Rosaria nodded to Elvira, who dipped a strip of cotton cloth into the pot with a pair of wooden tongs, then passed it to Rosaria. The old woman lay a sprig of herbs across Eliot’s knuckles and bound it with the damp cloth, which sent waves of heat into his fractured joints. She spoke to Will.

“She says you’re to keep that on tonight and come back to her for a fresh one tomorrow,” Will translated.

“Okay, but I ain’t drinking any potions, Will.”

Rosaria gestured to Will to take his jersey off and told him to raise his arms above his head. He was surprised that it embarrassed him to bare his torso in front of Elvira; he’d never suffered such shyness in the whorehouses in New Haven and New York. She knelt beside him and began to massage his cracked ribs with a bundle of pungent leaves. Her strong hands moved over his side as softly as a mother washing an infant, and the chant she sang, following Rosaria’s lead, was hypnotic in its drumlike cadences.

She fell silent, rose, and dipped more cotton strips in the herbal brew and held them, steaming and dripping, over the pot before returning to the mat to kneel and bind them around Will’s chest. He caught the scents of aloe and sage, and Elvira’s cheek came within an inch of brushing his and warmed the air between their faces. The sensation suggested a touch, and the suggestion was more arousing than a touch itself would have been.

“Well, that takes care of you for today,” said Rosaria. Few words could have been more disappointing to Will. He felt ready to be wrapped up like a mummy, so long as it was Elvira doing the wrapping. “Tomorrow, you’ll take an herbal bath in this tub you see here. I will speak with Babaluaye and we’ll see if the power of his herbs works on those who don’t believe in them.”

“Rosaria, qué es Babaluaye?” asked Will.

“Es orisha—una anima. Entiende Usted?”

“No.”

“The spirit of sickness and healing. The same as San Lazaro.” She twitched her small, round head at the miniature house. “His ashe is in there. Entiende?”

“No. Ashe. Orisha. These are words I’ve never heard. Nor the words that you and Elvira were singing.”

“Lucumi.” Leaning forward on the stool, knees spread beneath her dress and her hands folded in the furrowed cloth between them, she cast a slightly mischievous look at Will and Eliot. “The language of the old people, the ones the Spanish brought here in chains from Africa. It’s their words. It’s their religion.”

“I thought you people were Catholics,” said Will, with a puzzled frown.

“Somos Católicos, seguramente. Pero, somos orisha también. Hijos de santos.”

“Disculpe. No entiendo.”