He released her hand, and the next moment was on his feet and walking across the raft with a catlike precision. He stood beside the Carib punter and Kara could hear them talking together in the Carib dialect.
Lucan’s white shirt and smooth beige trousers emphasized the strong, active lines of him. His foxfire hair was tousled by the flying spray. Her husband, and yet so dangerously unknown, who aroused in her a feeling that mingled with fear like a sweet wine with a bitter one, until the two were a blend that intoxicated.
Mon coeur diable, she thought. My heart’s devil.
Suddenly, as she watched him, the Carib pointed into the underbrush of the left bank of the river, towards which he had steered in order to avoid a large floating tree. He said something in an excited tone of voice and Lucan immediately took the paddle, then to Kara’s amazement the Carib leapt ashore and disappeared among the crowding ferns and vine-veiled trees.
‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked.
‘Far from it.’ Lucan flashed her a smile, and the paddle dripped as he rested it and held the raft steady. ‘He set a pig trap on the way upriver and, with luck, we will celebrate our wedding with a feast.’
All was still in the forest, and then Kara tensed in her seat as a sudden loud squeal broke the silence. ‘Our dinner,’ she said, feeling a pang for the victim.
‘Our wedding supper,’ Lucan drawled.
The Carib returned in triumph with a small black pig, his knife again in its sheath at his hip. Lucan clapped him on the shoulder, and a minute later the raft was skimming along and Kara’s husband and the savage-looking Carib were chanting a song which sounded as old and elemental as the forest all around.
Purple shadows were adrift in the forest as their raft crossed the dazzling bar of the setting sun. The man who steered this unusual craft seemed a figure cast in bronze, and Kara felt the turning of her heart as they headed for a sandy bay where mangroves stood like giants in the gathering dusk.
‘This is Frenchman’s Bay,’ said Lucan, ‘where long ago a notorious pirate sloop used to hide out. The captain made off with an ancestress of mine, but from all accounts he was quite a charmer and she was quite rattled when rescued by the French Navy.’
Lucan’s eyes were full of diablerie as they met Kara’s, and she watched as he leapt to the beach and secured the mooring-rope of the raft to a firm boulder.
They were busily making camp when the sun burst into flame and spilled its last embers on to the river. A violet stillness followed, and then came darkness, and a bird broke plaintively into song and out of it.
Kara spread the bright Carib rugs near the barbecue-fire which Lucan was carefully building. Their punter, Julius, was cleaning the pig, and soon it was spitted and set to barbecue, while knobbly yams were set to bake at the edges of the fire.
‘This is an ideal place to make camp,’ said Lucan. ‘It’s one of nature’s larders—come, I’ll show you.’
She followed him in among the trees and was aware at once of their aloneness in the forest, musky with wild flower scents and the sap of the entangling vines. He switched on the torch which he had brought off the raft and directed its beam along the trunks of the trees. Something scampered, and then in the shifting light Kara saw clusters of fruit sheltering beneath large circular leaves.
‘Paw-paws.’ Lucan handed her the torch and while she held it steady he reached up and plucked some of the patchy-gold globes that hung above his tall head.
Quite soon Kara’s conical straw hat was bulging with the tropical fruits that grew wild and abundant in the forest, and they began to make their way back to camp, surrounded by a chorus of frog croaks and whistles and the persistent chirring of cicadas.
It was all new and exciting to Kara; a mysterious world of shadows and sounds that would have been unnerving if Lucan had not been with her. Once he was very close as he disentangled her from a clinging vine, and at the touch of his fingers she shivered and her heartbeats quickened. Tonight she would lie in his arms beneath the stars of this wild land and be made truly part of the Savidge tradition.
The tradition, the pride, and the obligation that had forced Lucan into marriage.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked suddenly.
She almost told him, for here it was intimately dim with the torchlight a gold pool at their feet. She almost said that if he did not want her heart’s love, then it would have been kinder of him to let her go.
‘I would enjoy a bathe in the river,’ she said. ‘The water glimmers so invitingly.’
‘Yes, it does look cool and inviting.’ He followed her glance to the river through the trees.
