Apprentice To The Sorcerer

Despite Mokulu’s assurances, I approached him with a little trepidation. He’d mentioned a mark… He waved me to follow him into the galley. A pair of tongs lay on the table and in the fire lay a red hot piece of twisted metal. Mokulu took out his knife. “This hurts,” he said. “But you be knowing that, I see.”

“Yes, I know it’ll hurt,” I said. “Don’t use what I told you to think of me differently.”

“I not do that.” Mokulu began rolling up my left sleeve. He stopped just at the elbow. “You same as always.” He cleaned the blade. “I listen,” he stressed, pointing to his knife. “Clean knife when cut into body.”

“Good,” I said.

He cut himself on his palm, cleaned the knife awkwardly, then reached for my arm. Cutting a single, vertical line on my upper forearm, he then cut a perfect circle around it. It hurt and I bled profusely. Slapping his palm over my cut, he mingled our blood while chanting in a language I did not know.

Mokulu took the object from the flames with a pair of tongs. He pressed it flat into my skin and held it. The pain felt incredible. He pulled it away. As I recovered, he took ashes from a little bowl and rubbed them into the design. “This stay with you until death,” he said, meeting my eyes. “On your skin, it look very dark.”

“I don’t ever want to hide it, Mokulu,” I answered. I meant it.

“Damu rafiki,” he said. “It mean blood friend.” He smiled. “Now that I am brother to you, I call you another name.”

“A nickname?” I smiled back.

“Yes. You are Hodari-Lei to me.” Again he smiled. “You want to know what it mean, you have to find out.”

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Miss Bishop kept confined to the captain’s cabin for two days. Gibbs told me she had been kidnapped by the slavers. He speculated her absence from us wasn’t so much fear of the crew or of the slaves, but simple seasickness. On hearing this I decided to be rational minded and see if I could help her. My knock was greeted with the utmost suspicion.

“Who is there?” The woman shouted.

“Ship’s physician, Lei Trapezia,” I answered. “I heard you are ill.”

“And who told you that?”

“The quartermaster, Mr. Gibbs,” I said patiently.

“I don’t know him,” Miss Bishop answered. “And how would he know I am sick? I didn’t tell anyone.”

“But you just did, Miss Bishop,” I answered. “Do you want me to alleviate your discomfort?”

A pause.

“Come in.” The door opened.

Jack’s cabin reeked of bile. A large bucket very close to my position seemed the culprit. Full of two day’s worth of stomach trouble, it heaved my gut just to look at it. I looked down into the blonde woman’s frightened, exhausted green eyes and felt a pang of pity stab me. Sitting my bag just inside the door, I picked up her bucket. “First thing, we dump this,” I said firmly.

“But what if I need it before you get back?” She wrung her hands prettily, fairly oozing feminine helplessness. I noticed she had very dark circles under her eyes and that she didn’t look any less beautiful with them. Her features were too fine to truly mar. She would probably be a beautiful old woman. I wondered what could be wrong with her that she’d been on the marriage block nine times.

“You won’t,” I said. “I won’t be two minutes.”

I carried the bucket to the side and heaved the contents into the ocean. I took an extra minute to rinse the disgusting slime out of the pail, wondering how the lady could bear the smell she’d been living with for two days. When Mokulu walked by me, I grabbed him by the wrist. “I’m getting ready to treat the captain’s guest,” I said. “Want to watch?”

“If she not have female fit,” Mokulu said. “I scare white women.” His beetle brow furrowed. “Sometimes I t’ink de new hair frighten all people too.”

“You are pretty fearsome,” I confessed.

“You t’ink?” Mokulu seemed to cheer up at this, his brow unwrinkled at once. “You very brave. If you say dis den it mus’ be true.”

“It is.” I patted his arm and we went to see Miss Bishop. She shrank back from the door at the sight of Mokulu, eyes wide and hands up to her chest. I held my own out to her, attempting to calm. “Miss Bishop, this is my brother, Mokulu. He is my partner. You don’t have to be afraid, he won’t hurt you.”

“A black doctor?” Miss Bishop said, seemingly amazed. If possible, her eyes widened even further. “Your brother?”

“You don’t think negroes get sick?” I replied disdainfully. I chose not to comment on being his brother.

“I never thought!” Miss Bishop put her hands to her lips. “I’m very sorry, do forgive me.” Her eyes were on me, not Mokulu.

“Perhaps the apology would mean more if directed at the offended party,” I suggested in a drawl.

“Oh.” Miss Bishop nodded to Mokulu, who by now thought very little of his patient. She looked at me again. “I don’t speak his language,” she said, panic in her voice.

Rolling my eyes, I pushed into the room and started setting up my bag. “I assure you Mokulu speaks your language,” I said.

“Oh.”

She said that a lot.

“I do apologize, Mr. Mokulu,” Miss Bishop said. “I’ve never been allowed to talk to niggers.”

Mokulu heaved a tremendous sigh. “Ignorance and wealth be a shield,” he muttered, coming to stand beside me. “And I not strike women anyway.”

