My Lord Savage

Chapter Four

Black Otter stood watching as the woman lifted the heavy ring of keys into the light. Strange, his own people had lived from the dawn of time without benefit of locks and keys. But here, in this alien world, keys seemed to control everything.

His heart dropped as he realized there were more keys on the ring than there were fingers on his two hands—large and small keys, in a bewildering mix of shapes and metals. He had thought one key would open any lock. Only now did it strike him how wrong he had been. Keys appeared to be as diverse as people, each fitting inside its own lock as a man would fit inside the woman he loved; and the chance that one of these keys would fit the shackles from the great boat were small indeed.

Fumbling with her key ring, the tall woman selected a large key and extended it toward the lock that held the iron around his wrist. Black Otter’s eyes flickered from the lock to the key, which was far too large for the tiny opening. Couldn’t she see that it wouldn’t fit? What was she trying to do?

Feigning perplexity, she tried to force the end of the key into the lock. Questions swirled in Black Otter’s mind. What sort of game was she playing? Did she really think he was foolish enough to be taken in?

From the top of the stairs, Black Otter could hear the muffled shouts of the old chief and the pounding of his fists against the door. Why had the ancient one been shut out of this dark place, and why had a mere woman risked her life to enter his prison? So many questions—and no answers.

The musky fragrance of her hair crept into Black Otter’s nostrils as she leaned close. He had come to loath the odor of white men. It was sharper and more pungent than the familiar smell of his own people. But the scent of this woman was lighter, richer in a way that made his loins stir. He steeled himself against her nearness as she selected yet another key, this one also far too large. She was only playing for time, he realized, his spirits darkening. None of her keys would unlock his terrible bonds.

Her hand brushed his skin, its touch cool and soft. Black Otter checked the impulse to tear his arm away and rebuke her. Let her finish this silly game. He had nowhere to go. And she had given him a much better hostage than the blubbering coward he had set free. Her menfolk would do a great deal to rescue such a woman as this.

“What is your name?” Her feline eyes glittered up at him as she spoke. Black Otter understood the phrase but chose not to answer. To tell her his name would be to give her a part of himself—a power she could use against him if she chose.

“My name is Rowena,” she said, touching the hollow of her throat with her free hand. “Ro-we-na.” She paused as if expecting him to mimic the three syllables. Black Otter gazed impassively over her head toward the door of his cell, willing himself to ignore her. But his mind was not so easily conquered, nor was his body.

He remembered touching her in the night, the exotic scent of her flesh, the smoothness of her skin and the slender curve of waist and hip beneath his seeking hand. He remembered the sharp intake of breath, the quickening of her heartbeat. Yes, for all her pallid face and golden eyes, she was a woman like any other.

“Rowena.” She repeated the name again as if he were a backward child. “I am your friend.”

The last phrase was one Black Otter did not understand. He had heard nothing like it from the men on the great boat. The words intrigued him. But this was no time to learn more of a language he had come to despise.

“Open!” He growled the word, shaking his manacled hand in her startled face. “Open it!”

Fear flashed in her tawny eyes, but she stood her ground. Outside the cell Black Otter could see the two men, one pressed against the bars, the other still collapsed on a heap of barrels—cowards, both of them. Only the woman faced him with a warrior’s courage. For that she had earned his grudging respect.

But he was growing tired of her game. Key or no key, there had to be a way to end the torment of the chafing iron bands and dragging chains. The men would have to find it if they wanted their woman to live.

With the speed of a striking puma he caught her waist. His manacled hand whipped her around and jerked her hard against him so that he was holding her from behind with the chain at her throat, exactly as he had held the trembling fool before her.

“Open it!” he thundered, shaking his free fist at the two men who stared, dumbfounded, through the bars. “Open it…I kill…kill!”

Rowena kept perfectly still, willing herself to not show fear. The savage’s sudden move had caught her off guard, but it came as no great surprise. She had hoped to calm him with kind words and a gentle touch. But she should have known better—and she should have realized she could not deceive him by stalling with her keys.

