Heart's Ransom

CHAPTER TWENTY

  “How long has it been since he last had a movement?” Rafe asked as he pressed his hand against the belly of the eight-year-old boy before him. He was on his knees, with his medicinal box open beside him, and Claudio’s youngest son, Felipe, standing nearby.

  “Three days, sir,” the boy’s mother, a waif of a woman named Carla, replied. Rafe had suspected as much, given the taut firmness of the child’s abdomen to his touch, and the obvious tenderness his palpating caused.

  Rafe smiled, meeting the boy’s gaze. “It will be alright,” he told the boy, speaking in Portuguese. He glanced over his shoulder at Felipe and spoke again, this time in Spanish. “In the left side, the rear compartment, there are some herb packets already…yes, thank you.”

  He smiled again as Felipe found one of the herbal treatments, wrapped in a thin square of cheesecloth. Six months earlier, Rafe would have been able to sift through the box and find the preparation himself, not to mention fold his fingers against it, holding it fast. But his right hand was lame now, his fingers loosely but permanently curled toward his palm, his thumb useless and flaccid. He could not scratch his own ass with it, much less accomplish any feats of dexterity, and had come to rely upon Felipe in place of the maimed appendage.

  He nodded once in encouragement as Felipe handed the packet to Carla. “Tell her what it is for,” he said gently. “In Portuguese, lad. She does not speak Castilian.”

  The two dialects were similar in many ways, and yet strikingly different in others, and Felipe had been having a difficult time wrapping his tongue around the native language of Fatima, where they had been staying. Forced into conversing in it, however, the boy had shown remarkable improvement over the last several weeks, and Rafe listened, pleased, as Felipe offered Carla halting but grammatically correct instructions for using the herbs to prepare a medicinal tea.

  Felipe had done more than take the place of Rafe’s crippled hand. Thanks to the boy, who now served as his apprentice, Rafe had been able to continue his work as a physician. Claudio had insisted, and there had been nothing Rafe could say, no protest he could offer that would convince his friend otherwise.

  “It is the least I can do, hijo,” Claudio had told him, and Rafe made a regular and committed point to remind Felipe that his father loved him; that he had been sent away to help Rafe because Claudio had known he could depend on the boy.

  Rafe had given La Venganza and El Verdad to Claudio. He had accepted no objection or argument on the matter. He had also given Evarado’s large, spacious home to the newly appointed captain, and divided up a grand majority of his father’s money among the crewmen of his ships―even those who had followed Cristobal’s command. He did his best to harbor no ill will toward any of them, and asked of them only in return that they bury a casket for Cristobal next to Evarado, and that they say Cristobal had died with honor at sea. He wanted the truth to be buried along with the casket, that in death, Cristobal might find the peace that had so eluded him in life.

  The manacle had at last been forced from his wrist by a skilled blacksmith in Santa Ponca and several hours spent in the wretched, stinking heat of a muggy smithy. Rafe had kept the cuffs, even though it was ridiculous―if not daft―to do so. He carried them in his traveling bag, as a matter of fact, a fond reminder of Kitty, and sometimes, when it would not pain his heart too terribly to do so, he would take them out and close his eyes. He would rattle them slightly, listening to the disharmonic melody of the chains, and he would lose himself, if only for a little while, in bittersweet memories.

  His hand ached him without end, a nearly constant reminder of what had happened to him, and what his foolish pride had cost him. The wounds had healed, but the pain remained; some nights, he would wake up drenched in sweat, his hand burning, his fingers jerking in knotted, agonizing spasms. He would clutch his hand against his stomach and curl onto his side, clenching his teeth to keep from crying out in pain and alarming Felipe.

  The villagers of Fatima remembered Rafe from his past visits, both with and without Lucio, and although they had been curious about his decision to stay among them, they were grateful nonetheless. Already, several women in the village had come to pay call at his rented room, bringing eligible daughters in tow for his consideration. He had politely and gently refused them all, making for fervent gossip at the village well. Surely he was a widower, a beloved bride lost to him, his heart broken; there could be no other accounting for such a handsome young man in his relative prime, to show such disinterest.

  Kitty may not have been his bride, but she was lost to him still the same, and his heart remained broken for it. A day did not pass when he did not call her fondly to his mind, or when such recollection left him feeling forlorn and distraught. On more than one occasion, he had considered finding consolation in wine, in drinking himself to a numb stupor, as had once been his habit. He had not succumbed, no matter how insistent the urge. He had promised Kitty, and even if she never knew it, if they both lived out their remaining days with her wholly unaware, he meant to abide by his word to her.

  Felipe finished offering instructions and glanced hesitantly at Rafe, his brows raised. Rafe smiled and nodded. “Muy bueno, Felipe,” he told the boy. Very good.

  He rose to his feet, tousling his young patient’s hair fondly. “You be good for your mother, and drink your medicine without complaint.”

  The boy looked up at him, all wide and adulating eyes. “Yes, sir,” he said, nodding. Most villages the size of Fatima hosted trained physicians once every few years or so, if even then. Being one who lived among them had elevated Rafe to nearly heroic status to his neighbors.

  Carla stepped toward him while Felipe collected their things, closing up the medicine box. “Obrigado,” she said in Portuguese, clutching Rafe’s good hand, her mouth spread in a smile. Thank you.

  She paid Rafe in fresh fish; called espada, they resembled eels, and Rafe had earned more of them in remittance for his services than he had in coins the past few months. He neither minded nor complained. He smiled, accepting the fish as graciously as if she had just offered him a prized coffer of gold, and when he left, Carla blushed in his wake, charmed and flustered by the striking young physician.

  “Now we will have something to go with the bread and eggs for supper,” Felipe said glumly as they walked together along the narrow street toward the inn where they shared a room. They had been making the rounds of Fatima and several neighboring villages since well before sunrise. Now it was nearly dusk, and they had only several cakes of flatbread, three goose eggs, a skin of goat’s milk and the fish to show for their efforts. Having had espada boiled, fried or braised almost every night without fail for weeks, Felipe had lost any lingering enthusiasm he might have harbored for the fish.

  Rafe laughed. “You did well today,” he said. “I am proud of you.” He forgot himself and reached out, brushing his maimed hand against the boy’s shoulder. It sent a shiver of pain through his arm, lancing toward his shoulder, and Rafe paused, sucking in a sharp, startled breath, cursing himself.

  Felipe paused, as well, and looked up at Rafe, his brown eyes round with worry. Rafe smiled; the pain faded as quickly as it had shot through him. “It is nothing,” he said. “Just a twinge. Come on. It is nearly dark.”