later round of dice or cards.
That failure had of course led to his ahh very delicate situation with Mistress Delphina of the once flowing red hair and his sudden and precipitous exit out the window into the cold, cold night. And as he’d already discovered this worked wonderfully as a distraction. However, and damn but those ‘howevers’ slipped in so easily, his ‘rescue’ from the pursuing Fleece roisters had been somewhat humiliating and it didn’t matter how that was dressed up by his daemon it didn’t change one very simple fact. After his merry band of revellers became ‘distracted’ that left Mistress Damn her Black and her miserable minion Roger as his sole and unexpected source of salvation. Ned chewed over that very disagreeable memory. Given the chance she’d pulled another trick from her satchel and between that sulphurous stench and Gruesome Roger’s cudgel, the Fleece roisters had fled. That was bad enough to suffer but to there had been further humiliation to come in the shape of Meg’s amused laugh as she surveyed his mostly unclothed condition and instantly came up with a number of practical and dire problems that he was due to endure unless Master Bedwell immediately followed her strict regime of remedies.
A very diffident knock drew his attention to the doorway, and Rob cracked open the door sufficient to poke through his head. The sounds of feasting and carousing surged past reminding Ned all too fully of what he was missing. Rob made a series of lip chewing faces and Ned held up a hand and sighed deeply. “Yes Rob, I know, I know-it must be time. All right, bring them in.”
Several slightly unsteady revellers filed into the room all possessing that silly expression informing the observer that they were about to partake in the most amusing of larks.
Ned pulled up his heaped cloaks and gowns and stretched out his legs. “How much longer?” he asked.
At the clearly bitter tone of the question Rob’s face continued through a brief spasm of embarrassed contortions and the apprentice smith’s hands twisted his grasped cloth cap almost fit to tear. “Ahh Ned, I’m sorry but…but Meg said it was a sovereign remedy for this affliction. I mean its better this than calling in a doctor of physick.”
Ned scowled at the answer. He didn’t want to think about what a doctor’s cure would be, or how painful and expensive-if it worked. “All right, all right. We’ll bow to her superior knowledge of practical physick and hedge potions.”
Rob looked relieved and gathering the inebriated band in a circle around Ned then unfastening their codpieces with those dopey grinning expressions of the drunkenly amused they began Meg’s sovereign remedy. Sweet Adeline of the interesting pleasures once said there were gentlemen at the Biddle who paid handsomely for this as a diversion. As far as Ned was concerned those gentlemen were welcome to it. As the treatment began and the resulting flow of ‘liquid’ glowed red gold in the light of the fire, Ned loudly cursed Meg Black, Flaunty Phil, Delphina the vixen, the Wool’s Fleece and that stupid measle Richard Reedman!
Rob gamely tried to lighten his friend’s mood and tentatively patted him on the shoulder. “Y’know Ned, its only another day of this according to Meg, so tis better than loosing toes to the black rot.”
Ned gave back another scowl and tried vainly to draw himself way from the promised cure as it splashed over his bare legs. Damn them all to the nether most regions of Hell! Someone was going to pay for this humiliation. All he had to do now was work out just who that should be. Oh by all the cursed demons and Satan’s imps, why did the accepted remedy for suspected frostbite have to be copious quantities of warm fresh urine? At least, whispered his daemon, there was some consolation. After all it could be worse…it could’ve been his nose.