Authors: William Savage
A
dam had spent
the past few days catching up with the demands of his practice. He had few patients at present. Nor would he ever have more unless he seized every opportunity to place his name before any who might become patients in due course.
Aylsham already had one physician, a Dr. Pennycoats. His established practice should have been a formidable block to Adam’s progress. Fortunately for him, if not for the little town, Pennycoats was both an indolent man and much given to good living. When Adam first placed his shingle outside his modest house, he had visited the man, expecting to meet firm opposition. Instead, he had found the doctor still in his bed past ten o’clock in the morning. He was recovering, his manservant said, from a good dinner taken at the local lodge of freemasons the evening before.
Since then, Dr. Pennycoats had taken every opportunity to send patients Adam’s way rather than keep them from him. The man, it seemed, had a substantial private income. Most of his limited attention was spent on compiling a book on the chemical composition of different types of rocks. At least, he said he was writing such a work, for not a single page had ever reached a printer’s hands.
Given their doctor’s peculiar attitude to his profession, it was no surprise that most people of the town sought medical advice from the apothecary. The wealthier folk and the gentry turned to doctors living elsewhere.
Today's apothecary was expected to have medical knowledge beyond the mixing and dispensing of prescriptions. Still, most still sold a range of nostrums, spices and teas as well as more potent herbal brews. In London, the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries controlled the profession. Here, far to the north, there was less regulation over who might set themselves up in that business. Nevertheless, the law of the land was at last bearing down on the worst quacks and charlatans.
Now, hearing that Aylsham's old apothecary had decided to retire and sell his business to a successor from elsewhere Adam felt some trepidation. He therefore determined to visit the shop in the High Street to take the measure of the new apothecary in person.
Above the window was a painted shop board: ‘Edward Gerstone, Apothecary and Herbalist’. In the window stood the typical range of bottles of coloured water and labelled china herb jars. Neither gave him any enlightenment. He would rely on this man to mix medicines to his prescription, yet must also regard him as something of a competitor too. Good relations might greatly assist his business. An adversarial turn of events would promise many barriers to progress. Yet as he entered the shop, he encountered the greatest surprise imaginable. For the voice which came to him from the dispensing room, hidden behind the counter, was instantly recognisable.
‘Lassimer? Lassimer?’ he said. ‘Can it be you?’
The reply was a loud burst of laughter. ‘Dr. Bascom, I believe. I had expected you before this. You are come to sniff around and steal my patients, I warrant.’
The words might sound harsh, but the voice that spoke them was filled with amusement.
‘Had I known whom I should find, I would have been here on your first morning,’ Adam said. He was delighted to see the apothecary emerge into the shop and recognise the smiling face of Peter Lassimer.
‘My dear friend. I thought you must be a grave physician by now, filling your patients with awe at your magisterial manner. But wait…above the door is the name of a Mr. Gerstone.’’
‘Mr. Gerstone is my master in the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries,’ Lassimer replied. ‘He is also the principal owner of this business, until I obtain freedom of the Company and can buy him out. You find me a humble journeyman apothecary, treating the good people of this town with foul brews and rank potions.’
‘Lassimer, my old friend. While I should be disapproving of your levity towards the
materia medica
, you know I would not have you change for an instant. I wager you are still casting a lecherous eye over every serving maid whose mistress is fool enough to send her here. But were you not well on your way to a doctor’s qualifications when I left Glasgow?’
The apothecary stepped quickly around the counter and closed the door to the shop, pulling down the blind. Then he advanced upon Adam and grasped him in an embrace that would have done justice to any bear.
‘There,’ he said. ‘I have closed my shop and we may retire to my parlour to talk properly. I want to know all about your adventures in the United Provinces. As for my own story, it will prove familiar enough. Still, I own that what once seemed the worst of fortunes has proved to be nothing of the kind.’
T
he two men
were soon seated in a comfortable parlour, each holding a glass of punch, which had been served by a well-dressed and attentive maidservant.
‘You are not married, Lassimer, I think,’ Adam said, after tasting the punch and nodding his head in pleasure. ‘The looks that passed between you and your maid would have quickly drawn the ire of any wife.’
