The Devlin Diary (2 page)

London, 4 November 1672

S
HE LEAVES HER
house on Portsmouth Street carrying a wood box with a smooth ivory handle and tarnished brass fittings. It is late afternoon in early November. The street is deserted and cold, and the sunless ground has sprouted scaly patches of hoarfrost; with each step her pattens crack the thin ice to sink into the mud beneath. At the top of Birch Lane she hoists the box to gain a firmer hold—it is heavy, and she is slight—and the constant dull ache behind her eyes becomes a throbbing pain. She has learnt, to her dismay, that the least occurrence can precipitate a headache: a sudden movement, a sound, even a sight as innocent as a bird’s wings fluttering at the periphery of her vision. She considers setting the box down, unhitching its scarred metal latches, and searching its neatly arranged collection of bottles and vials until she finds the one that she desires. It is late, however, and she is in a hurry. She continues walking. The small streets she passes through are little traveled; she encounters only a few others who, like herself, appear anxious to reach their destination. Hers is an alley near Covent Garden, and the dilapidated attic room of a house that was once grand. As she crosses Middlebury Street, her breath appears as puffs of white vapor that linger long after she has gone.

When she reaches the Strand she stops, confronted by a street teeming with people, horses, sheep, and snorting, mud-caked pigs rooting in the gutter. The autumn evening is brief and precious, a time for gathering the last necessaries before going home, and the shops and street vendors are briskly busy. The air is blue with coal smoke, rich with the aromas of roasted meat and onions. Underneath is the ever-present odor of the sewer, a narrow, open gutter in the center of the road, where the pigs scavenge. The morning’s storm washed away some of the sewage, but the gutters of London are never completely clean. In between the gnawed bones and bits of offal are orphaned puddles of rainwater that shine like mirrors, reflecting nothing but overcast sky.

She pushes back the hood of her cloak; long locks of unruly dark hair break free. In the crush of scurrying people, the limpid brightness of the paned shop windows, the copper lanterns haloed against the darkening firmament, she senses a feeling of contentment tantalizingly within reach. All Hallows’ Eve has just passed. This is her favorite season, or once was. In the chilled gray hour before the November night descends she has always felt a kind of magic. When she was younger she imagined that this feeling was love, or the possibility of love. Now she recognizes it for what it truly is: longing and emptiness.

“Mrs. Devlin.” A voice rises above the street noise. “Mrs. Devlin? Is that you?”

“Yes,” she replies, recognizing the short, ruddy-faced woman in a cotton bonnet and a thick apron, who pushes through the crowd to reach her. She remembers that the woman is a goodwife to a Navy secretary, remembers that she lives with her husband in St. Giles near the sign of the Ax and Anvil, remembers that the woman’s mother had suffered an apoplexy and then a fever. It takes her a moment longer to remember the woman’s name. “Mrs. Underhill,” she finally says, nodding.

“We never properly thanked you, Mrs. Devlin,” Mrs. Underhill says as her flushed face gets even rosier, “seeing as we couldn’t pay you.”

“Do not trouble yourself. You owe me nothing.”

“You’re very kind,” the goodwife says with a small curtsy and bob of her head. “I tell everyone how good your physick is. My mother’s last days were more easy because of you.”

She remembers Mrs. Underhill’s mother. By the time she was summoned, the elderly woman was as frail as a sparrow, unable to speak, and barely able to move. More than a year has passed, but she suddenly recalls holding the woman’s emaciated body as if it were only moments ago. “I’m sorry I could not save her.”

“She’d lived a long life, Mrs. Devlin. She was in God’s hands, not yours.” Mrs. Underhill’s words carry a gentle admonishment.

“Of course,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment. The pain in her head has grown stronger.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Underhill asks.

She looks into the goodwife’s eyes. They are clear, green, ageless. She briefly considers telling her about the headaches and the sleeplessness. Mrs. Underhill would understand.

“I’m fine,” she says.

“That’s a funny one, isn’t it?” Mrs. Underhill smiles, relieved to be unburdened of the thought that a physician could take ill. “Me asking after a doctor’s health. And you with a whole case full of physick,” she adds, looking at the wood box. “I suppose you of anyone would know what medicines to take.” She peers across the Strand at one of the street vendors. “Pardon my hurry, but I should be on my way. The master must have his oyster supper every Friday.”

