Suffer the Little Children (The Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez Book 5) Read online

  ‘You must just believe in yourself. Remember what I have told you about playing a part, when you were on a mission for Walsingham? It is like appearing on stage. You must think yourself into the skin of the character.’

  ‘I cannot see how that applies here.’

  ‘But of course it does. You must see yourself as a successful candidate, a licensed physician, and you will pass the examination with ease.’

  I laughed. ‘Perhaps you are right. I hope it may be that easy! I must practice speaking Latin again. Can I practice with you?’

  I was teasing him. He had attended St Paul’s school and had a good grammar school education, but I do not suppose he had uttered a word of Latin or opened a single Latin author since the day he left school and joined Burbage’s company.

  ‘It’s a bargain,’ he said, ‘as long as, in return, you agree to appear on stage in our next performance.’

  ‘We’ll shake on that,’ I said.

  We left the Lion in a much happier humour than we had arrived and walked the short distance to our lodgings, slithering on the icy roadway, which had grown worse since the morning. Rikki ran ahead, as eager as we to reach the warmth and comfort within doors.

  As we climbed the stairs, I asked, ‘Were the children there at the playhouse today?’

  ‘The beggar rascals? Aye. I gave them a penny.’

  ‘All five of them?’

  ‘As far as I could see. You are taking a mighty interest in them.’

  I paused on the landing outside his door.

  ‘With all that is done in London, it is not enough,’ I said. ‘Why are there so many children wandering the streets and sleeping in doorways or under bushes in churchyards? Why do we turn away, wilfully blind to the cruelties inflicted on the helpless young?’

  He looked at me soberly. ‘You have had a bad case at the hospital?’

  ‘Would that it were just one case! Only today . . . there is a little maidservant, barely fourteen, a child raped by her master, who gave birth to another unwanted child yesterday. A foundling boy trained to be wandering acrobat, then abandoned and nearly dying in a ditch. A girl – she cannot be more than eleven or twelve. Her parents – her parents – have been drawing her teeth to sell. We thought she was consumptive. All the blood, you see, as well as a chest infection. I cannot let her go back to those monsters.’

  ‘Can you prevent it?’

  ‘I am not sure. I shall speak to Superintendent Ailmer tomorrow.’ A deep sigh rose up from my lungs unbidden. ‘Those three – no, four, if you count the newborn babe – all in one day, as well as those starving beggars.’

  I reached down and ran Rikki’s silky ears through my fingers. Hearing something in my voice he had pressed himself comfortingly against my side.

  ‘The baby, at least, you will be able to give a home in Christ’s Hospital,’ Simon said.

  ‘I hope so. The girl must agree, and she is torn. I can understand why. All her family is dead. It would be someone for her to love.’ I could hear the break in my own voice. ‘But what sort of future would that mean for her? She must find work, and who would take her on, with a newborn baby?’

  ‘You cannot solve all the world’s problems, Kit, nor care for all the lost and abandoned children.’

  I gave him a wan smile. ‘Nay. Only the ones who come my way.’

  I turned toward the last flight of stairs.

  ‘Give you good night,’ he said.

  ‘And you. I will leave you to sleep in the morning.’

  ‘I should hope so indeed.’ He was grinning as he closed his door.

  It would be some days yet before any decision would need to be made about the three children who caused me most concern at St Thomas’s, but I feared that once Ellyn had recovered from her severe chest infection (and she was on the mend) her parents might come to claim her, not from affection, I was sure, but as a source of income from the sale of more of her teeth. I had no idea what kind of family they were, but if the father had once been a blacksmith they did not come from amongst the lowest scrapings of Southwark’s alleys. As a craftsman in a respectable trade, he would at some time have had a position in the community.

  It was common enough for the London beggars to be accompanied by maimed or disabled children, not always their own. If they did not have a crippled child to arouse sympathy in the breast of some rich lady marked for appeal, it was easy enough to break a child’s limb or cause some disfigurement. Nothing too unpleasant, for a disfigurement too grotesque would be more likely to cause a mark to turn away in horror at the sight of some child blighted by God for the parent’s sin.

