"Book of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooper Glenn)1532 PARISEDGAR CANTWELL BEGAN to feel unwell while taking his evening meal at Madame Pucell’s boardinghouse. He had been vaguely aware of a soreness in his groin for a day or two but had thought nothing of it, a strain of the muscle, perhaps. He was eating a lamb chop and a plate of leeks when the chill hit him, flying through his body like a swarm of winged insects. His colleague, Richard Dudley, another English student, noticed the unpleasant look on his friend’s face and remarked on it. “A chill, nothing more,” Edgar said, excusing himself from the table. He made it only to the parlor, where he was seized with an overwhelming nausea and threw up a copious amount of undigested food onto Madame’s chaise longue. When the doctor visited him later that night in his bedroom at the top of the stairs, Edgar was doing poorly. He was pale and sweaty, and his pulse raced. The ache in his groin had progressed to exquisite pain, and his armpits too were sore. His nausea was unabated and he began to have paroxysms of dry coughing. The doctor lifted his sheet and directed his bony fingers straight for his groin folds where he palpated a cluster of firm lumps the size of hen’s eggs. When he pressed down on them, Edgar howled in pain. He needed to see nothing more. In the parlor, Dudley seized the doctor’s arm, and asked, “What is the matter with my friend?” “You must leave this house,” the doctor barked. His eyes were wild and fearful. “All must leave this house.” “Leave my house? Why?” the landlady exclaimed. “It is the plague.” Edgar was only scant months away from completing his studies and returning to England for good. He had grown to be a confident young man who compensated for his rodent-like looks with a quiet air of nobility and superiority. He had survived Montaigu, so he reckoned he could tackle anything in life. Three years earlier, he had transferred to the College de Sorbonne, and he had acquitted himself well there. His final examinations were looming, and if all went according to plan, he would return to his country with a prestigious baccalaureate in canon law. His father would be proud, his life would be set on a glittering course. Now, he was alone and most probably dying in a fetid room in a small boardinghouse in this wretched, plague-infested city. He was too weak to drag himself off his soiled bed, and he barely had the strength to sip at a jug of bitter tea the doctor had left at his fleeting last visit. In his feverish and desperate state, he saw images running through his mind: a snarling boar that turned into the snarling face of a cane-wielding Bedier, a funeral procession of somber, black-robed men, his precious book, flung open with the name Edgar Cantwell, Mors, floating above the page, then the long, animated face of a reddish-haired young man with a long, reddish beard and crimson cheeks, so close, so real. “Can you hear me, Monsieur Cantwell?” He heard a voice, saw a full pair of lips moving. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” He felt a strong hand underneath his palm and exerted all his will to grasp it. “Good.” Edgar blinked in confusion into the man’s gentle, gray-green eyes. “I met your doctor at the house of another victim. He told me he had an English student. I am fond of the English, and I am especially fond of students as I was one myself not so long ago. All the study and hard work, a pity to have it snuffed out by the plague, wouldn’t you agree? Also, I hear your father is a baron.” The man moved away from the bedside and flung open Edgar’s window, muttering something about foul vapors. He was wearing the red robe of a doctor of medicine but to Edgar, he seemed a red angel, flying around the room, delivering a measure of hope. “Your doctor is old and superstitious, the kind who is no use in the plague. I have discharged him and will personally assume your care, Monsieur. If you survive, you will find it in your heart to pay me, I am sure. If you do not, you will be added to my account in heaven. Now, let us get to work. This chamber is squalid and will not do!” Edgar drifted in and out of consciousness. This red angel was a talker, and every time Edgar became sensate, he heard a torrent of words and exposition. The only way to defeat the plague, the man was explaining, was to remove filth and effluents and administer apothecary medicaments. When the plague struck, he said, the streets had to be emptied of bodies and washed with fresh water, the corpses buried deep in quicklime, the trash burned, the houses of the victims cleaned with vinegar and boiled wine, the sheets kept clean and laundered, the servants to the dead and dying made to wear leather gloves and masks. He had no need to fear for himself, he chattered, as he had survived a mild case of the plague in Toulouse and was thus protected from future affliction. But he insisted that nothing was as important as his medicines, and Edgar, scrubbed and clean, felt pleasant-tasting lozenges being pushed into his mouth followed by small mouthfuls of fresh, diluted wine. He heard the man telling him he’d return later with soup and bread, and Edgar was finally able to form some words and speak just above a whisper, “What is your name, sir?” “I am Michel de Nostredame, Apothecary and Physician, and I am at your service, Monsieur.” TRUE TO HIS WORD, the physician later returned to Edgar’s bedside and for that, the sick man was grateful. More lozenges were administered and small chunks of bread soaked in a potage of vegetables. Edgar remained feverish and in pain, his body