She looked at her hand, the blood on it half-congealed. Her glance darted back to him. Several of his wounds had healed to the extent that they were only jagged, seeping marks upon his body. If anything, she now looked more like the one wounded in battle. His life’s fluid smeared her hands, her dress, and probably her cheeks as well.
“Go wash at my basin,” he said softly, in that rumbling voice.
She had no intention of staying a moment more in that room. She resolved to lurch out onto the deck amid the press of humanity and the racket of sailors shouting. But somehow, looking into those eyes, the red in them now fading, she did not. She turned and went slowly to the basin. “There is a fresh cloth, just under it,” she heard him say. Mechanically she watched herself take the towel, pour the water from the pitcher into the basin, take up the soap. “Wash carefully now, your mouth first. Get every bit from beneath your nails. . . .” The murmured instructions were comforting, human, real. Was that why she obeyed? For obey she did.
Her mind, a comforting blank, began to engage as she dried her face. Here was a mystery, lying on the cot not three feet away. She stole a glance at him. He was still naked, the proof of his manhood lying in a nest of hair a shade darker than his sandy curls. He was a particularly fine physical specimen, and he looked strong and healthy. Now that the fear that he might be dying had subsided—oh, God . . . why was he not dying?—the awareness of his nakedness doubled and trebled within her. She felt her face grow warm. That was not the only place that felt the heat. It seemed to streak downward from her pounding heart. He saw her discomfiture and realized his state. He grabbed a bloodied quilt and clutched it to his chest. The wounds she could still see ceased their seeping and drew together into red angry weals, the skin shining pink. She had no doubt they would leave no scars. If he could heal thus, why did he bear any scars at all?
Fear cycled in her belly. Yet why? Was it because if he could heal himself he represented the unknown? Was he evil? What would the poor wretches in Dr. Granger’s surgery not give to heal as this man had? Her thoughts danced about the battle tonight. Healing was not his only strangeness. She had seen him fight with incredible strength, cleaving multiple enemies, lifting a great spar it might take half a dozen men to wield. Who was this man, or what?
She cleared her throat and gathered her courage, her curiosity now piqued. “You said you have a condition. . . . What is it, sir?”
“That I cannot explain, since I do not know myself,” he said, pushing himself up. The quilt covered his thighs and loins but left his torso bare. She was only too aware of the soft nipples, the brush of light hair across his chest, the throbbing of a pulse under the damp skin of his throat. He was wary of her. “I hope a good English physician will be able to tell me. But seamen are a superstitious lot. If they were to find out I am not like them . . . well, at the least it would make for a most unhappy ship. Or the results might be more violent.”
It seemed doubtful that any confrontation would end in his death. Was he really concerned for theirs? “I have no intention of telling anyone what I saw, if that is what you mean,” Beth said stiffly. “No one would believe me, in any case.”
“They will already be uneasy. They saw me lift the spar.”
“Men can sometimes perform extraordinary feats of strength in times of great stress. And you were very anxious not to be taken as a slave. Again.” That was the explanation for the whip scars, of course, and the fact that he had gone naked in the desert. Why was she giving him a way out of his dilemma? Should she not be shouting his alien nature from the mizzenmast?
“As you say.” He inclined his head, wary. “You have overcome your initial abhorrence.”
Beth was about to protest but could not. It was true. She was intensely curious, but whether it was his prosaic speech in this most seamanlike cabin, or the simple human action of washing herself, she was not quite so frightened of him. “I regret my tactless reaction, sir. It was the natural human response to the unfamiliar,” she said, hesitating. “We all fear the unknown. But I know that someone built the Sphinx before men knew how to put two blocks together. I have seen men walk on coals with no burns or scars.” She drew herself up. “In short, I have seen the mysteries of the world, and know enough to realize that not everything can be explained.”
He nodded, still speculating. His sandy curls had escaped their ribbon in the heat of battle, and his hair waved about his scarred shoulders. He might have been a warrior on the steppes of Russia or a hunter on the plains of Catalonia a thousand years ago.
