Five Months Before “The Key”
Illumination
An open book beside her, Isabelle du Mauny slept and dreamt. The breeze from the Thames kissed her cheek, and she awakened, alarmed – but only her serving woman Fiona sat near her on the cloth.
“Dreaming of your betrothed, mistress?” Fiona said in her Scottish brogue, her eyes on her mending.
Isabelle laughed to dispel the dream and the question. “Why did you let me sleep? Anyone could have seen me.” She returned to the leather-bound book she had been studying. The illuminated Latin script sparkled in the sun – the handwriting sharp in the daylight or she never would have risked bringing such a treasure outdoors.
“We are alone, Mistress.”
“But from the house – my stepmother. I do not welcome another lecture on propriety. I know she doesn’t care about the book,” Isabelle said.
Fiona bridled at the memory of the Countess’ last harangue. Lady Margaret Plantagenet had never adapted to her fate as wife of the mere baron Sir Walter de Mauny – favorite of her uncle King Edward III, though he was– and wreaked her resentment on her stepdaughter Isabelle. Whether one could accurately call her a stepdaughter was fuel for further ire. In Lady Margaret’s view, Isabelle was born to some Celtic slut during the King’s Scottish campaign sixteen years previously – during which Sir Walter had distinguished himself militarily, as well as reproductively. Lady Margaret could not ignore Sir Walter’s command to mother his beloved child – but she could remind the chit daily of her bastardy.
The servant swallowed her bile and said, “Queen Philippa has summoned her ladyship for the day – another tournament at Smithfield, I believe.”
“Perhaps the royal stands will collapse again,” Isabelle said.
“Perhaps you’ll keep such treasonous thoughts to yourself, my dear.”
“Oh, I wish the Queen no harm! She’s an angel! You know the story of the King’s first London tournament, though, and how her majesty’s stands crashed to pieces beneath her – and all her ladies – they nearly died! Such things do happen.”
“That was the year before you were born.” Fiona looked up from her mending as she reminisced. “The servants were still talking about it when we arrived from Scotland two years later. One of the carpenters was a brother to a scullery maid here. The king wanted to execute them all for their negligence – but Queen Philippa begged for their lives. No wonder the people adore her,” she said, returning to her needle.
Isabelle looked at Fiona’s sagging face with interest. Fiona never discussed their murky Scottish origins. Any allusion to them commanded Isabelle’s full attention.
The servant noticed and hesitated before choosing her words. “Sir Walter sent me here with you from the Scottish wars. There were letters for the housekeeper and the lawyers.” She paused again. “He adored you from the beginning, my dear.”
With these words, Isabelle sensed a change in the air as if humours that had fogged her mind had been cleared. The wind stirred the leaves far upstream where the de Mauny London estate bordered the Thames and rustled the branches nearer with a growing rush until it lifted her ribbons and skirts, revealing an ankle.
Led by the wind, she said, “Did you know my mother?”
Fiona looked at her with compassion and said, “No, my dear. She was from further north. I never knew anything of her.” With a glance toward the mansion’s empty windows, she said, “She died when you were born – I know that much. And your father must have loved her to keep you when she died.” Her next words trailed off with a gust of wind. “Your father found me in the Marches…”
“What do you mean, ‘found you?’”
The breeze had not yet died, and Fiona went on. “My people have lived in the disputed borderlands for many generations. Protecting the Marches from English raids has been a way of life – and death.” She drew a deep breath. “My husband and son died protecting our home. My daughter was – taken. And killed. I was surviving in the burned out shell of our cottage when your father’s division marched through.” She looked up. “I remember he was on horseback with a crying baby and a cow in tow. He didn’t know what to do with either and handed me the lead and the child. He allowed no one to lay a hand on me, gave me my own armed escort, and sent us here.” She returned to her sewing. “Your father has always been kind to me.”
They sat together as the wind filled the silence with shattering leaves. Isabelle had never known of Fiona’s husband or children – or the story of her servitude far from home – but she now understood the enormity of her servant’s silences and the weight of her words.
Isabelle murmured, “Quicumque voluerit in vobis primus esse, erit omnium servus.”