I snickered under my breath. “What’s the first thing you notice about the room?” I asked.

“It reek.” Mokulu gave the woman an accusing stare.

“We don’t glare at patients,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Well… I don’t know. It just seems wrong to glare at sick people,” I defended. “Now, if I smell something like this I know that whatever is wrong, the patient has a problem in the stomach.”

“Excuse me, but I’m not comfortable with this,” Miss Bishop said. “This is my health the two of you are discussing.”

I decided in the moment after her words that she had to be a moron. Of course we were discussing her heath! We were trying to help her. To do that we first had to know what was wrong. I didn’t want to just assume her problem was simple seasickness. Assuming things were dangerous.

Ignoring her, I set out my sulphur and mercury bottles. I had panax ginseng and ginger in root form, wrapped in cheesecloth and half sealed in wax. “Since Miss Bishop has been here little over two days, she probably wasn’t due for a bowel movement,” I said clearly. “If we had smelled shit we might’ve considered she has a problem in her guts as well as her belly.”

Miss Bishop turned the deepest shade of scarlet I’d ever seen. Whimpering, she sank into a chair and stared at the floor.

“Her hygiene looks good despite the nature of her complaint, which tells me she hasn’t been overly weakened.” I turned to her. “Have you any cuts or sores upon your person, Miss Bishop?”

“No.” Miss Bishop whispered. “It’s just my stomach. All this pitching back and forth.”

“And how did you get relief on the Madeline?” I asked, shaving a little ginger root and ginseng together into a clean glass. I added a little chamomile blossom and just a pinch of fennel. Mokulu snagged Landry on his way down the galley and ordered him to fetch a kettle of hot water.

“I stayed sedated,” Miss Bishop confessed. “The captain kept me in poppy incense.”

“Expensive,” I muttered, peering into her eyes for redness or bulging veins.

“I paid for it, just as I am paying Captain Sparrow to sail me to Cape Verde.” Miss Bishop tossed her head. Mokulu and I shared and amused look. The captain took her gold, certainly, but he delivered her to her destination because he wanted to, not because any deal had been taken seriously. “But in any case,” she went on, her voice growing in heat, “What business is it of yours? I spend what I wish. Just because you have never been free with money doesn’t mean others must be stingy.”

“My father was a wealthy man,” I replied coolly. “I had the best of everything.”

“If that’s true, why are you a poor pirate?” Miss Bishop probed, her eyes bright with disdain.

“Because I decided I liked raping and killing better than having comfort and servants,” I answered. Mokulu laughed because he knew I wasn’t a bloodthirsty rapist. Miss Bishop, however, didn’t know. As Landry brought the hot kettle, she shrank back away from my proximity.

I poured the water over the roots and herbs. The fragrant steam made me feel warm inside.

“Then why are you a doctor?” Miss Bishop challenged.

“Pirates get sick too,” I said, handing her the glass. “Let it cool a bit and then drink it. Drink all of it. I’ll make you more in four or five hours until you get accustomed to the ocean.”

“Does it have sugar in it? I can’t drink tea without sugar, it isn’t civilized.” Miss Bishop pressed her perfect lips together, shivering as if the very idea repulsed her.

I stared at her, wondering how I could ever have associated with people like this woman. This behavior seemed so far removed from what I’d become that Miss Bishop almost seemed like a caricature instead of a real woman. But she made me very angry. She had no sense about her, no wit, and no backbone. “You will drink it,” I said lowly.

“I won’t.” She crossed her arms like a five year old, thrusting her chin out.

“You will, because I’m taking your sick pail,” I answered, grabbing the bucket.

“No!” Miss Bishop leapt to her feet. “Please don’t take that!”

“Drink your tonic and I’ll leave it,” I said. “Be quick about your choice.”

She put the glass up to her lips. A look of extreme distaste marred her flawless mien for a fleeting second before she gulped down the hot tonic. Promptly, she threw the glass at me. I deflected it automatically. It smashed on the boards. “Better clean that up,” she said smugly. “The captain won’t like it if he has to step in broken glass.”

I had my hand out to slap her, but Mokulu caught me by the wrist. “Now, little brother,” he said lowly, his eyes twinkling. “We not hit patients. We not hit woman. Woman for bed and children.”

I could have slapped him too, for using my own words against me. Turning, I packed my belongings up, grabbed the kettle and a glass.

“Aren’t you going to clean up this mess?” Miss Bishop asked sweetly.

“The captain doesn’t know Mokulu and I came in here,” I replied. “You’re the guilty party.” With that, I marched out of the cabin, Mokulu at my heels. Miss Bishop slammed the hatch shut behind us, hard.

“Bozibozi,” Mokulu muttered. “Means stupid and useless.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “Let’s go have a drink. Shift’s over and I want some rum.”

“Woman drive man to drink,” Mokulu said. “When I pick, I pick woman who can hoe while she carry baby on hip.”