Stanton relit his pipe, smoke clouding his face. "All right, then, d.a.m.n it. I had my heart set on a new barouche for the springtime, but I suppose it can wait another year. I stand with Johnston and move to vote. Any further discussion, gentlemen?"

A second motion was made for a vote, and Johnston emerged victorious. He would leave for Windsor in the morning in the school's two-horse phaeton, to see what could be done about bringing back in it a school slave.

THE SANDY ROAD wound through the outskirts of All Saints Parish under cypress and live oak that hung low enough to form a cavern of branches over the white lane. The sun, so fierce elsewhere, was here subdued, filtered through the millions of dense small leaves so that the road at midmorning seemed steeped in twilight. Crickets chirred in the shadows, a soft counterpoint to the hissing of the wagon wheels in the sand and the muted plod of the horses' hooves out front of the phaeton.

On the bench, Johnston slept. In one hand he held a volume of Cicero, a finger marking the place where he had acceded to sleep. He held the reins loosely in the other. His head nodded in time with the bobbing of the horses' manes. Like any good country doctor, he could ride for an hour or two at a stretch like this, letting the pair of animals yoked in front carry him to whatever house call awaited at whatever distant hamlet and back again. And like most of those country doctors, he had known the bemused dislocation of waking before a strange tavern or commissary, the sonorous motion of wheels replaced by the sound of his mares lapping at the trough out front, only to find that he had a mile-or two or three-to retrace back to some crossroads where his equine pilots had taken the wrong fork in the road. But for now he slept in the soft doze of the low-country afternoon.

The phaeton rounded a bend and the road split before it, a hand-painted sign adorned with the legend windsor pointing to the left. The horses tugged right.

Presently the branches overhead began to thin and the soft undulating sound of flowing water ahead hastened the animals' steps. The wagon dipped into a small hollow and rose on the other side to a low bluff a hundred yards from the Waccamaw River. The horses stopped and snorted, nostrils flaring as a breeze off the river brought to them the coppery scent of blood.

Johnston opened his eyes slowly, expecting to see before him the inspiring grace of Windsor's twelve-columned facade. What he saw instead was an imposing structure of a different sort: a hard-weathered lodge propped ten feet above the marsh ground on stilts of cypress trunks, a set of bowed plank steps leading up to a high porch that bristled with the antlers of perhaps three dozen whitetail bucks. They were nailed to the wall beneath the gabled roof as densely as the clapboard wall could accommodate them, from twelve-pointers down to spikes, so that the front of the old building looked to his sleep-clouded eyes like either a wall of outsized thorns or the many-tined skeleton of a prehistoric beast.

"Hallo there, master!" a voice called. "Good day, sir!"

The greeting was robust, but when Johnston's eyes separated the man who issued it from the shadowy s.p.a.ce beneath the lodge, the greeter seemed markedly less than glad for the company. A slave nearly six feet tall stepped from the shadows, wiping a blood-smeared knife on his trouser leg. Behind him hung the carca.s.s of a fat doe hamstrung on two hooks fixed to the lodge floor above. He slipped the knife into his pocket and shrugged his shoulders. Johnston smiled.

"Ah, me. I am not so lost as I feared I might be. If I know my man, you are Drake's Cudjo, head huntsman of Windsor and guide extraordinaire. Am I mistaken?"

"No, sir."

"And that fine specimen of venison behind you would be one of your master's prime herd, taken-let me think-a good two weeks before Windsor's season begins. Again, am I mistaken?"

"Again, sir, you ain't."

Johnston slipped down from the phaeton seat like a man ten years younger. "Cudjo, you are still a boy with appet.i.tes beyond the limits of his master's beneficence. But I must say I am pleased to see you nonetheless." He stepped to the carca.s.s and felt of it, glanced into the tub set below to catch the entrails. "Still warm, Cudjo."

"Yes, sir. She was a pretty thing."

"I'd guess her weight at a hundred and twenty."

"No more than hundred, hundred and ten, master, this back say. I can't lie, Doctor Johnston. She was a pitiful sight, caught up in the worm fence a half mile down the river. When I saw her neck was nearly broke, there weren't much else to do."

Johnston held up a hand. "You may as well save that for Mister Drake. Carry on," he said, and sat down on a section of log. He had always held Cudjo's skill at dressing deer in the highest esteem and had watched him each year cleaning the gentlemen's kills with a regard bordering on envy. Put him in another country, perhaps in another era, Johnston would tell his friends over their evening whiskeys, and Cudjo could have stood with the most senior of Johns Hopkins surgeons in an operating theater. Not in this country, they would say, laughing, and sure as h.e.l.l not in my era.