Would he really kill her? Reason argued against it. She was of no worth to him dead. But her own fear whispered otherwise. How could she expect civilized—or even reasonable—behavior from a man with the reflexes of a wild animal?

“Mistress, what shall we do?” Thomas’s terror-filled eyes pled with her through the bars.

Rowena’s eyes flickered obliquely to the manacled wrist that lay along her shoulder. In the hellish glow of the torchlight the flesh lay swollen and suppurating beneath the crusted iron rim. Infection had already set in. Gangrene would be next, and the savage would die in agony. Yes, the shackles had to come off at once.

“We have an anvil and some blacksmith tools in the stable,” she said, thinking fast. “Fetch them at once!”

Thomas hesitated, then shook his shaggy head. “Nay, mistress, I’ll not leave you alone with the creature. Your father would have me drawn and quartered.”

“Then send poor Dickon if his legs will carry him!” She strained to speak against the chain that pressed her throat. “Hurry!”

She held her breath as Dickon staggered toward the stairs. “You’ve naught to fear,” she whispered to the savage as if he could understand. “We mean you no harm in this place, but if you want to live, you must stop fighting—”

The chain tightened against her throat as the savage muttered something harsh and guttural in her ear. Rowena could feel the hard length of his torso against her back and the rib-crushing grip of his arm beneath her breast. Each taut, shallow breath stirred tendrils of hair at her temple. She had never been this close to any man—least of all a bare-skinned primitive who could kill her with a mere jerk of his wrist. By all rights she should have been swooning in terror. Instead, the fear that gushed through her veins was as heady as a dive into a churning ocean wave. Her senses were exquisitely heightened. Every nerve in her body seemed to be tingling, alive….

“You think you can frighten me.” She forced herself to speak in a calm tone, as if she were conversing over a leg of veal at the dinner table. “Well, you’re quite mistaken, My Lord Savage. A wild man you may be, but you’re no simpleton. You would hardly be fool enough to harm your only friend in this place. Perhaps we might—”

Her words were interrupted by a sudden commotion from the top of the stairs as Sir Christopher burst through the door that Dickon had opened, knocking the unsteady groom aside. “Rowena!” Her father’s voice, hoarse from shouting, rumbled down the dark stairwell. “By my faith, if the brute has harmed so much as a hair on your head—”

“Go to him, Thomas.” Rowena gasped the words against the icy pressure of the chain. “Help him down the stairs. And see that you don’t alarm him. I’m really quite…safe.”

Thomas muttered his assent and turned to go, but before he could reach the foot of the stairs, Sir Christopher staggered into the torchlight. The old man’s face turned ashen as he caught sight of Rowena in the cell, imprisoned by powerful bronze arms. His mouth worked in horror as he stumbled through the clutter of boxes and barrels.

“Rowena, child—” He gripped the bars, looking small and drawn and old.

“The savage has not harmed me, Father, and shall not, God willing,” Rowena said quickly. “But if you think to leave him in these festering irons another day, you may as well kill him now and be done with it!”

Sir Christopher had recovered his wits, and now he thundered at her through the bars. “Be still and listen! You should have done as you were told and left this matter to me. You could have spared us both!”

“Father?” Rowena stared, dumbfounded, as he drew a small tarnished object from a pocket in the folds of his robe. Her knees crumpled beneath her as she realized what it was.

“The key,” he snapped. “Given to me by the captain who sold me the wretched creature.” He shot Thomas a sharp glance. “Open the cell.”

The chain had gone slack against Rowena’s neck as the savage stared at the key. “Give it to me,” she insisted. “He trusts me—as much as he trusts anyone in this place.”

“So I see.” Sir Christopher glared at her. “Hold your tongue, mistress. You’ve done quite enough damage already.” He strode into the cell and halted just out of the savage’s reach. “Let…her…go,” he said, as if speaking slowly could make him understood. “Then…we…use…this.” He held up the key, letting the well-thumbed bronze catch the flaring torchlight.

