The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd (good short books .txt) 📕

“I was advised –”

“Do you not know that a tame beast is better for sick people than a wild one? You need a carp from your pond, dear lady, not a shrimp from the sea-shore.” The prioress’s monkey was fingering Gunter’s leather satchel, in which he kept all the tools of his craft. “Have patience, dear Adam,” he whispered to it. “All shall be revealed. Tell me somewhat about your humours, my lady.”

“Melancolius.” The prioress gave a little burp, and covered her mouth. “A portion phlegmaticus.”

“Then I shall not cup you.”

“I wish you would purge me, Master Gunter. I feel some noisome matter sitting within me. I cannot sleep.”

“I have pills which can provoke sleep. Tell your nuns to go to the dove-house. The dung of doves is a soporific when it is applied to the soles of the feet.”

“Do you have that ointment which you wrote me of?”

“I have considered further, and I am not sure that its natural virtue fits your case. Give me room and space to wonder.” He opened the satchel. “The prison of your melancholy lies in your spleen.” He brought out an earthenware jar. “This medicine is good, since it purges the humour of those night places. Do you drink much milk?”

“I have that weakness.”

“It is good. Excellent. Milk is very good for melancholy. Abstain from hazelnuts. They discomfort the brain. But eat green ginger. It quickens the memory, and may yet make you gay.”

“My memory is not of gay things, Master Gunter. I have my burdens.”

“Nevertheless, good prioress, I heartily recommend it to you. Indulge in eggs also. Poached eggs are best at night. New roasted eggs are good in the morning, with a little salt and sugar. This is not a hard diet, you see. It is full easy. And remember this, my lady. If you be unobedient or unpatient to my commandings, you may fall into a full great peril. May I?” He put his hand upon the tips of her fingers. “Rose oil is needed to heat you here.” He took from his satchel a little glass vase. “Before you lie down to sleep, you must lay this stuff upon your stomach with as even a stroke as you can.”

“What is it?”

“It is a mixture of my devising. There is horse dung here, that is called lutum sapien. Together with the powder of burnt hen’s feathers and the fur of a hare. It is dry to the fourth degree.” He held up the vase for her inspection. “As it comes from diverse bodies, so it works in diverse complexions.”

The prioress sighed. “Do your cunning on me. All is mixed beneath the moon.”

“Then beware of pissing in draughts.”

“I never thought of pissing in draughts.”

A short while after this exchange, Thomas Gunter rode out of the convent. He was indeed glad to be gone, since his healing would be affected if he were in the company of menstruating women. He had not seen the young nun, about whom so many scandalous reports had circulated, but he feared the taint of her blood. He had wanted to question the prioress about her, but her melancholy and evident exhaustion had persuaded him to remain silent on what must have been an unhappy subject. He turned his horse towards Smithfield, and within a few minutes had arrived in his neighbourhood; he crossed the Walbrook at St. Stephen’s Bridge, and turned down Bucklersbury. He lived among other druggists and herbalists, and in the shop next to his own he noticed a display of the dried flower known as “Hallelujah”; it was so named because it blossomed in the period between Easter and Whitsuntide, when the one hundred and seventeenth psalm was sung, but Thomas Gunter was more interested in its curative properties. It was known as a sure antidote to cramps and seizures, and the physician made frequent use of it. The druggist was watching him from his doorway as he dismounted. “God be with you and his cross comfort you, Thomas.”

“You are pious this morning.”

“I have been proclaiming. Hallelujah!” Robert Skeat, the druggist, was well known for his somewhat ironic attitude towards the Church’s devotions. “I trust to be saved.”

“In God’s time, I hope. What do you have for me at present?”

“I can give you spurge laurel for the flux. And the ground ivy to stop bleeding.” Skeat was smiling as he spoke, almost as if he did not credit his own words. “Here is corncockle, Thomas –”

“Agrostemma.”

“If you say so, leech. For those who will not shit, I believe. And here is mayweed.”

“Which smells like shit. I gave some to Goodwife Kello only last evening.”

“All her matter comes out of one hole. Lord, is she a chattermouth.”

“There is no cure for that, alas.” Thomas Gunter was about to enter his house – his hall and solar were built above his shop – when a tall man dressed in a grey cloak approached him. “Is it you, Lambert? Why muffle yourself on the edge of summer? Excessive heat will provoke the piles.”

“It is not so warm in the pits, sir.” Lambert was one of the gaolers in the Poultry Street compter; he had a wide hat, which he took off as he entered Gunter’s shop. “You know why I have come.”

“Is it fresh?”

“It died yesterday night. A Loller. It was taken at the Clerkenwell rumble. It has yellow hair.”

“The more hot a man is, the more hair he will have.”

“I will have five shillings.”

“So much? For a body that none will wish to bury?”

“Five shillings. Yellow hair.”

It was well known to Gunter, and to others, that a corpse with yellow hair was of enormous efficacy. The body must have been killed, however, and not died from some disease. The flesh was then cut to pieces and placed in a powder of myrrh and aloes; it was imbibed for twenty-four hours in the spirit of wine and turpentine, and then hung in a shadowy place where it would dry