TWENTY-ONE

BECAUSE WE HAD interrupted the bandits’ pillaging, the thieves had barely touched the monks’ baggage. We found food, wine, fresh linen, Bibles, medical supplies, and, most welcome of all, soap. We scrubbed clean at the river, washed the blood off the robes, and lit a fire to dry the clothes and cook a meal.

We camped on a hillock off the road that night, watching it for a posse. The next morning, feeling human again with fresh clothes and our bellies full, we continued on the road to Dolores. As we set out, Lizardi correctly noted the flaws in my disguise.

“Your horse is a pure-bred stallion, not at all what a monk would ride. Mine is much smaller and would be acceptable, but mules are more priestly. The two mules the bandidos had probably belonged to the monks. We need to trade the horses for mules.”

He was right, but I wouldn’t give up Tempest even if the Lord High Constable himself were on my tail, not if the devil were to offer me a fine woman instead . . . Eh, perhaps that wasn’t true, but I was not about to trade Tempest for a mule.

“If we get chased by constables, I will need Tempest.” I grinned at Lizardi. “To draw them away so you can make your escape.”

“You refuse to wear the sandals we took off the monks and insist upon those caballero boots.”

“You can’t control a stallion like Tempest with sandals. He obeys boots, quirts, and spurs, not the gentle touch of sandals.”

Among the monks’ possessions were two saddlebags containing medical supplies. Lizardi went through the bags as we rode. He had assisted his physician father for several years and knew the purpose of the medicines and implements. He took a vial out of the monk’s medicine pack. “Monks use this elixir to clean wounds. Known as aqua feu, it can discolor hair and turn black hair lighter. We can mottle your stallion so he’s not such an obvious sloeberry thoroughbred.”

I gave Tempest a brown forehead star and markings on his shoulders and rump so that he did appear more of a mixed breed.

“This glass tube has mercury in it, the quicksilver you once sold to the mines to separate out silver.” He showed me a round glass tube about as thick as a finger and as long as a man’s foot. “It’s called a Celsius thermometer. You stick it in a patient’s mouth and wait ten or fifteen minutes. If he goes above this mark, thirty-seven degrees, he has a fever. You have to leave it in the mouth to get an accurate reading, so you must use a candle and bend down by the person’s chest to read it.”

“So what does it mean if the person has a fever?”

“It means . . .” he shrugged, “he’s sick.”

“Any fool could tell when someone is sick. The person tells you that.”

Shaking his head, he held up other items from the bags. “This is a small bone cutter,” he held up a two-handled instrument that looked like it would be best employed snapping twigs off tree limbs, “and this is a bone saw.”

“The monks were barbers?”

“No, many physicians now do surgery. My father is that kind of doctor.”

I didn’t say anything, but the reason most surgery was done by barbers is because the practice is so dangerous and disreputable. As many people died from the surgery as from the injury. I had no intention of butchering patients like dressed-out deer.

“The scalpels incise flesh, and a tourniquet chokes off bleeding.” He held up a contraption with a large screw holding two metal plates that in turn held leather straps that went around an arm or leg.

“Here are medications, salves, oils of violets. A metal rod you heat red-hot for cauterizing, and, ah, amigo, this is especially for you.” He showed me a very thin, foot-long rod. “To extricate musket balls, you slip it into the wound and probe for the lead ball. Once you locate it, you use these forceps to extract it.” He held up an instrument that had scissor handles, but had two long narrow rods with “cups” on the end. “You clamp the lead ball between the cups and pull it out. Clever, eh?”

“I’d just as soon leave the ball in me than dig into my flesh with that thing.”

“Not if the wound became infected, you wouldn’t.” He pulled another instrument out of the bag. “This one you use on your worst enemy.”

It was a silver tube, long, thin, and curved.

“What is it?”

“A catheter.”

“A what?”

“A catheter. This one is for a man. You stick it into the opening at the end of his penis and push it in.”

“¡María Madre de Dios!” I shuddered and crossed myself. “Is this one of the Inquisition’s torture devices?”

“No, it relieves blockage in a man’s urinary tract. The tube is hollow and permits the liquid to escape through it. The technique is ancient. Even the Greeks and Romans used it.”

“It’s an instrument of the devil. Throw it away.”

He put it back into a saddlebag. “You must know these things if you are called upon to treat a patient.”

“If I am called upon to treat someone, I will cut his throat and say that it was God’s will.”