The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

  Contents

  The Physician

  Part One: Barber’s Boy

  1: The Devil in London

  2: A Family of the Guild

  3: The Parceling

  4: The Barber-Surgeon

  5: The Beast in Chelmsford

  6: The Colored Balls

  7: The House on Lyme Bay

  8: The Entertainer

  9: The Gift

  10: The North

  11: The Jew of Tettenhall

  12: The Fitting

  13: London

  14: Lessons

  15: The Journeyman

  16: Arms

  17: A New Arrangement

  18: Requiescat

  19: A Woman in the Road

  20: Caps at Table

  21: The Old Knight

  Part Two: The Long Journey

  22: The First Leg

  23: Stranger in a Strange Land

  24: Strange Tongues

  25: The Joining

  26: Parsi

  27: The Quiet Sentry

  28: The Balkans

  29: Tryavna

  30: Winter in the Study House

  31: The Wheat Field

  32: The Offer

  33: The Last Christian City

  Part Three: Ispahan

  34: The Last Leg

  35: Salt

  36: The Hunter

  37: Reb Jesse’s City

  38: The Calaat

  Part Four: The Maristan

  39: Ibn Sina

  40: An Invitation

  41: The Maidan

  42: The Shah’s Entertainment

  43: The Medical Party

  44: The Death

  45: A Murdered Man’s Bones

  46: The Riddle

  47: The Examination

  48: A Ride in the Country

  49: Five Days to the West

  50: The Chatir

  Part Five: The War Surgeon

  51: The Confidence

  52: Shaping Jesse

  53: Four Friends

  54: Mary’s Expectations

  55: The Picture of a Limb

  56: The Command

  57: The Cameleer

  58: India

  59: The Indian Smith

  60: Four Friends

  Part Six: Hakim

  61: The Appointment

  62: An Offer of Reward

  63: A Clinic in Idhaj

  64: The Bedoui Girl

  65: Karim

  66: The Gray City

  67: Two Arrivals

  68: The Diagnosis

  69: Green Melons

  70: Qasim’s Room

  71: Ibn Sina’s Error

  72: The Transparent Man

  73: The House in Hamadhān

  74: The King of Kings

  Part Seven: The Returned

  75: London

  76: The London Lyceum

  77: The Gray Monk

  78: The Familiar Journey

  79: Lambing

  80: A Kept Promise

  81: The Circle Completed

  Acknowledgments

  Shaman

  Part One: Coming Home

  1 Jiggety-Jig

  2 The Inheritance

  Part Two: Fresh Canvas, New Painting

  3 The Immigrant

  4 The Anatomy Lesson

  5 The God-Cursed District

  6 Dreams

  7 The Color of the Painting

  8 Music

  9 Two Parcels

  10 The Raising

  11 The Recluse

  12 The Big Indian

  13 Through the Cold Time

  14 Ball-and-Stick

  15 A Present from Stone Dog

  16 The Doe Hunters

  17 Daughter of the Mide’Wiwin

  18 Stones

  19 A Change

  20 Sarah’s Suitors

  21 The Great Awakening

  Part Three: Holden’s Crossing

  22 Cursing and Blessings

  23 Transformations

  24 Spring Music

  25 The Quiet Child

  26 The Binding

  27 Politics

  28 The Arrest

  29 The Last Indians in Illinois

  Part Four: The Deaf Boy

  30 Lessons

  31 School Days

  32 Night Doctoring

  33 Answers and Questions

  34 The Return

  35 The Secret Room

  36 The First Jew

  37 Water Marks

  38 Hearing the Music

  39 Teachers

  40 Growing Up

  41 Winners and Losers

  42 The Collegian

  43 The Applicant

  44 Letters and Notes

  Part Five: A Family Quarrel

  45 At the Polyclinic

  46 Heart Sounds

  47 Cincinnati Days

  48 The Boat Ride

  49 The Contract Surgeon

  50 A Son’s Letter

  51 The Horn Player

  52 Troop Movements

  53 The Long Gray Line

  54 Skirmishing

  55 “When Did You Meet Ellwood R. Patterson?”