They take their leave of each other. As she departs the Strand for Covent Garden, a wintry, soot-filled wind strikes her face. The sky is darker now, and the sense of tranquility she momentarily felt has disappeared, as if it never existed. Inside her head, a bouquet of sharp metal flowers takes root and blossoms. The headache is here to stay, for hours, perhaps days. The medicine case bumps hard against her leg. Many times she has thought of purchasing a smaller, lighter one, but she has not done it. She would never admit it, but she believes that the box itself has healing power. She is aware that this is a superstition with no basis in fact; indeed, she has ample evidence to the contrary. The boy she is on her way to see, a seventeen-year-old apprentice stricken with smallpox, will most likely die before the night is over. For days she has followed Dr. Sydenham’s protocol, providing cool, moist medicines where others prescribe hot and dry. The physician’s radical
new method seems to offer a slightly improved chance of a cure, but she knows that only a miracle will save her patient now, and she has long since stopped believing in miracles. The most she can do is ease the boy’s suffering.
Ease suffering
. So she was instructed, but it hardly seems enough. Just once, she would like to place her hand on a fevered cheek and feel it cool, to cradle an infant dying of dysentery and stop its fatal convulsions, to administer medicines that cure rather than placate disease. To heal with her hands, her knowledge, and her empathy. Even a small miracle, she believes, would redeem her.

When she looks up from her ruminations she sees that night has fallen. A coach has stopped at the end of the lane. The bald coachman pulls on the reins, his back still arched, as if he has just brought the horses to a halt. She slows her pace. Something about the coach bothers her, though there’s no precise reason for her concern; it’s only a common hackney. The door creaks open and a man steps down to the street. He’s dressed like a person of quality, but his stance and beefy body are more suited to a tavern brawler. His gaze is so direct it feels both intimate and threatening, as if he knows her and has a personal grievance with her. She is certain she has never seen him before.

She’s close enough that he hardly needs to raise his voice when he speaks. “Mrs. Hannah Devlin, daughter of Dr. Briscoe?” he demands. His voice is hard, without finesse, and her first impression is confirmed: he’s a brute in expensive clothes. She braces herself, her right hand dipping toward her skirt pocket and the knife concealed there, a weapon she wields with more than ordinary skill. Before her fingers reach the knife she is seized from behind. The ruffian’s accomplice wraps his thick arms around her waist and lifts her off the ground so effortlessly that she doesn’t have time to think about the strangeness of it all. The first man grabs the medicine case from her and shoves it inside the coach, while the other immediately hoists Hannah through the door after it. She lands on the hard seat facing the back, knocked out of breath. Even if she was able to speak, being confronted with the person who calmly sits across from her would have shocked her into momentary silence.

“Mrs. Devlin,” he says. It’s both a greeting and a chastisement.

She regards him warily. Lord Arlington, secretary of state, is the
king’s most trusted minister and the most powerful man in England, after the king. His periwig has more gray in it than she remembers, but his self-important air and the black bandage across his nose, which covers a scar won fighting for Charles I, are the same as ever.

“You carry your father’s medicine cabinet,” he comments dryly. “How sweet.”

Arlington was once a friend of her father’s, but that was years ago, before they became enemies. He raps his gold-tipped walking stick on the ceiling and the coach lurches forward.

“Where are you taking me?” Hannah asks.

“To Newgate,” he replies, settling back. “You’re under arrest.”

T
HE COACH SWAYS
and bounces over the pitted London streets. Hannah steadies herself by gripping the seat, sticky with spilled wine from a past occupant. Like all hackneys for hire, it reeks of ale, human sweat, and stale tobacco. Two small tapers, smoking and smelling of pork fat, light the gloomy interior. The odors combined with the bone-jostling jolts of carriage travel have long cemented her preference for walking.

