by Joan Aiken
Dido said: “Yus, of course, Doc, I’ll help you, if that’s what you want. Though I don’t know a blame thing about doctoring; but I’ll be glad to do anything I can for poor Mr Mully. He’s been right kind to me. That looks like the fellows coming now with a push-cart; you better fetch up your cutting-tackle, Doc.”
Studying them as they approached, Dido thought gloomily that the group of men on the quayside with the stretcher looked like mourners prematurely celebrating Mr Multiple’s funeral. They moved and spoke to each other soberly; they were black-haired, brown-skinned, like the dock-workers, but much taller, and with sharply chiselled features. They looked as if they had been carved out of wood. Dido guessed that they were Angrians, whereas the dock-workers, much more cheerful and lively, were Dilendi or Forest People.
The stretcher had two wheels, like a rickshaw; two of the men pushed it, two pulled. Mr Multiple, still deeply unconscious, was lowered over the ship’s side in a sling, and carefully positioned on a mattress stuffed with leaves, that rustled under him. He was motionless and hardly seemed to breathe.
Doctor Talisman, carrying a bag of equipment, slipped quickly down the ladder, closely followed by Dido, and they followed the stretcher across the wide stone quay. It was all inlaid, Dido noticed, with small oblongs of marble about the size of dominoes. They were either black or white, and were formed into patterns, squares, circles, and geometrical designs. Some of these looked like chess – or chequer-boards; others seemed to be designed for games that Dido did not know. It’s no wonder Lord Herodsfoot wanted to come to this island, she thought; it all seems to be set up for games. Indeed she saw two men playing a dice-game on one of the patterned squares.
Shiny-fronted houses, blue-and-white tiled, lined the rear of the quay and rose, one above the other, up the steep hill behind. Some of the tiles formed pictures, women spinning, men fishing, or digging; others were merely flowers or stars. Dido followed the doctor up a narrow, steep, black-and-white paved street. The town seemed almost unnaturally clean, bare, and silent. The hush was eerie after the mutter of drums as the ship made her landfall. But of course it was early still. However, Dido noticed that they were watched, as they walked, through tiny grilled windows and iron-barred gateways, by silent, black-hooded figures.
This is a right spooky place, Dido thought.
Suddenly a small group a few yards distant down a sidealley parted, and a black-clad figure darted towards the stretcher with arms outflung.
“My son! My son!”
The voice had in it a mixture of rapture and appeal.
“Croopus! Now what?” muttered Dido.
Two more women now left the group and ran after the first. Dido supposed they were women, for they had black skirts down to the ground; but their faces were invisible, wrapped in black, with only slits for the eyes. Their voices were low, urgent, and concerned.
“No, no, Modredal That sick man is not your son. Your son is far from here. Go back now. Go back to your home. You should not be on the street.”
The woman sobbed and protested – but humbly, in a murmur, as if she did not expect to have any attention paid to her.
The man, Manoel, who had followed the stretcher from the quayside, now intervened. He spoke a few quick, harsh words in an undertone, marshalling the group of black-clad figures away down the alley from which they had come.
The men with the stretcher had gone steadily on, as if this was no concern of theirs.
But Doctor Talisman had paused, and while there was still a bit of distance between them and Manoel and the men in front, Dido said softly: “Doc Talisman! There’s a thing I better say now while no one else is near by. Listen – you’re really a gal, ain’t you? Like me? Rigged out as a feller? No business of mine why you do it, but Mr Mully and me, we both of us twigged your act – at least I’m pretty sure he did – and, and I jaloused as how I’d better let you know. You got your own best reasons for doing so, I reckon. None o’ my affair. I’m on your side, whatever it is – buckle and thong! Jist figured I oughta tell you.”
Doctor Talisman’s level stride paused, hesitated for a moment, then resumed its smooth swing. After a moment the doctor said, “Thank you, Dido. I appreciate your telling me. You are quite right, of course.”
Manoel caught up with them again and told them, “The hospital is just at the top of the hill here, on the right.”