‘Married?’ Lassimer said. ‘Nay, sir, that is a yoke to which I will long be loathe to bend my neck. For who would settle for a single wine when he might taste of as many of those that are on offer as his stomach – and his fortune – may bear. Unless, of course, he spurns the native beauties of his own land to seek out exotic beauties from over the seas.’
‘I am not sure that I would allow any exotic beauty to make your acquaintance, sir,’ Adam said. ‘Not only would you turn her head with outrageous flattery, but would soon win her away from a dull dog like me.’
‘You may rest easy, my friend,’ Lassimer said. ‘You are no dull dog. But are you not wed?’
‘Indeed not. I am too poor, my friend. Besides, like you, I value my freedom to do as I wish, though perhaps not in quite the same way.’
‘Yet I am sure you do not lack female company, Bascom. At Glasgow, as I recall, you had your pleasure of many a Scottish lass. Indeed, there was sometimes quite a queue.'
‘Do not mock me, old friend. You make me sound a veritable terror to the fair sex.’
‘As you were. I speak only the truth.’
‘Nay,’ Adam said. ‘Not even then and certainly not now. Am I not a grave physician, devoted only to my books and patients?’
‘I pray that is not so,’ Lassimer said, laughing. ‘But if you do lack for suitable diversions, I will be happy to supply you with the names of several lusty widows of my acquaintance. One man alone can do only so much. I would welcome assistance to lessen the demands placed upon me.’
‘Lassimer,!’ Adam said. ‘You are as given to boasting of your exploits now as you ever were. I can find all the ladies I need by my own efforts, thank you.’
If that was not strictly true, it would suffice. He did not doubt Lassimer would arouse a fury of speculation and gossip if he did as he promised. What husband would then trust Adam to attend on his wife? What father would trust him to treat his sick daughter? ‘Enough of such nonsense, sir. I never expected to find you an apothecary, and in Norfolk too. Still, I am in no doubt that you are an excellent practitioner of your art, and much valued by your customers.’
‘Yet are you not well upon your way to fame and fortune as a physician of note,’ Lassimer said, ‘while I will languish in this small town for the rest of my days?’
‘Fame I care about little. Fortune would be enough. But now, sir. You promised me an answer to my question on how you came to be here. You say you met misfortune. Yet here you are, frightening the grave virgins of this county and in possession of what I see to be a fine house and shop.’
‘My tale is soon related,’ Lassimer said, his levity gone for the moment. ‘I was set upon my way to obtaining my degree at the university. I proceeded more slowly than yourself, for I lack both your fine brain and the education you had at Cambridge, but well enough. Then, on a sudden, such a storm engulfed my father’s business as drew away all his money, so that I might no longer pay my way. Indeed, in the end it took his life.’
‘That is ill news indeed,’ Adam said. ‘I am sorry such a heavy fate fell upon you, who deserved none of it. It seems yet more proof that Divine Providence is naught more than mankind whistling to keep up his spirits.’
‘My father had always been most liberal in extending credit, as you know, Bascom,’ Lassimer said. ‘Especially to the gentry and merchants of Shrewsbury. That liberality ruined him. Two young blades, both of noble parentage, patronised his tailoring business to fit them for the fashionable life each believed he deserved. Both were profligate, idle and licentious, as is too often the way of the sons of the gentry. Now each proved that he was as poor a player at the gaming tables as the veriest country bumpkin. They gambled away their allowances. Then they fell into the hands of money lenders. Soon they learned also that gentlemen of that sort were unwilling to wait for the settling of debts.’
‘But your father was a prosperous man,’ Adam said, ‘in good standing in that city. Could the debts of two such men cause him to fail?’
‘By themselves, no,’ Lassimer said. ‘He saw that he would never recover what each owed him. They denied not just the debt, but ever having patronised his shop. Worse was to come. Their fathers were eager to limit what they must pay to save their offspring from the debtor’s prison and chose to believe them. Then came the worst blow of all. His chief clerk had, it seems, grown tired of his wife of twenty years and taken up with the young wife of his neighbour. The two of them were in bed together, when they thought the husband safely gone for the night to stay with his brother. It was not so. The woman's husband suspected her of adultery. Now he sprang his trap and drove them out into the night, inflicting some severe wounds on the man who had cuckolded him. The two lovers were forced to flee. Well aware that he would find it hard to find well-paid work elsewhere, the wretched man emptied the safe of the money my father had placed there ready to pay his own creditors.’