“What do you know of your . . . condition, even if you cannot name it?” she stuttered, looking for some conversational ground that did not move beneath her feet.
His eyes, so intensely blue now that all trace of red was gone, blinked once and a veil descended upon them. “I heal when none should heal, and fast. I have great strength at my command. It was a careless drop of blood on my lips that started it all. I know no more.”
“But would it not be something great to convey these powers to others? I wonder how long a man could heal himself. Would life itself be extended?” The possibilities lit up inside her.
“You run too fast, Miss Rochewell. It would be a sin to pass the malady to others without full knowledge of the effect.” His tone was damping.
“And you do not like the sun, do you?” she mused. “Is that a part of it?”
“My eyes and skin are particularly sensitive.” He looked alarmed at her surmises.
“So to choose the ability to heal would be to deny the daylight forever.” A heavy price.
“In Tripoli I found if I used colored lenses and covered myself from head to toe I could survive, but it is inconvenient.” His expression was dark. “Enough about this foolish condition.” He looked at her pointedly. “I wish merely to live as much like everyone else as I can.”
“But surely you want to study the ramifications, that we might know as much as possible about it? That is the way of science, and the progress of mankind.”
“The way of science will have to plod along without me, Miss Rochewell. All I ask is to be left alone.” He looked so drained after his ordeal she could not in conscience press him now. Who knew what resources a body claimed in order to affect that miraculous recovery?
“Very well, Mr. Rufford. I shall leave you to your rest. We can talk another time.”
He looked far from resigned to that event. But as she turned to go, he called out, “Miss Rochewell . . . I am indebted to you for your efforts on my behalf.”
She felt herself blushing again. “They were nothing and not needed, in any case.”
She closed the door softly behind her. But she could not close the door on her thoughts. How had he been infected by a drop of blood? What were the full effects of his condition? What was he hiding? He knew something he was not telling her.
She peeked in on Mrs. Pargutter. Jenny had resorted to laudanum to calm her. The older woman was now sleeping heavily. Beth retired to her own cabin, knowing sleep was far away in spite of the quite pronounced letdown after so much excitement. There was a full-fledged mystery aboard the Beltrane. And she wanted to know more about it—about him.
Six
Exhausted as he was, sleep did not overtake Ian easily. For the first time, a human being had mastered the natural abhorrence for his state, and she was only a woman. Even a man who had been a soldier and a diplomat like Ware had not done as much. She would not be so sanguine if she knew he sucked blood, and he was glad she didn’t realize he had compelled her to wash.
Her acceptance was most strange. Perhaps it was rooted in her experience divining rational explanations for things others could not explain, gotten from her father’s archaeology. She might be the one woman capable of accepting as much of him as he would allow her to see. Not that she was much of a woman. She was far from those flowers of white heaving bosoms and sensibility he had known in London or . . . or the other female who so dominated his body and his soul. But all women were driv
en to control a man, if not straightforwardly, then with caressing ways meant to assert superiority. They must make up for their weaker physical being by using a man, directly or indirectly. The females of the species were all the same, even this one.
Still, her blunt straightforwardness was unlike the coy manipulation he had known or the direct cruelty he’d experienced in the desert. Her impulse had been to help him. That spoke of underlying goodness and competence. She was almost more like a man. Her father had certainly treated her like a son, traipsing about Africa. He already knew she was intelligent. Tonight she’d guessed that he’d been a slave, though she could not know the depth of his servitude. No one could imagine that. He would not think of it. He would think of England and the normal life that lay ahead of him, if he could only reach it. . . .
An oasis. The caravan stopped. The slaves were allowed to put down the litter. Her tent was erected as the sun rose. She stepped out of the litter and into the dark reaches of her tent. The chosen slaves, the sturdy males just around her litter, were given wooden cups of water. One of the rabble of slaves from the back of the caravan was sent into her tent, a woman. She would be dragged out again shortly, Ian knew, dead and deathly pale, her flesh collapsed against her bones. The beautiful owner had been going through the horde of slaves at the rate of one a week, or even two.
