"A traitor judges all others by his traitorousness," Saunders sneered, as if he had hit upon an important point of philosophy. "Kur keeps her bargains with those useful to them."
"What about with those who are no longer useful to them? What happened to Peatwo when you didn't need a second set of eyes, Captain?"
"Boul, have him beaten!"
Saunders stormed out, letting his stomping feet do his cursing for him. Boul's lips curled into an uneven grin, and two heavyset Haitians entered, wooden clubs in hand.
An hour later, Valentine consoled himself with the knowledge that this pain would not be forever. Pain never was; the body either died or healed. In either case, the pain subsided.
But for now, he had an existence of seeping blood and throbbing pain. Blood stinging his eyeballs-the sting coursed up the side of his face like a hot circuit. Blood in his mouth, blood in his urine from the hammerlike blows to his kidneys, he fancied his toes were bleeding where one of the jailers had stood on them with thick-soled boots. And pain underneath, pain as deep as the Cayman abyssal. Vomit covered his shirt, and worse filth stained the inside of his pants.
He felt a callused yet gentle hand rock his head. Some kind of leaves went into his mouth, and the hand worked his jaw. He chewed with loosened teeth and swallowed; it seemed important to the hand.
"Oui, oui, my child. This will help, yes," a woman's voice said in Haitian Creole.
Valentine opened one blood-gummed eye and looked up into a black face. Warm dark eyes looked down at him, a tenderness glowing there thanks to some inner light. He felt he must be resting in a lap-though the arrangement of her legs seemed wrong-but he only had a moment to enjoy the sensation before fading out.
When he awoke, he was in clean cotton ducks of the same kind he had seen under the straw hats in the Cape Haitian market. Something had woken him, and a sniff of fresher air made him turn to the door, which the breeze told him was open.
A figure slid in, moving mostly with its arms like a chimpanzee. It was the same woman who had cradled his head in her caressing hands. She was disfigured: two fleshy stumps were all she had left of her legs, and one arm ended in a leather-covered knob at her wrist. She had a wide nose, so
wide it seemed to touch every other part of her face, below a cheerful yellow bandanna tied tight around her head. Swinging on her arms, like a cripple using two short crutches, she was at his side in two strides. She pivoted on the wrist-stump as neatly as a ballerina en pointe.
"Feeling better, child?"
"Yes. Whatever was in those leaves helped."
The door remained open. A lemon-sucking guard watched every move the woman made in the bare cell. Valentine noticed that she wore a man's wristwatch with a cracked crystal on her good arm.
"Food and water'll help more. I brought both. I'm Sissy. I tend to the poor souls in here."
"Sissy?"
"Short for Narcisse," she said, unrolling a bundle. A coconut and further food wrapped in bits of rag greeted him.
"Food doesn't sound that good, but that coconut-"
"As full of milk as a cow, child. You want me to hold it for you?" She sniffed at the air above his waist, like a mother wondering if a diaper needed changing.
"I think I can manage."
Valentine removed the coir plug and tipped the sweet, thin coconut milk down his throat. It tasted like pure honey.
"You're a good healer, child. I've seen men die from such a beating. Here you are with an appetite already."
"I'm grateful," he said, handing her the empty husk.
"You want the meat inside?"
"Maybe later."
"I understand, child. Been there myself."
"Sorry to hear that."
"Grateful and sorry." She chuckled. "That makes you two rungs up on every man in this town."
"Narcisse," Valentine said, not to his nurse, but to the ceiling of the cell. "That's a lovely name."