Kitabı oku: «Lord of the Beasts», sayfa 2

CHAPTER TWO

“IT IS QUITE BEYOND ANYTHING I had imagined,” Theodora said, brown eyes sparkling in her plain and honest face.

Cordelia Hardcastle squeezed her cousin’s arm and smiled, though she could not entirely share Theodora’s fascination with the many diversions available to the privileged visitors of the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. She, Theodora and their friend Bennett Wintour, Viscount Inglesham—who had so amiably escorted the ladies on this sojourn to London—had already viewed the museum with its collection of stuffed birds, exotic skins and every conceivable sort of animal horn and tusk; admired the pleasingly arranged gardens and buildings; delighted in the antics of the beavers in their ponds and marveled at the Australian kangaroos, African zebras and South American llamas.

But perhaps Cordelia had not marveled quite so much as Theodora and the other men and women who strolled about the grounds on this bright spring morning. For she, like a few of the Zoological Society Fellows who had established this impressive display in the very heart of the world’s greatest city, had actually seen many of these beasts in their natural habitats. And the sight of such creatures displayed for the general amusement of the Fellows’ guests filled her with a certain discomfort.

“You can’t expect Cordelia to be impressed, Theodora,” Inglesham said, flashing his easy smile. “She has been twice around the world with Sir Geoffrey and has a menagerie of her own. I fear she may be finding this excursion rather tedious.”

Theodora searched Cordelia’s face. “Is it all frightfully dull for you, my dear? Shall we return to the house?”

“Certainly not.” Cordelia cast Inglesham a reproving glance and tucked her cousin’s arm through her own. “It was I who suggested this visit, after all.”

“And have you found the answers you sought?” Inglesham asked.

Cordelia suppressed a sigh and steered Theodora toward a bench under the spreading shade of an elm. “Lord Pettigrew was most generous with his time and advice,” she said. “But even he cannot suggest a reason for my animals’ malaise.”

“I do not see why they are unhappy,” Theodora offered shyly. “Edgecott is a most beautiful estate, and they have pens of ample size. No one could care for them more conscientiously than you, Cordelia.”

“One might even say that you devote far more attention to those beasts than you do your friends,” Inglesham said with a teasing grin. “A husband might object to such neglect.”

“Then it is fortunate that I have never remarried,” Cordelia said, folding her parasol with a snap. It was an old game between them, this sparring over his lazy but persistent courtship and her polite but firm rejections. They had been friends since childhood, and in spite of the game there had always been an unspoken understanding that one day the refusals might become acceptance. They got on tolerably well together, the viscount would never think of forbidding his prospective wife to make use of her fortune as she saw fit, and her father thoroughly approved of the match.

But Cordelia wasn’t ready to assume the duties of wedlock, however light they might be. She had loved her first husband with a young woman’s passion in the few brief months of their marriage. Such passion was no longer a part of her plans for the future, and she would have to accept the conjugal responsibilities of marriage even if Inglesham demanded little else of her.

She would know when the time was right. Until then, she had more than enough interests and responsibilities to keep her heart and mind thoroughly occupied.

“We have not yet seen the elephants,” she said briskly. “Unless you would prefer to rest a little longer, Theo?”

“I am quite ready,” Theodora said, adjusting her bonnet. “If it is not too inconvenient, perhaps we might also see the chimpanzee? I have heard … Oh!”

Theodora’s faint gasp called Cordelia’s attention to the broad avenue that ran through the center of the gardens. Top-hatted gentlemen and ladies in bell-shaped skirts suddenly scattered away from a high wrought-iron gate, abandoning parcels and parasols, and the breeze carried faint cries of alarm and shouts of warning.

The cause of the disturbance was not far to seek. Through the open gate charged a great gray behemoth, an ivory-tusked colossus flapping large ears like wings and moving with amazing rapidity as it bore down on the crowd.

Theodora clapped her hands to her mouth. “What is it?” she whispered.

“That, my dear, is your elephant,” Inglesham said, shading his eyes for a better look. “Gone rogue, from the look of it. And coming this direction.”

“Of the African species,” Cordelia added, her mind crystal clear in spite of the danger. “They are said to be far more aggressive than the Indian.”