Ian’s keeper used a great metal pair of pliers to crimp the slaves’ chains to several posts. Naked, he crouched next to his post, alone there, since several of the other slaves had died. Ian glanced over at the Frenchman. Red marks, twin circles, as well as longer slashing cuts adorned his body. The twin circles were at his neck, his wrists, the crooks of his arms, his upper thighs. The slashes were everywhere. He had lasted longer than most, maybe a month. He was tough, that Frenchman. Now he crouched, rocking and murmuring. Perhaps his mind was gone at last.
“Go with God,” Ian murmured to the Frenchman, though he was not sure the man could hear and was certain God was not listening to this particular part of his creation, since their many prayers for delivery had gone unnoticed. Or perhaps God did not hold sway here.
He peeked up to see the tall Arab who followed the mistress of the caravan look sharply at him. The man was clothed from head to foot in a burnoose with a hood. Ian wondered if he would be whipped for whispering. But the keeper was busy throwing jerked meat and dried dates into a bowl to feed the mistress’s specially chosen slaves. They were fed better than the rabble at the rear, at least. Ian ate his portion greedily and dozed in the growing heat.
The date palms gave a little shade, but that was reserved for the camels and their drivers. He could hear the drivers saying that this was the last oasis for many days. They would stay for two days to let the camels drink their fill. That meant rest.
Sunset. Someone kicked him. He scrambled to his knees with lowered head, hoping to avoid the lash. The others still dozed. The sandaled foot did not belong to the keeper.
“You,” said a voice in heavily accented English. “You are Briton?”
The sound was sweet. He had heard no English for six months. “Yes, Master. English.”
“Where do you come from?” The air vibrated around him, but to a lesser extent than around the woman who owned the caravan.
“Suffolk.” It was the Arab. He had heard Ian speak to the Frenchman in English.
“Keeper!” the man called in Arabic. “Release this slave. I will take his chain.” The heavy keeper hurried over and unbent the iron link, handing Ian’s chain to the Arab.
“Come, English.” The chain was jerked up. Ian heaved himself to his feet and staggered stiffly after his new custodian. The man took him to the far side of the pool of precious water, away from the caravan encampment, and bade him drink. Ian knelt and slurped long and noisily. “Now, face.” Ian glanced up and then cupped his hands and rinsed the dust and grit from his face and neck, splashing water even into his hair. He had never felt such luxury. His chain was jerked again and he crept to the side of the man, who sat upon the trunk of a fallen date palm.
“Tell me of Briton . . . no, England,” he corrected himself. “It is long since I was there.”
“What . . . what would the master like to know?” he croaked, his voice hardly human after not being used for so many months.
“Is it still green? So green, it was.” The man smelled a little like her, like cinnamon.
“Yes. Green. When I was last there.” The ache of an English May, so verdant and alive, swept over him until he thought he might waste his body’s water in tears.
“And Londinium? No, London now. Is it grown even larger?”
“They say almost a million souls.”
“A million?” the Arab marveled. “It must be squalid, with so many.”
“In the poor neighborhoods yes. On the west side, there are the parks and squares, with flowers.” Ian grew a little braver. Yet still he was puzzled. Londinium?
“Did they ever buy back Richard?”
Now Ian was truly at sea. “Richard?”
“Of the heart of the lion. I came away, and then . . . there were other things to occupy me.”
Ian stole a glance upward, expecting a cuff for his boldness, but he had to see if he was being made game of. The Arab’s face was only expectant. Ian ducked his head. “He was ransomed. He came home from the Crusades and took his rightful crown from his brother John.”
“Good. Never did I like this John. He was not like some others of your countrymen. They were good to me. One Walter of Ghent helped me in the prison of the Moors when they had cut my bollocks off. We fought each other in Jerusalem, but when you are in a prison, what matters a city a thousand miles away? We broke from the prison of the Moors and sailed for England.”
