The Longest Way Home Read online

  “Will you do it?” the Ardardin said, using not just the supplicatory tense but a form that Joseph thought might be known to grammarians as the intensive supplicatory. The Indigene—the chieftain, the high priest—was begging him.

  He could not bear to disappoint them. He hated doing anything under false pretenses, and he did not want to arouse any false hopes, either. But he could not resist an abject plea, either. These people had willingly taken him in, and they had cared for him these two days past, and they had promised to transport him to Ludbrek House when he was strong enough to leave their village. Now they wanted something from him in return. And he did have at least some common-sense notions of first aid. There was no way he could refuse this request.

  “Can you raise them up a little higher?” he asked. “I’m not able to bend, because of my leg.”

  The Ardardin gestured, and several Indigenes piled up a tall stack of furs and placed the one with the wound in its thigh on top. Bending forward a little, Joseph inspected the cut. It was three or four inches long, perhaps half an inch wide, fairly shallow. There was swelling all around, and reddening of the bronze-colored skin. Hesitantly Joseph placed his fingertips against the ragged edges of the opening. The texture of the alien skin was smooth, unyielding, almost slippery, oddly unreal. A small sighing sound came from the Indigene at Joseph’s touch, but nothing more. That did not sound like an indicator of severe pain. Gently Joseph drew the sides of the wound apart and peered in.

  He saw pus, plenty of it. But the wound was filthy, besides, covered with a myriad of black spots, the dirt of whatever object had caused it. Joseph doubted that it had ever been cleaned. Did these people not even have enough sense to wash a gash like this out?

  “I need a bowl of hot water,” Joseph said. “And clean cloth of the kind I used for bandaging my leg.”

  This was like being an actor in a play, he thought. He was playing the role of The Doctor.

  But that was no actor lying on the pile of furs before him, and that wound was no artifact of stage makeup. He felt a little queasy as he swabbed it clean. The Indigene stirred, moaned a little, made a small shuddering movement.

  “The juice that you gave me, to make my fever go down: give some of that to him too.”

  “To her,” someone behind him corrected.

  “To her,” said Joseph, searching for and not finding any indication that his patient was female. Doubtless the Indigenes did have two sexes, because there were both male and female pronouns in their language, but all of them, male and female both, had the same kind of narrow transverse slit at the base of the abdomen, and whatever sort of transformation came over that slit during the sexual process, what organs of intromission or reception might emerge at that time, was not anything that the Indigenes had ever thought necessary to explain to any human.

  He cleaned the wound of as much superficial dirt as he could, and expressed a good deal of pus, and laved the opening several times with warm water. The queasiness he had felt at first while handling the wound quickly vanished. He grew very calm, almost detached: after a while all that mattered to him was the task itself, the process of undoing the damage that neglect and infection had caused. Not only was he able to steel himself against whatever incidental pain he might be causing the patient in the course of the work, but he realized a little while further on that he was concentrating so profoundly on the enterprise that he had begun to forget to notice the pain of his own injury.

  He wished he had some kind of antiseptic ointment to apply, but his command of the Indigene language did not extend as far as any word for antisepsis, and when he asked if their herbal remedies included anything for reducing the inflammation of an open wound, they did not seem to understand what he was saying. No antisepsis, then. He hoped that the Indigene’s natural healing processes were up to the task of fighting off such infection as had already taken hold.

  When he had done all that he could to clean the wound Joseph instructed Ulvas in the art of bandaging it to hold it closed. He did not want to experiment with using the device from his utility case that seemed to be designed for stitching wounds, partly because he was not certain that that was what it was for, and partly because he doubted that he had cleaned the wound sufficiently to make stitching it up at this point a wise thing to do. Later, he thought, he would ask Ulvas to bring him a chunk of raw meat and he would practice using the device to close an incision, and then, perhaps, he could wash the wound out a second time and close it. But he dared not attempt to use the instrument now, not with everyone watching.

  Dealing with the broken arm was a more straightforward business. The field-hands of House Keilloran broke limbs all the time, and it was a routine thing for them to be brought to his father for repairs. Joseph had watched the process often enough. A compound fracture would have been beyond him, but this looked like nothing more than a simple break. What you did, he knew, was manipulate the limb to make the fractured bone drop back into its proper alignment, and bind it up to keep the broken ends from moving around, and do what was necessary to reduce inflammation. Time would take care of the rest. At least, that was how it worked with Folkish fractures. But there was no reason to think that Indigene bones were very different in basic physiology.

  Joseph wanted to be gentle as he went about the work. But what he discovered very quickly was that in working on an unanaesthetized patient the key lay in getting the job over with as fast as possible, rather than moving with tiny circumspect steps in an attempt to avoid inflicting pain. That would only draw things out and make it worse. You had to take hold, pull, push, hope for the best. The patient—this one was male, they told him—made one sharp grunting sound as Joseph, acting out an imitation of the things he had seen his father do, grasped his limply dangling forearm with one hand and the upper part of his arm with the other and exerted sudden swift inward pressure. After the grunt came a gasp, and then a sigh, and then a kind of exhalation that seemed to be entirely one of relief.

