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“Spit it out!”
“She … she … oh!”
And the girl, with a last look of deepest sympathy, darted off through the crowd.
“Silly girl!”
“No, Papa,” murmured Camillia, eyes wide. “Not silly. She saw. She knew. Oh, Jamie, run fetch her, make her tell!”
“No, she offered nothing! Whereas, the Gypsy, see her list!”
“I know it, Papa.” Camillia, paler, shut her eyes.
Someone cleared his throat.
A butcher, his apron a scarlet battleground, stood bristling his fierce mustaches there.
“I have seen cows with this look,” he said. “I have saved them with brandy and three new eggs. In winter I have saved myself with the same elixir—”
“My daughter is no cow, sir!” Mr. Wilkes threw down his quill. “Nor is she a butcher, nor is it January! Step back, sir, others wait!”
And indeed, now a vast crowd clamored, drawn by the others, aching to advise their favorite swig, recommend some country site where it rained less and shone more sun than in all England or your South of France. Old men and women, especial doctors as all the aged are, clashed by each other in bristles of canes, in phalanxes of crutches and hobble sticks.
“Back!” cried Mrs. Wilkes, alarmed. “They’ll crush my daughter like a spring berry!”
“Stand off!” Jamie seized canes and crutches and threw them over the mob, which turned on itself to go seek their missing members.
“Father, I fail, I fail,” gasped Camillia.
“Father!” cried Jamie. “There’s but one way to stop this riot! Charge them! Make them pay to give us their mind on this ailment!”
“Jamie, you are my son! Quick, boy, paint a sign! Listen, people! Tuppence! Queue up please, a line! Tuppence to speak your piece! Get your money out, yes! That’s it. You, sir. You, madame. And you, sir. Now, my quill! Begin!”
The mob boiled in like a dark sea.
Camillia opened one eye and swooned again.
Sundown, the streets almost empty, only a few strollers now. Camillia moth-fluttered her eyelids at a familiar clinking jingle.
“Three hundred and ninety-nine, four hundred pennies!” Mr. Wilkes counted the last money into a bag held by his grinning son. “There!”
“It will buy me a fine black funeral coach,” said the pale girl.
“Hush! Did you imagine, family, so many people, two hundred, would pay to give us their opinion?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “Wives, husbands, children, are deaf to each other. So people gladly pay to have someone listen. Poor things, each today thought he and he alone knew quinsy, dropsy, glanders, could tell the slaver from the hives. So tonight we are rich and two hundred people are happy, having unloaded their full medical kit at our door.”
“Gods, instead of quelling the riot, we had to drive them off snapping like pups.”
“Read us the list, Father,” said Jamie, “of two hundred remedies. Which one is true?”
“I care not,” whispered Camillia, sighing. “It grows dark. My stomach is queasy from listening to the names! May I be taken upstairs?”
“Yes, dear. Jamie, lift!”
“Please,” said a voice.
Half-bent, the men looked up.
