side. He found a large patch of clay covering the area, adhered by some sort of sticky brown substance, with a bulge underneath that to indicate something else pressed directly to the wound.
'The doctor made a poultice, ' Rachel said. 'Herbs, and tobacco leaves, and... I don't know what all.'
'What doctor?'
'Um.' Rachel glanced toward the watchful demon. 'This is their physician.'
'My God!' Matthew said, dumbstruck. 'I must be in Hell! If not, then where?'
'We have been brought, ' Rachel answered calmly, 'to an Indian village. How far it is from Fount Royal, I can't say. We travelled over an hour from where the bear attacked you.'
'An Indian village? You mean... I've been doctored by an Indian?' This was absolutely unthinkable! He would have preferred a demonic doctor to a savage one!
'Yes. And well doctored, too. They have been very kind to me, Matthew. I've had no reason to fear them.'
'Pok!' the doctor said, motioning for Matthew to stand. The two women had cut the leather thongs that had secured his ankles, then had withdrawn. 'Hapape pok pokati!' He reached out, picked up the woven mat that covered Matthew's torso, and threw it aside, leaving Matthew naked to the world. 'Puh! Puh!' the doctor insisted, slapping his patient's legs.
Reflexively, Matthew started to cover his private area with both hands. His right hand went quickly enough, but a searing pain shot through his shoulder at the mere nerve impulse of moving the left. He gritted his teeth, fresh sweat on his face, and made himself look at the injury.
His shoulder all the way past his elbow was wrapped in clay, and presumably other so-called medicines were pressed to the wound beneath the earthen bandage. The clay also was smoothed over a wooden splint, and his elbow was immobilized in a slightly bent position. From the edge of the clay to the fingertips, the flesh was mottled with ugly black and purple bruises. It was a ghastly sight, but at least he still had the arm. He lifted his free hand to touch his forehead. He found another clay dressing, secured with the sticky paste-like material.
'Your head was gashed, ' Rachel said. 'Do you think you can stand?'
'I might, if I don't fall to pieces.' He looked at the doctor. 'Clothes! Do you understand me? I need clothes!'
'Puh! Puh!' the doctor said, again slapping Matthew's legs.
Matthew directed his appeal at Rachel. 'Might you please get me some clothes?'
'You have none, ' she told him. 'Everything you wore was covered with blood. They performed some kind of ritual over them, the first night, and burned them.'
What she'd said sent a spear through him. 'The first night? How long have we been here?'
'This is the fifth morning.'
Four whole days in the grasp of the Indians! Matthew couldn't believe it. Four whole days, and they still had their scalps! Were they waiting for him to get well enough to slaughter both him and Rachel together?
'I think we've been summoned by their mayor, or chief, or whatever he is. I've not seen him yet, but there's some special activity going on.'
'Puh! Puh!' the doctor insisted. 'Se hapape ta mook!'
'All right, ' Matthew said, choosing to face the inevitable. 'I'll try to stand.'
With Rachel's help, he eased down off the pallet onto a dirt floor. Modesty called him but he couldn't answer. His legs held him though they were fairly stiff. The clay dressing on his broken arm was heavy, but the way the splint crooked his elbow made it bearable. At his left side his ribs thundered with dull pain under the clay and poultice, but that too could be borne if he didn't try to breathe too deeply.
He knew he would have been instantly killed if Jack One Eye himself hadn't been so old and infirm. To meet that beast in its younger years would have meant a quick decapitation, or a long suffering death by disembowelment such as Maude's husband had endured.
The Indian doctor—who would have been naked himself but for a small buckskin garment and strap covering his groin— walked ahead, to the far side of the rectangular wooden structure that housed a number of pallets. Matthew realized it was their version of an infirmary. A small fire crackled in a pit ringed with stones, but from the huge pile of ashes nearby it was evident a smoky inferno had raged in here.
He leaned on Rachel for support, if just until his legs grew used to holding him up again. His mind was still hazed. It wasn't clear to him now if his amorous encounter with Rachel had been real or a fevered dream brought on by his injuries. Surely she wouldn't have crawled up on that pallet to make love to a dying man! From her there was no indication that anything had occurred between them.
Yet still... might it have happened?
But here was something real that he'd imagined to be a figment of his dreams: on the floor, along with other clay cups and wooden bowls and carved bone pipes around the fire, was the broken half of Lucretia Vaughan's heart-decorated pie dish.
The healing savage—who would have made his compatriot Dr. Shields blanch with terror—drew aside a heavy black-furred bearskin from the infirmary's entryway.
Blinding white sunlight flooded across the floor, making Matthew squeeze his eyes shut and stagger. 'I have you, ' Rachel said, leaning into him so he might not fall.
There was a great excited clamor from outside, complete with squeals, whoops, and giggling. Matthew was aware of a brown mass of grinning faces pressing forward. The Indian doctor began to shout in a voice whose irritated tone was universal: Stand back, and give us space to breathe!
Rachel led Matthew, naked and dazed, into the light.
forty
THE FOREMOST GROUP of them backed away, heeding the doctor's continued shouts. As Matthew and Rachel followed the loinclothed healer, the Indians trailed in their wake and the shouting, giggling, and excited vocals began to surge loudly again.
Matthew would have never dreamed in a barrel of rum that he might have found himself naked before the world, clinging to Rachel and walking through a horde of grinning, hollering Indians. His vision was returning, though he was still overwhelmed by all this light. He saw a score of round wooden huts, some covered with dried mud and others moss-grown, with roofs upon which grass grew as thickly as from the earth. He caught sight of a lush plot of cornstalks that would have dropped the farmers of Fount Royal to their knees. Two dogs— one gray and the other dark brown—came to sniff around Matthew's legs, but a shout from the doctor sent them running. The same happened when a giggling pack of four naked brown children neared the pallid patient, and they ran away squealing and jumping.
Matthew saw that most of the men—who shared the doctor's narrow facial structure, lean body, and topknot of hair growing from an otherwise shaved head—were nearly nude, but the women were clothed in either deerskin garments or brightly dyed shifts that appeared to be woven from cotton. Some of the females, however, had chosen to let their breasts be bared, a sight that would have made the citizens of Fount Royal swoon. Their feet were either bare or clad in deerskin slippers. Many of the men were adorned with intricate blue-dye tattoos, and also a few of the older women. These tattoos appeared not only on the face but also on the chest, arms, thighs, and presumably just about everywhere else.
The mood was festive. Men and women were childlike in their glee, and the children—of which there were many—like little scampering squirrels. Of real creatures, there were aplenty as well: pigs, chickens, and a barking battery of dogs. Then the doctor led Matthew and Rachel to a hut that seemed to be centrally located within the village, drew back a buckskin decorated with blade carvings to gain admittance, and escorted the visitors into the cool, dimly lit interior.
The light came from small flames burning in clay bowls that held pools of oil, set in a circle. Facing this circle, a man sat cross-legged on a dais supported by wooden poles about three feet off the ground, and cushioned by various animal skins.
It was the sight of this man that made Matthew stop in his tracks. His mouth opened and his teeth might have fallen out, so great was his shock.