After a moment of Cudjo's shuffling, the knife reappeared and continued slicing against the hide, shearing it from the crimson muscle as precisely and smoothly as though it were working through b.u.t.ter rather than tissue. As he had always done-and as none of the other skinners bothered to attempt-Cudjo cut the fat from the muscle as he went, long ribbons of the pearl-like material falling to the tub in gossamer sheets. Johnston realized that the slave had been talking for several moments as he worked, his voice as raspy as the blade on the hide, hints of Senegal in the cadences and lilt of his words.

"Shame, shame about him. Say it ain't getting but worse. Say he ain't left the house in a week."

"Drake? Drake will be better on the morrow, I a.s.sure you. There will be adjustments, to be sure. Perhaps no hunting for him this season."

"Say they had to open the windows on his study, even with the mosquitoes so bad, on account of the smell."

"That is the nature of gangrene."

"He going to lose the foot?"

"Impossible to say without a proper diagnosis, of course. It's likely. Say, may I take a look at your knife there?"

Cudjo halted his methodical work and wiped the blade on his trousers before handing it over heel-first.

"Extraordinary," Johnston said, balancing the blade across his fingers. "What manner of knife is this? The heft is nearly perfect." He sc.r.a.ped the blade against his forearm and sheared more hair than he had intended.

Cudjo chuckled, the sound like wind in corn husks. "Ain't nothing but an old b.u.t.ter knife, sir. Took the emery wheel to it. See, your old hunting knife got too much shaft to it, don't bend. b.u.t.ter knife'll ground down thin, so she'll bend. Little flex in the blade makes the cutting easier."

Like a scalpel, Johnston thought. But with an extra three inches of cutting edge and a tang strong enough for it to double as a tendon blade. He handed it back to Cudjo and nodded toward the deer. "You're nearly finished here, are you not?"

"Yes, sir. She just ready for the smokehouse now."

"Well, put her in, then. I will wait for you in the phaeton."

Cudjo stared at the doctor blankly. "You aim to turn me in?"

Johnston turned on his heel. "I've never answered questions put to me by a slave, Cudjo, and don't intend to begin now." He stopped a few steps short of the carriage. "You can handle a two-in-hand, can't you?"

The slave had the doe over his shoulder, but he turned to face Johnston before he spoke. "I can, sir, and a four-in-hand just as well."

"Very well. Put the venison in the smokehouse and then you shall drive me to Windsor, where no person shall be turned in for alleged deeds I did not witness." Johnston climbed into the phaeton's pa.s.senger seat and shut the little door. "And Cudjo, make sure to bring that knife of yours."

"Yes, sir!" the slave said, moving more briskly now.

"We shall retrieve the venison on our way out of the parish this evening," Johnston said, though he knew that Cudjo, enveloped in the smoldering smokehouse now, was beyond the range of his voice.

DRAKE'S LIBRARY AT Windsor was paneled in English walnut, wood imported on the same ship that had brought the pewter chandelier hanging above the shelves of leather-bound cla.s.sics that reached to the twelve-foot ceilings. Johnston noted that the books were ordered in the meticulous manner of an owner who never bothered to read them. Drake, he knew, was not a man for poetry or essays-not a man for books of any kind, in fact, that were not ledgers or accounts; he had probably never delved further into his library than to glance at the engraved frontispiece of Scott's Ivanhoe. These books, like the library itself, were but part of the grand image of the planter-scholar so beloved in the low country-a creature as rare in Johnston's experience as the fabled albino alligator of the Waccamaw Swamp.

Whatever kind of man Drake was or purported to be, he was at present a man in considerable discomfort. His face was drawn, his eyes hollowed, his neckerchief soaked with the acrid sweat of sickness. He sat in a leather armchair by the fireplace, a half-empty decanter of bourbon beside him and a gla.s.s in his hand. Propped on an ottoman in front of him was the gangrenous left foot. A blind man could have located it by the olfactory sense alone, Johnston thought. It was well that Drake had not waited another day to send for him. The big toe had already swollen and blackened around the raw cut. It turned a bruised green at its root, then shaded into yellow at the sole, with crimson runners of infection stretching across the arch of the foot. Drake's houseman, Caesar, stood behind the chair, slowly fanning the air with a palmetto branch. He looked rather green himself.

