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sizes, as well as bodkins and stoppered bottles and drawstringed bags. Last of all, he drew out three serrated blades, selecting the largest, with the crudest teeth. Carefully feeding his little fire until it burnt with a white-hot flame, he emptied one of his bags into a small metal crucible and hung that from the pot's handle.
    While it heated, he launched into a monologue, as if lecturing apprentices:
    "A fire in the chamber is good, to waste and consume evil vapors within the chamber. I do advise you neither to stand nor to sit by the fire, but stand or sit a good way off from the fire, taking the flavor of it, for fire does arify and dry up a man's blood, and does make stark the sinews and joints of man. In your bed lie not too hot nor too cool, but in a temperance. Ancient doctors of physic said eight hours of sleep in summer and nine in winter is sufficient for any man; but I do think the sleep ought to be taken as is the complexion of the man."
    Seamus, still exhausted though he had slept the clock around and then some, had difficulty believing his ears. The smells, the heat, the deathlike earl—all this presided over by a merry man discussing the values of fire and sleep was too much. He had to get out of here for a second to breathe clean air.
    "Physician," he interrupted, "is there aught else that you might need?"
    The doctor looked about the chamber and nodded. "A table—a good, solid one, the length at least of that man there ... and of the same width or more. And some wine. A Malmsey if you please."
    Seamus felt like one released from Hell as he left the room, the two lackeys in reluctant tow. They had been drinking in the words of the doctor and were loath to leave. When Seamus returned with a trestle table brought up from the great hall below, the doctor was still carrying on.
    "When you be out of your bed, stretch forth your legs and arms and your body, cough and spit." He demonstrated, then continued.
    "After you have evacuated your body ..." He paused. Seamus feared another demonstration, but the doctor wanted merely to check the temperature of the contents of the crucible. "Near at heat. Now, where did I leave off? Oh, yes. After you have evacuated your body and trussed your points, comb your head so and do so divers times in the day. And wash your hands and wrists, your face and eyes and your teeth, with cold water."
    He stopped. The crucible was bubbling away, and from among his jars, he selected one, slowly emptying it into his concoction. The crucible hissed, and the room filled with the smell of roses. Seamus's stomach lurched, then steadied. As Seamus gently lifted the earl to the table and lashed him fast, the doctor sniffed, then savored the bouquet of the wine.
    "A good vintage this, I ha' never had better. Oh, you'd best remove the bandages from his arm," he directed, then devoted himself to guzzling the wine.
    Wiping his lips fastidiously on the arm of his gown, he upended the wine jug well above the furthest reach of the poison's streaking. The dregs he sloshed over his own hands to wash them. Just below the elbow, he made his first cut with the largest lancet, a bold brave stroke that caused blood to well up; whereupon the earl came awake, screaming. Seamus's hand over his mouth stilled further sounds, while the physician got up the gag. At Boorde's direction, Seamus let go. Seaforth opened his mouth to scream, and Boorde deftly popped in the gag. Whistling tunelessly, Boorde went back to work, cutting away as the patient's eyes bulged, and the veins and muscles in his neck stood forth in mute token to the strength of each muffled scream until finally, mercifully, he fainted.
    Deeper the lancet probed, and the blood spurted. Undismayed, Boorde took up his white-hot cauters and slapped them on the wound. The smell of cooking flesh added to the nightmarish quality of the scene. Boorde, Seamus admitted, seemed to know well his business and didn't waste a moment. Other than the whistling, he made