“We have discussed the rudeness of speaking in a language not understood by all present. You may try French or English. Or Gaelic, if you prefer,” Fiona said with irony. Isabelle had never mastered that tongue.
Her voice failing her, Isabelle repeated, “Quiconque veut être grand parmi vous, qu'il soit votre serviteur.”
Tears pricked Fiona’s eyes. To be understood is a balm. To be compared to our Lord is a bounty. Whoever would be first among you must be slave of all: the words of Christ to his disciples, fulfilled by him at the crucifixion.
“Thank you, my dear,” she whispered.
Isabelle could not speak, heavy with Fiona’s loss. She returned to her book of herbal remedies and medicine, a subject of recent interest as her stepmother had repeatedly called the family physician to their home that week. The rumors from the continent of a virulent plague had reached Lady Margaret’s ears. This pestilence was rumored to strike down entire villages so that no one remained to bury the dead. Lady Margaret feared such a thing coming to England. What could be done to prevent it? Would she die of it? In desperation, she had instructed the physician Robert Holland to draw up her horoscope. The fate of such an important person as herself would certainly be written in the stars.
It was a habit of Isabelle’s to educate herself on the interests of those around her as Fiona had taught her to do. (Dear Fiona – even dearer now.) Not that Lady Margaret’s interests warranted her attention but that Master Robert Holland deserved her kindness. He was an interesting young man who had served as a doctor in her father’s army at the Battle of Crécy two years previously. She had been but a child at that time – but she would turn 16 in December and could converse with the adults now. After all, if she were old enough to marry a friend of her father’s at court that winter, she was old enough to speak to the physician.
She turned another vellum page in the book, engrossed by the description of Edward I’s brother’s remarkable recovery from the small pox. His physician had wrapped him in scarlet cloth, fed him red food and covered the windows in vermillion curtains, causing him to recover from the disfiguring disease unscarred. A miracle of modern science! She was so riveted that she noticed nothing else – until Fiona spoke.
“Master Holland! What brings you here on this fine day? I thought you’d be at the tournament. All those injuries need attention, do they not?”
Startled, Isabelle looked up into the handsome face of Robert Holland as he smiled at her.
“Mistress Isabelle, Fiona, I’ve come to bring the horoscope that Lady Margaret requested. But no one answered at the house. Everyone seems to be at the tournament but you.”
Fiona waited for Isabelle to play the hostess as she’d been taught – but she sat paralyzed with as vivid a blush as had ever appeared on her. With a flood of understanding, Fiona’s heart foundered. An instinct that should have been the cause of celebration – a girl’s choosing a man of good character and respectable family – was nothing here but a complication. As the step-daughter of a king’s proud niece, she could not marry a physician. Besides which, she was already betrothed.
Robert Holland – graduate of Cambridge University and the University of Paris and veteran of the King’s new continental wars – had not found time in his 27 years to consider taking a wife. However, upon surprising the beautiful daughter of his former commanding officer reading a Latin medical text, he considered it now.
“Mistress Isabelle, is that Rosa Medicinae?”
With effort, Isabelle managed to command her tongue, took a breath, and formed the words, “It is.”
“Have you met the author John of Gaddesden? He attends the king and has been helpful in promoting my practice.”
“I have not,” she managed.
“I see that you are reading the remarkable description of his scarletta rubra method in healing a patient of small pox.”
“Yes. I –” She paused, full of questions, bursting to discuss, not knowing how to proceed.
Robert smiled and looked down at her with interest – interest in what she had to say! Isabelle, the lady of the house for a few hours, resolved to perform her role with dignity.
“Won’t you sit down, Master Holland?” she said, indicating the grass near them.
Robert paused and glanced up at the windows of the manse, knowing that he lacked permission to converse with the daughter of the house. Taking courage from the stolid presence of the Scottish servant, he chose a spot against a tree, a discreet distance from the young lady.
“Thank you,” he said when he was settled. “You were saying?”