  I did not think this was the case with Ellyn’s parents. They would not be beggars, not yet at any rate. They would consider that they were engaged in legitimate business, selling what was theirs, for under the law, the child is the property of its parents, just as the wife is the property of her husband. An apprentice, too, was the property of his master, though the guilds offered some protection to apprentices, since they were the source of future journeymen and master craftsman. If a master was found to have treated his apprentice badly, the apprentice was no longer bound and the master could be disciplined with greater or less severity, depending on the offence. However, as for parents who abused their children, I was not sure that the law offered much protection to the victims.

  Next morning, I put the case to Superintendent Ailmer. Although he was merely the deputy superintendent, he liked the title of Superintendent and it was as well to yield to this small vanity in order to gain his support. Besides, he worked hard and conscientiously, while the gentleman superintendent merely drew the stipend and was never seen at St Thomas’s.

  ‘You are quite sure of the truth in this case, Dr Alvarez?’ he said, steepling his fingers before his face and regarding me across the desk. I had not been long at St Thomas’s, but I believed I had earned his respect.

  ‘Quite sure,’ I said. ‘You may see for yourself that the teeth have been drawn. The gums are not yet healed. She was bleeding profusely when she was left here. Merely dumped on the doorstep like a foundling, as it were. No caring parent came with her. I think that tells us something.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He opened the admissions ledger which he had sent for from the almoner’s office when I had put the case to him. ‘Ellyn Smith. Not a very revealing name. I see there is no address given.’

  ‘Her name is Ellyn. And it may well be Smith. The father is an out-of-work blacksmith. These crafts tend to run in families. They may be a long line of blacksmiths.’

  I leaned over the desk and studied the register upside down. Ailmer pointed to the blank where the address should have been written.

  ‘She may have been too ill to give it when she came in. Or she may have been too frightened. I wonder . . .’ I looked up at him. ‘If the parents thought we might realise what had been done to her, they may have threatened her, told her not to give the address. They certainly made her so terrified that she was afraid to say what had happened to her until I worked it out for myself.’

  Ailmer closed the book and rested his palms on it.

  ‘If we have no address for the child, we cannot return her to her home.’

  ‘What I fear is that they may come for her, if they believe she has survived. She might not have done, it was a serious chest infection. With all the blood, I was afraid at first that it might be consumption.’

  ‘I assume that what you are saying is that we should not return the child to her parents,’ he said.

  ‘In all conscience,’ I said, ‘I do not think we can.’

  ‘I am not sure that the courts would quite see it that way. In any case, what is to become of her? She is old enough – eleven or twelve, you say? – old enough to go for a maidservant.’

  ‘Aye, she is, but she will not be strong enough for such work for some time. It can be heavy work, and long hours.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I wondered whether we could ask Christ’s Hospital to take her in. She has, after all, been abandoned here by her parents, and we have no address. They are meant to take in abandoned children.’

  He gave me a tight smile. ‘I believe you are become a lawyer as well as a physician, Dr Alvarez, making a case out of cobwebs. At all events, is she not a little old?’

  ‘We can but ask,’ I said, seeing that he was coming round to my way of thinking. ‘I have had some dealings with the staff at Christ’s. They are kindly folk. I believe they will help if they can. Do I have your permission to raise the matter with them?’

  ‘Very well, but do not make any final arrangement without coming to me again.’

  ‘Of course. There is another child, the baby born early two days ago.’

  ‘It has died?’

  ‘Nay, not at all. I think she will live. The mother is hardly more than a child herself, a victim of rape.’

  He passed a hand over his face. ‘I remember that one. I have sent for the master. He will not get off lightly, if I can help it. She was an apprenticed servant, to all intents and purposes, although there was no formal agreement. She should therefore have been protected.’

  ‘The girl, Mellie, is in two minds about giving up the baby, but I am hoping she will let the little girl go to Christ’s. She cannot start her own life afresh while caring for a child at the same time.’

