“Not in health, thank God. But I am heavy of heart, child. Our Lady is in evil case, and she is very old.”
We should not now call a woman very old who was barely sixty years of age; we scarcely think that more than elderly. But in 1373, when the numerous wars and insurrections of the earlier half of the century had almost decimated the population, so that, especially in the upper classes, an old man was rarely to be seen, and when also human life was usually shorter than in later times, sixty was the equivalent of eighty or ninety with us, while seventy was as wonderful as we think a hundred. King Edward was in his second childhood when he died at sixty-five; while “old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,” scarcely passed his fifty-ninth birthday.
“Is she sick?” said Amphillis, pityingly. She had not seen her mistress for several days, for her periods of attendance on her were fitful and uncertain.
“She is very sick, and Father Jordan hath tried his best.”
The household doctor at that time, for a country house, was either the mistress of the family or the confessor. There were few medical men who were not also priests, and they only lived in chief cities. Ladies were taught physic and surgery, and often doctored a whole neighbourhood. In a town the druggist was usually consulted by the poor, if they consulted any one at all who had learned medicine; but the physicians most in favour were “white witches,” namely, old women who dealt in herbs and charms, the former of which were real remedies, and the latter heathenish nonsense. A great deal of superstition mixed with the practice of the best medical men of the day. Herbs must be gathered when the moon was at the full, or when Mercury was in the ascendant; patients who had the small-pox must be wrapped in scarlet; the blood-stone preserved its wearer from particular maladies; a hair from a saint’s beard, taken in water, was deemed an invaluable specific. They bled to restore strength, administered plasters of verdigris, and made their patients wait for a lucky day to begin a course of treatment.
“He hath given her,” pursued Perrote, sorrowfully, “myrrh and milelot and tutio (oxide of zinc), and hath tried plasters of diachylon, litharge, and ceruse, but to no good purpose. He speaketh now of antimony and orchis, but I fear—I fear he can give nothing to do any good. When our Lord saith ‘Die,’ not all the help nor love in the world shall make man live. And I think her time is come.”
“O Mistress Perrote! must she die without deliverance?”
“Without earthly deliverance, it is like, my maid. Be it so. But, ah me, what if she die without the heavenly deliverance! She will not list me: she never would. If man would come by that she would list, and might be suffered so to do, I would thank God to the end of my days.”
“Anentis what should she list, good Mistress?”
“Phyllis, she hath never yet made acquaintance with Christ our Lord. He is to her but a dead name set to the end of her prayers—an image nailed to a cross—a man whom she has heard tell of, but never saw. The living, loving Lord, who died and rose for her—who is ready at this hour to be her best Friend and dearest Comforter—who is holding forth His hands to her, as to all of us, and entreating her to come to Him and be saved—she looketh on Him as she doth on Constantine the Great, as man that was good and powerful once, but long ago, and ’tis all over and done with. I would fain have her hear man speak of Him that knoweth Him.”