“Yes, I – I –” Isabelle noted his expression of respectful attention and pulled herself together. “I want to know how the color red saved the young prince from the small pox!” she said in a rush. “Was it the dye used in the fabric that seeped into the skin? Or the redness of the air through the curtains that medicated the sores?” Was it polite to talk about sores with a man, even if he were a physician? “Or were the humours in the blood imbalanced and the redness brought the blood to order?”
Robert’s own blood became out of order as he observed the girl’s enthusiasm and flushed cheeks and realized that a silence had fallen as she awaited his response. “I – ah – truth be told, we don’t know. No one but God knows why it works – only that it does.”
He said something else about God’s sovereignty and miraculous creation. She said something insightful about red symbolizing the blood of Christ that washed our sins whiter than snow – a Bible scholar, too. Their conversation meandered through various herbal remedies and medicinal uses of plants that grew within sight on the lawn. He asked about her other reading. She asked about his studies in Paris. The sun was low in the sky when they heard the returning wheels of her ladyship’s carriage in the distance, brought to them on the wind.
It lifted Isabelle’s ribbons toward Robert and mussed his hair. He must leave now and cast about for words to convey the revolution of his thoughts, his new intentions – and alighted on a verse from Song of Songs. The latter part of the verse was warm. ‘Climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit’ was for a riper courtship. But the first part – he could find a lead stylus and scrap of parchment in his satchel and write it down for her to read later….
No, best not. Sir Walter would accuse him of abusing his privileged position and forbid him the house – and he would be right.
He must wait.
“Mistress Isabelle, this afternoon has been… a delight. Your conversation is… stimulating. I look forward to the next opportunity to discuss whatever interests you. And now, I must deliver this horoscope to her ladyship,” he said as he rose and brushed himself off. He nodded at Fiona and let his gaze rest on Isabelle.
She smiled at him and inclined her head with exaggerated graciousness in imitation of her stepmother. He chuckled at this bit of playacting and turned back toward the house, murmuring the Song of Songs to himself in the summer breeze.
Quam pulchra es, et quam decora, carissima, in deliciis!
How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!
Song of Songs 7:6
Dear Readers,
This month’s story is another character study for the novel I’m currently researching. It will take place in 1348-9 when the Black Death killed half the population of London and in 2013 when the plague cemetery was discovered by Crossrail archaeologists under Charterhouse Square in Central London.
The stories in my Impossible Tales Series hint at happy endings and miraculous cures – resolutions that resonate with our hope that we’ll all live “happily ever after.” Last month’s essay, Impossible Tales, explored the connection between fairy tales, happy endings, and our spiritual beliefs.
The impossible healing in this month’s story – achieved through the scarlet method or scarletta rubra method pioneered by John of Gaddesden in the early 14th century – involved wrapping a smallpox patient in red cloth, feeding him red food, and covering the windows in red curtains until the patient recovered without scars. This bizarre treatment is rendered more astonishing by the fact that it works.1
Unbeknownst to medieval physicians, red light stimulates activity in the body’s energy powerhouse – the mitochondria – which (among many other things) boosts collagen production and blood circulation in cells, allowing the skin to heal.2 The name has changed from scarletta rubra to “photobiomodulation;” we now have medical-grade red light devices instead of red blankets; and we understand more about the treatment’s underlying bio-mechanisms.
In spite of our increased knowledge, however, this power of light to change our cells awes me. It feels metaphorical in its vast reach, deep within us – even magical or miraculous. The power behind the light is certainly ancient and has always filled us with hope. We have only begun to understand its capacity to change us.
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily.
Isaiah 58:8
Mount, Toni. Medieval Medicine: Its Mysteries and Science. Gloucestershire, Amberley Publishing, 2016, p. 110-111.
Oh my goodness, this was so fascinating! (And thought-provoking and sweet, I really love these characters). Aside from being immersed in the past, my favorite thing about historical fiction is what one learns! Everything about the scarlet method and red light is wild.
You are a far more intelligent person then I, and as such I often marvel at your breadth of knowledge. Today’s story was no different. My first thought though was how much I love that you sprinkle biblical truths/seeds into your work. Lastly I was thrilled you explained the “red” situation, because I was about to go research it myself! Hahaha