The Maid in the Harbour

A Norwegian ship’s surgeon files a supplementary medical report on the death of Margaret, Maid of Norway, and discovers that clinical language cannot contain a seven-year-old girl.

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To Master Eirik Hallvardsson, physician to the royal household at Bergen, from Thorvald Arnason, surgeon, formerly attached to the company of the lady Margaret on the vessel Søhesten — greetings and correction.

I write to amend my earlier account of the lady Margaret’s illness, filed with your office on the ninth day of October, in which I recorded the onset of fever as occurring on the second day at sea. The onset was on the third day. I have confirmed this against my own notes, which I kept in a waxed tablet during the crossing and transcribed upon return to Bergen, and I am certain of the correction.

I make it not from vanity but from necessity. A clerk travelling with Bishop Fraser’s Scottish delegation has been asking after the precise sequence of symptoms — the hour of onset, the order of complaint, whether the child ate on the second day or refused food. His questions were put to me in Latin, courteously, at the harbourmaster’s quarters in Kirkwall, and again in Bergen three days past, less courteously, through an interpreter whose Norse was adequate but whose manner suggested he had been instructed to press. I answered him fully on both occasions. I have no reason to alter what I observed. But I have learned since that reports are being compiled — by the Scottish delegation, and perhaps by others — and that these reports do not agree with mine in all particulars. Therefore I wish the Norwegian record to carry the correction before any discrepancy can be attributed to evasion or error.

Let me set down what I know, in order, so that you may place it before whichever authority requires it.

The company sailed from Bergen on a morning of light wind and broken cloud, the sea running a moderate swell from the northwest. I will not name the date here, as it is recorded in the harbour log and I do not wish to contradict an official document from memory. The lady Margaret was carried aboard in the arms of her Norwegian nurse, whose name I will also leave to official record — I have spelled it differently on two occasions already and do not wish to compound the error. The child was awake. She was pale, as she had been pale on every occasion I had examined her in the weeks preceding, and her weight was less than I would have expected for her age, but she was alert and looked about her with interest as the ship cleared the harbour.

The Scottish delegation was already aboard. They occupied the forward quarter below the deck, separated from the Norwegian attendants by a partition of canvas and timber that the ship’s master had erected at the request of the Norwegian commander. I do not know whose idea the partition was. I record only that it existed, and that for the duration of the voyage the two parties communicated through it rather than across it — a detail that may seem trivial but that I mention because it determined how quickly information passed between the child’s Norwegian attendants and the Scottish representatives, and therefore how much the Scots knew of her condition at any given hour.

The provisions were considerable. The Scottish parliament had sent supplies aboard the vessel that met us at the harbour mouth — dried fruits, sweetmeats, bolts of fine linen, furs, a quantity of medicines that I examined and found to be competently prepared, though several were purgatives of a strength I would not have administered to a child of her size. There was also a small wooden box containing sugared almonds. I mention this because the child ate three of them on the first evening, before the seasickness began, and they were the last food she took with any willingness.

The first day passed without incident. The sea was rough but not dangerous. The child was sick twice in the evening, which I attributed to the motion and to the almonds, and I gave her a tisane of ginger root in warm water, which she accepted. She slept.

On the second day the swell deepened. The ship’s master altered course to run with the weather rather than against it, which eased the motion below decks but extended the crossing. The child was sick again in the morning and refused food. She drank water and a little of the tisane. Her colour was poor but her skin was cool to the touch. I checked her twice. I recorded no fever.

On the third day — and I am certain it was the third, because I remember the light — she was hot.

I felt it first at her forehead, then at her throat below the jaw, where the skin was damp and the pulse faster than it should have been. She was lying in her berth with the furs drawn up, though the cabin was not cold — the closeness of the space below decks, the bodies, the tarred timber, made it warm enough that I had shed my own cloak. The lamp above her swung with the ship’s roll and put her face in and out of shadow. In the shadow she looked grey. In the light she looked flushed. Neither was good.

I told the nurse. The nurse told the Norwegian commander. I do not know what the Norwegian commander told the Scots, or when, or in what language.

I administered what I had. I will not catalogue the treatments here — they are listed in my original report and I stand by them. I will say only that I did what was within my competence and that nothing I did was reckless or contrary to the practice of my training. If the clerk from Bishop Fraser’s party suggests otherwise, I would ask that my account be weighed against his qualifications to judge.