Even as she spoke, the elephant paused, swung toward a nearby bench and upended it with a flip of its powerful trunk. A woman shrieked in terror.

“Perhaps it’s best if we move out of its way,” Inglesham said. He took Theodora’s elbow in one hand and Cordelia’s in the other. “If you’ll permit me, ladies …”

Cordelia planted her feet. “The animal has obviously been mistreated,” she said, “or it would not behave in this fashion. No matter its origin, any creature, when handled with firmness and compassion, must ultimately respond to—”

“Your theories are all very well, Delia, but now is not the time—”

Cordelia gently worked her arm free of Inglesham’s grip, set down her parasol and started up the avenue.

“Delia!” Inglesham shouted. Theodora echoed his cry. Cordelia continued forward, her eyes fixed on the elephant. The beast was still moving at a fast pace, but she was not afraid. Enraged the animal might be, but even it was not beyond the reach of sympathy, kindliness and reason.

The pleas of her companions faded to a rush of incomprehensible sound. Cordelia was vaguely aware of white, staring faces to either side of the lane, but they held no reality for her. The elephant barreled toward her, broke stride as it noticed the obstacle in its path and began to slow.

Cordelia smiled. That’s it, my friend, she thought. You need have no fear of me.

The elephant shook its head from side to side and blew gusts of air from its trunk. The small, intelligent eyes seemed to blink in understanding. The space between beast and woman shrank from yards to mere feet, and Cordelia drew in a deep breath.

She had scarcely let it out again when a blurred shape passed in front of her and set itself almost under the pachyderm’s broad feet. Cordelia came to a startled halt, and the elephant did likewise. The shape resolved into a man, hatless and slightly above average height. He placed one hand on the elephant’s trunk and stood absolutely still.

Cordelia’s heart descended from her mouth and settled into a quick, angry drumming. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I believe it is generally considered dangerous to step in front of a charging elephant.”

Still maintaining his light hold on the pachyderm, the man half turned. She caught a glimpse of raised brows and vivid green eyes in the instant before he spoke.

“And yet you apparently believed you could stop her, madame,” he said, his words crisp and patrician in spite of his slightly shabby coat and scuffed boots. “Did you perhaps believe that the thickness of your petticoats would protect you?”

Cordelia found that her mouth hung open in a most vulgar fashion. She closed it with a snap and looked the fellow up and down with a cool, imperious gaze.

“Were you under the impression, sir, that you were protecting me?”

A mischievous glint flared in his emerald eyes. “I have no doubt that you could bring an entire army to a halt, madame, but this lady—” he scratched its leathery skin “—requires rather more delicate handling.”

Turning his back on Cordelia, the ill-mannered rogue leaned against the elephant’s leg and whispered to the animal. The beast curled its trunk around his neck in something very like an embrace and gave a low, pitiful squeak.

Cordelia took firm hold of her patience and carefully moved closer. “You seem to be familiar with this animal,” she said.

“We have never met before today.”

“Yet she trusts you.”

He didn’t answer but continued to stroke the pachyderm’s trunk as delicately as he might caress a newborn baby’s skin. Cordelia took another step. “Is she hurt?” she asked.

Once more the man glanced over his shoulder, as if he found her question remarkable. “You seem more concerned for Sheba than any men she might have injured.”

“She would not have acted so without reason.” Cordelia frowned. “If you have never seen her before, how do you know her name?”

“She told me.”

“Indeed. And what else has she confided to you, pray tell?”

He turned fully and stood tucked beneath Sheba’s head, careless of her sheer weight and impressive tusks. “She has been mistreated in the past,” he said with perfect seriousness. “She was taken from her home as a child, and the men who bought her believed that only force and cruelty could compel her to obey.”

A look of black and bitter rage crossed his face, so intense that Cordelia almost retreated before the menace so thinly held in check. But then he smiled, and it was as if the sun had burst gloriously through the clouds.

“Sheba knows you mean well,” he said. “She would not have hurt you, and thanks you for your kindness.”