Across from her, Lord Arlington appears complacent, accustomed or simply immune to any discomfort from the rattling coach. He was the most successful of courtiers, her father once told her, because he was born with the gift of a naturally congenial expression. Those who have dealings with him realize too late that he is not their friend and has no loyalty except to that which brings him power and profit. Even now, as Arlington nears fifty-five and his cheeks have become jowls, his face is boyish and bland, its most distinctive feature being the slender black bandage on the bridge of his nose. Hannah wonders if the king is impressed by this constant reminder of Arlington’s service to the Crown. He must be, seeing how high Arlington has risen in twenty-
four years, from Lord Digby’s messenger to secretary of state. But aside from what looks to be a somewhat pretentious affectation, Arlington is no fop. He is referred to as charming, courtesy of a glib tongue and a knack for languages, but is known to be ruthless, his callous venality glossed over by a sophisticated nonchalance. His Parisian attire is the epitome of style—brocade coat, lots of lace at the cuffs—but unlike the younger court gallants, with their studied casualness and fashionable disarray, Arlington has a Castilian formality, a result of his time in Spain as English ambassador. His hands, sheathed in perfumed gloves, rest lightly on the gold head of the walking stick planted on the floor between his feet. Ragged lines of dried mud ring his high-heeled shoes, and a few related splatters have crept up his beige silk stockings. Hannah stares, momentarily fascinated by the evidence that occasionally Arlington must walk in the street like everyone else. And, apparently, he sometimes rides in a common hackney coach to conceal his activities, although the two dandified thugs just outside the doors, standing on the sideboards and holding fast to the coach like leeches, must attract a bit of attention.

“On what charge am I being arrested?” she asks.

“I should think it would be obvious,” Arlington replies. “For practicing physick without a license.”

“You can’t be serious.”

A wry smile briefly raises his sagging cheeks. “Can’t I?” With a shrug he sums up Hannah’s current predicament: she is his captive, two of his personal ruffians guard her, and the coach is steadily progressing toward Newgate Prison and a squalid cell with no hope of escape. “A woman practicing medicine without a license from the College of Physicians? That is a crime punishable by fines, jail, or both.”

“My late husband was a doctor, and as his widow I am entitled by law to adopt his profession.”

“I see you have already prepared your defense for the courts. It sounds convincing, but I don’t believe that a widow’s right to carry on her husband’s trade extends to the practice of medicine. Widow or no, all practitioners of physick require a license.”

“There are hundreds of unlicensed doctors in London, as you well know. I presume that the secretary of state is not planning on personally escorting each one of them to prison.”

“No, I am not. But you are special, Mrs. Devlin. The only child of the great Dr. Briscoe, perhaps the king’s finest physician ever.”

Is he serious? Hannah wonders.

Arlington reads her expression easily. “You think I jest with you?”

“It is strange to hear you praise my father, as you are the man who had him dismissed from court.”

“His own stubbornness and pride brought about his downfall, not I. And he might still be alive today if he’d stuck to his own kind, instead of ministering to the lower classes and the indigent. I was quite distraught when I heard of his death.”

“Why am I not convinced?”

“Believe what you will, but your father and I were friends once. I have never forgotten that.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Too bad you were not born a man. You could have taken his place at court.”

“I have no wish to be at court.”

He snorts with derisive laughter. “You actually prefer treating the poor?”

“The poor are as much in need of physick as the rich. I believe it is a worthy calling.”

Arlington shakes his head. “Stubborn and proud, like your father.” He fixes her with a solemn regard. “Tell me, did he teach you well?”

Why is the minister interested? It is all so strange. After making off with her in the manner of a scoundrel kidnapping an heiress for a forced marriage, then telling her she is under arrest, Arlington appears to want to talk about her education. “Why should that concern you, now that you are taking me to jail?”

“Do not make light with me, young lady. You are hardly in a position to bandy about with your future.”

“It appears there is little of my future left for me to bandy about with.”

“Your wit may make your friends merry, but be assured it is not welcome here, Mrs. Devlin. A woman should comport herself with
greater modesty. Especially a woman such as yourself, who presumes to take on a man’s role.”

