Portsmouth Darkfest

My feet haven't touched the ground yet.  It's only the 8th November and we are well into Darkfest.  This past two weeks have seen me performing in three events and I still have a couple more to come in November.
My favourite so far has been The Cure, The Cure at Southsea Castle on the 26th October.  Great fun dressing up as a plague doctor and performing in front of a fantastic light/video show to a very welcoming audience.
This is what I performed:
Mercury - The ultimate cure

I’ve always wanted to help people.  When I was young I knew that I was born to heal.  Of course, being a woman, it wasn’t possible for me to study the healing arts in the same way as a man could.  But I spent time in the shadow of the midwife, watching and assisting her in birthing and with the dying. 
    “Death is a natural part of Life,” she would say, and there was much birthing and much dying in our town.  I learnt aplenty.   I’ve seen many of the fevers and pestilences that are common everywhere.  I believed I was charmed because however close I got to those who were suffering, I always seemed to escape from any malady myself.
    But because I was a woman, I was shunned by men in the profession.  Doctors looked down their noses at me, called me witch and said it was unnatural.
    My Father being a well-respected Parson, taught me to read, but disapproved of my desire to heal the poor so I hid what I was doing by pretending that I was ministering to the peasants, taking them scraps of food as was appropriate and only right from the daughter of a man of religion.  Mother died when I was born and perhaps this was why I had such a desire to heal the sick.
    It was frustrating having to hide what I was doing.  Gathering herbs and plants from the meadows and marshes, drying and grinding them into remedies was time consuming.  Seeing the benefit of what I was learning when I tried out the concoctions on my patients was satisfying to a degree.  Only I wished that I could be open about what I was doing rather than having to keep secret all that I had learnt.  I stole a book that was left on the table in the Rectory after my Father had been entertaining a medic friend and this book became my Bible.  Hidden in a box under my bed, I would take it out at night and study the pages until my eyes were sore.  I soon was able to try out more and more remedies.  People came to me secretly, no one wanting to be associated with a woman healer.  Father would not have understood.

    Then came the Plague.
    The Doctors tried everything they knew: poultices of onion and butter with a sprinkling of dried frog, arsenic or floral compounds, bloodletting, inducing diarrhea to relieve the body of invading demons.  It seemed that nothing worked and soon the Doctors, one by one, faded away, either by succumbing themselves to the deadly disease, or leaving town for the safety of the country.  Even when dressed in their protective robes, they were not safe from death, so they went, leaving us poor town folk to the mercy of the devil that was the Plague.
    For me, it was my chance.  I believed I could help where they had not, and when donned in the robes and mask of the Plague Doctor, I could be anonymous; no-one would know who I was, nor my fair sex. I needed not to even touch the patient, my cane would suffice to remove the covers so that I could inspect their frail bodies.
    I witnessed all stages of this foul disease, saw the look of fear in the eyes of those inflicted when they found the blackened buboes in their armpits.  I had seen how leeching these swellings did nothing to stop how swiftly they spread throughout the body until the poor soul’s skin turned black, they bled from the mouth and fell into a stupor, the only outcome of which was death.
    None of the cures worked.  It seemed as though it was only the hand of God that decided who was to live and who was to die.  And yes, some did survive, only it was impossible to see why one person lived and another was doomed to hell.
    It was on the morning, after a long night of study, that I discovered two things: firstly, the new treatment of Mercury painting, and secondly, that I was suffering from the first sign of the disease - fever and chills like I have never before experienced.  I obtained the Mercury from my Father’s office - it had, in the past been used as a store for the local medical man and I had often filched supplies from there before.  I had read that it was to be made into a paste using a base of flour and mixed with water.  Simple, I thought.  It was hard going as I was feeling weaker as time passed but soon it was ready.  Next I had to make sure that the bread oven was fired up and hot enough to complete the process.
    “Cover the infected body with Mercury paste, then bake in the oven until a crust is formed.”  These were the instructions that I followed.  When I climbed into the oven, I hadn’t expected it to be so painful, but the heat certainly killed the Plague.  Feeling the flames licking over me was almost a relief.  I closed my eyes and let the ultimate cure take place.