For a moment Cordelia was mute with consternation, torn between judging the fellow mad as a hatter or simply addled by some harmless delusion. Certainly he appeared sane in every other respect. His clothing, while worn and several years out of fashion, was clean and neat. His voice was cultured, his language educated and his manner—though it more than verged on the impertinent—was that of a man raised in a respectable household.

As for his face … Cordelia’s gaze drifted over the shock of russet-brown hair, its waves barely contained and in need of cutting, followed the intelligent line of his brow, paused at those startling eyes and continued over a strong, aristocratic nose to mobile, masculine lips and a firm, slightly dimpled chin.

His was a face most would call handsome, even if he lacked the artful curls and long side-whiskers favored by the most stylish gentlemen. At first blush, she would have thought him the son of some hearty country squire, well accustomed to brisk rural air, a horse between his knees and the feel of good English earth sifting through his fingers.

She emerged from her study to find him regarding her with the same bold stare, noting her well-cut but sensible gown, her plain bonnet and simply-dressed hair. What he thought of her features it was impossible to discern.

“Can it be, sir,” she asked, “that in spite of your intimate acquaintance with elephants, you have never observed a female of the species Homo sapiens?”

That imp of mischief snapped again in his eyes. “I have had occasion to examine a few in their natural habitats, but seldom have I had the privilege of beholding such an extraordinary specimen.”

“Extraordinary because I do not swoon at the first sight of danger?”

His face grew serious again. “Extraordinarily foolish,” he said. “If I had not—” He broke off, his gaze focusing on something behind Cordelia. A moment later she heard the tread of boots and Inglesham’s familiar stride.

“Cordelia! Are you all right?” He stopped beside her and took her arm in a protective grip. “The brute didn’t touch you? I came as quickly as I could, but when I saw you had the beast under control, I thought it best …” He paused as if noticing the stranger for the first time, and Cordelia sensed his confusion.

“I fear I cannot take credit for calming Sheba,” she said a little stiffly. “This gentleman reached her before me.”

“Indeed.” Inglesham gave the other man a swift examination and assigned him to a station somewhat beneath his own. “In that case, my good fellow, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Are you an employee of the Zoological Society? I will see that your courage is properly rewarded. If you’ll remove the animal to a place where it can do no further harm …” He favored Cordelia with a look of somewhat overtaxed tolerance. “Miss Shipp is quite beside herself. She feared for your life.”

Cordelia suffered a pang of guilt and glanced down the avenue. “I’ll go to her as soon as I’ve had another word with—”

She stopped with chagrin as she realized she had never learned her would-be savior’s name. When she turned to remedy the oversight, she found that man and elephant had already moved away, about to be intercepted by a small herd of uniformed keepers who carried various prods and manacles designed to subdue and restrain.

Whatever they might have intended, the auburn-haired gentleman clearly had the upper hand. The keepers kept their distance, and Sheba continued on her majestic way unhindered.

Cordelia considered it beneath her dignity to run after a man who so clearly had no desire to further their acquaintance, so she accompanied Inglesham back to the bench and spent several minutes reassuring Theodora that she had never been in any real danger. But even after they returned to the townhouse and enjoyed a soothing cup of tea, Cordelia could not pry thoughts of the stranger from her mind.

It was true that he had not done anything she hadn’t been prepared to do herself. But the casual ease with which he approached and touched the elephant, the manner in which it responded to him … all suggested a man with considerable experience in the area of animal care and behavior.

Unlike Inglesham, however, she was not convinced that he was merely a Zoological Society employee. It had occurred to her that he might even be one of the Fellows, a scientist in his own right. Her father was a cogent example of a titled gentleman who often dressed and sometimes behaved with no more sophistication than a common farmer.

So the green-eyed stranger remained a mystery. In a brief moment of fanciful abandon, Cordelia christened him Lord Enkidu after the legendary companion of Gilgamesh, who had been raised by animals and could speak their language. Several times during their last few days in London, Cordelia considered writing to Lord Pettigrew and asking him if he knew Enkidu’s name and direction. Each time she remembered his hauteur, and how he had simply walked away without as much as a goodbye.