  ‘And the baby will fare better. Otherwise they may both end up in the gutter, or in one of the whorehouses.’

  I nodded. ‘The baby is very small. They will both need to spend some time here until they are stronger. Then we shall see.’

  ‘Well, that is a straightforward case, Dr Alvarez, which I can leave to you and Mistress Maynard. Is that all?’

  ‘Aye, thank you, Superintendent.’

  I rose, bowed and left his office, feeling I had achieved all I could hope for. It seemed that Ailmer was willing, like me, to bend the rules in the case of Ellyn. All that I must do now was to persuade Christ’s Hospital that she was not too old to be taken into their care. But Davy – what could be done for the little acrobat Davy?

  On my way to the playhouse that afternoon, I turned aside to Dr Nuñez’s home in Mark Lane. I felt some guilt as I knocked on the door. When I was younger, I used to come here with my father to attend Jewish services in the makeshift synagogue provided by the Nuñez’s great hall. I had not attended since my father’s death. I did not even know whether the services were still held. Dr Nuñez had never made any reference to them. Perhaps he understood that for us, the younger members of the immigrant Marrano community, already baptised Christians, the old faith was slipping away. Once or twice Sara’s daughter Anne and I had discussed it. Living in Christian England, obliged by law to attend our parish churches every Sunday, finding our friends amongst the English, meant that our ties with the old country and the old faith were loosening, for Anne even more than for me. Her mother had been born in England, and so had she. For myself, I had no desire to return to Portugal. As time passed I had begun to think of myself more and more as English, not Portuguese, especially now that my father was gone.

  Beatriz Nuñez followed the maid who opened the door to me and gave me a quick hug. Her husband had become almost a second father to me and although I saw Beatriz less often, she was always kind to me.

  ‘Come in, Kit. Hector has been looking out the books for you and he has them laid out in his study.’ She beamed at me. ‘So we are to have another Fellow of the College, are we?’

  I laughed. ‘Nothing so grand, I fear, Mistress Nuñez. I am to try for a licence. To become a Fellow is far above my aspirations.’

  ‘Well, well, we shall see. In time, who knows? This way.’

  I knew the way to Dr Nuñez’s study, for I had been here on Walsingham’s business before, but I let her escort me. I liked the Nuñez house. They were surely as wealthy as Ruy Lopez, wealthier probably, for Dr Nuñez had his own fleet of ships trading in spices, but this home had none of the florid ostentation that Ruy so loved. It was spacious and extremely comfortable, with cushioned chairs and thick but modest tapestries on the walls. There were rugs on the floor, probably obtained as part of Dr Nuñez’s trading, but there were no displays of silver and Venetian glass and jewels, no useless ornamental objects such as Ruy liked to flourish before his guests. It was truly a home, where you were not afraid that you might break some priceless object with a careless elbow.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Kit,’ Dr Nuñez said. ‘I have been busy, you see!’ He gestured at several piles of books laid out on his desk, then laid his hand on one.

  ‘These, I think, will be the most useful.’

  He passed them to me.

  ‘The standard edition of Galen in four volumes. The College still places him above all others. Modern authors who disagree with Galen’s teachings are regarded as little better than religious heretics. Here is a recent reprint of Celsus, Galen with annotations, if you like. It was first printed about a hundred years ago, but is still regarded as a useful commentary on Galen.’

  He picked up a slim volume with celestial symbols depicted on the cover. ‘Fundamentals of astrology. You will not be expected to know this in detail, but best to be able to show that you have read it.’

  ‘Paracelsus?’ I asked hopefully. Paracelsus believed in experience and experiment, rather than the slavish adherence to the theories of second-century Galen.

  He shook his head. ‘Not Paracelsus. Too controversial.’

  I looked wistfully at a large volume standing separately in the centre of the table and ran a loving finger along its spine.

  ‘Not Vesalius?’

