Crow Boy by Philip Caveney

Doctor assured her. ‘You’ll be needing to put your hands on that ten shillings. And young Tom here has been expounding his fascinating views about . . . the efficacy of lavender. I’m sure he’ll take good care of me.’
    â€˜I know it sounds weird to you,’ said Tom, ‘but you have to . . .’
    â€˜Lead on, boy, before the poor girl dies of old age!’ snapped The Doctor impatiently, so Tom led him along the landing to the door of Alison’s room. When he pushed it open, he saw that The Doctor’s two helpers were already in there. The stocky man had opened the small casement window and had placed the glowing brazier in front of it. He was blowing on it to coax fresh heat from the slumbering coals. Joshua had unrolled a leather pouch and was arranging a row of fearsome-looking metal instruments on the floor beside the bed.
    As Tom watched, he selected what looked like a poker and thrust the head of it into the midst of the coals. He caught Tom’s eye and winked mischievously. Alison looked on, wide-eyed in terror, as well she might. Tom knew from what he had read that the preferred method of dealing with buboes at this time was to cut them open with a razor, drain the pus and insert a red-hot iron into the wound in order to cauterise it. It was not uncommon for patients to die of shock and those few who actually survived the plague would be scarred for life by its drastic treatment.
    The Doctor stood beside Tom, staring at the bed. In the small room, he smelled even worse than he had down on the street, like something that had died and been left to rot. He approached the bed and looked at the clumps of lavender hanging from the metal headboard on lengths of twine. He reached out and touched one of them.
    â€˜Where did you first hear of this nonsense?’ he hissed.
    â€˜It’s not nonsense!’ said Tom, without hesitation. ‘It’s . . . the latest thing.’ He studied Alison and thought she looked a little better than she had the night before. The swelling at her neck seemed to have gone down a bit and she was no longer gasping for breath. ‘Honestly, she’s looking loads better than she did. I think she’s already on the mend.’
    The Doctor didn’t seem so convinced. He moved closer to the bed. ‘Now, my pretty,’ he purred, as he leaned over Alison. ‘How are we feeling this morning?’ He lifted the stick and poked at the red swelling under her jaw, making her flinch. ‘Is that sore, my dear?’
    â€˜A . . . a little,’ gasped Alison, staring up at the hideous beaked mask. ‘But nothing like as bad as it was last night. I think the Sassenach pills must be working!’ She pointed to the cardboard box of antibiotics on a rough wooden table beside the bed.
    â€˜The . . . Sassenach pills?’ The Doctor reached out and picked up the box. He stared at it for a moment, puzzling over the printed design and the brightly coloured logo. Then his masked head turned to look at Tom again. ‘What are these things?’ he snarled.
    Tom swallowed. ‘It’s j . . . just some medicine I brought with me from . . . from Manchester.’
    â€˜Doesn’t look like any medicine I’ve ever seen. What manner of apothecary despatched these?’
    â€˜Oh, just my . . . regular GP! Those pills are made ‘specially for the plague.’
    â€˜Plague pills?’ The Doctor shook his head in disbelief. ‘Are you making mock of me? There’s no such thing!’
    â€˜Not here, but you can get them in England! E . . . everybody’s using them.’ As he watched, The Doctor was opening the box and pulling out one of the transparent blister packs. His head tilted to one side as his seventeenth century mindset tried to figure out just exactly what he was looking at.
    â€˜You’ll see,’ Tom assured him, ‘she’s only had two, so far, but if she finishes the course,