Ian shot a look up and saw fond memory pass over the Arab’s face. “I passed some years there. I liked Walter’s people.” He rose suddenly. “But it was too green. I came home to the sand and Asharti found me, and I found my destiny.” He jerked the chain at Ian’s wrist. “Mayhap we will talk English again if you are still alive tomorrow.”
Ian stumbled back to his fellows behind the Arab. His owner’s name was Asharti. The Frenchman was being carried away. He had made his escape at last, though it had taken death to set him free. An imperious command came from the tent, and the Arab hurried ahead in the black night with the stars wheeling against the sky in mute disregard of human suffering. Ian could hear the Arab’s voice, soothing; then Asharti burst from her tent. Ian was being chained nearest to her of all the slaves. She did not hesitate in choosing among them this time. Even before he could be refastened to his post, she gestured at his keeper. Ian could understand enough to know she was giving orders for him to be washed.
Ian’s heart leaped into his mouth. If only the Arab had not singled him out he would not have been standing where he could catch her attention. She might have chosen the Nubian she had picked up at the last village, or the Turk. She turned back to her tent. His keeper jerked his chain and suddenly, regardless of the consequence, he jerked back. His hands were free, and a lethal chain clanked at his wrist. He swung it at the keeper, hitting him across the cheek and nose. The man went down like a horse at the knacker’s and Ian stumbled around the pool. The keeper raised a cry. Ian saw the camel drivers just ahead of him jolt upright from where they smoked their tobacco. But he was by them, stumbling naked into the deep sand beyond the pool. Ahead were only the black night lit by stars and the white sand pulling at his feet. His breath heaved in his lungs—the freedom of it! He pounded on, expecting the crack of guns at his back from the camel drivers, waiting for the sear of pain that said he was hit, welcoming it, if only his death would come while he was running free in the desert night. But no shot came. Instead he heard the honking cry of a camel, the rhythmic beat of its great splayed feet, so much more suitable than his for sand. He turned just as it galloped past him. There was the sear of pain but it was from a truncheon wielded by a man leaning from the camel’s back. Light flashed in Ian’s hea
d like a thousand stars and he dropped to the sand, dazed.
Hands pulled at him, shouting. Blows fell about his shoulders. He stumbled, was dragged up, back to the pool. Hands shoved him into the water. He fell to his knees. The water was only to his chest. Two of the camel boys scrubbed him with a rough cloth until he was raw. They held him down and took a razor to his beard, pulled him out, and dusted him with lime to kill lice. His senses began to return, along with a mighty ache in his head. Then it was into the water again, strong lye soap, dried roughly and delivered naked to the flap of the embroidered tent. The angry keeper, a weal across his face, unbolted Ian’s shackle and replaced it with a hemp rope. He was about to deliver a fisted blow when the tall Arab raised his voice.
“Do not damage him!” The keeper fell back reluctantly and the tall Arab gestured Ian through the flap. “English, it is your time.” He looked sorry. “Your rebellion will please her.”
Ian straightened. What could one woman who probably didn’t weigh nine stone possibly do to a man who even still weighed fourteen? What indeed? Something inside him shuddered so deeply he thought he might faint.
Inside the tent, lamps burned in a soft glow, their flames flickering on the red fabric of the tent walls. There were the carpets that were rolled every day and put across a camel’s back, unfurled now in sumptuous luxury, and soft cushions, fabric that hung from the tent pole in shades of orange and magenta and burgundy. In the center of the room a low carved table was set with plates of dates and sweetmeats.
She lay across a low couch, her body draped insouciantly over cushions embroidered in gold. She wore a diaphanous gown that hid nothing, clipped at the shoulders with gold brooches and held at the waist by a girdle of worked gold. Her lips were painted gold, and her toenails. She was barefoot, her leg up to her thigh bared by the slit in that transparent fabric. He could smell her scent. Ambergris. That was what it was. She smelled like cinnamon and ambergris.
Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0] Page 8