The Shaman's Secret (17 page)

I was frightened for him.

Doc Cotton ripped open his shirt. A bony lad, apparently his assistant, had appeared. He brought a pail of water, with which the doctor sluiced down Cyril's chest.

“He's mighty hot,” he said. “Got any idea how he catched this fever?”

Aunt Hilda shrugged. “Not really. He seemed a little poorly in California—just got worse and worse as we came into the desert.”

“Poor wretch shouldn't have traveled. What's the hurry anyway?”

“He believed he was cursed,” I said.

Doc Cotton swung his gaze over to me, his pale blue eyes widening. “Cursed?”

“Something like that,” I said, aware of how foolish I sounded. “He believed he was struck down with an illness that wasn't of—I don't know—of human origin … Like a disease of the spirit … that he was haunted, if you—”

“The child is confused,” Aunt Hilda butted in. “She doesn't know what she's saying. Mr. Baker here caught a fever—that is all.”

“Sounds like Apache talk,” said Doc Cotton, keeping his eyes trained on me. “Or them Navajo Indians. They talk of ghost sickness. That's when the dead come back to haunt the living.”

“Maybe it involves a skinwalker,” I said.

“That one of them savages who can turn themselves into animals?”

“I think the idea is that they can walk—literally walk—in other creatures' skins.”

“You can't believe in such nonsense,” Aunt Hilda interrupted, but Doc Cotton just shrugged.

While we were talking, the gangling assistant had been removing Baker's shirt and trousers. He was near naked now, his skinny body laid out on the slab as if being prepared for his funeral, so pale it could have been made out of glue, or dried cheese. The brand of the snake was very visible on him—but now it was no longer on his arm. It had appeared instead in the center of his chest, just to the right of his heart.

“What's that?” the doctor asked, staring at it.

“Witchery,” I replied, while Aunt Hilda hurriedly said it was some sort of decoration.

“Skinwalkers and suchlike,” the doctor said, “I don't know much about 'em. But I don't hold with dismissing it out of hand. The desert ain't like the city.”

“Men turning into animals?” Waldo asked in a skeptical voice. “Sounds like heathen poppycock.”

I glared at him when he spoke, then glanced away. At the moment, feeling as I did, I never wanted to see his smug face ever again.

“Stranger things have happened out here.”

The doctor began to palpate the chest, placing his hands firmly over Cyril's body. He grunted something to his assistant who went over to the wall and fetched a pair of large rusty-looking pliers and a pair of tongs. I thought it strange that the doctor didn't order us out of the surgery while he was working. No other doctor I've known would operate on someone with an audience crowding around. Waldo, Isaac and Aunt Hilda were gazing with a sort of ghoulish curiosity as the doctor swabbed down Cyril's chest, but Rachel was looking rather sick.

“I think he got some kind of stone or blockage down here,” the doctor said. “Feels hard. Like summin's wrong. First I'm gonna take some of his blood. After doing some tests I'm gonna make a li'l cut just here”—he pointed to the snake on Cyril's chest—“and take a closer look inside.”

It was my friend down there on the table, helpless as a goat about to be skinned. My initial suspicion and dislike of him had vanished. Our illness, too, had made a bond between us. Still, I wondered how well I really knew him. Often his presence felt as slippery as satin. Something that would slide through your fingers, leaving you unsure of what you were dealing with.

We were in the same boat, Cyril Baker and I. It was just that he was further down the road. I hadn't wanted to explain to the doctor the origin of our illness. How we were both cursed by drinking an elixir of life, a forbidden
water in the Himalayas. How a worm of disease, a grub of illness, had feasted on us ever since. Growing fat on our souls. How could I explain something like that to a simple country doctor?

It was easier to put it in Apache terms. I turned away from the scene around the operating table and gazed around aimlessly. Mr. Baker was haunted by ghost sickness. Something was not right inside him; he had a diseased soul.

While I was thinking these thoughts, my eyes were idly swinging over Doc Cotton's cabinets. The trophy cabinet was stuffed with moose head, deer antler and buffalo skins. The diagram of a horse, with all the major bones and arteries. The skull of a dog, or was it a sheep?

