"Let . . . !"
"I'm only trying to wake you, Captain." A voice cut through the nightmare. "His Eminence, the Shahbandar, has requested that I attend your wound."
Hawksworth startled awake and was reaching for his sword before he saw the swarthy little man, incongruous in a white swath of a skirt and a Portuguese doublet, nervously shaking his arm. The man pulled back in momentary surprise, then dropped his cloth medicine bag on the floor and began to carefully fold a large red umbrella. Hawksworth noted he wore no shoes on his dusty feet.
"Allow me to introduce myself." He bowed ceremoniously. "My name is Mukarjee. It is my honor to attend the celebrated new feringhi." His Turki was halting and strongly accented.
He knelt and deftly cut away the wrapping on Hawksworth's leg. "And who applied this?" With transparent disdain he began uncoiling the muddy bandage. "The Christian topiwallahs constantly astound me. Even though my daughter is married to one." One eyebrow twitched nervously as he worked.
Hawksworth stared at him through a groggy haze, marveling at the dexterity of his chestnut-brown hands. Then he glanced nervously at the vials of colored liquid and jars of paste the man was methodically extracting from his cloth bag.
"It was our ship's physician. He swathed this after attending a dozen men with like wounds or worse."
"No explanations are necessary. Feringhi methods are always unmistakable. In Goa, where I lived for many years after leaving Bengal, I once served in a hospital built by Christian priests."
"You worked in a Jesuit hospital?"
"I did indeed." He began to scrape away the oily powder residue from the wound. Hawksworth's leg jerked involuntarily from the flash of pain. "Please do not move. Yes, I served there until I could abide it no more. It was a very exclusive hospital. Only feringhi were allowed to go there to be bled."