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“She’s not right.”
“Yes, yes?”
“She’s poorly.” The good doctor scowled.
“Go on, go on!”
“She’s a fluttering candle flame, no doubt.”
“Ah, Doctor Gimp,” protested Mr. Wilkes. “You but tell us as you go out what we told you when you came in!”
“No, more! Give her these pills at dawn, high noon, and sunset. A sovereign remedy!”
“Damn, she’s stuffed with sovereign remedies now!”
“Tut-tut! That’s a shilling as I pass downstairs, sir.”
“Go down and send the Devil up!” Mr. Wilkes shoved a coin in the good doctor’s hand.
Whereupon the physician, wheezing, taking snuff, sneezing, stamped down into the swarming streets of London on a sloppy morn in the spring of 1762.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes turned to the bed where their sweet Camillia lay pale, thin, yes, but far from unlovely, with large wet lilac eyes, her hair a creek of gold upon her pillow.
“Oh,” she almost wept. “What’s to become of me? Since the start of spring, three weeks, I’ve been a ghost in my mirror; I frighten me. To think I’ll die without seeing my twentieth birthday.”
“Child,” said the mother. “Where do you hurt?”
“My arms. My legs. My bosom. My head. How many doctors—six?—have turned me like a beef on a spit. No more. Please, let me pass away untouched.”
“What a ghastly, what a mysterious illness,” said the mother. “Oh, do something, Mr. Wilkes!”
“What?” asked Mr. Wilkes angrily. “She won’t have the physician, the apothecary, or the priest!—and Amen to that!—they’ve wrung me dry! Shall I run in the street then and bring the Dustman up?”
“Yes,” said a voice.
“What!” All three turned to stare.
They had quite forgotten her younger brother, Jamie, who stood picking his teeth at a far window, gazing serenely down into the drizzle and the loud rumbling of the town.
“Four hundred years ago,” he said serenely, “it was tried, it worked. Don’t bring the Dustman up, no, no. But let us hoist Camillia, cot and all, maneuver her downstairs, and set her up outside our door.”
“Why? What for?”
“In a single hour”—Jamie’s eyes jumped, counting—“a thousand folk rush by our gate. In one day, twenty thousand people run, hobble, or ride by. Each might eye my swooning sister, each count her teeth, pull her ear lobes, and all, all, mind you, would have a sovereign remedy to offer! One of them would just have to be right!”
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“Ah,” said Mr. Wilkes, stunned.
“Father!” said Jamie breathlessly. “Have you ever known one single man who didn’t think he personally wrote Materia Medica? This green ointment for sour throat, that ox-salve for miasma or bloat? Right now, ten thousand self-appointed apothecaries sneak off down there, their wisdom lost to us!”
“Jamie boy, you’re incredible!”
“Cease!” said Mrs. Wilkes. “No daughter of mine will be put on display in this or any street—”
“Fie, woman!” said Mr. Wilkes. “Camillia melts like snow and you hesitate to move her from this hot room? Come, Jamie, lift the bed!”
“Camillia?” Mrs. Wilkes turned to her daughter.