She was not a good patient. I do not mean that she resisted — she was docile, too docile, in the way of children who are frightened and have learned that obedience is the safest response to things they do not understand. I mean that she asked questions. She asked me what was in the tisane. She asked me why the lamp swung. She asked me whether the men above were angry — she could hear their voices through the deck planking, Norwegian and Latin and something that might have been French, and she had correctly identified the tone if not the words.

She asked me whether the sea had a bottom.

I told her it did. I told her there were rocks and sand and strange fish below us. She considered this and said that she would like to see the bottom, because then she would know how far away it was. I said perhaps she would, one day.

This exchange has no clinical relevance. I record it because it occurred, and because my account should be complete.

By the evening of the third day her fever was higher. She had stopped asking questions. The nurse held her and sang — something low, in Norse, that I did not recognise — and the child turned her face into the woman’s shoulder and breathed in the shallow, laboured way that I have heard in others who are losing strength faster than the body can replace it.

The argument above decks began that night or the following morning. I heard it through the planking, as the child had heard it earlier. The Norwegian commander wished to put in at Kirkwall. The Scottish delegates wished to continue to the mainland. Kirkwall was Norwegian. The mainland was Scotland. I understood the argument’s substance without hearing every word, because there was only one argument to be had: whose ground would the child touch first, and therefore whose authority would govern what happened next.

I was called above. I was asked — in Latin, formally, with witnesses present — whether the child could endure the additional time at sea required to reach the Scottish coast. I said she could not. I said she should be brought ashore at the nearest harbour. I said this clearly, and I believe it was understood.

Both sides thanked me. Both claimed my opinion supported their position. The Norwegian commander said it proved the child must land at Kirkwall, under Norwegian protection. The senior Scottish delegate said it proved the urgency of reaching Scotland, where better physicians could attend her. I went below again. The argument continued above me. The sea did not care.

We made Kirkwall on a grey morning with the wind cutting from the north and a fine rain that was almost mist. The haar sat low over the harbour, blurring the stone of the cathedral tower. I could smell peat smoke and salt and the cold mineral breath of wet stone. The child was wrapped in furs and carried from the ship. I walked beside the man who carried her. She weighed very little.

They took her to a building near the cathedral — I believe it was connected to the Bishop’s residence, though I did not ask and no one told me. The room was stone-walled and cold. Someone lit a peat fire. It smoked. The child was laid on a bench that had been covered with linen, and I examined her and did what I could, which was not enough and not different from what I had done aboard the ship.

She died before vespers.

I will not describe the hours between our arrival and that time. They are recorded in my original report — the interventions attempted, the sequence of decline, the witnesses present. I have nothing to add to that account and nothing to amend.

What followed was administration. The Norwegian commander sealed the room. The Scottish delegates demanded access. A notification of death was composed — in Latin, by the cathedral’s clerk — and the dispute over whose seal should authenticate it occupied the better part of an hour. In the end both seals were applied, which satisfied no one and meant nothing, since each delegation immediately composed its own separate report to its own court.

A messenger was dispatched to King Erik. Another to the Scottish Guardians. I was told that a third left that same evening, bound — by way of Caithness and the south road — toward the English court, though I could not confirm who sent him and I did not ask. There are questions a man in my position does not ask.

The Scottish clerk examined my medical report that evening. He asked for a copy. The Norwegian commander refused. The clerk asked again the following morning, through the cathedral’s prior, framing it as a pastoral request. The commander refused again. I do not know whether a copy was made in secret. I know that when I was approached in Bergen three days past by the same clerk’s interpreter, the questions put to me corresponded precisely to the content of my report — content that should have been known only to the Norwegian delegation.

I state this without accusation. I state it so that you understand why I am writing this supplementary correction now, in haste, and why I wish it filed before the accounts that are being prepared by others. My report is a medical document. I am aware that it is also becoming something else. I have no patron at court and no means of protecting myself except the accuracy of my own record. I therefore ask that you receive this letter, place it with my original report, and ensure that both are available to whatever inquiry the king may order.

I have filed: the original medical report, dated the ninth of October; this supplementary correction; an inventory of medicines administered, with quantities and times; and a witnessed account of the death, signed by myself and by the Norwegian commander’s adjutant. I have retained copies of all documents. I will produce them if required.

I commend you to God’s keeping and remain your servant in all professional matters.

Given at Bergen, in the twenty-third day of October, in the year of Our Lord 1290.

Thorvald Arnason, surgeon.

Postscriptum. The shoes she wore when she was carried ashore were red leather, too large for her, with ties of braided cord. The left tie had come undone. No one re-tied it. I record this for the inventory.