  56 Across the Rappahannock

  57 The Full Circle

  Part Six: The Country Doctor

  58 Advisers

  59 The Secret Father

  60 A Child With the Croup

  61 A Frank Discussion

  62 Fishing

  63 The End of the Journal

  64 Chicago

  65 A Telegraph Message

  66 The Elmira Camp

  67 The House in Wellsburg

  68 Struggling in the Web

  69 Alex’s Last Name

  70 A Trip to Nauvoo

  71 Family Gifts

  72 Breaking Ground

  73 Tama

  74 The Early Riser

  Acknowledgments and Notes

  Matters of Choice

  Part One: The Throwback

  1 An Appointment

  2 The House on Brattle Street

  3 Betts

  4 Moment of Decision

  5 An Invitation to the Ball

  6 The Contender

  7 Voices

  8 A Jury of Peers

  9 Woodfield

  10 Neighbors

  11 The Calling

  12 A Brush with the Law

  13 The Different Path

  14 The Last Cowgirl

  Part Two: The House on the Verge

  15 Metamorphosis

  16 Office Hours

  17 David Markus

  18 A Feline Intimacy

  19 The House on the Verge

  20 Snapshots

  21 Finding Her Way

  22 The Singers

  23 A Gift to be Used

  24 New Friends

  25 Settling In

  26 Above the Snow Line

  27 The Season of Cold

  28 Rising Sap

  Part Three: Heartrocks

  29 Sarah's Request

  30 A Small Trip

  31 A Ride Down the Mountain

  32 The Ice Cube

  33 Inheritances

  34 Winter Nights

  35 Hidden Meanings

  36 On the Trail

  37 One More Bridge to Cross

  38 The Reunion

  39 A Naming

  40 What Agunah Feared

  41 Kindred Spirits

  42 The Ex-Major

  43 The Red Pickup

  44 Early Concert

  Part Four: The Country Doctor

  45 The Breakfast Tale<
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  46 Kidron

  47 Settling In

  48 The Fossil

  49 Invitations

  50 The Three of Them

  51 A Question Is Answered

  52 The Calling Card

  53 Sunshine and Shadows

  54 The Sowing

  55 Coming of Snow

  56 Discoveries

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright page

  Back Ads

  THE PHYSICIAN

  by Noah Gordon

  With my love

  for Nina,

  who gave me Lorraine

  Fear God and keep his commandments;

  for this is the whole duty of man.

  —Ecclesiastes 12:13

  I will give thanks unto Thee,

  for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

  —Psalms 139:14

  As to the dead, God will raise them up.

  —Qu’ran, S. 6:36

  They that be whole need not a physician,

  But they that are sick.

  —Matthew 9:12

  PART ONE

  Barber’s Boy

  1

  THE DEVIL IN LONDON

  These were Rob J.’s last safe and secure moments of blessed innocence, but in his ignorance he considered it hardship to be forced to remain near his father’s house with his brothers and his sister. This early in the spring, the sun rode low enough to send warm licks under the eaves of the thatched roof, and he sprawled on the rough stone stoop outside the front door, enjoying the coziness. A woman was picking her way over the broken surface of Carpenter’s Street. The street needed repair, as did most of the small frame workingmen’s houses thrown up carelessly by skilled artisans who earned their living erecting solid homes for those richer and more fortunate.

  He was shelling a basket of early peas and trying to keep his eyes on the younger children, his responsibility when Mam was away. William Stewart, six, and Anne Mary, four, were grubbing in the dirt at the side of the house and playing secret giggly games. Jonathan Carter, eighteen months old, lay on a lambskin, papped, burped, and gurgling with content. Samuel Edward, who was seven, had given Rob J. the slip. Somehow crafty Samuel always managed to melt away instead of sharing work, and Rob was keeping an eye out for him, feeling wrathful. He split the green pods one after another and scraped the peas from the waxy seedcase with his thumb the way Mam did, not pausing as he noted the woman coming directly to him.

  Stays in her stained bodice raised her bosom so that sometimes when she moved there was a glimpse of rouged nipple, and her fleshy face was garish with cosmetics. Rob J. was only nine years old but a child of London knew a trollop.

  “Here now. This Nathanael Cole’s house?”

  He studied her resentfully, for it wasn’t the first time tarts had come to their door seeking his father. “Who wants to learn?” he said roughly, glad his Da was out seeking work and she had missed him, glad his Mam was out delivering embroidery and was spared embarrassment.

  “His wife needs him. She sent me.”

  “What do you mean, needs him?” The competent young hands stopped shelling peas.

  The whore regarded him coolly, having caught his opinion of her in his tone and manner. “She your mother?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s taken labor bad. She’s in Egglestan’s stables close by Puddle Dock. You’d best find your father and tell him,” the woman said, and went away.

  The boy looked about desperately. “Samuel!” he shouted, but bloody Samuel was off who-knows-where, as usual, and Rob fetched William and Anne Mary from their play. “Take care of the small ones, Willum,” he said. Then he left the house and started to run.

  Those who may be depended upon to prattle said Anno Domini 1021, the year of Agnes Cole’s eighth pregnancy, belonged to Satan. It had been marked by calamities to people and monstrosities of nature. The previous autumn the harvest in the fields had been blighted by hard frosts that froze rivers. There were rains such as never before, and with the rapid thaw a high tide ran up the Thames and tore away bridges and homes. Stars fell, streaming light down windy winter skies, and a comet was seen. In February the earth distinctly quaked. Lightning struck the head off a crucifix and men muttered that Christ and his saints slept. It was rumored that for three days a spring had flowed with blood, and travelers reported the Devil appearing in woods and secret places.

  Agnes had told her eldest son not to pay heed to the talk. But she had added uneasily that if Rob J. saw or heard anything unusual, he must make the sign of the Cross.

  People were placing a heavy burden on God that year, for the crop failure had brought hard times. Nathanael had earned no pay for more than four months and was kept by his wife’s ability to create fine embroideries.