What they had seen of the town so far was all dry, clean narrow alleys and white-washed walls, often as high as the houses themselves. Many of the houses were tucked away behind walls, gates, and courtyards. All the house-fronts that could be seen were faced with glistening blue-and-white tiles. Some of these had recurring patterns like wallpaper, others were large pictures, battle-scenes, or ships, or mermaids, or monsters.
The hospital, when they reached it, was similarly set back. It lay behind heavy wrought-iron gates, a wide paved courtyard, and a colonnade of arches. Palm and locust trees made the courtyard shady. Outside the gates a black-clad group of people had gathered; they seemed to have learned, by some bush-telegraph, of the event that was about to happen; all their eyes were fixed on Doctor Talisman. They were all men, and looked unfriendly. Dido heard murmured words, curses perhaps? – as they passed in. Manoel acknowledged a few bows by an inclination of his head.
Inside, the hospital was impressively white, silent, and clean, with arched stone passages and paved cloisters, like a monastery. Perhaps it had once been one?
A group of women met them at the end of a cloister. Women? Dido supposed they were women. They had green robes down to their feet and immense square green headdresses made of leaves – huge leaves, bigger than rhubarb or hemlock, giant leaves tacked together with threads of fibre.
Manoel addressed them in what Dido guessed to be the Dilendi language, using many gestures. Here and there she recognised a word or two.
“Now I must leave you,” Manoel said to the doctor. “And so must the stretcher-men. Only medical staff are allowed in beyond. The nurses will not take off their headdresses while we are present.”
Does Manoel know that Doc Talisman is a girl? Dido wondered. And that I’m one? After all, Manoel and the doc met before, in Bad Thingummy. Or are doctors allowed in here even if they are men? Maybe they don’t have any women doctors?
Manoel and the stretcher-bearers left. Mr Multiple was wheeled away by the nurses, Dido and the doctor were led into a little clean, cell-like room where they were provided with large earthenware basins of hot water, smelling strongly of sage or ginger, to wash their hands, and offered clean towels and white smocks. Then they were escorted farther on into a large vaulted room where Mr Multiple already lay on a stone block in the middle of the floor. A frame, draped with more of the huge leaves, covered him, all but his head.
Dido began to feel slightly sick.
The hooded helpers now took off their leaf headdresses and robes, revealing themselves as small, thin, dark smiling women in white tunics and trousers.
One of them, with lively pictorial gestures that included putting the palms of her hands over her eyes, offered Doctor Talisman a twig, first nibbling on a similar twig herself. Talisman tested the twig with her tongue, bit off a shred of bark, then spat into a clay dish that the girl held out. She shook her head, smiling.
“What is that?” asked Dido.
“Narcotic. A very powerful one. My tongue went numb! It’s to put the patient to sleep. But not needed now. He sleeps already.”
A cane table on wheels was now rolled forward, with various implements on it. But Doctor Talisman, with a polite gesture of thanks, declined them and spread out her own tools, which were made of steel and glittered dimly in such light as there was, which, coming through tiny windows, was not very bright.
Doctor Talisman turned to the assistants.
“Luz?” she inquired. “O sol? Tem lume?”
“Nusa?” suggested Dido, remembering the Dilendi word for light.
One of the girls pulled a cord, which drew bac
k a blind above, revealing a window in the vaulted ceiling. A ray of sunlight stabbed directly down on to the block where the patient lay.
“Ah, very good, just right—” Doctor Talisman turned to lay out her tools, but one of the girls touched her arm, to indicate that they had more facilities to offer. These were curved metal mirrors, shaped like shallow bowls, which caught the sunlight from above and focused it in beams thin and fine as needles.
“They can cut and cauterize besides giving light – how extremely clever.”
Talisman tested the strength of one of the rays on her finger, then burned a thread of cotton from a bandage. “Excellent! Bueno! Now: let me see . . . Dido, please pass me those tools in order as I have laid them out. And, when I ask, be ready to pin back a flap of skin with one of these. Like that . . . Now this hair must be shaved off – thank you—”
Having stripped the bandages from Mr Multiple’s head, the doctor indicated the short dark hair which had to be removed, and a girl skilfully shaved a patch of scalp with a slender white blade which seemed to be made from a seashell.