In the end she allowed Inglesham to distract her with a few more London entertainments and resolved to dispense with all further speculation about Lord Enkidu. But when she retired to her bed in the pleasant comfort of her father’s townhouse on Charles Street, she was troubled by the strangely stimulating notion that she and Lord Enkidu were destined to meet again.

THE DREARY STREETS of London seemed to echo Donal’s mood as he made his way back to the hotel. The fine spring morning had lapsed into an evening thick with choking fog, a miasma that left Donal wondering how any creature could long survive with such foul stuff constantly seeping into its lungs.

But he had learned that the mere act of fighting for life was far more cruel in the city than in the countryside, where struggle was a natural and accepted fact of existence. Here he had seen ragged children selling wilted flowers for a few pennies, and hollow-eyed women selling their bodies for only a pittance more. Men beat their children and their wives and each other, their breath and clothes stinking of liquor. Starving dogs and starving humans scuffled over refuse even the hungriest wild scavenger would disdain to touch.

Donal could not hear the silent cries of the men, women and children in their daily suffering, but he heard the animals. He strode along broad avenues where the carriages of fine ladies and gentleman dashed from one amusement to the next, attempting to shield his mind from the wretched travails of overworked cart horses who might be fortunate enough to live a year or two before they broke down and were sent off to the knackers. The contented thoughts of pampered lap dogs, safe in their protector’s arms, slipped past his defenses, but he could not warn them that a dismal life on the street was only a stroke of misfortune away.

Once again his thoughts turned to last night’s dream of Tir-na-Nog. In the Land of the Young there was no stench, no starvation, no drunken violence. What men called hatred did not exist. Anger, like joy and thanksgiving and affection, was the work of a moment, quickly forgotten.

At times such as these he could almost forget why he had chosen to throw in his lot with mankind.

He stopped at a street corner to take his bearings, blinking as a lamplighter lit a gas lamp overhead. Behind lay Regent’s Park and Tottenham Court Road, and between him and his hotel at Covent Garden stood the filthy warren of tumbledown houses and bitter poverty known as Seven Dials. He had been warned by the staff at Hummums to avoid the rookeries at all costs, but he had little concern for his life or scant property. The wilderness of his own heart was a far more frightening place.

When he had traveled up to London at the request of Lord Thomas Pettigrew, an old acquaintance of his mother’s and Fellow of the Zoological Society, Donal hadn’t expected to face anything more arduous than the work of healing he was accustomed to doing in his Yorkshire practice. Certainly he had never before been asked to examine an exotic beast from beyond England’s shores; he had been content to limit his sphere to the common animals he had known all his life. But Lady Eden Fleming had too much pride in her children to hide their lights under a bushel, and so Lord Pettigrew had been convinced that her gifted son must give his expert opinion on several difficult cases that had defied solution by the usual string of local experts.

That was how Donal had come to see the tiger. She had been refusing food since her delivery at Regent’s Park, and her keepers feared she might starve herself to death. So Donal had sent all the other men away and listened to a mind unlike any he had touched before.

It was not that he had never entered the thoughts of creatures that survived by taking the lives of others. He had run with foxes on the moors, hunted with badgers among limestone grykes and ridden the wings of soaring falcons. But those familiar souls were simple and mild compared to that of a beast who had stalked swift deer in the teeming forests of India, undisputed mistress of all she surveyed.

Donal had shared the tiger’s memories and her deep, inconsolable grief for what she had lost forever. That joining had left its mark on him, but he might have come away unchanged if not for the others: the giraffes and zebras with their dreams of running on the vast African plain; the chimpanzees whose seemingly humorous antics had meaning no ordinary human could understand; and Sheba, who remembered what it was to bask in the mud with her kin and glory in a world of which she was an irreplaceable part.

The sights and smells and sensations of those “uncivilized” lands had reduced England to a narrow cage of ordered fields and hedgerows, shaped by man for mankind’s sole purpose, and the animals’ wild souls had awakened a yearning within Donal that hearkened back to his father’s ancient and unearthly heritage … feral blood that recoiled at the thought of returning to the sheltered, safe existence that Dr. Donal Fleming had believed would content him for the rest of his life.

