Page 139 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Besides, they were each of the caught with the Contagion one after the other, not all at the same
time, and Santi was in fine health himself.

Santi had taken in extra work as a ceiling painter at the new Offices of the Duke, so as to
put finer food on the table, medicine in their mouths, logs in the hearth, and clothes on their
backs. And yet Santi, poor Santi, still felt there must have been more he could have done to have
warded off the Contagion from visiting his family. This was his fault, no matter what anyone
might say or discover. Even if it turned out in the end not to have been his fault...it will have
been his fault.

But now, at the time of this tale, it was only his father Jacopo left. When Jacopo’s lips
had also begun to yellow and wither back away from his teeth, Santi knew the inevitable. He
had paid the apothecary his predatory fees, for where else could he get the Astragalus at this time
of year?

But recently, Santi had done something new, something unprecedented, even dangerous.
He had consulted with the Duke and Duchess de’ Medici’s private physician, Dr. Ludovico
Valerius. This was wildly inappropriate, of course. A mere common painter didn’t speak
directly to the ducal physician. Such things were not done! Two things gave Santi courage to
speak to Dr. Valerius: first, Santi was desperate. Anything to save my father’s life! For what is
the value of my own life if my entire family were to have died? And second, well, the doctor
seemed...nice.

Dr. Ludovico Valerius’s office at I Magistrati was just outside the bays which Santi and
the other two apprentices had been assigned, so there had been daily noddings of heads, which
lead to occasional exchanges of pleasantries, which lead to briefest of conversations. So it had
not been too terribly awkward for Santi to slip into Valerius’s office one day and inquire whether
the doctor might have a suggestion of some remedy which Santi’s father might try, or whether it
was all too late.

“Never is it ‘all too late’!” had said Valerius. “As long as the patient still has a pulse, and
a will to live.”

“Then we must hurry, Dr. Valerius. You must help me save my father’s life.”

So it was that kind Dr. Valerius came to visit Jacopo del Meglio, and proscribed rest and
then, blessedly, four-times administration of hot cups of tea mixed with a little bit of cloves, sage
or oregano which, the doctor explained, “I have found a help in soothing the throat and softening
the chewy spittle. It will make your father’s coughing less violent, I hope, which will in turn,
help him to rest more serenely.”

“No more Astragalus?” asked Santi.

“Oh, no, no, no!” practically shrieked the doctor. “That's the stuff of alchemy! That's
fraud and childish magic-potionary. Is that what you're using to treat your father, is Astragalus?”

Santi said it was. Had he been foolish?

139