“Good. Are you ready, Dido?”
Dido nodded, gulping, and moved to where she could assist without getting in the doctor’s way.
The ray of sunshine piercing through the roof-light had moved slowly across from one side of the space to the other before the doctor had finished her delicate, intricate task. At one point she said, “Ah, look. There is a spot of blood on the surface of the brain. Tweezers, please, Dido—”
And when she had lifted the tiny dark particle from where it swam, Mr Multiple suddenly stirred under the linen bands that held him and exclaimed: “Curse it, Windward, one of those be-damned mosquitoes just bit my noddle—”
“Hush, sir!” the doctor admonished him mildly. “You will be very well presently. Go back to sleep now! – You may let go of the flap, Dido.”
She stitched up the wound in Mr Multiple’s skull with a thread of grass, using a curved needle like that of a shoemaker. Then a pad of what looked like cobweb was laid over the scar.
“Put him to bed now, he will sleep for hours,” Talisman told the nurses.
The patient was carefully shifted to a trolley and wheeled away.
A male voice was heard outside in the cloister and the women quickly resumed their green-leaf hoods.
“D’you think he’ll get better now, Doc?” Dido asked.
The doctor was rinsing her hands in the ante-room. This time the hot water was scented with rosemary and lavender.
“Yes; I believe that his head will mend now. There may be a blank in his memory. But I do not think he will die.”
“That’s just prime, Doc. You are a one-er, and no mistake! If it weren’t for you, poor Mr Mully’d be sharks’ dinner by now.”
“But I am worried that there may be trouble with the authorities over my doing this,” said Doctor Talisman, pulling off the white smock and putting on her jacket again.
Now that Dido knew for certain that the doctor was female, the very possibility of her being a man faded into the realms of impossibility – all her movements, her neatness, her thinness, the cock of her elegant dark head, the angle of her neck and jaw, seemed to proclaim her as undoubtedly of the female sex.
Dido would have liked to ask the reason for this disguise. Maybe it was just for convenience? – after all, Dido herself, in her midshipman’s rig, was often taken for a boy – and there were plenty of occasions when this came in very handy. There were places where girls were not welcome, specially on a ship. And – on this island – it seemed as if females were not welcome anywhere. Except with their heads wrapped up in leaves.
“How long—” she began. She was going to have said, “How long have you been going around in this turn-out?” but as one of the nurse-girls returned to the room at this moment, she changed her question to, “How long will Mr Mully have to stay in the sick-bay now, d’you reckon, Doc?”
“At least a week, I’d guess, depending on how fast he mends. Such an injury to the head inflicts a strong shock on the whole system.”
Dido frowned, pondering.
“Hmn. That may be a mite okkard. I’m supposed to get back to Amboina with Lord Herodsfoot the quickest way I can (supposing I can find the guy). As well as that, I reckon Cap Sanderson won’t want to dangle here with the Siwara all that time – he’ll want to drop his cargo and finish his trip. And Cap Hughes on the Thrush will wonder what the plague has happened to us.”
She folded up her white smock and handed it, with a nod, to the green-hooded nurse-girl, who was making beckoning gestures.
“I think we are wanted outside,” said Doctor Talisman, and followed the girl.
In the cloister, Manoel waited for them.
“How did it go, Doctor?” he inquired civilly.
“Well enough – I think – I hope.” Doctor Talisman’s tone was one of calm caution. “We shall know better after he has slept and woken again. I shall go back and look at him this evening.”
“Good.” Manoel’s tone suggested that his mind was on other matters. “I think it would be best if we now quickly left the hospital.”
“Certainly. And I think we should inform Captain Sanderson that so far all is well—”
“I will send a boy with a message. Sanderson is busy taking on stores. In the meantime, pray come to my house, which is close by, and have some breakfast—”
Dido wondered if she was included in this invitation, and, if so, whether she wanted to accept. She was not sure that she liked Manoel Roy. He was too smooth, too bland, his tone never seemed to go with his words. His clothes were too neat, his hair was too white. His eyes were too blue. He’s like a dummy, Dido thought, a big handsome doll made jist like a man, so everything works as it should, but – but—
“Take care!”
