Dark Fire

It had only his name, 'Guy Malton', on the sign above the door. The window displayed neatly labelled flasks, rather than the stuffed alligators and other monsters most apothecaries favour. I knocked and went in. As usual the shop was clean and tidy, herbs and spices in jars lining the shelves. The room's musky, spicy smell brought Guy's consulting room at Scarnsea monastery back to my mind. Indeed the long apothecary's robe he wore was so dark a shade of green that in the dim light it looked almost black and could have been mistaken for a monk's robe. He was seated at his table, a frown of concentration on his thin, dark features as he applied a poultice from a bowl to an ugly burn on the arm of a thickset young man. I caught a whiff of lavender. Guy looked up and smiled, a sudden flash of white teeth.

'A minute more, Matthew,' he said in his lisping accent.

'I am sorry, I am earlier than I said I would be.'

'No matter, I am nearly done.'

I nodded and sat down on a chair. I looked at a chart on the wall, showing a naked man at the centre of a series of concentric circles, Man joined to his creator by the chains of nature. It reminded me of somebody pinned to an archery target. Underneath, a diagram of the four elements and the four types of human nature to which they correspond: earth for melancholic, water for phlegmatic, air for cheerful and fire for choleric.

The young man let out a sigh and looked up at Guy.

'By God's son, sir, that eases me already.'

'Good. Lavender is full of cold and wet properties, it draws the dry heat from your arm. I will give you a flask of this and you must apply it four times a day.'

The young man looked curiously at Guy's brown face. 'I have never heard of such a remedy. Is it used in the land you come from, sir? Perhaps there everyone is burned by the sun.'

'Oh, yes, Master Pettit,' Guy said seriously. 'If we did not wear lavender there we should all burn and shrivel up. We coat the palm trees with it too.' His patient gave him a keen look, perhaps scenting mockery. I noticed that his big square hands were spotted with pale scars. Guy rose and passed him a flask with a smile, raising a long finger. 'Four times a day, mind. And apply some to the wound on your leg made by that foolish physician.'

'Yes, sir.' The young man rose. 'I feel the burning going already, it has been an agony even to have my sleeve brush against it this last week. Thank you.' He took his purse from his belt and passed the apothecary a silver groat. As he left the shop Guy turned to me and laughed softly.

'When people made remarks like that at first I would correct them, tell them we have snow in Granada, which we do. But now I just agree with them. They are never sure if I joke or not. Still, it keeps me in their minds. Perhaps he will tell his friends in Lothbury.'

'He is a founder?'

'Ay, Master Pettit has just finished his apprenticeship. A serious young fellow. He spilt hot lead on his arm, but hopefully that old remedy will ease him.'

I smiled. 'You are learning the ways of business. Turning your differences to advantage.'

Apothecary Guy Malton, once Brother Guy of Malton, had fled Spain with his Moorish parents as a boy after the fall of Granada. He had trained as a physician at Louvain. He had become my friend on my mission to Scarnsea three years before, helped me during that terrible time, and when the monastery was dissolved I had hoped to set him up as a physician in London. But the College would not have him, with his brown face and papist past. With a little bribery, however, I had got him into the Apothecaries' Guild and he had managed to build up a good trade.

'Master Pettit went to a physician first.' Guy shook his head. 'He stitched a clyster thread into his leg to draw the pain down from his arm, and when the wound became inflamed insisted that showed the clyster was working.' He pulled off his apothecary's cap, revealing a head of curly hair that had once been black but now was mostly white. It still seemed odd to see him without his tonsure. He studied me closely with his keen brown eyes.

'And how have you been this last month, Matthew?'

'Still better. I do my exercises twice a day like a good patient. My back troubles me little unless I have to lift something heavy, like the great bundles of legal papers that mount in my room at Lincoln's Inn.'

'You should get your clerk to do that.'

'He gets them out of order. You've never seen such a noddle as Master Skelly.'

He smiled. 'Well, I will have a look at it if I may.'

He rose, lit a sweet-smelling candle, then closed the shutters as I removed my doublet and shirt. Guy was the only one I allowed to see my twisted back. He got me to stand, move my shoulders and arms, then stood behind me and gently probed my back muscles. 'Good,' he said. 'There is little stiffness. You may get dressed. Keep on with your exercises. It is good to have a conscientious patient.'

'I would not like to go back to the old days, fearing ever-worsening pain.'