Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

gold. Only now^ and then, liverish on dark, inclement days, does he look over his shoulder at the young v^^olves coming up behind him; looks and shudders.

'Friends! I am a Christian gentleman. As such I come among you today. I do not seek personal profit' - he waits for the jeers; a half-dozen come; he closes his eyes in the manner of one long used to such injustice - 'I do not seek personal profit more than that which will enable me to continue my crusade. For if pain comes from the devil, then to fight pain is to fight with angels!'

Behind Gummer is a box, iron-bound. He opens it and lifts out a bottle of dark brown fluid. For the rest of his pitch he holds the bottle over his heart with both hands.

'I was, in my youth, betrothed to a girl of infinite sweetness. A girl of such loveliness and virtue . . .'

A voice calls: 'One or other. Never the twain t'gether!'

'. . . of such Christian virtue I shall never look upon her like again. Not in this world. She was my bride but one brief year, then took sick of a complaint that baffled the most eminent minds. The sight of her suffering' - he gulps; there are moans of sympathy from some of the women - 'brought me to the very precipice of madness. I prayed that I might take her place, that I might die and she live. 'Twas not to be.' His eyes fill; a plump tear winds down his cheek. For a moment he seems incapable of continuing. He groans.

'Why, I asked, was I spared? For what? There was no happiness in the world without my bride. And then it came to me in a dream, that I, Marley Gummer, had been chosen as the instrument through which the burden of man's suffering might be eased.

Heavy task! I searched for years among the wisdom of the ancient world. I devoured Hbraries. I studied Galen. I corresponded with the great Boerhaave. All to no avail. I was, I confess it, on the point of abandoning my search when, in the great library of Alexandria, a scholar of that place, a man of antique manner, brought to me a volume crusted with the dust of centuries and said . . .'

With what tongue did he converse?'

The heckler possesses an alarmingly cultured voice. Gummer's face betrays a flicker of discomfort, an instant's loss of poise. He cannot see who called out. He lobs his reply in the general direction.

'He spoke, sir, with his own tongue, and I with mine. We had but one apiece. "This," intoned the relic, "is what ye seekest." I opened the tome and began to read, ay, and was reading still when the cock crowed and the sun climbed into the sky. This book, friends, was writ by the very doctor who cured the archer Philoctetes of the serpent's bite . . .'

'Does it cure warts?'

'How much is it?'

'Patience, patience ... In those pages I discovered the recipe which, with some alterations to render it palatable to a Christian people, I present to you this afternoon.' Gummer holds the bottle aloft like a communion chalice. "Yet I would not have you take my word on it. Indeed, I forbid you to purchase even one bottle until its efficacy is proved beyond doubt.'

'How you gonna do that, then?'

Grace leans again into James's ribs. This time it means: Get ready.

'I intend, before your very eyes, here upon this dais' - a dozen tea chests covered by a sheet of muddy canvas - 'to demonstrate in the clearest manner imaginable the miraculous force of this draught. I carry no testimonies, though I could pave the road from here to Scotland with them if I chose. I prefer the witness of your own

eyes. Thomas, after all, was no less a saint for wishing to place his fingers into our Saviour's wounds.'

'You blaspheme, sir!' Again, that voice.

Gummer says: "Tis in the gospels, friend, should you care to read them.' He sets the bottle on a small table on which there is also a candle stub, and something that catches the light: an implement.

In pursuit of verus - his voice booms - 'it will of course be necessary to inflict pain before I may relieve it. The suffering wiU not be lengthy but the sharper the fangs the sweeter the relief which follows. Who among you will come up? Who will sacrifice a little blood for his feUow men. The risk, I assure you, is very nearly negligible.'

He takes up the implement. It is a steel pin turned to a very obvious sharpness. 'Come now, somebody . . .' He hits upon the least likely among the crowd, gathers their refusals, their hurried 'Not I, by God'. His eyes settle on James, then on Grace.

'Madam, are you the mother of that fine boy?'

'Ay, sir. His sole parent since his father died in the French wars.' Murmurs of approval and interest.

Says Gummer: 'Gave his life for his country. Noble. And might the boy, madam, give a drop of his father's martial blood for something greater than nations? I mean, madam, for the Truth!'

'My Billy! Never! Why, 'is skin's like silk. He has but to graze his knee and he turns white as eggmeat.'

'A sensitive child?'

'Oh, very, sir, begging your pardon.'

'Then do you not see how he is precisely the subject I require? Madam, if you will but let me have him' - some cries of 'Let 'im!' - 'it shall, I promise you, be your proudest boast that your Billy brought the light of understanding, the beacon of hope, the balm of ease to these' - a grand sweep of his arm - 'goodly folk.

Come, madam, the suffering will be but a moment. A blink of the eye. For his father's memory.'

James says: 'Let me go. Mother. Let me be brave like my father.'

It is Gummer's experience that one can never be too obvious in these matters.