"Don't get up, Robert," Johnston said with a faint smile as he set his bag on the floor.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, you know I couldn't if I wanted to. I can't bear to put any weight on it. Every time Caesar gets close to it, I flinch. I can feel the air on it, Johnston, like a pressure."

Johnston traced the tip of his finger down the arch of the foot. Drake groaned and sipped from his gla.s.s.

"We will attend to it this morning. Caesar, all the windows shut directly, if you please. It will not do to operate with the swamp miasma permeating the room."

At the mention of operation, Drake motioned for more whiskey. Caesar filled his gla.s.s and began lowering the windows in their cas.e.m.e.nts.

"You mentioned a fox trap in your telegraph," Johnston said. "I'm grateful it did not catch you at the ankle."

"That G.o.dd.a.m.ned Cudjo has set them out all over the place. It would have caught me, by G.o.d, but I was just dismounting when it sprang. He sets them with a hair trigger."

"A most enterprising boy, he is. I met him on the road."

Drake grunted. "That figures. His task this morning was to go down by the sh.o.r.e to see to the crab traps. Never where he should be. Look for him south, he's north. Look east, and he's west."

"He is what the hands call a stray n.i.g.g.e.r, sir," Caesar said.

"Be that as it may, he is in the yard now. I suppose I rounded him up for you. Caesar, help me move your master to his desk, will you? We will arrange him facedown."

Caesar stepped forward and hooked his hands under Drake's shoulders. Johnston took the legs as gingerly as he could.

"Bring that whiskey with me," Drake said.

Before they could lay Drake out to Johnston's satisfaction, the lord of the manor had downed another gla.s.s of bourbon. He lay breathing heavily as Johnston took his materials out of the leather bag, careful to array the scalpels, saw, and gla.s.s cups on the desk out of Drake's vision. Frowning, Johnston chipped at a smear of dried blood on a scalpel blade with his thumbnail.

"Should we bother with unb.u.t.toning your shirt, Robert? Or would you prefer that I cut it?"

"Cut it down the back, d.a.m.n it. I'm not moving another inch." He held out the empty gla.s.s. "Caesar, again."

"And Caesar, a tallow, after you've replenished Mister Drake."

Johnston sliced at the broadside cotton while Caesar poured. When Caesar came around the desk with a candle, Johnston handed him a bell-shaped gla.s.s cup slightly larger than a shot gla.s.s.

"A delicate thing, isn't it? And in and of itself hardly an impressive apparatus. But one of the cornerstones of modern medicine, nonetheless. I will place them on Mister Drake's back, two at a time. You will hold them in place while I administer heat with the candle." Caesar looked at him with horror. But Johnston, disciple of Benjamin Rush, would go to his grave convinced of the salubrious effect of blistering and bloodletting. It was inconceivable to essay surgery without this preparatory treatment to draw out the infection. "You are capable of that small task, are you not?"

"I will endeavor my best, sir," Caesar said.

"Excellent." Johnston set two cups on Drake's white back below each shoulder blade. "Hold them by the rim, fast to the skin. Do not lift them until I say so. Take another drink, Robert."

While Drake gulped the whiskey, Johnston bent the candle to the peak of the first gla.s.s cup, one hand spread out beneath it to catch dripping wax. After thirty seconds, Drake began to groan as the flesh beneath the gla.s.s reddened. When the skin began to rise Johnston moved the candle to the other cup. Wax dripped on his palm and he blew at it. When the skin once more rose into a welt, he set the tallow aside and pulled his watch from its vest pocket. The second hand completed three quarters of its circuit and he nodded to Caesar, who removed the cups and set them on the desk blotter abruptly, one of them nearly rolling off to the floor. On Drake's back now were two perfect circles, each the size of a silver dollar. The red flesh seemed to glow angrily above his twitching muscles.

"Excellent," Johnston said with satisfaction. "Two more and we are done."

Caesar cleared his throat. "I don't believe I'll be able to a.s.sist you again, sir."

"That's my good man, Caesar," Drake said. His speech was beginning to slur. He waved the gla.s.s over his shoulder and murmured, "Pour."

Johnston looked at Caesar coldly. A glance revealed the butler had lost what little stomach he may have had before. The close air of the room seemed to be affecting him.

"I cannot perform the surgery without aid. Caesar, since you are unable to provide a.s.sistance beyond libation, step outside and send in that Cudjo. The fresh air may renew your vigor."

"Cudjo!" Drake spat. "Do you mean to kill me, man?"

