‘Dr Shelby, thank you for agreeing to come.’
It seems a strange thing to say, thinks Nicholas, when you’ve sent three men to drag someone from his bed – especially when you already pay him handsomely to be on call.
‘I am always at your service, Sir Robert,’ he says quietly, wishing it didn’t sound so much like an admission of guilt.
Robert Cecil rises and steps forward from his desk. There is a tension in his little body that almost dares you to recognize its imperfection, to ask him to his face how it is that a small man with a crooked spine can make even the most powerful dance to his tune. Nicholas has heard the tavern-talk: that the queen calls him Elf, or Pigmy. Given that the Cecils know almost everything that occurs in this realm, he wonders how Sir Robert bears the insult. Perhaps his hard carapace is more a defence against life’s slights than against the realm’s enemies.
‘Leave your gabardine there,’ Cecil says, indicating a high-backed chair in the corner. ‘I don’t wish my wife to think I’ve summoned a Thames waterman instead of a physician.’
‘Is Lady Cecil ill?’ Nicholas asks as he unlaces his coat. ‘Why didn’t your man say?’
But Cecil merely regards him with a critical eye. ‘Tell me, Dr Shelby, what exactly is it you spend my retainer on? That is the same white canvas doublet you were wearing when I sent you to spy upon Lord Lumley. When was that – two years past? Are you hoarding my stipend in case the Spanish come again? It won’t save you, you know. They’ll rob you of it and give it to the Pope to expiate their sins. So you might as well spend some of it on a good tailor.’
Nicholas tries not to sound sanctimonious. ‘I spend a little on lodgings and food, the rest I use to subsidize my medical practice, so that Banksiders can afford something better than the usual charlatans who peddle false remedies. In return, I come when you call. It is what we agreed when I accepted your patronage.’
Cecil shoots him a look of mock despair. Then he opens the door and ushers Nicholas through into the panelled corridor. Candles burning in silver sconces throw their two shadows back against the oak wainscoting. In Nicholas’s mind, one shadow is a man climbing the steps to a scaffold, the other a gargoyle watching from the crowd. Why is it, he asks himself, that whenever I’m in this man’s presence, my thoughts turn inevitably towards a violent fate?
At the end of the corridor they stop before a set of doors, their panels carved with the Cecil crest. Sir Robert raps his energetic little fist on the timber and calls out, ‘Madam, are you composed? Dr Shelby has arrived.’
The door opens onto a pleasant chamber hung with shimmering drapes and cushioned as Nicholas would imagine an Eastern harem to be. He remembers the craze for all things Moorish that swept London when the envoy of the Sultan of Morocco visited: Tamburlaine at the Rose theatre, shoemakers turning out oriental slippers, everyone gawping at the sight of dark-skinned men in exotic robes. Even Eleanor had insisted they turn their own chamber Turkish. But that was before…
He pushes the memory from his mind and follows Cecil into the room.
A slight, graceful woman of about thirty sits flanked by four ladies-in-waiting, an empty cradle at her feet. In her lap is a toddler, dressed in an embroidered smock that Nicholas reckons would set back a Southwark labourer the better part of a month’s wages. He has met Lady Elizabeth Cecil, daughter of Lord Cobham and wife to the Lord Treasurer’s son, before. And he knows she does not care much for him.
‘Is there really no other physician in London to attend us, Husband?’ she asks Cecil, putting her arms protectively around the child, who begins to grizzle loudly.
So it’s the son I’ve been called to treat, thinks Nicholas. And his mother doesn’t want me anywhere near him. This could prove a difficult diagnosis.
‘Madam, you know my opinion of doctors,’ says Cecil. ‘I have suffered the best of them, certainly the most expensive. They did nothing for me. I remain as I was born – disjointed. To my mind, I count Dr Shelby among the few honest ones I’ve met. At the very least, he will not lie to us.’
It is the first time Nicholas has heard Robert Cecil speak openly of his condition. He takes it as a cue, looking directly into Cecil’s wife’s eyes.
‘Lady Cecil, let us be open with one another. I assume you have heard what a few of the older Fellows of the College of Physicians say about me.’
His directness takes her by surprise. ‘I have. They say that in some matters of physic you are a heretic.’
A sad smile – quickly mastered. ‘And I do not deny it, Lady Cecil. When I discovered that what I had learned wasn’t enough to save the woman I loved and the child she was carrying, there followed a period when I shunned all reason. I rejected everything I had been taught. I drank myself into insensibility, because it seemed the only medicine I could stomach. I lost my practice, my friends, my livelihood. I slept beneath hedges and I cursed God for letting me wake in the morning. When I recovered my senses – with the help of a woman I can only describe as a ministering angel – I swore I would only practise medicine that I could prove works. If I was to have faith in it, it must be physic whose outcome I could predict with some accuracy. That is an oath I do not intend to break. If it is not enough for you, I am content to return to Bankside and the bed from which your husband’s men so roughly summoned me.’
Shocked by his honesty, Elizabeth Cecil drops her gaze to her son. She gentles him, but he keeps grizzling. ‘I am not sure that recommends you, Dr Shelby, except as a man who loved his wife more than he loved his reputation.’
‘As Sir Robert has just this moment said, madam, I will not lie to you.’
‘Is it true you abjure casting a horoscope before you make a diagnosis?’ she asks.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Then how do you know what manner of cure is propitious?’
‘I do not believe the stars influence the body nearly as much as is claimed, Lady Cecil.’
‘But that flies in the face of all received wisdom, Dr Shelby.’
‘Perhaps it does. But if you have a pain in your back in January, and after treatment it returns in August, how can the constellations guide me on what medicine I should prescribe? The stars are no longer aligned.’
He can see the confusion in her. Her delicate fingers fuss with the child’s smock.
‘And they say you do not believe in the humours of the body. Is that true?’
‘Until someone can show me a humour, madam, yes, it is. Until I can touch it, examine it, replicate its influence in a reliable manner, I cannot in all faith insist it exists. Besides, it is taught that balancing the humours requires the drawing of blood from certain parts of the body. Would you have me bleed a child of William’s age? He’s barely two, am I right?’
‘Of course not! William is far too young for bleeding,’ she exclaims, more than a little horrified. She clutches the boy to her breast, as if she fears Nicholas will produce a lancet from beneath his doublet and advance upon the infant.
‘But if bleeding works, Lady Cecil, why not bleed a child?’
‘Because… well, because…’