Free The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice by Noah Gordon Page B

metheglin numbs the tongue and warms the soul.”
    Vitalia, the Herb of Life from far-off Assyria, turned out to be a pinch of niter, stirred well into each gallon of metheglin by Rob. It gave the strong spirits a medicinal bite, softened by the sweetness of the fermented honey that was its base.
    The flasks were small. “Buy a keg cheap, sell a flask dear,” Barber said. “Our place is with the lower classes and the poor. Above us are the surgeons, who charge fatter fees and sometimes will throw the likes of us a dirty job they don’t wish to soil their own hands on, like tossing a bit of rotten meat to a cur! Above
that
sorry lot are the ruddy physicians, who are full of importance and cater to gentlefolk because they charge most of all.
    “Do you ever wonder why this Barber doesn’t trim beards or cut hair? It’s because I can afford to choose my tasks. For here’s a lesson, and learn it well, apprentice: By mixing a proper physick and selling it diligently, a barber-surgeon can make as much money as a physician. Should all else fail, that is all you would have to know.”
    When they were through mixing the physick for sale, Barber got out a smaller pot and made some more. Then he fumbled with his clothing. Rob stood transfixed and watched the stream tinkle into the Universal Specific.
    “My Special Batch,” Barber said silkily, milking himself.
    “Day after tomorrow we’ll be in Oxford. The reeve there, name of Sir John Fitts, charges me dear in order not to run me out of the county. In a fortnight we’ll be in Bristol, where a tavern-keeper named Potter alwaysutters loud insults during my entertainments. I try to have suitable small gifts ready for men such as these.”
    When they reached Oxford, Rob didn’t disappear to practice with his colored balls. He waited and watched until the reeve appeared in his filthy satin tunic, a long, thin man with sunken cheeks and a perpetual cold smile that seemed prompted by some private amusement. Rob saw Barber pay the bribe and then, in reluctant afterthought, offer the bottle of metheglin.
    The reeve opened the flask and drank its contents down. Rob waited for him to gag and spit and shout for their immediate arrest, but Lord Fitts finished the final drop and smacked his lips.
    “Adequate tipple.”
    “Thank you, Sir John.”
    “Give me several flasks to carry home.”
    Barber sighed, as if put upon. “Of course, my lord.”
    The pissy bottles were scratched to mark them as different from the undiluted metheglin, and kept separate in a corner of the wagon; but Rob didn’t dare to drink any honey liquor for fear of making a mistake. The existence of the Special Batch made all metheglin nauseating, perhaps saving him from becoming a drunkard at an early age.
    Juggling three balls was wickedly hard. He worked at it for weeks without great success. He started by holding two balls in his right hand and one in his left. Barber told him to begin by juggling two balls in one hand, as he had already learned. When the moment seemed right, he popped the third ball in the same rhythm. Two balls would go up together, then one, then two, then one … The lone ball bobbing between the other two made a pretty picture, but it wasn’t real juggling. Whenever he tried a crossover toss with the three balls he met with disaster.
    He practiced every possible moment. At night in his sleep he saw colored balls dancing through the air, light as birds. When he was awake he tried to pop them like that but he quickly ran into trouble.
    They were in Stratford when he got the knack. He could see nothing different in the way that he popped or caught. He had simply found the rhythm; the three balls seemed to rise naturally from his hands and return as if part of him.
    Barber was pleased. “It’s my natal day, and you have given me a fine gift,” he said. To celebrate both events they went to market and bought a joint of young venison, which Barber boiled, larded, seasoned with mint and