The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice Read Free

boy.”
    “Do you know where he can be found, Master Bukerel?”
    Bukerel hesitated. “Pardon me, please,” he said finally, and went to where several men were seated nearby.
    Rob could hear only an occasional word or a whispered phrase.
    “He’s with
that
bitch?” Bukerel muttered.
    In a moment the Chief Carpenter returned. “We know where to find your father,” he said. “You hasten to your mother, my boy. We’ll fetch Nathanael and follow close behind you.”
    Rob blurted his gratitude and ran on his way.
    He never stopped for a breath. Dodging freight wagons, avoiding drunkards, careening through crowds, he made for Puddle Dock. Halfway there he saw his enemy, Anthony Tite, with whom he had had three fierce fights in the past year. With a pair of his wharf-rat friends Anthony was ragging some of the stevedore slaves.
    Don’t delay me now, you little cod,
Rob thought coldly.
    Try, Pissant-Tony, and I’ll really do you.
    The way someday he was going to do his rotten Da.
    He saw one of the wharf rats point him out to Anthony, but he was already past them and well on his way.
    He was breathless and with a stitch in his side when he arrived at Egglestan’s stables in time to see an unfamiliar old woman swaddling a newborn child.
    The stable was heavy with the odor of horse droppings and his mother’s blood. Mam lay on the floor. Her eyes were closed and her face was pale. He was surprised by her smallness.
    “Mam?”
    “You the son?”
    He nodded, thin chest heaving.
    The old woman hawked and spat on the floor. “Let her rest,” she said.
    When his Da came he scarcely gave Rob J. a glance. In a straw-filled wagon Bukerel had borrowed from a builder they took Mam home along with the newborn, a male who would be christened Roger Kemp Cole.
    After bringing forth a new baby Mam had always shown the infant to her other children with teasing pride. Now she simply lay and stared at the thatched ceiling.
    Finally Nathanael called in the Widow Hargreaves from the nearest house. “She can’t even suckle the child,” he told her.
    “Perhaps it will pass,” Della Hargreaves said. She knew of a wet nurse and took the baby away, to Rob J.’s great relief. He had all he could do tocare for the other four children. Jonathan Carter had been trained to the pot but, missing the attention of his mother, seemed to have forgotten the fact.
    His Da stayed home. Rob J. said little to him and maneuvered out of his way.
    He missed the lessons they had had each morning, for Mam had made them seem like a merry game. He knew no one so full of warmth and loving mischief, so patient with slowness of memory.
    Rob charged Samuel with keeping Willum and Anne Mary out of the house. That evening Anne Mary wept for a lullaby. Rob held her close and called her his Maid Anne Mary, her favorite form of address. Finally he sang of soft sweet coneys and downy birds in the nest, tra-la, grateful that Anthony Tite was not a witness. His sister was more round-cheeked and tender-fleshed than their mother, although Mam had always said Anne Mary had the Kemp side’s features and traits, down to the way her mouth relaxed in sleep.
    Mam looked better the second day, but his father said the color in her cheeks was fever. She shivered, and they piled extra covers on her.
    On the third morning, when Rob gave her a drink of water he was shocked by the heat he felt in her face. She patted his hand. “My Rob J.,” she whispered. “So manly.” Her breath stank and she was breathing fast.
    When he took her hand something passed from her body into his mind. It was an awareness: he knew with absolute certainty what would happen to her. He couldn’t weep. He couldn’t cry out. The hair rose on the back of his neck. He felt pure terror. He could not have dealt with it had he been an adult, and he was a child.
    In his horror he squeezed Mam’s hand and caused her pain. His father saw and cuffed him on the head.
    Next morning when he got out of bed, his