  ‘Definitely not Vesalius! What, the anatomy of human corpses! Be content with Galen.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, with a touch of stubbornness, ‘you know best. I will parrot the ancients and do my best to sound convinced, but afterwards, however the examination goes, I may return to Paracelsus and Vesalius and the Arab texts?’

  ‘Of course. Simply avoid making a parade of it. The wise man always practices discretion.’

  He loaned me an extra satchel to carry the heavy tomes, so I went on my way burdened like a donkey with two saddlebags. We agreed that I should return in a week to be tested on the first volume of Galen.

  I continued on my way to the playhouse, but made some purchases in Wormwood Street – more spiced buns, which were filling as well as tasty, a dozen apples, and another pie, rabbit this time, for it was larger than the mutton pie and the same price. The beggar children were in their usual place. I handed out the food first, then gave Matthew a groat again.

  ‘I’ll ask one of the lads to fetch you some ale,’ I said. ‘I could not carry any more today.’

  ‘What’s all that, then?’ Matthew eyed my two satchels, clearly weighing up whether they were worth stealing, while he munched his way through his slab of pie.

  ‘This one,’ I said, patting my own satchel, ‘is for my salves and other medicines. I am a physician, you see, and always carry a few things with me, in case they are needed.’

  ‘What about the other one? A’nt seen you with that before.’

  ‘It belongs to a friend and is full of books. Medical books, written in Latin.’

  ‘Oh, books!’ He spat contemptuously. ‘Not worth nothing.’

  In fact they were worth a good deal, but I was not going to tell Matthew that.

  ‘If you are a doctor, why are you always going to the playhouse?’ he said. ‘Play’s over for today.’

  ‘I know that. I am here to play music with one of my friends who is one of the players’ company.’

  ‘Can you really play music?’ It was the girl Katerina. She had never addressed me voluntarily before.

  ‘We are playing music for two lutes,’ I said. ‘I can play the lute and the virginals and several different sizes of recorder.’

  None of which, sadly, I still owned.

  ‘Katerina used to play a pipe,’ Jonno volunteered, ‘but it was pinched.’

  ‘Do you like music, Katerina?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well enough.’

  ‘People used to give us pennies when she played,’ Jonno said. ‘More’n we get here.’

  ‘Perhaps you can get another pipe,’ I said, but the girl just gave me a scornful look, as if I were soft in the head.

  Once inside the playhouse I found one of the lads of all work, who ran errands and sold playbills and fetched and carried. Some hoped to be taken on as boy players, some merely glad to earn what they could. I gave him enough to buy a flagon of small ale for the children.

  ‘When you have brought it back, you shall have a penny for yourself,’ I said and he ran off.

  Guy and I practised for about an hour, and I told him that I was to take the examination for the College.

  ‘You will soon be too grand to speak to us, poor players that we are,’ he said, putting on his sorrowful clown’s look, which reminded me uncomfortably of the Commedia dell’Arte puppets I had encountered earlier in the year.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ I said, rather crossly. ‘You are all my friends. It is nothing very grand, but it would mean I could take private patients of my own and not depend on St Thomas’s for every penny.’

  ‘Have you told them?’ he asked. ‘For surely, once you are licensed, they will be obliged to pay you a full salary.’

  ‘I suppose they will.’

  I had not thought of that. It might be wise to say nothing at the hospital. It might not please Superintendent Ailmer if he found he must pay me a full physician’s pay.

  ‘Is Simon still here?’ I asked, as I fitted my borrowed lute into its case and took up my heavy burden again.

  ‘Nay, his part was only in the first two acts today. He has gone off to Newgate to see that fellow Marlowe.’

  Guy, like me, did not care for Marlowe, who had no time for Guy’s musical and comic talents. Their dislike was mutual. When in company they eyed each other like hostile dogs.

  I sat down on my stool again and let my satchels slide to the ground. Rikki who had risen eagerly to head home, slumped down and laid his chin on his paws with a sigh.

  ‘Guy, what do you think of Simon as a comic actor?’