Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 112

It was not the blow to his head, but a mysterious ache in his lower belly that was dragging him away against his will. The pain had come and gone for a week and for that whole time the Hakim had kept Mungo in a darkened room where he was forbidden any activity at all. He had been given only boiled water and a tea made of flaxseed and steeped wild yam. Curiosity and Elizabeth took turns sitting with Mungo to keep the cold compresses on his belly fresh, and for a time it seemed to Hannah that he would get well.
Then, on the very day that the Isis first came within sight of Scotland, he began vomiting again, and the pain settled in for good. Curiosity called it an angry belly, for its heat and hardness and the fullness of misery it brought with it. The Hakim called it the vermiform appendix and showed them drawings of a little finger of gut that was spilling poison into the blood. Mungo wrestled with the pain, and did not care what name they gave it.
After a particularly difficult night, Charlie came to the Hakim, his eyes red with weeping, but his voice steady. "Can we no' give him laudanum to ease his passing?"
Hannah held her breath. She knew well enough that Hakim Ibrahim had no more laudanum. He had used the last of it when a sailor called Jonathan Pike had mangled his hand in a winch.
Hakim Ibrahim pressed Charlie's bony shoulder. "I will do what I can for him."
So he took Hannah with him to the locked storage room and opened the door with a key that hung on a cord around his neck. A sticky-sweet, warmish smell met them. He reached up to hang the lantern from the hook in the ceiling, and the room came into focus.
In the middle of it all sat a throne. It was carved of some dark wood Hannah did not recognize and so tall that the curved back touched the timbers overhead. The whole of it glinted with inlay work of pearl and silver and gold that told a hunting story. Men with eyes like the doctor's held long lances. A tiger ran through tall grass, its tail winding.
"You may sit in it," said the Hakim, and so Hannah climbed up.
It was very uncomfortable, but she stayed to study the room so she could tell the story. Forests of ivory tusks longer than a man sprouted in dark corners. A whole army of statues of all sizes crowded together, wrapped and padded with sacking so that only faces peeked out: some of polished white stone, others so old that noses and ears had been softened away to almost nothing. Animals, dragons, warrior women with furious hard faces. Piles of furs such as she had never seen before spilled out of trunks: some striped, some spotted, some deep black and others glossy brown. Spread out over a humped chest Hannah recognized the pelt of a lion by its mane, and because the paws and tail and head were still attached. The mouth was propped open with an ivory box, so that the lantern light played on the heavy yellow teeth. Dusty glass eyes stared into the shadows where wooden spice casks lined the walls.
Hakim Ibrahim opened one, and the sweet smell rose into the room in a fresh wave. Hannah went to stand beside him. There was another chair here and a little table, its rumpled cloth sprinkled with tobacco. On it were a flint box with a pierced tin lid, a few pewter plates, a half-bottle of port, a carved ivory case, a scale, and a worn hornpipe, the stem almost bitten through. Hannah wondered how often the captain sat here alone, smoking.
The Hakim took a cake from the open cask and put it on a clean plate. It was flattish, a deep dark brown, with small bits of leaf stuck to it.
"Laudanum would be easier," he said. "But raw opium will serve too, if he can keep it down."
He opened the ivory case. Inside, a row of metal weights nestled in green velvet, the smallest no larger than Hannah's thumbnail, and cast in the shape of a spider. She saw a deer, a fish, a turtle, a horse, a cow, a tiger. The largest, the size of a hen's egg, was fashioned in the shape of an elephant with a trunk curled upward.
The Hakim took the turtle weight and placed it on the scale. The knife flashed bright as he cut into the brown cake. When he had three pieces of opium, each equal to the weight of the little turtle, he quickly put the cake back in the cask and replaced the lid.
He said, "I will miss your assistance in the surgery. You have been a very good student."
Hannah was so surprised that she could say nothing in return, but only bobbed her head.
"I need not encourage you to continue to study. But I will caution you to be alert in Scotland. Your natural curiosity is a powerful thing, but it may put you in danger."
"My father will protect me."
Beneath the red turban the Hakim's brow creased thoughtfully. "Your father is a brave man of excellent understanding. But he is coming to a strange land, and he will need all the assistance you can give him. There are men in Scotland--" He paused, and then went on. "There are bad men in Scotland who would do you harm."
"There are bad men everywhere," said Hannah. The images came to mind without her bidding: Mr. MacKay and his ruined face; a man hung from a dead oak with his hands hacked off; the old Tory with his notched ears and moccasins of skin, hissing at her in her own language. And Liam as he had first come to them, beaten by his only brother until his bones had broken inside him. She had not thought of Liam in days, and a sudden swell of homesickness came over her. But when she opened her mouth to say this, to talk about home, something else came out.
Hannah said, "Are there many men like Mr. MacKay in Scotland?"
"And what kind of man is Mr. MacKay?" the Hakim asked. He was looking at her thoughtfully, and he waited while Hannah gathered her thoughts.
"The kind who thrives on the pain of others," she said finally. Thinking of Margreit MacKay, worn so thin by grief that she lost all connection to the world.