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His soul draws near to the pit, and his life to the messengers of death.
Job 33:22
'I have been equally blessed and cursed with an intelligent daughter' she smiles
'I have failed by some peoples measures my darling girl, but believe me I am prouder of you today than I could ever imagine. Your father is stronger than I, and he needs you at the moment. Dear Hannah, learn from him and use what you can. These will be difficult times'
These words make my heart want to break, especially coming from my docile, beautiful mother. All that I can do is to nod in recognition. I stand silently and lean into her kissing both her cheeks. In that moment I know that she understands the frustration I feel at being merely a girl. As she pulls her embroidery table towards her and starts to hum quietly, I memorise these words of wisdom. Still wishing that this is another time, perhaps another place. Wandering in a daydream again would life be so different if we had more rights than we do now.
I follow the old winding corridor down to the kitchen and reach the door that leads to the cellar, which is now converted to my fathers laboratory. I follow the old narrow stairs down running my fingers against the rough sandstone walls. The first thing that strikes me on my now familiar visits down here underneath the house is the change in temperature. It is refreshing from the searing summer heat and mugginess of the upper rooms. The second is the smell. It is a familiar beloved smell of herbs and the earth which always reminds me of my father. It is the aroma of physic, burning herbs, distilling alcohol and my fathers hard work.I come to the lowest step, now in gloomy darkness I unlatch the tattered wooden door.
The worktable here is as always cluttered with papers, fathers new writing and drawings. Most of them are anatomical drawings, some are recipes for a new remedy or draft that he is brewing. Manuscripts are piled on the side benches along with pestles, mortars and bottles packed full of herbs, dead animals, precious metals: all tools of the modern apothecary. Papa himself sits at the back of the laboratory with his small lamp, the parchment from upstairs still in his hands. He is reading and re-reading it. As I re-latch the door, he turns to me and places the letter on his desk.
'Now Hannah, we have work to do.' With this he produces a vast quantity of poor quality hemp linen cloth from the desk drawer, unfolding it lightly and passing me one of his sharp, scalpel knives.
'Prevention my dear, will be the key in this fight. And it will be a fight, perhaps to the death. Now, I would like you, if you please to cut out the linen into little squares, like this' his own knife and deft hands makes easy work of producing a square roughly the size of a floor tile. 'We will require all of this linen I fear. I have concocted a new sanitising powder for this attack' he is making it sound as if we already at war. He turns on his slipper to a pestle which is full to the brim of a glorious smelling pale purple powder.
'It's a new mixture Hannah, smell it! I'm very excited about it. 2 parts Lilac, 1 part powdered Mercury and 5 parts Lyme and a good pinch of Oregano for good measure. With any luck it should sanitise the air before you inhale it, you see? So, think back to your readings now, what are we making here? Do you remember?'I scour back through virtually all the papers I have read and memorised in the last two years.
Ah, I remember:
'A pomander, for the sanitation of virulent airborne diseases of the cholera!' he smiles at me proudly and places his hand on my shoulder squeezing gently. Obviously the right answer. He shows me how to fill the linen squares with a spoonful of powder, carefully gathering it as not to spill any, or touch any part of my skin with it. He then shows me how to twist it into a package and tie it securely with a ribbon. He places the first pomander under my nose tying it firmly behind my head.
'Et Voila! Sanitary air is no longer a problem! I must teach you later how to press the ingredients together. Your assistance will be invaluable to me over the coming months! Let's see how much of an apothecaries life you remember daughter'So, we stand in the cool laboratory, making our pomanders to hand out to the poorer residents of Marseilles. There are dozens upon dozens of them mounting up on the table. We talk of medicine and new developments he has made. He tells me again of the humours, the essential elements of life and quizzes me to make sure I have learnt. I describe them back to him simply and what basic ailments an over-balance causes. The hot choleric, bringing with it anger and indigestion, the cool Sanguine, with her lethargy and fever; the dry Melancholic causing low mood and sleep: and the wet Phlegmatic, causing irritation and coughing. He determinedly wraps each pomander and I ask about balancing each humour, which can be achieved quite easily through diet, drafts and phlebotomy. I then turn to ask him about the "death" and it's treatment. Suddenly his face becomes taut and I can see that for the first time today he is struggling to find the words: or in which order they should come in. He drops his hands to the table and places both palms to the worn wood, leaning forwards and taking deep breaths.
'That is indeed an intelligent question and I would not expect anything less of you my darling. I am rather afraid to tell you dear heart, that even the finest scholars in the University de Paris have not found an answer to the riddle. It spreads in a wave, and once it has begun it does not abate until it has devoured the life and soul of whomever it chooses. It is like the hand of God itself Hannah. I shall tell you of my patient in Provence. Please do not repeat this to your Mama, she would be very upset indeed.
''I was summoned there to treat an old friend of mine, a merchant. He took ill quite suddenly after a trip to Florence. Upon his return he had a fever and was flushed. He took to his bed. His manservant sent for me directly reporting this. I set off immediately for the days ride to get there by morning. I thought it a straightforward case of imbalance of the choleric.' He looks down dismayed in himself. I put my small hand on his, which seems to give him strength to continue. He looks at me from under his unkempt hair and cups my face in his palm, stroking my cheek with his thumb.
'Merci, my good, good girl. By the time I got to him he was in agony. Writhing on the bed, vomiting green bile. I was taken aback not expecting to find him in such a state. I made my draft of chamomile, recommending that we should try to keep up his fluid balance. Not even my most potent draft of chamomile would stop the sickness. And it was made with the finest chamomile, remember the flowers we picked? When dark bile and blood filled blisters started to lift up his skin, the fever broke and I thought for a foolish moment that I had won. He was lucid, we discussed times gone by and his recent trip to Italy. I lanced the blisters with my leeches and with my scalpel into a bowl and recommended more chamomile infusion. By that afternoon he was dead Hannah. He had vomited all that was vital to him on the inside. There was nothing at all I could do. It spread to his wife, his two daughters, even the servants. I treated them all and they all perished. Francoise, his son was the only one to survive. He caught the disease but by some miracle he survived. You see what I mean about the Hand of God Hannah? Francoise will be joining us here before the weeks end so I can study him closer. He will live with us' Not knowing what to say to someone when he is devastated is possibly the worst thing in the world. This is my first encounter with the plague, with anything that sounds so worryingly vile and unforgiving. The description my father left me with echoes in my head. How my thoughts and dreams can be turned into such nightmares in the space of one day is quite beyond me. I feel totally unprepared for what lays ahead. All I can do is try to make this man proud of me.
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