‘May I have a dip in it, Lucan ?’
‘Of course.’ He gave a laugh and feathered her cheek with his thumb. ‘You are being a submissive bride.’
‘I merely wondered if the water was safe to bathe in.’
‘Much safer than a plunge into matrimony with a Savidge,’ he mocked. ‘Supper will not be ready yet, so I think I will join you.’
Kara changed into her bathing suit beneath the leafy tent of a rainfall tree at the river’s edge, her senses thrilling to the cool, dark caress of the water as she slipped into it. How often she and Nikos had swam in the wine-dark waters of Andelos at night, laughing and carefree, not thinking of tomorrow or questioning the future.
She heard behind her what sounded like a water-plopper in the shallows, and she grabbed handfuls of reflected stars as she swam and breathed the lush night air, spiced with the forest scents all around.
What strange surprises life held! Even yet she could not take in the reality of all this, and she gave herself a pinch and laughed at her own foolishness. The river, the stars, the forest were real enough—
So, too, the masculine arms that were suddenly around her in the water. She fought them instinctively, and heard Lucan laugh. ‘What a nervous bride!’ His teeth flashed in the starlight, and though he let her slip away, to seemingly escape, he came after her again, and this time she felt less playfulness in him as he took hold of her, less fight in herself. She was helpless in his arms as he carried her up the opposite bank of the river to the shadowed sands. There he laid her down and she felt his hands on her shoulders, and then his face pressed against her.
‘Don’t let us think about tomorrow—and Dragon Bay.’ It was a groan, crushed against her temple by his lips. ‘Let’s forget everything—let’s pretend that I married you for my sake only.’
His lips burned their warmth into her throat, his lips smudged from hers a hurt protest. Her slim body was pressed close to the hard beat of his heart, to the warm strength of his body—but she had gone cold to her heart. He had married her for Pryde’s sake … he had to pretend it was for his own!
With a supreme effort she turned her face from his searching lips. ‘Yes, let us be honest with each other, Lucan.’ She dragged the words out of the heart that bled from his honesty. ‘I married you because my pride could not bear pity from those who thought Nikos wanted me. There, now we start even! You married me for Pryde’s sake—I married too for pride’s sake.’
The silence that fell between them was filled with the chirring of the cicadas. She felt heartbeats her heart could have counted, then Lucan released her and stood up. He towered over her, his face dark, his hands clenched at his sides, then he turned and splashed into the river, leaving-silvery trails in his wake as he swam away in the direction of the campfire, where sparks leapt up about the feast pig on its spit.
‘Chairete,’ Kara thought, as she rose out of the sands where Lucan had held her as if to love her. She would not have asked for words of tenderness, but there had been words in his heart and he had spoken them—words that made their marriage a cage, which he had entered with a snarl in his heart.
‘Chairete’ she sighed, as she walked down tiredly to the river’s edge. ‘Rejoice in this your marriage, Kara. Go share your wedding supper with your bridegroom. Share his food and wine; share his home but not his heart.’
The barbecued pig was meltingly tender, crackling and juicy and spiced with forest herbs their Carib had hunted out with his keen nose. The yams tasted delicious baked on an open fire with their skins burnt to charcoal.
Kara had not eaten very much all day and now she ate with automatic appetite, using her fingers to hold her pork chop, and too elemental at heart not to love all this—the smoky tang of the meat, the sparks like fire-beetles in the air—with that mixture of gaiety and sadness which is so very Greek.
She glanced across at her husband in the firelight, free to watch him because he was listening to the song their Carib was singing. Julius had a deep, natural voice and none of the inhibitions of the civilized. He sang because he liked to, and because Lucan his master enjoyed his songs. Old as time, their source lost in the history of the Caribbean.
Kara studied the creases either side of Lucan’s mouth, the gleam of his eyes, and his hair that was like dark fire. Fate had led her over the threshold of his room at the Hotel Victoire, and tomorrow she must cross with him the threshold of the Great House. Not in his arms as a beloved bride—of that she could be unbearably sure—but as the companion of his strange fate.