The Indian’s hand flashed outward like the swipe of a cat’s paw. But Sir Christopher had anticipated this move. He stepped backward, well out of reach. “No,” he said. “You let her go. Let her go now.”

Black Otter studied the old chief cautiously—the aging body, stooped and frail beneath the somber black robe, the pale eyes squinting behind what appeared to be two transparent shells. Only a coward would harm such an ancient being. But could the old man be trusted? Black Otter had known nothing but cruelty from white men. How could he expect anything else from their chief?

But why wonder? All he really needed was a hostage, and the chief would be more valuable, even, than the woman. With the old man as his prisoner he could demand anything he wanted, even passage back to his homeland.

Slowly and cautiously Black Otter loosed his grip on Rowena’s slender body. She stumbled to one side, leaving traces of her musky warmth on his skin. The old chief’s eyes flickered toward her. He uttered a gruff command, most likely ordering her to leave. Instead she edged backward to the bars, crouching there, her skirts pooling around her. The two of them were father and daughter, he realized, glancing from one proud face to the other—a good thing to know when the time came to bargain.

The old chief approached him cautiously. Black Otter stood motionless, waiting. He had never set eyes on the key to his shackles, having been unconscious when the iron bands were clamped around his limbs. But every instinct told him this key would fit perfectly into the locks.

In the silence of the underground room he could hear the faint drip of water and feel the ripping cadence of his own pulse. He willed himself to keep rigidly still as the gnarled fingers inserted the key into the tiny opening. His breath stopped as the hidden mechanism ground, clicked, separated.

The woman gasped as the iron band parted and fell away, exposing the raw flesh of Black Otter’s wrist. With more haste now the old man thrust the key into the second lock. A quick turn, and both hands were free. Tongues of fire blazed up Black Otter’s arms as the blood gushed into long-constricted vessels. He clenched his hands into fists, biting back the urge to scream with pain. Soon he would be free. Soon…

The ancient chief glanced down at Black Otter’s legs. To unfasten the ankle bands, he would have to drop to his arthritic knees, exposing himself to treachery from above. As the old man hesitated, Black Otter’s eyes caught a flicker of movement from the corner of the cell and heard the woman’s voice.

“I’ll do it, Father.” Without waiting for a reply she snatched the key from the old man’s hand and dropped to a kneeling position on the floor. Black Otter’s ankles had suffered even more from the chafing irons than had his wrists. They were swollen with fluid and raw with infection. He waited, in silence, teeth clenched against the pain he knew would come.

Her pale hands were cool and as soft as flower petals against his tormented flesh. Rowena. Her name echoed in his mind as she worked the key into position. A liquid name, as smooth as flowing water on the tongue. No he would not kill this harmless creature. Nor would he kill the old chief who was her father. They had shown him kindness and he, as a Lenape warrior, was bound by honor. But the toad-faced cowards who had dragged him down into this black hole—yes, on them he would take a warrior’s vengeance. He would strike without—

Black Otter’s body jerked in sudden agony as the iron band fell away from his ankle and dropped with a clatter to the stone floor. The pain of flowing blood lanced up his leg into his groin, so hot and intense that only his warrior’s discipline kept his mouth clamped shut, his throat silent.

The last iron band, he knew, would be the worst. Over the three long moons of his imprisonment, the rusting iron had worked into his swollen flesh, spawning odorous poisons that seeped like snake venom into his blood—poisons he knew would kill him if the irons were not removed and the wounds treated with healing herbs—if he could but find any. But where, in this accursed land—?

In the midst of his thoughts the rusty lock parted. The rush of sensation was so searing, so unspeakably painful, that Black Otter disgraced himself with a low groan. Sweat broke out on his face, streaming in small rivulets down his temples, his cheeks, as the realization struck him.

He was free.

