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“I may as well die in the open,” said Camillia, “where a cool breeze might stir my locks as I …”
“Bosh!” said the father. “You’ll not die. Jamie, heave! Ha! There! Out of the way, wife! Up, boy, higher!”
“Oh,” cried Camillia faintly.“ I fly, I fly …!”
Quite suddenly a blue sky opened over London. The population, surprised by the weather, hurried out into the streets, panicking for something to see, to do, to buy. Blind men sang, dogs jigged, clowns shuffled and tumbled, children chalked games and threw balls as if it were carnival time.
Down into all this, tottering, their veins bursting from their brows, Jamie and Mr. Wilkes carried Camillia like a lady Pope sailing high in her sedan-chair cot, eyes clenched shut, praying.
“Careful!” screamed Mrs. Wilkes. “Ah, she’s dead! No. There. Put her down. Easy …”
And at last the bed was tilted against the house front so that the River of Humanity surging by could see Camillia, a large pale Bartolemy Doll put out like a prize in the sun.
“Fetch a quill, ink, paper, lad,” said the father. “I’ll make notes as to symptoms spoken of and remedies offered this day. Tonight we’ll average them out. Now—”
But already a man in the passing crowd had fixed Camillia with a sharp eye.
“She’s sick!” he said.
“Ah,” said Mr. Wilkes, gleefully. “It begins. The quill, boy. There. Go on, sir!”
“She’s not well.” The man scowled. “She does poorly.”
“Does poorly—” Mr. Wilkes wrote, then froze. “Sir?” He looked up suspiciously. “Are you a physician?”
“I am, sir.”
“I thought I knew the words! Jamie, take my cane, drive him off! Go, sir, be gone!”
But the man hastened off, cursing, mightily exasperated.
“She’s not well, she does poorly … pah!” mimicked Mr. Wilkes, but stopped. For now a woman, tall and gaunt as a specter fresh risen from the tomb, was pointing a finger at Camillia Wilkes.
“Vapors,” she intoned.
“Vapors,” wrote Mr. Wilkes, pleased.
“Lung-flux,” chanted the woman.
“Lung-flux!” Mr. Wilkes wrote, beaming. “Now, that’s more like it!”
“A medicine for melancholy is needed,” said the woman palely. “Be there mummy ground to medicine in your house? The best mummies are: Egyptian, Arabian, Hirasphatos, Libyan, all of great use in magnetic disorders. Ask for me, the Gypsy, at the Flodden Road. I sell stone parsley, male frankincense—”
“Flodden Road, stone parsley—slower, woman!”
“Opobalsam, pontic valerian—”
“Wait, woman! Opobalsam, yes! Jamie, stop her!”
But the woman, naming medicines, glided on.
A girl, no more than seventeen, walked up now and stared at Camillia Wilkes.
“She—”
“One moment!” Mr. Wilkes scribbled feverishly. “—magnetic disorders—pontic valerian—drat! Well, young girl, now. What do you see in my daughter’s face? You fix her with your gaze, you hardly breathe. So?”
“She—” The strange girl searched deep into Camillia’s eyes, flushed, and stammered. “She suffers from … from …”
