Surgeon Wadoud snaps her fingers. An attendant places a rolled cloth beneath the patient’s neck, arching the throat as though preparing him for an execution. The tortured breathing becomes deeper, slower. Now Nicholas can see what’s causing the man to slowly suffocate – a large swelling on one side of his neck, just above the Adam’s apple.
Wadoud places her free index finger on the man’s throat and nods an invitation to Nicholas to do likewise. The flesh is still damp from washing, he notices.
Wadoud guides his fingers until Nicholas can feel the ring of cartilage above the trachea. Her touch sends a pulse through his body. Her face is very close to his. He can smell the rose oil on her skin, reminding him of Bianca. She gives him one short glance with her extraordinary eyes and presses his fingers down on the patient’s throat, saying something to him in her language. It could be an instruction. It could be a lover’s endearment. Nicholas forces himself to concentrate.
‘Keep pressing, and watch closely,’ de Lisle translates at his shoulder.
Surgeon Wadoud moves her index finger to a spot midway between where Nicholas is pressing and the top of the patient’s sternum, talking all the while.
‘The cut must be made on the centreline,’ de Lisle says as the scalpel tip touches the flesh like a jewel placed against a lover’s throat. ‘Or else when the reed is inserted, it can slip under the surrounding tissue. And it should be vertical – with enough force to penetrate the trachea – thus.’
Surgeon Wadoud’s scalpel slices downwards into the patient’s throat. His body gives no more than a brief tremor.
For a moment she leaves the blade there, as though she’s testing the centre of a joint of meat to see if it’s cooked. When she removes it, the pink edges of the wound draw back like morning-glory petals opening to the rising sun. Just as she’d promised, there is little bleeding.
An assistant produces a short length of reed, neatly trimmed at each end. He rolls one end in honey smeared on a small trencher and hands it to Surgeon Wadoud, who deftly inserts it into the open wound, inspects the results of her labours, nods to show she is content and steps aside.
Two more helpers hurry forward to anoint the wound with a balm of oliban, aloe and myrrh, sprinkling it with red iron oxide. They bandage the patient’s neck with clean linen, leaving the tip of the reed exposed. Nicholas notices the rasping sound of his breathing has been replaced by a soft whistle with each exhalation. If Surgeon Wadoud is pleased with her efforts, the deep-set eyes do not show it.
De Lisle says, ‘Now there is a chance he will live – God willing – while his tumour is treated with…’ a quick exchange with Surgeon Wadoud to get the correct words, ‘regular cupping to draw out the black bile. The wound should be washed daily with water and honey. Provided that he is fed only cold broth, he should recover his speech.’
‘Such a simple procedure,’ says Nicholas, impressed. ‘We could have made use of it in the Low Countries.’
‘Aside from the risk of severing the carotid artery, there is also the danger that the wound becomes foul. The trick is in keeping it clean.’
‘That would put us at a disadvantage,’ Nicholas agrees. ‘It could be a while before we get marble and fountains in our hospitals.’
Surgeon Wadoud receives Nicholas’s expressions of thanks and admiration with what appears to be supreme indifference. But al-Seddik is visibly excited.
‘After the work must come the play, yes?’
The minister makes it sound as though he’s performed the laryngotomy himself. He beams with self-congratulatory pleasure.
‘I have arranged a visit to the hammam, the bathhouse.’ He lays a regretful hand across his ample breast. ‘Sadly, it is not permitted for someone who is not a follower of the Prophet – peace be upon him – to bathe amongst the faithful. So I have arranged for Professor de Lisle to take you to the hammam in the Aduana, where the Christians bathe. Then we shall all feast together at my house. You can tell me how Lord Burghley and his son are faring in their dealings with your queen.’ He takes a final look at the patient wheezing gently on the table and sighs. ‘It must be difficult for such clever men to have to step so cautiously across the shadow of a woman who can end their lives on a whim.’
And just for a moment Nicholas’s isn’t certain whether the woman he’s referring to is Queen Elizabeth or Surgeon Wadoud.
The hammam is a nondescript building set deep in the Aduana, with nothing to show its purpose other than a faded hand brandishing a strigil painted beside the entrance. Nicholas is unsure what to expect; the queen’s father shut down the Southwark bathhouses long before he was born, for being dens of vice and lascivity. And he’s not asked Arnoult de Lisle, for fear of looking like a country green-pate.
At the doorway the Frenchman gives way to a departing customer, a man who stops Nicholas dead in his tracks for reasons that go far beyond mere courtesy.
He is a studious-looking fellow of about thirty, whose benign, freshly cleansed face glows with rapturous contentment, though whether from piety or from the exertions of the masseur it is hard to tell. What concerns Nicholas is his dress: the black gown and broad-brimmed hat of the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits. Nicholas tries not to stare.
To the Cecils – indeed, to the Privy Council and the queen herself – a Jesuit is a wasp to be stamped upon, before it has a chance to sting you. It is the Jesuit order that sends papist agents into England to plot against the woman they consider a heretic. If they are here in Morocco, Nicholas thinks, who knows what mischief they could be about. What will Robert Cecil expect him to do, he wonders: follow the Jesuit home and garrotte him in a dark alley?
De Lisle greets the man in French, and Nicholas hears the physician mention his name. The priest looks his way and makes a polite little nod. Unsmiling, Nicholas returns it. Then, sparing him further consternation, the Jesuit goes on his way, clean in body if not in religious conviction.
Once inside the hammam they are greeted by the owner, a large, glistening fellow, whose smile of welcome reveals a row of extraordinarily uneven teeth. His tunic is stained with cleansing oil and his heavy hands have the calloused palms of a vigorous masseur. He’s a Melkite Christian from Aleppo, de Lisle explains, though it means little to Nicholas.
After Nicholas and de Lisle have undressed, wrapping themselves in silk towels for modesty, they are ushered into a warm antechamber where atay is served. When they have drunk, they move on into a broad, hexagonal space with a domed roof and a circle of pillars. It is as hot here as it is outside, under the full glare of the sun. But the air is steamy, thickly laden with the scent of foreign unguents. On wooden benches a score of bathers sit, conversing in almost as many languages, their voices echoing off the dripping plaster walls: business talk, by the earnest tone of it, offers and counter-offers, protests at an inflated asking price, laughter as hands shake on the deal. From somewhere beyond a doorway arched in the Ottoman manner comes the slap of fists pummelling flesh, and the groans of tortured ecstasy that escape the mouth when muscles suddenly unknot.
As they take their places on a vacant bench, Nicholas feels the sweat streaming down his body. For a moment he feels lightheaded. De Lisle leans closer and, with a knowing smile, says casually, ‘You need have no fear. Fra Cyprien is a negotiator.’
Caught off-guard by both the atmosphere and the Frenchman’s words, Nicholas feigns innocence. ‘You have me at a loss, sir. I know of no such person.’