An awful lot of pictures of animals. He must love animals.

“Most of your patients aren't much given to conversation, are they, Doc Cotton?” Isaac said loudly, cutting into my thoughts. I turned round just as the doctor filled a syringe with Baker's blood.

“They're not exactly fine talkers,” he replied.

I stared at him, strange suspicions forming in my mind.

“What are you blathering about, Isaac?” Aunt Hilda said, her eyes glued on the syringe. “Stop interrupting. The doctor's got work to do.”

“The veterinarian,” Isaac said.

“What?”

“Doc Cotton's main business is animals, not humans. Isn't that right, Doc?” Isaac said.

“People can't afford to be too choosy around here,” the man replied. “There ain't another medical man within a hundred miles … So I do get more than my fair share of humans.”

“Gunshot wounds mostly, I'd guess,” Isaac said, looking at the pliers.

“Nobody better at taking lead from a man's gut than Doc Cotton,” the skinny assistant piped up loyally.

“You're a veterinarian?” I asked, appalled.

“By training, yep. But jack of all trades out here.”

Aunt Hilda had flushed deep red. “Sir … you have played the foulest trick on us.”

Sighing, Doc Cotton put down his vial and his syringe. “Look, lady, you want to, you take this man away. He can ride over to Vegas—or any place else you want. Find someone with a fancy qualification. Doubt he'd last the ride, mind. The man's dying.”

At this Mr. Baker gave a hoarse groan. His eyes rolled over the doctor and then onto me, where they stopped. The look he gave me was chilling.

“Leave me in peace,” he said. “I haven't got long.”

“This won't do, Mr. Baker,” Aunt Hilda said. “We have got to get you to a proper doctor.”

“There is nothing any doctor can do.”

“A proper doctor. A surgeon.” She turned to Doc Cotton. “Surely there is a qualified doctor somewhere near here?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a day's ride.”

“We must send for him at once,” Aunt Hilda said.

But Mr. Baker seemed to have found some reserves of strength.

“I order you to leave me … GO!”

“You're in no fit state to make that decision.”

“Miss Salter … leave me. I must talk to your niece.”

“Shush now.”

“JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” he shouted.

Mr. Baker had used all his strength to sit up, the veins standing out in his neck. It was awful, the elderly, half-naked man sitting there propped on one trembling arm, his face red with rage.

“I am going to die now,” he said in a quieter voice, “but first I want to have one last talk with Kit. In private.”

“GO!” I hissed, anger rising in me. “Respect him, will you?”

“I think we should do as she says,” said Rachel softly. “It's Mr. Baker's wish.”

“I will be calling the
real
doctor. This man is sick and in no position to know his own mind.” With that Aunt Hilda sailed out, the others trailing behind her. Waldo turned to me and smiled, as if we liked each other. As if we even
knew
each other. I gave an icy glare to the air above his head. Then
finally they were all gone, even the enthusiastic veterinarian and his assistant. I was left alone with Mr. Baker.

I brought him a pillow to sit him up against the wall, averting my eyes from his sad, shrunken body. The vial of his blood was on top of the cabinet with the animal bones. Would Doc Cotton even have known the first thing to do in Baker's case?

Mr. Baker held out his hand. I knew he wanted me to take it, though he'd never made such a gesture to me before. I reached out and took it in mine, feeling the thinness of his bones. There was nothing there. It was like cradling a dying sparrow.

“I'm going to hell,” he said.

“Don't—”

“Stop trying to be kind. I deserve all the torments of the damned—but before I go I need to tell—”

“You don't,” I interrupted. “You don't need to say anything.”

“Oh yes, I do … I need to tell you the truth.”

“You've told me the truth.”

“No, Kit, not all of it.”

“It's hard,” Mr. Baker said. “I don't know where to begin.”

“Then, please … don't talk.”

He looked at me, his gaze watery. Something in there was sharp though, as if he guessed at my fears. Guessed that I didn't want him to talk—didn't really wish to know any more awful truths. I let his hand drop. There was a small, hard object in my palm, which I looked at dully. My mind was far away.

