Free Solomon's Song by Bryce Courtenay

on the floor.
    ‘Is she dead, mister?’ one of the lads asks.
    ‘No, she’s fine.’ Hawk removes his bundled coat from his left ear so that they see the blood covering his neck and soaked into his white shirt. ‘My ear, it’s torn, it needs to be stitched up. Is there a doctor hereabouts?’
    ‘There’s Mrs Pike,’ the other urchin replies.
    ‘Is she a doctor?’
    ‘Nah, I think she’s a sort o’ nurse,’ the boy says, ‘fer ‘avin’ babies.’
    ‘There’s a sixpence in it for both of you, go fetch her, tell her to bring her stitching stuff.’
    The boys do not move. ‘G’arn, be off with you and hurry.’
    ‘Where’s our money, mister?’
    Hawk sighs and pulls out his purse, allowing the blood to run from his ear, and takes a sixpence from it. ‘One now, one when you return.’ He holds the little silver coin up to the urchins.
    ‘Throw it here,’ one of them says. Hawk throws the sixpence in his direction and both boys drop to the ground in a scramble, pushing and shoving each other out of the way to reach the small fortune at their feet.
    ‘Damn you, get moving!’ Hawk barks. ‘And close the door!’
    One of the lads has secured the coin and they both run off, to return half an hour later with a stout, big-breasted woman who huffs and puffs as she makes her way through the crowd beginning to gather outside the hovel. She carries a leather doctor’s bag and shouts, ‘Out of the way! Out of the way!’ pushing the crowd aside by banging the bag against them until she reaches the door. The two lads are still with her. ‘G’arn, be off with you!’ she says, shooing them away.
    ‘It’s our sixpence, we’s got a sixpence comin’ from the nigger man!’ one of them protests.
    ‘Honest, missus!’ his companion confirms.
    Not bothering to knock, Mrs Pike pushes open the door. ‘Sixpence! You promise them sixpence?’ she shouts into the darkened interior. She turns to the two boys. ‘Wait here,’ she commands imperiously as she steps into the hovel.
    Hawk finds the second sixpence and hands it to the nurse who drops it into the pocket of her nurse’s pinny and turns to the two urchins. ‘You two stand here at the door, I’ll need it open to let in the light, don’t let nobody come in, you hear? You’ll get yer sixpence later when I’m good an’ ready.’
    She looks over the heads of the two urchins at the crowd. ‘G’arn, piss off the lot’a ya! This ain’t none of your business.’
    *
    In the time it has taken the two boys to fetch the nurse Hawk has found a threadbare blanket and torn a strip off it and bound his head several times around to contain the bleeding from his ear in order to free both his hands. He finds a bucket half filled with water and a tin mug and splashes as much blood from his hands as is possible. Then he returns with a mug of water to find Hinetitama sitting up with her face in her hands.
    ‘Better get dressed, my dear,’ Hawk says to her, handing her the mug.
    Hinetitama takes it in both hands and drinks thirstily, downing the entire mug without taking a breath. Then she gets slowly to her feet and, bringing her hands down to cover her pubic region, she goes back into the little bed chamber and begins to get into her filthy gown. She has no hosiery or underwear and finally she pushes her dirty feet into a pair of badly scuffed and worn boots and dumps herself in the middle of the mattress with her legs tucked under her and waits. She has not said a word to Hawk since her recovery.
    Mrs Pike, it turns out, is the local midwife, which is a stroke of luck, as she well understands how to insert stitches. She does a neat enough job of Hawk’s ear, stemming the bleeding and inserting the stitches which run halfway down the ear by using horsehair and what has the appearance of a small darning needle. It is a rough enough job but soon the bleeding stops. ‘It ain’t pretty but the parts I ‘as to stitch in me midwife’s work don’t need no fancy