  There, Joseph thought, with a hot burst of satisfaction. He had done it. Matagava, indeed! “Bind the arm the way you bound my leg,” he told Ulvas, no supplication this time, simple instruction, and moved to the next patient.

  But the third case was a baffling one. What was he supposed to do about a swollen abdomen? He had no way of making a rational diagnosis. Perhaps there was a tumor in there, perhaps it was an intestinal blockage, or perhaps—this patient was another female—the problem was a complication of pregnancy. But, though he had blithely enough talked himself into going through with this medical masquerade, Joseph’s audacity did not begin to extend to a willingness to perform a surgical exploration of the patient’s interior. He had no notion of how to go about such a thing, for one—the thought of trying to make an incision in living flesh brought terrifying images to his mind—nor would there be any purpose in it, anyway, for he had no inkling of internal Indigene anatomy, would not be able to tell one organ from another, let alone detect any abnormality. So he did nothing more than solemnly pass his hands up and down over the patient’s taut skin with a kind of stagy solemnity, feeling the strangeness again, that cool dry inorganic unreality, lightly pressing here and there, as though seeking by touch alone some understanding of the malady within. He thought he should at least seem to be making an attempt of some kind at performing an examination, however empty and foolish he knew it to be, and since he did not dare do anything real this would have to suffice. He was, at any rate, unable to feel anything unusual within the abdominal cavity by these palpations, no convulsive heavings of troubled organs, no sign of some massive cancerous growth. But then, thinking he should do something more and obeying a sudden stab of inspiration, Joseph found himself making broad sweeping gestures in the air above the Indigene and intoning a nonsensical little rhythmic chant, as primitive witch-doctors were known to do in old adventure stories that he had read. It was sheer play-acting, and a surge of contempt for his own childishness went sweeping through him even as he did it, but for the
moment he was unable to resist his own silly impulse.

  Only for a moment. Then he could no longer go on with the game.

  Joseph looked away, embarrassed. “For this one I am unable to do anything further,” he told the Ardardin. “And you must allow me to lie down now. I am not well myself, and very tired.”

  “Yes. Of course. But we thank you deeply, Master Joseph.”

  He felt bitter shame for the fraud he had just perpetrated. Not just the preposterous business at the end, but the entire cruel charade. What would his father say, he wondered? A boy of fifteen, posing as a doctor? Piously laying claim to skills he did not in any way possess? The proper thing to do, he knew, would have been to say, “I’m sorry, I’m just a boy, the truth is that I have no right to be doing this.” But they had wanted so badly for him to heal these three people with the shining omnipotent human matagava that they knew he must have within him. The very grammar of the Ardardin’s request had revealed the intensity of their desire. And he had done no real harm, had he? Surely it was better to wash and bind a gash like that than to leave it open to fester. He felt confident that he had actually set that broken arm properly, too. He could not forgive himself, though, for that last bit of disgraceful chicanery.

  His leg was hurting again, too. They had left a beaker of the succulent-juice by his bedside. He took enough of it to ease the pain and slipped off into a fitful sleep.

  When he awoke the next day he found that they had set out inviting-looking bowls of fruit at his side and had put festive bundles of flowers all around his chamber, long-tubed reddish blossoms that had a peppery aroma. It all looked celebratory. They had not brought him flowers before. Several Indigenes were kneeling beside him, waiting for him to open his eyes. Joseph was beginning to recognize the distinct features of different individuals, now. He saw Ulvas nearby, and another who had told him yesterday that its name was Cuithal, and a third whom he did not know. Then the Ardardin entered, bearing an additional armload of flowers: plainly an offering. It laid them at Joseph’s feet and made an intricate gesture that seemed certainly, alien though it was, to be one of honor and respect.

  The Ardardin earnestly inquired after the state of Joseph’s health. It seemed to Joseph that his leg was giving him less discomfort this morning, and he said so. To this the Ardardin replied that his three patients were greatly improved also, and were waiting just outside in the hallway to express their thanks.

  So this will go on and on, Joseph thought, abashed. But he could hardly refuse to see them. They came in one by one, each bearing little gifts to add to those already filling Joseph’s room: more flowers, more fruit, smooth-sided ceramic vessels that his father would gladly have owned, brightly colored weavings. Their eyes were gleaming with gratitude, awe, perhaps even love. The one who had had the infected wound in her thigh looked plainly less feverish. The one with the broken arm—it had been very nicely bound by Ulvas, Joseph saw—seemed absolutely cheerful. Joseph was relieved and considerably gratified to see that his amateur ministrations had not only done no harm but seemed actually to have been beneficial.