wracked by paroxysms of coughing, but the sight of his red angel soothed him and gave him a respite from despair. The bread stayed down in his stomach, and before long he felt his eyes growing heavy, and he let the blackness come. When he awoke, it was night, and the room was dark except for a single candle burning on his table. His red angel was sitting in a chair staring down with a glazed look in his eyes. There was a copper bowl on the table, filled to the brim with water. It was this bowl that commanded the man’s full attention and every so often, he made the water move by wiggling a wooden stick into it. The candlelight played on the water’s surface and cast a fractured yellow glow up onto the man’s dark face. There was a soft humming emanating from his mouth, a low chant? He seemed fully absorbed, unaware he was being watched. Edgar thought he should ask what he was doing but before he could, fatigue overcame him again, and he drifted back to sleep. In the morning, the light poured through his open window, and a refreshingly cool breeze wafted in. By the bed, there was a plate of salted cod carefully broken into little pieces, a chunk of bread, and a vessel of light ale. He had just the strength to take a few bites, then lift the chamber pot into service. He listened for any sounds in the house and, hearing none, found himself able to call out. There was no reply. He lay awake waiting for the hopeful sound of footsteps on the stairs. Before the morning had fully passed, he was elated finally to hear them. The red angel was back, with more lozenges and cloves of garlic. He seemed pleased with Edgar’s progress, and cheerfully told him that it was a good sign he was not yet dead. He quickly inspected the hen’s eggs in his armpits and groin but agreed to Edgar’s panicky pleas not to put pressure on them as they were fiery hot and agonizing. He made it apparent he intended it to be a flying visit because he kept his cloak on and moved about the room quickly, cleaning and freshening. “Please do not leave so soon, Doctor,” Edgar said weakly. “I have other patients, monsieur.” “Please. Just a little company, I pray.” The doctor sat and folded his hands on his lap. “Was I dreaming?” “When?” “The night I saw you staring into a bowl of water.” “Perhaps, perhaps not. It is not for me to say.” “Are you using witchcraft to heal me?” The doctor laughed heartily. “No. I only use science. The critical elements are cleanliness and my plague lozenges. Would you like to know what they contain?” Edgar nodded. “They are my own formulation, one I have been refining since my doctoral years in Montpelier. I pluck three hundred roses at dawn and pulverize them with sawdust from the greenest cypress wood and mix in a precise blend of iris of Florence, cloves, and calamus root. I trust your mind will be too feverish to remember this list as it is a secret! I am counting on my lozenges to make me very rich and very famous!” “You are ambitious,” Edgar said, managing a smile for the first time. “I have always been so. My maternal grandfather, Gassonet, was an ambitious fellow, and he had a profound influence on my thoughts.” Edgar tried to prop himself up. “Did you say, Gassonet?” “Yes.” Edgar was jolted. “That is not a common name.” “Maybe so. He was a Jew. Lay yourself back down! You look flushed.” “Please continue!” “He was a great scholar from Saint Remy. From a young age he taught me Latin, Hebrew, mathematics, and the celestial sciences.” “You are an astrologer?” “I most certainly am. I still have the brass astrolabe that Grandsire bequeathed me. The stars have a present influence on all things on earth, including the diagnosis of the body’s ailments. Give me your birth date, and I will draw your chart tonight.” “Tell me, can your stars tell me the date I will die?” Edgar asked. Nostredame looked at his patient suspiciously. “They cannot, sir, but that is a very curious question, if I may say. Now, I advise you to chew three more lozenges, then go ye to sleep. I will return in the afternoon. There is a woman sicker than you on the rue des Ecoles who told me in her pitiful state this morning that if I did not come back to her soon, she would have to sew up her own shroud.” For two more days, the doctor visited his patient and administered his prescriptions. Edgar was anxious to talk to the man and weakly pressed him to stay longer, but the doctor would protest and complain about the number of poor souls afflicted in the district. Then, one evening, when Nostredame flew in with lozenges and a pot of soup, he found Edgar sobbing uncontrollably. “What troubles you, Monsieur?” Edgar pointed to his groin, and cried, “Look.” The doctor lifted the sheets. Both his inguinal folds were covered in bloody pus. “Excellent!” the doctor shouted. “Your buboes have ruptured. You are saved! If we keep you clean, I promise you, you will make a full recovery. This is the sign I have sought.” He took his knife from his satchel and cut one of Edgar’s good linen shirts into bandages and cleaned and dressed the suppurating abscesses. He fed the man some soup and sat down wearily on the chair. “I confess, I am tired,” Nostredame said. The setting sun was casting a golden glow into the room, which made the bearded, red-robed man look beatific. “You are an angel to me, Doctor. You have delivered me from death.” “I am gratified, sir. If all goes as expected, you will be restored to health within a fortnight.” “I must find a way to pay you, Doctor.” Nostredame smiled. “That would be most appreciated.” “I have little money here, but I will write my father, tell him what you did, and ask him