It was then that Kara became aware of a strange animal crouching some distance from the fire, but close enough for the glitter of its eyes to be seen, and its dragon-like shape.
She watched it tensely, unaware that the Carib song had come to an end until Lucan spoke. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he said. ‘The iguana—the little dragon—is quite harmless.’
‘Make bamboo chicken breakfast,’ chortled Julius, but Lucan shook his head.
‘Let the fellow be,’ he said. ‘He reminds me of the bronze dragon on our mantel at the house.’
And then, with a ponderous shuffle, the iguana made off into the forest and Kara was left with the odd feeling that he had been a sign, a warning that the Savidge dragon was a threat to the Savidge brides. She gave a shiver and Lucan must have noticed. He poured her another mug of coffee and handed it across to her. ‘Thank you.’ She held the mug in both hands and sipped gratefully at the hot, sweet contents.
‘Wait till you taste our Dragon Bay chocolate.’ Lucan opened his knife and began to rip the carapace of a green avocado. ‘We add cinnamon, as the Incas used to, and then a thick dob of cream. I love it. I always have, right from a boy.’
And then his face hardened, as if mention of his boyhood brought him memories less sweet. Memories of the mother who, Kara suspected, had doted on Pryde but not on Lucan. The younger twin who may have given her a difficult and painful time at his birth; a wide-shouldered, restless boy with a passionate temper. He had mentioned his mother only twice to Kara, once to say that she had been French, the second time to point out cynically that he was scarred on the cheek from a lash of her riding whip.
He dug the stones out of the centre of the avocado and tossed them into the fire. Then he speared a piece of the pale green fruit on the point of his knife and held it out to Kara. She took it and wished that she and Lucan could spend all their tomorrows, all their nights, alone like this, forgetful of the world and its obligations.
Julius sat smoking a strong cigar, and when it was finished he got to his feet and picked up his Carib rug. ‘Goodnight, Masser Lucan. Goodnight, mistress,’ he said, and he retired to the raft to sleep, leaving them alone by the fire.
Alone, whispered the leaves. Alone, chirred the cicadas.
‘It was a good supper,’ Kara murmured.
‘We have not yet opened our bottle of wine,’ he said.
‘No—’ She gazed beyond the fire and saw winged foxes like flying shadows among the trees.
‘We should drink a toast to our bridal.’ There was a note of irony in his voice, and Kara gave a jump as the cork popped and the wine glowed red as blood as Lucan poured it out into their empty coffee mugs. ‘We never seem to have any wine glasses,’ he drawled. ‘Here you are, Mrs. Savidge. You had wine and a song even if there were no lanterns to light the feast.’
‘Chairete.’ She drank her wine in quick sips, and her eyes grew wide until they were full of Lucan as he rose to his feet and stepped over to her. Their eyes clung as he knelt and pressed her back on the Carib rug. He took the mug from her hand, and then calmly tucked the end of the rug over her feet and cocooned her in its folds. He lifted her head and tucked beneath it his rolled-up jacket, to which clung cheroot smoke and the lingering scent of the rose still in the buttonhole.
‘Go to sleep,’ he said. ‘We start early for Dragon Bay.’
‘Lucan—’
‘Go to sleep,’ he cut in. ‘Dream of the boy-lover who never bruised you with a kiss, but who knew how to break your heart.’
‘Oh, Lucan—’
‘My dear,’ the fire played its shadows over his saturnine face, ‘the Wagnerian sword will not always share our bed, I promise you, but you have had a long, tiring day, and tomorrow will be full of new events for you to cope with. Are you warm ?’
‘As a little cat,’ she said huskily.
‘Then goodnight.’ He bent briefly and kissed her. The smoke of the fire clung to his ruffled hair—the bittersweetness of the wine to his lips. And soon she slept, her cheek pressed against the golden rosebud he had worn to their wedding.
CHAPTER FIVE
THEY breakfasted on fish caught at the river’s edge, and began the second half of their journey as dawn splintered the sky with colour, beautiful and flamy. A mist hung over the river, fine as gold tulle, and the whistle of a solitaire floated across, clear and promising to Kara’s ears.