  When they were newly wed, she and Nathanael had been sick with love and very confident of their future; it had been his plan to become wealthy as a contractor-builder. But promotion was slow within the carpenters’ guild, at the hands of examination committees who scrutinized test projects as if each piece of work were meant for the King. He had spent six years as Apprentice Carpenter and twice that long as Companion Joiner. By now he should have been an aspirant for Master Carpenter, the professional classification needed to become a contractor. But the process of becoming a Master took energy and prosperous times, and he was too dispirited to try.

  Their lives continued to revolve around the trade guild, but now even the London Corporation of Carpenters failed them, for each morning Nathanael reported to the guild house only to learn there were no jobs. With other hopeless men he sought escape in a brew they called pigment: one of the carpenters would produce honey, someone else brought out a few spices, and the Corporation always had a jug of wine at hand.

  Carpenters’ wives told Agnes that often one of the men would go out and bring back a woman on whom their unemployed husbands took drunken turns.

  Despite his failings she couldn’t shun Nathanael, she was too fond of fleshly delight. He kept her belly large, pumping her full of child as soon as she was emptied, and whenever she was nearing term he avoided their home. Their life conformed almost exactly to the dire predictions made by her father when, with Rob J. already in her, she had married the young carpenter who had come to Watford to help build their neighbor’s barn. Her father had blamed her schooling, saying that education filled a woman with lascivious folly.

  Her father had owned his small farm, which had been given him by Aethelred of Wessex in lieu of pay for military service. He was the first of the Kemp family to become a yeoman. Walter Kemp had sent his daughter for schooling in the hope that it would gain her a landowner’s marriage, for proprietors of great estates found it handy to have a trusted person who was able to read and do sums, and why should it not be a wife? He had been embittered to see her make a low and sluttish match. He had not even been able to disinherit her, poor man. His tiny holding had gone to the Crown for back taxes when he died.

  But his ambition had shaped her life. The five happiest years of her memory had been as a child in the nunnery school. The nuns had worn scarlet shoes, white and violet tunics, and veils delicate as cloud. They had taught her to read and to write, to recognize a smattering of Latin as it was used in the catechism, to cut clothing and sew an invisible seam, and to produce orphrey, embroidery so elegant it was sought after in France, where it was known as English Work.

  The “foolishness” she had learned from the nuns now kept her family in food.

  This morning she had debated about whether to go to deliver her orphrey. It was close to her time and she felt huge and clumsy, but there was little left in the larder. It was necessary to go to Billingsgate Market to buy flour and meal, and for that she needed the money that would be paid by the embroidery exporter who lived in Southwark on the other side of the river. Carrying her small bundle, she made her way slowly down Thames Street toward London Bridge.

  As usual, Thames Street was cro
wded with pack animals and stevedores moving merchandise between the cavernous warehouses and the forest of ships’ masts on the quays. The noise fell on her like rain on a drought. Despite their troubles, she was grateful to Nathanael for taking her away from Watford and the farm.

  She loved this city so!

  “Whoreson! You come back here and give me my money. Give it on back,” a furious woman screeched at someone Agnes couldn’t see.

  Skeins of laughter were tangled with ribbons of words in foreign languages. Curses were hurled like affectionate blessings.

  She walked past ragged slaves lugging pigs of iron to waiting ships. Dogs barked at the wretched men who struggled under their brutal loads, pearls of sweat gleaming on their shaven heads. She breathed the garlic odor of their unwashed bodies and the metallic stink of the pig iron and then a more welcome smell from a cart where a man was hawking meat pasties. Her mouth watered but she had a single coin in her pocket and hungry children at home. “Pies like sweet sin,” the man called. “Hot and good!”

  The docks gave off an aroma of sun-warmed pine pitch and tarred rope. She held a hand to her stomach as she walked and felt her baby move, floating in the ocean contained between her hips. On the corner a rabble of sailors with flowers in their caps sang lustily while three musicians played on a fife, a drum, and a harp. As she moved past them she noted a man leaning against a strange-looking wagon marked with the signs of the zodiac. He was perhaps forty years old. He was beginning to lose his hair, which like his beard was strong brown in color. His features were comely; he would have been more handsome than Nathanael save for the fact that he was fat. His face was ruddy and his stomach bloomed before him as fully as her own. His corpulence didn’t repel; on the contrary, it disarmed and charmed and told the viewer that here was a friendly and convivial spirit too fond of the best things in life. His blue eyes had a glint and sparkle that matched the smile on his lips. “Pretty mistress. Be my dolly?” he said. Startled, she looked about to see to whom he might be speaking, but there was no one else.

  “Hah!” Ordinarily she would have frozen trash with a glance and put him out of mind, but she had a sense of humor and enjoyed a man with one, and this was too rich.

  “We are made for one another. I would die for you, my lady,” he called after her ardently.

  “No need. Christ already has, sirrah,” she said.

  She lifted her head, squared her shoulders, and walked away with a seductive twitch, preceded by the almost unbelievable enormity of her child-laden stomach and joining in his laughter.

  It had been a long time since a man had complimented her femaleness, even in jest, and the absurd exchange lifted her spirits as she navigated Thames Street. Still smiling, she was approaching Puddle Dock when the pain came.