  But the great surprise was the third patient, the one with the swollen abdomen, over whom Joseph had made those shameful witch-doctor conjurations. She appeared to be in a state of transcendental well-being, wholly aglow with radiant emanations of health. Throwing herself at Joseph’s feet, she burst forth with a gushing, barely coherent expression of thankfulness that was almost impossible for him to follow in any detailed way, but was clear enough in general meaning.

  Joseph hardly knew how to react. The code of honor by which he had been raised left no room for taking credit for something you had not done. Certainly it would be even worse to accept credit for something achieved accidentally, something you had brought about in the most cynical and flippant manner.

  Yet he could not deny that this woman had risen from her bed of pain just hours after he had made those foolish conjurations above her body. A purely coincidental recovery, he thought. Or else his idiotic mumblings had engendered in her such a powerful wave of faith in his great matagava that she had expelled the demon of torment from her body on her own. What could he say? “No, you are mistaken to thank me, I did nothing of any value for you, this is all an illusion?” He did not have the heart to say any such things. There was the risk of shattering her fragile recovery by doing so, if indeed faith alone had healed her. Nor did he want to reject ungraciously the gratitude of these people for what they thought he had done for them. He remained aware that he was still dependent on them himself. If a little inward embarrassment was the price of getting himself from here to Ludbrek House, so be it. Let them think he had worked miracles, then. Perhaps he had. In any event let them feel obligated to him, because he needed help from them. Even the honor of a Master must sometimes be subordinated to the needs of sheer survival, eh, Balbus? Eh?

  Besides—no question about this part of it—there was real satisfaction in doing something useful for others, no matter how muddledly he had accomplished it. The one thing that had been dinned into him from childhood, as the heir to House Keilloran, is that Masters did not simply rule, they also served. The two concepts were inextricably intertwined. You had the good luck to be born a Master instead of one of the Folk, yes, and that meant you lived a privileged life of comfort and power. But it was not merely a life of casual taking, of living cheerfully at one’s ease at the expense of hardworking humbler people. Only a fool would think that that was what a Master’s life was like. A Master lived daily in a sense of duty and obligation to all those around him.

  Thus far Joseph had not had much opportunity to discharge those duties and obligations. At this stage of his life he was expected mainly to observe and learn. He would not be given any actual administrative tasks at the House until his sixteenth birthday. For now his job was only to prepare himself for his ultimate responsibilities. And there always were servants on all sides of him to take care of the things that ordinary people had to do for themselves, making things easy for him while he was doing his observing and learning.

  He felt a little guilty about that. He was quite aware that up till now, up till the moment of his flight into the woods with Getfen House ablaze behind him, his life had been one of much privilege and little responsibility. He was not a doer yet, only someone for whom things were done. There had been no real tests for him, neither of his abilities nor of his innate character.

  Was he, then, truly a good person? That remained open to question. Since he had never been tested, he had no way of knowing. He had done things he should not have done. He had rebelled sometimes, at least inwardly, against his father’s absolute authority. He had been guilty of little blasphemies and minor acts of wickedness. He had been needlessly harsh with his younger brothers, enjoying the power that his age and strength gave him over them, and he knew that that was wrong. He had gone through a phase of wanting to torment his sometimes irritating sister Cailin, mocking her little frailties of logic and hiding or even destroying her cherished things, and had felt real pleasure mingled with the guilt of that. All these things, he knew, were things that most boys did and would outgrow, and he could not really condemn himself for doing them, but even so they left him with some uncertainty about whether he had been living on the path of virtue, as by definition a good person must do. He understood how to imitate being a good person, yes, how to do the kind of things that good persons did, but how sincere was it, really, to do that? Was it not the case that good people did good things through natural innate virtue, rather than consciously working up some flurry of good-deed-doing on special demand?

  Well, there had been special demand just now, and, responding to it, he had wantonly allowed himself to pose as a doctor, which, considering that he had no real medical knowledge, could only be considered a bad thing, or at least morally questionable. But he had managed, all the same, to heal or at least improve the condition of three suffering people, and that was beyond doubt a good thing. What did that say about his
own goodness, that he had achieved something virtuous by morally questionable means? He still did not know. But at least, for this murky reason or that one, this shabby motive or that, he had accomplished something that was undeniably good. He tried to cling to that awareness. Perhaps there were no innately good people, only people who made it their conscious task, for whatever reason, to do things that would be deemed good. Time alone would give him the answer to that. But still Joseph found himself hoping that he would discover, as he entered adulthood, that in fact he was fundamentally good, not simply pretending to goodness, and that everything he did would be for the best, not just for himself but for others.

  Having done indisputably good deeds here in this village, the one thing Joseph feared more than anything else now was that they would not want to let such a powerful healer out of their grasp. But that was not how the minds of these people worked, evidently. In another few days his own healing had progressed to the point where he was able to walk with only a slight limp. Removing the bandage, he saw that the swelling was greatly reduced and the discoloration of his flesh was beginning to fade. Shortly Ulvas came to him and said they had a wagon ready to take him, now, to Ludbrek House.