‘What depravity,’ Adam said. ‘Was the thief apprehended?’
‘Alas, no, for none knew which way the two might have gone from the town. My father was ruined. He sold his business and managed to pay all his creditors from the proceeds. Only just enough remained to pay for me to take up an apprenticeship with an apothecary in Leicester. My father insisted I move as far away as I could. He knew that the disaster would forever be attached to the name of Lassimer, should I stay in Shrewsbury.
‘When I finished my apprenticeship early, thanks to my medical studies, here I came. The arrangement suits both Mr. Gerstone and myself. No sooner had he purchased this business than his own health failed. He cannot now make the calls necessary to sustain a country practice. Though I am still a journeyman, we have agreed I shall buy him out by stages and become his successor. He now lives in a fine house on the edge of the town, where he hopes to end his days in quiet retirement.’
‘When will that be?’ Adam asked.
‘I must serve another two years at my present level, under the professional – but very occasional – supervision of Mr. Gerstone. Then I may seek to be entered a Freeman of the Company.’
‘And your father?’ Adam said, fearing what he suspected must come.
‘My mother died some years ago, as you know, and I have neither brother nor sister. I pleaded with my father to let me stay at his side, but he would have none of it. Though my heart demanded I set all else aside to support him as best I could, my head told me that he was right. Had I stayed, I would always have been “that man whose father lost his fortune through his own trusting and foolish actions”. My future would be blighted by such words and my father could not bear that. So, in the end, I gave in, believing I could make my fortune, then return to help him reclaim his. It was not to be. He died within six months.’
‘Some of our vaunted authorities claim mind and body are quite separate,’ Adam said. ‘Yet both my studies of the most up-to-date natural philosophers, and my own experience, such as it is, tell me they are wrong. We are a unity: a thinking animal, using our brains to reason as we use our legs to walk or our gut to digest our food. Many a sickness of the mind has its causes in some bodily malfunction or imbalance. Grief and loneliness are as swift to end life as the smallpox or any fever.’
‘Enough of gloom,’ Lassimer said. ‘The past is past and cannot be changed. I have found happiness and good fortune in my new profession. I will not allow dark musings to take them from me. Does your practice show promise, Bascom? You may be very sure I shall send all my most difficult cases to you. Thus I will win a fine reputation as a healer by restricting myself to simple maladies. You meanwhile will struggle with the most intractable diseases.’
M
uch cheered
by finding this unexpected friend and ally in the town, Adam now gave all his attention to his practice. He was pleased to discover several new patients had sent in their requests to consult him. Had they heard good reports of his skill? Or were they eager to have someone visit them who might be persuaded to pass on information about the archdeacon’s death? He neither knew nor cared. A patient was a patient. Without them, he would sink into penury.
Even routine business was not to be spurned. Adam arranged several visits to the better class of people in the neighbourhood to inoculate them and their households against the scourge of smallpox. Even in his short period so far as a country doctor, Adam had every cause to bless the name of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Finding the procedure used by the Ottoman Turks with signal success, she had not only had her own daughter inoculated, but interested others. Amongst these were the King’s doctor, and soon the practice was introduced into the Royal Family. It was then but a small step for the gentry to follow suit. Although it was not yet itself free from risk, the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks.
Many of the older physicians in the county were unwilling to learn the technique. Some were so set in their ways as to deny its efficacy altogether. As a result, inoculation was too often open to quacks and half-trained practitioners. Fearing such people, the gentry were eager to find a better alternative. As the only doctor in this part of the county willing and able to provide this service, Adam had a near monopoly of their business and could charge handsomely. He was, however, humble enough – and wise enough in the ways of business – to realise that others would soon come to challenge him. He therefore offered handsome reductions in his fees to any who would have their whole household, including servants, inoculated in a single visit.
It was more than a week before he could visit Peter Lassimer again. As he expected, he was greeted with great delight by the young apothecary and they sat in the compounding room where they could talk at leisure. Peter Lassimer was an able and hard-working man, whose heart was as large as his smile. While some of the stricter sort might frown on his delight in pretty women, few of them seemed to complain. Lassimer might be faithless and have an eye that wandered far and wide, but he made no secret of this to anyone. Nor did he ever used false vows or declarations to smooth his path into a lady’s bedchamber. He neither gave nor demanded exclusivity in his affections. His much-admired prowess in the amatory arts, gained from a mass of experience, ensured a steady stream of female customers.