So much verdure and richness, woods that rose high and bird haunted and fell suddenly into giant punchbowls. Kara drank it all in with her big Greek eyes, while the river unwound like a silk ribbon and drew them onward to the Bay of the Dragon.
‘It is all so different from Greece,’ she said to Lucan. ‘There we have a barren grandeur, a soil that gives with reluctance, but here everything is so green.’
She met his eyes, green as the leaves on the trees that stood like giants to watch the raft go skimming by. She recalled her awakening at the camp-site and how it had disturbed her to see him half in, half out of the folds of his Carib rug, still fast asleep, his face relaxed into a ghost of the boyishness he had long since left behind him.
Right now, long legs straddled to take the motion of the raft beneath him, he looked a stranger to all tenderness. The sun capped his hair like a helmet of bronze; each impulse and muscle of his lean body was trained and conditioned to meet challenge.
Could marriage with such a man ever be secure and warmly intimate, as marriage should be? A haven for a woman, in which she could be released from the fears and inhibitions that raged in her until she was truly loved. Kara gazed at Lucan and knew in her heart that they could never be close because too much held them apart—foremost his obligation to Pryde. It ruled all his actions. It was the impulse that had led him into marriage—when the impulse should be love—and when they had a son he would be given to the Great House so that the Savidge tradition could continue, ever onward like this river.
Fast-flowing now, and widening as it began to merge with the sea. Rocks began to appear, and the masses of verdure on their left began to fall away until when Kara glanced behind her the mass of greenery was lost in the silvery green of the sea.
As the colour of the water changed, so did Lucan’s eyes. They were glittering, and Kara knew by their look of expectation—and rebellion—that the raft drew nearer all the time to Dragon Bay.
‘We are running with the currents beyond the bay,’ he said to her. ‘Hold tight to the arms of your seat, for this part of the trip is the roughest.’
And so it proved, the raft pitching like driftwood on the turbulent waters of the bay as Julius steered it between a forked tongue of rocks towards a more placid lagoon, sparkling in the sun like a pot of melted emeralds. Sheer above the lagoon, its lower terraces of stone licked at by the sea, was the House of the Dragon. Re�
�mote-looking, a stronghold that had held centuries of Savidges, its atmosphere even from here one of mystery and brooding.
Kara caught her breath in awe, for the house was so massive, built to defy all the elements and all its enemies, its windows flashing like eyes, and its wings spread to receive the new bride, the stranger.
‘Castles are proud things, but it’s safest to be outside them.’ That line of Emerson’s leapt into her mind as spray leapt the sides of the raft and flew in her eyes and clung like raindrops to her dark hair. Blinking her lashes to clear them of spray, she saw Lucan devouring the house with his eyes, his sardonic mask stripped away, a look on his face of tortured love and hate. Kara glanced quickly away as something twisted into her heart, a barb of sheer jealousy, lunatic jealousy, for a house was just a mass of stone, mortar and tile, not a human being that could feel, and love.
The stab of pain left its hurt as Julius steered the raft to the landing-stage of the lagoon. He leapt up to secure the mooring-rope, and Kara felt the encirclement of Lucan’s arms — steel that rippled—as he swung her up off the raft on to the stone quay.
Coral-trees waved their tresses on the strip of beach, and sea-flowers clung to the water-level terraces of the house. They were like giant steps, those terraces, carved from the stone of the cliffs and dropping one after the other into the green water.
‘We call it the Dragon’s Stairway,’ said Lucan. He scanned her, from her spray-wet hair to her sandalled feet, and once again he swept her up in his arms, the water swirling about his ankles as he mounted the first of the terraces. She rested tensely against his hard shoulder, until upon the fourth step he lowered her to her feet.
‘There is another way up to the house,’ he pointed along the beach to where the cliffs rounded a bend. ‘Engineers tunnelled out the rock in my grandfather’s time and put in a lift—rather like a miner’s cage—absolutely safe, but it doesn’t provide the romantic view that we get from these terraces.’
[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 8