to deliver a purse.” “That is most kind.” Edgar bit his lip. He had rehearsed this moment for the past few days. “Perhaps, Doctor, I can give you another gift in shorter order.” Nostredame raised an eyebrow. “Ah. And what would that be, Monsieur?” “In my chest. There is a book and some papers I pray you to see. I believe you will find them of the greatest interest.” “A book, you say?” Nostredame retrieved the heavy book from under Edgar’s clothes and returned to the chair. He noted its date of 1527 on the spine and opened a page at random. “This is most curious,” he said. “What can you tell me about it?” Edgar spilled out the entire tale, the long history of the book within the Cantwell family, his fascination with the tome, his “borrowing” of the book and the abbot’s letter from his father, his demonstration with a fellow student that the book was a true predictor of human events. Then he urged the doctor to read the letter for himself. He watched the young doctor as he nervously pulled on his long beard with one hand and, with the other, held the pages up, one by one, to the last of the sunlight. He watched the man’s lip begin to tremble and his eyes well up. Then he heard him whisper the name, Gassonet. Edgar knew he was reading this passage from Felix’s letter: He concentrated his gaze on the doctor’s reddish hair and greenish eyes. Edgar was not a mind reader, but he was certain he knew what was in the man’s thoughts at that moment. When Nostredame finished, he tucked the pages back into the book and placed it upon the table. Then he sat heavily back down and quietly began to weep. “You have given me something far greater than money, Monsieur, you have given me my raison d’être.” “You have powers, do you not?” Edgar asked. The doctor’s hands trembled. “I see things.” “The bowl. It was not a dream.” Nostredame reached for his satchel and pulled out a beaten copper bowl. “My grandsire was a seer. And his too, it is said. He used this to see into the future, and he taught me his ways. My powers, Monsieur, are strong and weak at the same time. In the proper state I can see fragments of visions, dark and terrible things, but I have not the ability to see the future with the precision that this Felix describes. I cannot say when a child will be born or a man will die.” “You are a Gassonet,” Edgar said. “You have the blood of Vectis.” “I fear it must be so.” “Please look into my future, I beg you.” “Now?” “Yes, please! By your healing hand, I have escaped the plague. Now I want to see what lies ahead.” Nostredame nodded. He darkened the room by closing the curtains, then filled his bowl from a pitcher of water. He lit a candle, sat before the bowl and pulled up the hood of his robe, pulling it forward until his face was hidden under its tented fabric. He lowered his head over the bowl and began to move his wooden stick over the surface of the water. In a few minutes, Edgar heard the same low vibratory hum emanating from the man’s throat he had heard the night of his feverish state. The humming became more urgent. While he could not see the doctor’s eyes, he imagined they were wild and fluttering. The stick was moving furiously over the bowl. The throaty sounds were building to a crescendo, growing louder and more frequent. Edgar grew anxious at the grunting and panting and regretted sending him down this fearful path. And then, in an instant, it was over. The room was silent. Nostredame lowered his hood and looked at his patient with awe. “Edgar Cantwell,” he said slowly. “You will be an important man, a wealthy man, and this will happen sooner than you think. Your father, Edgar, will meet a foul and terrible fate and your brother will be the instrument. That is all that I see.” “When? When will this happen?” “I cannot say. This is the full extent of my powers.” “Thank you for that.” “No, it is I who should thank you, sir. You have given me a history of my origins, and now I know I must not fight my visions as if they were demons but use them for greater good. I know now I have a destiny to fulfill.” Edgar gradually recovered his strength and his health, and the plague soon burned itself out in the University district. He sat for his examinations and was passed from the Sorbonne as a baccalaureate. On his last full day in Paris, he spent the morning sitting in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, admiring its grandeur and majesty for the last time. When he returned to his boardinghouse, his friend, Dudley pressed him to go to the college tavern for a last drink but there, lying against his bedroom door was a letter, left by his landlady. He sat on his bed, broke the seal and read with horror: Twenty-three years later, in 1555, the old plague doctor sat in his attic study composing a letter. It was after midnight, and the streets of Salon-de-Provence were quiet, allowing him full concentration. This was his special time, when his wife and six children were in bed and he could happily work as long as he liked or until sleep overtook him, sending him tottering over to his study cot. He had long since Latinized his name to Nostradamus as he imagined it sounded weightier and indeed, he had a reputation to nurture. His Now, he held in his hand a copy of his new work, one which he hoped would bring him more notoriety, more accolades, and more money. The book had been printed in Lyon and would soon go on sale. His publisher had delivered a crateful of copies, and he took one of them and with his sharpest knife, cut away the title page: He dipped his quill and continued his letter. |
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