The inside of the Bimaristan al-Mansur is cool and shadowed. From within intricately patterned casings, lamps throw scatterings of golden light against the gleaming white vaults through which Nicholas passes, pale antechambers of some imagined Elysium, whose inhabitants slumber on low divans while nurses in long Moorish gowns move amongst them, moistening lips with water sponged from clay bowls. The air smells of cedar and frankincense, not the fetid odour of sickness and poverty he remembers from St Thomas’s on Bankside. He hears the occasional cough and groan of patients in pain or unable to find sleep, but the loudest noise is the sound of his own ankle-chain clanking on the marble floor.
Connell picks up a lamp and beckons the little group to follow him. Nicholas is drawn on into the Bimaristan like a man going to the scaffold. The nurses show little interest in him. He recalls what Sumayl al-Seddik said: Man; woman; sultan or pilgrim; even slaves are treated here… Only one nurse looks up from her work. The kufiya says something in Arabic and makes a mime of delirium. The nurse nods.
He’s told her I’m a poor, deranged madman, Nicholas thinks. They’re going to put me in their equivalent of Bedlam.
But they do not. Instead, they bring him to a small chamber with six slender pillars holding up an arched ceiling. It is darker than the others, with only eight beds, four of them occupied. At the far end is a low door.
The kufiya gives a short command and the janissary who’d made so free with his kicks walks forward and places a heavy iron key in the lock. As he turns it, a movement behind one of the pillars catches Nicholas’s eye. Two women are standing there. They appear to be attending to a patient on a nearby divan – a male patient whose throat is wrapped in cloth bandages. Even in the meagre light from the single oil lamp, Nicholas can see the thin section of reed poking out of the bindings: it’s the patient who’d undergone the laryngotomy. And one of the women is Surgeon Wadoud.
Nicholas takes his chance. He turns towards her, yanking the chain out of the kufiya’s hands. ‘For mercy’s sake, help me!’ he shouts, his voice echoing into the dark corners of the little chamber. ‘These men intend me great harm! I want to speak to Minister al-Seddik. Do you understand? Find al-Seddik. Please, help me!’
He has only enough time to register the blank, uncomprehending look on Surgeon Wadoud’s face, before the kufiya’s fist smashes into his cheek, sending him sprawling onto the marble floor.
As he’s dragged to his feet, Nicholas hears the two women speaking. Though he cannot understand the words, their tone is clear: Surgeon Wadoud is troubled more by the disturbance to her patient than by what might be happening to the manacled infidel who has behaved so uncivilly in her presence.
Through the ringing in his ears, he hears Connell snarl to Surgeon Wadoud, ‘What are you gawping at, ya miserable heathen bitch. Get back to your nursing. This is men’s work we’re about here.’
Laughing, the kufiya translates. Nicholas’s last image of Surgeon Wadoud is of the young woman dipping her head in shame and tugging at her companion’s robe, in an effort to drag her away.
Beyond the door is an open space that stinks of urine and fermenting fruit. The night feels cold against the bruised flesh of his cheek, even though the air has lost little of the day’s heat. The dancing light of Connell’s lamp leads them to a low, squat building that Nicholas fears might be a mortuary chamber for the hospital. He can smell the same faint stench of putrefaction here that troubled him so much in the garden of Adolfo Sykes’s house.
To his relief, when they unlock the door, Nicholas catches fractured glimpses not of corpses, but of a small ziggurat of crates stacked against the far wall. As the lamplight briefly slices across them, he sees the double-sickle wool-mark painted on one of the crates.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Dr Shelby,’ says Connell from the doorway as the kufiya pushes him inside. ‘If you’re considering ripping out your fingernails in an effort to get at one of those matchlock muskets, you’re wasting your time. We keep the powder elsewhere. We wouldn’t want someone getting careless and blowing up the sultan’s prized hospital, would we now? Think of all the innocent people who might get hurt.’
And with that, Nicholas is left alone in the darkness – the only person in the Bimaristan al-Mansur without even the faintest hope of recovery.
37
A herdsman drives his cows up Giltspur Street to pasture on Smithfield in the early June sunshine. Bianca steps cautiously in their wake towards Gault’s fine new house, one hand gripping the hemp sack slung over her left shoulder, the other battling to stop the hem of her kirtle dragging in the cow dung. As she rams the knocker against the heavy oak door, she hears the bell at St Sepulchre ringing the ninth hour. Like the ominous tolling of a funeral bell, it sends a shiver through her body.
A servant girl shows her into the main hall. When she hears Gault’s footsteps, Bianca embarks on the gambit she’s been rehearsing all the way from Bankside.
First, flatter his vanity…
She affects a study of his portrait hanging over the hearth, feigning an approximation of a nun adoring a picture of a saint.
‘Have you come to tell me you’ve seen reason, Mistress Merton?’ she hears him say to her back.
She turns and lowers the sack to the floor. ‘Oh, Master Gault! I didn’t hear your approach. Forgive me, I was admiring the brushwork. I’ve brought some more preventatives. If you can smell cow dung, it’s not them – it’s the cow turds in the lane.’
Gault makes a bow to her that is only a little less elaborate than the saffron silk doublet with black lace trimmings he wears. He smiles. ‘I smell only the perfume of roses. Is it Italian?’
‘I make it myself, from oil, rosewater and mace,’ she says, pleased that the care she’s taken to make the best of herself has not been wasted.
She’s wearing her sea-green gown and the carnelian bodice she knows flatters the darkness of her hair. If you’re dealing with a canny merchant like Gault, she told herself as Rose helped her prepare, it’s wise to ensure the box contains your best wares.
She unties the sack and peers in. ‘It’s all here: pomanders of rose leaves, tragacanth gum and camphor to hang about the neck… powder of tormentil, clove and lemon to mix in a posset… Also a tincture of bezoar and sorrel. Mix that in water or small beer every morning.’
‘I applaud your efforts, Mistress. Would that all apothecaries in this city were as diligent.’
Then make him trust you…
‘I can recommend each of these personally,’ she says confidently. It’s a tenuous claim, but her plan hinges on Gault’s determination to believe in his own infallibility. ‘At least, they worked for me.’
He remains silent for a moment, observing her as though her very existence is a vindication of his own certainties.
‘So it was true – you did cure yourself of the pestilence.’
She lets that go with a knowing smile; no point in overdoing it.
‘I should never have let Robert Cecil sow seeds of doubt in my mind,’ he says.
‘How are your young apprentices this morning? All healthy, I trust.’