"You know my opinion of his abilities, Robert. He is quite adept."

"At skinning a f.u.c.king deer! I'll not have him in here at my back with a knife, by G.o.d."

"He will only a.s.sist, Robert, nothing more." Johnston nodded at Caesar, indicating the foyer. "Would you like some laudanum?"

Despite his pain, Drake nearly turned over on the desk. "You've had laudanum all this time? Blistering my back with nothing but whiskey, and you've had laudanum?"

"I can only give you ten grains. I intended to conserve it until the moment of greatest need."

"I am in great need, I a.s.sure you."

Johnston took a pewter tin and a pack of papers out of his bag. He shook the tin over one of the papers, much as he would salt a delicacy, and handed the paper to Drake. "Under the nose, Robert. Sniff it vigorously."

Drake needed little encouragement. He snorted the powder, sniffled twice, and sipped from his gla.s.s. "All you doctors, G.o.d. I never send for you if I can help it, because things always get worse after you arrive."

"Surgery without pain is a chimera, Robert," Johnston said as he set two more cups on Drake's lower back.

"Surgery is just s.h.i.t, I say."

"You'll be at greater ease presently," Johnston said as Caesar and Cudjo entered, the former ushering his taller and darker companion into the room with a sardonic flourish.

"Hold these cups where they are, Cudjo, firmly. I will attempt to move at greater haste." Cudjo took his place as Drake muttered. Johnston set to work with the candle again, Cudjo watching intently as the skin puckered and reddened. As he touched the flame to the last cup, Johnston looked at Cudjo appraisingly. "Doing all right?"

"Capital, sir," he said, his lips thinning into a smile.

"Robert, feeling pain?"

Drake said only, "Oh, mammy."

"Fine, then. We will remove the foot with dispatch, at the ankle. Cudjo, take firm hold of the heel and toes. Hold them fast."

"Mammy, mammy," Drake said, the words rising to a falsetto singsong as the slave grasped his foot.

Johnston picked a scalpel from the small array on the desk. At the first incision, low on the Achilles tendon, blood spurted onto his shirtfront, crimson on the starched white. He worked the blade around and under, to the front of the foot, then rose again to complete the circle. Arterial blood shot into his eye and he paused to wipe his face with a handkerchief. At the corner of his vision he saw Caesar stumbling out of the room.

"Your knife, Cudjo."

"Sir?"

"Your blade, quickly." He snapped his fingers.

Cudjo loosened his hold on the rapidly blanching foot and produced the knife. Johnston set to with it on the remaining ligaments, cutting each with a precise nick of the blade, realizing that this humble tool would speed his already efficient amputation regimen-a point of considerable pride-by as much as ten seconds.

"Bone saw," he said.

He was pleased to feel the slave set the saw into his outstretched palm without further prompting. He made six vigorous pa.s.ses, the saw blade first grinding, then singing as it picked up speed, and the foot came off in Cudjo's hands. Johnston retrieved his needle and sutures himself, selecting a number-four catgut. Three minutes later the arteries were closed and the stump swaddled in the remains of Drake's shirt. Johnston and Cudjo carried the semiconscious Drake back to the armchair. Johnston propped the foot up with two volumes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, watching the spread of the bloodstain on the bandage. After a moment he added Emerson's English Traits to the stack, then, convinced the elevation was suitable to stanch the blood flow, sat down himself.

"Cudjo, be a good man and bring me a gla.s.s of whiskey. Ask in the kitchen for rags to clean up this room." He sighed as Cudjo handed him an amber gla.s.s. He hoped the day's roughest work was now behind him.

AN HOUR LATER, the room cleared of the operating debris, which Cudjo had carried out in a single b.l.o.o.d.y bundle, Drake showed signs of reviving. His mood was uplifted considerably after a second dose of laudanum, which caused him to giggle intermittently as Johnston collected his equipment.

"How much of that dope do you carry with you on a call, Johnston? I would like to procure a bit more of it. You can roll the cost into your fee."

Johnston smiled. "I've left four more powders here on your desk, Robert. One dose every six hours for the next day, then back to the whiskey as you need it."

"All right, then," Drake said, and giggled. "Oh, mammy."

"As to the fee, there is none. How could I bill the man who has been my host for so many memorable hunting seasons?" Johnston snapped his bag shut. "I would, however, like to engage you in a business transaction."

The host stopped giggling. "What business?"

"Cudjo. I would like to purchase him for the medical school."

"What in h.e.l.l for?"