Dido was aware of something wildly jerking at her feet, a hand that grabbed her arm and spun her aside. Startled to death, she looked down.
Doctor Talisman, right beside her, was breathing fast but not at all discomposed; from her hand dangled a black-and-white snake. She had snatched it off the ground and cracked it like a whip. It was dead.
“Even here in the town you must always watch where you tread,” she said quietly. “Captain Sanderson was most urgent in his warning – and he was right, is it not so, Manoel? The snakes here are a constant peril.”
“Good sakes!” said Dido. “Thanks, Doc! I reckon I didn’t figure to tread on one right here in the hospital. But, my certie! How quick you were, Doc! I owe ye for that – I’d a bin a goner.”
“No need for thanks,” said the doctor. “A medical training speeds up one’s reactions.”
Manoel, who had not commented on the incident, led them out into the street. Dido saw that the group of people waiting outside the gate had all left.
“Down the hill now,” said Manoel. “This way, if you please.”
He don’t like me one bit, Dido thought. He wouldn’t have cried millstones if that snake had done me in. Why? What bee’s he got in his bonnet? He’ll bear watching, will Mister Manoel Roy.
And Dido quickly changed her mind about returning to the ship, and decided to accept Manoel’s invitation, whether it had been intended for her or not. But the way Doc caught that snake – that was really something! How could she have been so quick? I’d have said she was ten paces behind me—
The narrow cobbled roadway forked here; as they were about to go down the left turning they saw Captain Sanderson coming up the right one, accompanied by a sailor who carried Mr Multiple’s duffel bag.
“The job’s all done!” called Dido. “Doc here done a prime bit of work, and he thinks Mr Mully may come to and be as right as a trivet.”
Dido had nearly said she thinks; I better watch my tongue, she scolded herself. It had become so natural to think of Doctor Talisman as a woman; she now felt as if she had done so all along.
“Aweel, aweel, I’m rejoiced to hear that,” grunted Captain Sanderson. “Now we must conseed
er what’s best to be done.”
“Come and have breakfast at my house while you talk it over,” invited Manoel.
Sanderson accepted, and the sailor was sent on to the hospital with Mr Multiple’s gear while the others turned down the steep hill. Over the high white walls tropical greenery could be seen – a feathering of palm fronds against a gable, rich-leaved spiny branches behind iron gates, blue-flowered creeper dangling over roofs and chimneys. And huge red or white flowers the shape of thistles but the size of chimney-pots. The air was spicy with a dozen tickling scents, blown on the warm breeze. The distant drumming had started up again, Dido noticed.
“Windy up here, ain’t it,” she said.
“Wind always blows on Aratu,” Manoel said. “Which means the climate is never intolerably hot. But the wind makes people irritable. Here we are.”
They walked through one of the wrought-iron gates – which was locked, Dido noticed, Manoel had to unlock it with a key – into a pebbled courtyard where water from a spout trickled into a large stone basin among pots of glossy-leaved shrubs with purple-and-white flowers. In a pillared arcade at the far end of the court stood a cane table and chairs. A fragrance of coffee drifted through an open door.
“Ech, now, that looks comfortable,” said Captain Sanderson, and made for one of the chairs. Dido, two paces behind him, heard a dry rustle in the shadows of the pot-plants and, turning, was just in time to notice another of the small pearl snakes slither purposefully towards the Captain’s foot. She glanced round rather wildly, saw a riding-crop on the table, snatched it, and gave the snake a whack, severing the pearly head from the black body.
“Neatly done. You learn fast,” said a cool voice behind her and Manoel, taking the riding-crop from her, used it to flick the body of the snake into the flower-pot. “Tonto!” he called. “Bring coffee!” and a boy appeared from indoors with a tray of coffee and rolls. Manoel jerked his head towards the snake in the pot, and the boy removed it.