Lassimer did have one vice. He loved gossip. About his love affairs he maintained the strictest discretion. No lady likes to find her matters of the heart spread around the town. For the rest, he was most assiduous in collecting information. Many in the town had found some reason to buy remedies, herbs or spices during the past week, so that they might glean some information about the mysterious death of Dr. Ross. Lassimer’s supplies of fresh gossip were now diminishing and he looked eagerly to Adam for ways to refresh them.
‘So…you have at last found time to visit your old friend,’ Lassimer said. ‘I thought you must have fled overseas to escape your reputation as the doctor who finds dead bodies, as well as producing them.’
‘Enough!’ Adam replied, laughing. ‘I must see to my business as much as you. Nor do I have the benefit of most of my customers coming to my place of work, as you do. In these country areas, those few who can afford a physician expect him to go to them. It matters not how wearisome the journey, nor how foul the roads may be.’
‘I hear you also spend your time infecting others with the pox.’
‘That, sir, would be you, though I know you are most careful inn such matters. I seek only to help them avoid the smallpox, as well you know. My services are much in demand in that regard. Its effects are too often mortal, as well as scarring those who survive. I think we should not joke about such matters. Until recent times, there was little any of us medical men could do when the disease struck.’
Lassimer tried to look penitent, but his grin was never long away. ‘I also hear, my friend, that you have a number of new patients.’
‘The one who said that notoriety is no bar to success spoke truly,’ Adam replied. ‘Since chance brought me to play a small part in the discovery of the archdeacon, I have found people see consulting me as the best way to obtain information. Would you not agree that is a most disreputable mode of behaviour?’
‘In no way, sir, for I hope to employ it myself,’ Lassimer said. His total honesty about his motives made it impossible not to smile.
‘Then you must be disappointed, I fear. I have little more to relate, save that the inquest was a most odd affair. It seemed more concerned with preventing any enquiry into the man’s death than promoting one.’
‘You call that a little matter? Come, sit down in my parlour, take a glass of punch, and tell me all, leaving out not the smallest detail. I will close my shop for this. Anne! Bring us two glasses of punch at once.’ The servant clearly knew her master’s habits, for she had entered the room almost as he called, bearing a jug of punch and two glasses. Lassimer looked at her fondly.
‘Is Anne not a paragon amongst servants, Adam, as well as being the handsomest wench in the county?’
‘You will make the girl blush, Lassimer,’ Adam said, though he observed rather a look of pleasure on the young lady’s face than any embarrassment.
‘A becoming blush would only add the final crowning touch to your beauty, would it not, my dear? Yet I must with reluctance end my contemplation of your charms, for my old friend here has grave news to relate. Be off to your duties!’ As she turn away, he landed a resounding smack upon her rump, which brought forth a squeal. Whether of indignation or delight Adam could not tell.
‘One of these days your familiar ways will land you in serious trouble,’ Adam said, trying, with scant success, to look severe.
‘Nay, my friend’ Lassimer said. ‘I may be lecherous and pay more attention to the wenches than most, but I am no fool. I steal no man’s wife. I seduce no lady of virtue, whatever her age or status. I will not force myself upon any, or pay those who make a business of pleasing men. There are enough and to spare who will join with me in love’s pleasures of their own free will. Some are, perhaps, of lower station, but not all. Several widows of good fortune and breeding have cause to thank me for returning a spring to their steps and a smile to their faces. And not all of those who have found no husband wish to remain virgins too. I own that I play the devilish flirt with my pretty Anne, but I would stop in an instant if she asked me. I have never, I assure you, troubled her bed – and never will, unless she tells me that it is what she wants.’
He paused and a wicked smile passed across his face. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘a man may live in hope!’
A
s they sipped their punch
, Adam related all he could recall of the events at the inquest. He began with the stern unwillingness of the coroner to concern himself with anything beyond the narrowest interpretation of the law. He ended with the rudeness of Mr. Harmsworthy’s words as he was leaving.
Mr. Lassimer was the best of listeners, paying the most intense attention and saying nothing. Only when Adam came to the end of his tale did he share his thoughts. ‘Indeed, it was a most odd affair, as you said. I believe your nautical friend is right: this was nought but a plain use of the law to stop any further exploration of the matter.’