“We can just sit here quietly,” I said.

“I haven't got long. I've got to tell you. I'm dying. It is now or never.”

All this talk of death was making me uncomfortable. He didn't
know
. How could anyone know they were to die?

“Rest. If anything is going to make you better, it is peace and quiet,” I murmured.

“No. You deserve more.” He paused and drew another shuddering breath. “Understand this, Kit. I never told you the one important thing. It's all about Tabby.”

A jolt of something like fear made my body go rigid. I
didn't move a muscle. Since he'd said it in the desert, that name had been constantly in my thoughts.

“Ta …” I began slowly.

“Tabby. Tabitha. Your mother. You never really knew her.”

“Oh yes, I did. I was seven, nearly eight, when she—”

“A child.”

He drew in a deep breath, making a visible effort. I could see the muscles of his chest contracting and the tendons in his neck standing out. It made the speckled black snake, above his heart, move like oil on water.

My mother. What did this man have to do with my mother? Her smiling presence. Her vivid eyes. I never thought of my mother, tried not to, because it all came back to the same thing. She was gone. Would always be gone.

“My brother and I grew up near Huntsham, on Exmoor,” Mr. Baker continued. “A lonely place. Bleak, windswept, home only to heather and lichen. Our father was a servant, a butler, at the big house on the hill. Can you imagine the life of a servant? I believe not.”

“Of course I can. I've met—”

“Oh no, I don't think you could. Not really imagine it. Not really inhabit a servant's soul. You see, Kit, you are different to me. It was all given to you—the house in Oxford, the servants, the carriage.”

“We're not rich. We don't have a carriage,” I interrupted. “Or servants. Apart from Mrs.—”

He talked over me: “For my brother and I, one emotion dominated everything. Envy. We used to visit the kitchens sometimes when the family was away. They were like palaces compared to our home. The shining silver, the fine bone china. I remember I left a smudge on a plate and my father told me off. Shouted. I couldn't believe it. The wealth, the ease, the lovely things. Then and there I vowed I would have it all—and more. My brother felt the same way, because, of course, we were as one.

“We wanted it. All of it. Money, horses, lovely things. We wanted footmen bowing as we entered our mansion. Elegant ladies hanging on our every word. But how were we to get it? As the children of the footman, who later became the butler, we were tolerated about the place. But there was an unbridgeable gulf between us and them.

“Us and them. We were beneath them, you see. Even when Tabby played chase with us through the stables and hay barns, we always knew that she was above us. She denied it, of course—Tabitha was a hothead—but we
knew
.”

“You knew my mother? As a child?” I broke in.

“Of course. Aren't you listening? We were best friends. Playmates. Cecil hoped for more. He was violently in love with her—but she laughed him off.”

“That was nothing to do with—you know—that Cecil
was the son of a butler,” I said. “I know my mother was from a wealthy family, but she married my father, for heaven's sake. He's not a millionaire—or anything like it. She obviously just didn't like your brother—no offense meant.”

He looked at me—a smile twitching his lips. “None taken.”

“I just doubt if a man like your brother was the kind of person someone like my mother would fall in love with. It's not a snobbish thing. Even if he was the son of a duke!”

“Cecil didn't see it that way. He believed it was his position in the world that made her reject him. And he never forgave Tabitha. He threw himself into money—and made a mint of it. And then when we were rich—very, very rich—he came back for Tabitha.”

“When was this?” I asked, speaking past the lump in my throat.

“Oh—she was married, if that's what you're inquiring about. You were just a little thing. We kept tabs on all that … Well, I won't go into exactly what Cecil did. Suffice to say, he was thorough about the thing. He saw hypnotists, criminals, sorcerers—all sorts of practitioners of the dark arts. Finally he found a very old and extremely evil Frenchman who had dabbled in witchcraft and alchemy.
He hoped to use the dark arts to win her forever
.

“The plan went wrong. And your mother died.”

“She died in an accident. That's what I was always told.”