“When did medicine become solely a man’s province? I follow my mother’s recipe book as often as the
Pharmacopoeia Londinensis,
and I have often found it superior. I shall save my modesty for when I am in jail.” She holds Arlington’s gaze, daring him to make good on his threat, though she is already beginning to suspect that he will not. There is another reason for this complicated show he’s putting on, one that has nothing to do with laws, licensing, or prison, and sooner or later he will tell her. The coach rattles violently. Hannah swallows hard, gulping back the pain. Her headache has settled in and stretched out, working itself into the remote recesses of her brain. Each time the coach joggles and shakes—a regular occurrence, given the condition of the streets—knifing pains radiate from the center of her head. Without thinking she lets her eyes rest on her wood case. The medicine is there, one she has created herself from a variety of herbs, roots, and flower extracts, and, its most vital ingredient, the distilled juice of red poppies.

“Are you feeling ill?” Arlington’s ability to sense weakness in others is as sharp as ever.

“Indeed, I am quite well.”

His eyes search her face. She can see him adding up the sum of the parts: her sallow skin, sunken cheeks, the dark half-moons under her eyes. “You are in need of a particular remedy, perhaps?” Arlington doesn’t wait for an answer. “I have heard—and note well, it is my job to hear everything—that you often purchase poppy syrup from the apothecaries.”

“I am not unusual in that.”
Papaver somniferum,
the opium poppy, is used in medicines in a variety of ways. Most commonly, poppies are made into a syrup: the blossoms and pods are boiled and the decocted liquid is mixed with sugar water. Less common is the use of opium, the dried sap of the poppy pod, but it is becoming increasingly popular. A few years ago Dr. Sydenham created a preparation of opium dissolved in wine which he christened laudanum, from the Latin verb
laudare,
meaning “to praise,” for he considered it the most useful of all medicines. Laudanum has found its way into the London
Pharmacopoeia
and into many of the city’s apothecary shops. Either as syrup or as laudanum, the opium poppy is the only thing that allays her agony.

“I have also heard,” Arlington continues, “especially from those who have spent time in Constantinople, that the pleasures of the poppy are difficult to forgo, once one has savored them. Could it be you have a secret vice? You can be open with me. It’s a debauched age—everyone I know has at least one secret vice, and most don’t even bother keeping them secret.”

“I believe that opium has more uses than those to which it is presently put.” She wants to cite Dr. Sydenham’s views on the subject, as he is an esteemed physician, but he is also a notorious anti-Royalist whose political views and modern medical opinions keep him at odds with the College of Physicians. Her father’s own association with him was considered, by some, a mark of disloyalty to the king. Her father didn’t see it that way, but she knows better than to bring up Sydenham’s name with Arlington, so she mentions only her own observations. “I find it especially helpful for my patients with griping of the guts or with consumption.”

“So says you, Mrs. Devlin, so says you.” Arlington sighs and studies the floor for a moment. “I may regret it, but I’m going to offer you an alternative to Newgate,” he says. “I require your services at Whitehall.”

“Are you asking me for a favor?”

“Not at all. I am offering you a reprieve, and a temporary one at that, if you do not suffice.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“Not so fast, my girl. First you have a decision to make: Whitehall or Newgate.”

As she understands him, she’s only one misstep away from jail, even if she does his bidding. What would it mean to be Arlington’s puppet for the rest of her life? She can escape him only if he is disgraced and toppled from power, always a possibility for anyone close to the king, but she can’t count on that. She restrains a desire to press her fingertips against her throbbing temples. Pain is a great leveler, she finds; it makes her fierce and careless. “I would rather go to Newgate than be forever subject to your whim.”

Arlington’s affable expression disappears, and he leans forward angrily. “So you’d rather be in jail? Need I remind you that I’m a very busy man, with many important affairs to attend to. I might forget something as inconsequential as your imprisonment for months, even years. I’m told your mother is grown worse since your father died—that she is insensible, that she wanders the streets. Who will provide for her and take care of her if you don’t? She’ll end up in Bedlam. Only a selfish, headstrong girl such as yourself would make such a choice.” He sinks back into his seat, chin up, triumphant. The coach shudders and creaks to a halt. Arlington snaps open the leather window shade: outside is Newgate’s humbling façade, a patchwork of impregnable stone and iron.

The minister is well aware that there is no one else to take care of her mother. Her father always said that Arlington was formidable. Now she sees why. “You have no charity in your heart.”

“I have charity, Mrs. Devlin. I just never make the mistake of allowing it to interfere with solving the problem at hand.”