‘But why?’ Adam said. ‘And why would the church authorities, let alone the poor man’s family, appear so willing to let the matter rest there?’
‘Aye,’ Lassimer said. ‘There is a great mystery here. What was the man doing in such a remote spot, so late in the day? Why did Mr. Harmsworthy leave him there alone? It is no place for anyone to be after dark, as I hear, for that coast has long been the haunt of gangs of smugglers. Such men may be desperate to avoid being taken, for I am sure war is brewing in Europe and the Press Gangs will soon be out. Prisons are their first point of call, especially if they know men with some knowledge of the sea are held there. Besides, this business in France overshadows us. Smuggling is now so widespread that the authorities are all but helpless. They have to keep the navy at sea to watch the French. They must also safeguard English ships and colonies from privateers and pirates. I hear many a merchant complain that there are too few customs cutters and revenue men to cope with the smuggling gangs. Harvests are bad, while the woollen trade too is suffering a decline. Men must eat and provide for their families, even those that are turned out of work by enclosure or machinery. If all else fails, they must turn to crime. The gangs pay well for help in landing their contraband. A poor labourer may earn more by that means in one night than he would receive for a week’s back-breaking toil in the fields.’
‘Might the archdeacon have stumbled upon smugglers at their work?’ Adam asked.
‘He might. But I do not believe those who find their living through one sort of crime would not stay their hand from theft of his belongings. Yet you said he was not robbed.’
‘True,’ Adam said. ‘Nor would falling in with smugglers on a chance meeting explain why he was in the churchyard at all. That is what puzzles me most. Mr. Harmsworthy said he had thought it impolite to ask the man for his reason in seeking to be taken there. I could hardly brand him a liar, though I struggled to believe he would not have sought to dissuade such a visit so late in the day. What convinced him to fall in with the archdeacon’s wish to go there?’
Adam’s visits to Lassimer normally left him feeling cheered. Today was different. Today all he felt was despondency. ‘I fear I shall never discover the answers to my questions,’ Adam said. ‘It is all too obscure.’
‘Oh, Bascom, my dear friend,’ Lassimer said. ‘Do not be so downhearted. You are already moved further forward than but a few days ago. You know how the archdeacon got to the churchyard and what has happened to his horse and chaise. You know, to a reasonable certainty, at what time he went there. Best of all, you know that there is a mystery to his visit. If that were not so, why should those in authority seek to conceal the truth. If I know you, that curious mind of yours will not let this matter rest, until you have divined what took place and why.’
‘My affection for you, Lassimer, springs from many sources,’ Adam said, ‘but none more deep than your invincible optimism. You are right. I must not give in to the melancholy. But now, I must leave you to tend your business and go to mine. The day is passing, and there are many things that I must do before it is over.’
‘One more question before you go,’ Lassimer said. ‘Are you doing this for yourself or for the man who died?’
It seemed a long time before Adam replied. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said.
‘The way you were treated during and after that inquest was enough to anger any man,’ Lassimer replied. ‘You have every right to feel annoyed with the way the process was handled. Since it appears the authorities are concealing some aspects of this event deliberately, you may also, with reason, feel such behaviour is not acceptable and not in accordance with the demands of the law. Yet the fact still remains that you have no standing in this affair. You are not a relative of the deceased. No one who is has asked you to act on their behalf. I do not say this to criticise, Bascom. My purpose is rather to prepare you to consider what others undoubtedly will say if your interest comes to their notice. You have been warned to mind your own business once. A future warning may come with more force behind it.’
‘If I am to be honest,’ Adam said, ‘I must own to the truth in what you say. My pride has been hurt. I also feel someone is trying to take me for a fool. Neither is a rational reason for fretting about this puzzle, but they are powerful enough all the same to deny me the simple alternative of ignoring it. Yet I will think hard about your words, old friend. I am not a student any more to throw myself heart and soul into any complex problem that catches my fancy. But something in this touches me as a doctor too. A man has died. How and why he did so remains unclear. That, as much as the wounds to my belief in my own worth, does not let me rest.’
With that they parted, their earlier light-hearted pleasure at meeting quite overshadowed by mutual concern.