He shivered and continued on his way toward the hotel, stepping into Crown Street with little awareness of the changing scene around him. In his imagination he crept through a dense and dripping jungle where only a few men had ever walked, breathing air untainted by civilization’s belching chimneys and grinding machines. His fingers sought purchase on the sheer side of a mountain peak while pristine snow lashed his face. His legs carried him at a flying run over a plain where the only obstacles were scattered trees, and the horizon swept on forever.

And sometimes, in the visions of freedom that possessed him, a nameless figure walked at his side. A woman with bold gray eyes, severe brown hair and a foolhardy fearlessness she wore as if it were a medieval suit of armor. A female of the type he thought he despised: meddlesome, supremely well-bred and absolutely convinced of her own infallibility.

But he couldn’t drive her from his thoughts, so he accepted her presence and set off across a sun-scorched desert, searching for the life that lay hidden just beyond his reach….

The scream shattered his pleasant illusion. He jerked upright, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness of the narrow, lampless street. The half moon crept behind him like a timid beggar, offering only the faintest illumination, but it was just enough to show Donal how far he had gone astray.

The rookeries of Seven Dials rose around him, unglazed windows and empty doors glaring like hollow eye-sockets and toothless mouths. The air was still and heavy, poised as if awaiting a single misstep from an unwelcome visitor.

Donal had no memory of how he had come to be in the very heart of the slum. Ordinarily he would have simply turned and walked away. But the cry of one in deathly fear still quivered in the silence, and he could not pretend he hadn’t heard. He listened, breathing shallowly against the stink of raw sewage and rotten food. There was no second scream.

The sagging walls of cramped tenements seemed to press in on him with the sheer weight of the misery they contained, and he almost chose flight over intervention. But he continued to linger, casting for the thoughts of the stray dogs that knew each corner of every maze of alleys and crumbling shacks.

Almost at once he found the source of the trouble. He unbuttoned his coat and followed the agitated stream of images that flowed through his mind like water over jagged stones, abandoning the illusory safety of the street for a dank, noisome passage between two dilapidated buildings. Slurred laughter floated out from an open doorway, and a man’s voice uttered a stream of curses in a hopeless monotone. Donal felt the dogs’ excitement increase and broke into a run.

The passage ended in a high stone wall. The sound of coarse, mocking voices reached Donal’s ears. He turned to the right, where the wall and two houses formed a blind alley, a perfect trap for the unwary. And this trap had caught a victim.

A child crouched amid a year’s worth of discarded refuse, her back pressed to the splintered wood of a featureless house. The dress she wore was no more than an assemblage of rags held together with a length of rope, and the color of her long, matted hair was impossible to determine. It concealed all of her thin, dirty face except for a pair of frightened blue eyes.

A trio of nondescript dogs stalked the space directly in front of the girl, facing an equal number of men whose manner was anything but friendly. It was their voices Donal had heard, and they were far too intent on their prey to notice Donal’s arrival.

“’ere, now,” a fair-haired giant said, wiggling his blunt fingers in a gesture of false entreaty. “Don’t be so shy, love. We only wants to show you a good toim. Ain’t that roight, boys?”

“’at’s roight,” said the giant’s companion, a skinny youth whose jutting teeth were black with decay. “Yer first toim should be wiv true gents like us. We won’t disappoint you.”

“Maybe you’ll even be able t’ walk when we’re done,” the third man said, wiping the mucus from his nose with the back of his sleeve. All three broke into raucous laughter, and the girl shrank deeper into the rubbish while the dogs bared their teeth and pressed their tails between skinny flanks.

“You come wiv us now,” the first man said, “and maybe we’ll let yer doggies go. ‘R else—” He nodded to Rotten Teeth, who drew a knife and slashed toward one of the dogs. The animal darted back, shivering in terror but unwilling to abandon the girl.

Donal set down his bag and stepped forward. The dogs pricked their ears, and the girl’s eyes found him through the barrier of her tormenter’s legs. Her cracked lips parted. Fair-Hair’s shoulders hunched, and he began to turn.

With a flurry of silent calls, Donal shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on a slightly less filthy patch of ground.

“I regret to interrupt your sport, gentlemen,” he said softly, “but I fear I must ask you to let the child go.”