The urge exploded in him to run—to shove these foolish people aside, to flee up the stairs and out of this great smelly warren of a house, to find fresh air and blue sky, to find the sea…

The door to his cell was ajar. Reason fled as he ripped it open, knocked the burly man out of the way and lunged toward the stairs. Behind him, the old chief was shouting, but his voice was drowned by the roaring sound that filled Black Otter’s head, a sound like the crash of ocean waves in a mighty storm.

Above, at the side of the stairs, the reed torch flickered in its bracket on the wall. If he could reach it, he would have a weapon—a weapon he could swing like a war club or fling into the straw, setting the hateful lodge aflame.

He struggled upward, head throbbing, limbs screaming in agony. The flame of the torch filled his vision, the light haloed by unearthly rings of green and violet. He strained upward to seize it, but his arms were as heavy as tree trunks and his legs suddenly refused to support him. The roar in his head grew, and now he was sinking into it like a swimmer in a dark ocean. Deeper, deeper, he struggled until it closed over his senses, leaving nothing but blackness and silence.

Clutching her skirts, Rowena pushed past her father and raced up the stairs to where the savage lay slumped beneath the torch.

“Keep away from him, Rowena!” Her father’s voice echoed off the dank stone walls. “Leave the brute to me and to Thomas.”

“So you can throw him back in that cell to die of his wounds?” She crouched beside the dark head, gazing down at the crumpled length of the man—the bruised torso, the ropy muscles, devoid of fat, the bloodless cheeks beneath the bronze patina of his skin. Where the torchlight fell on his face she noticed, for the first time, the blue tracery of birds in flight across his forehead and the small spear-shaped figure at the corner of his mouth. There were tattooed lines on his arms, as well, faint, like the river lines on an old map. This man’s mind would be a treasure trove of stories and adventures, Rowena knew. Suddenly she wanted to hear them all.

Crouching above her savage like a protective hawk, she glared at her father. “We’ll be taking him upstairs, and putting him in a clean bed,” she said. “Thomas, fetch Dickon to help us. Quickly, before he awakens.”

Thomas glanced from master to mistress, then, as if sensing the stronger will, worked his way around the sprawled Indian and sprinted up the stairs.

“Are you mad?” Sir Christopher rasped. “After what the creature nearly did to you? I say throw him back in the cell like the wild animal he is!”

“It was you who paid a hundred fifty pounds for him!” Rowan retorted hotly. “For that grand sum, Father, do you want a living being or a corpse?”

Sir Christopher’s shoulders sagged in surrender to his daughter’s logic. “Very well,” he growled. “But he must be locked up like the wild beast that he is. We can hardly have him prowling the halls or leaping out of the windows.”

“No, certainly not.” Rowena eased the battered head into her lap, her mind groping for a solution that would mollify her father. “The small chamber at the end of the upstairs hall—we set up a cot there when Viscount Foxley visited last November, for his manservant, as I recall.”

“The window—”

“Higher than a man’s head, and securely barred. ’Twill do for our savage, I think. But we must have the means to watch him, Father, and to pass food and slops.”

“A simple matter!” Sir Christopher was becoming caught up in the plan he had opposed so vehemently. “We’ll have Thomas saw two openings in the door, one at eye level and one above the floorboards. That way, we can observe the savage and even communicate with him without risk to our safety.”

“A splendid idea, Father.” Rowena glanced down in sudden alarm as the dark head stirred in her lap. The savage’s eyelids fluttered. He moaned a word—a name, perhaps—in his own tongue. His body jerked in agitation, as if he were dreaming.

“Hush now.” Rowena brushed a fingertip across his forehead, tracing the line of winging birds. “You’re safe with us, My Lord Savage. We’ve no reason to harm you.”

Slowly the twitching limbs relaxed. The powerful chest rose and fell as the Indian slipped back into unconsciousness. Rowena supported the fierce head between her knees, her senses taut and wary, as if she cradled a sleeping leopard in her lap.

“My Lord Savage, indeed!” Sir Christopher hissed. “You’re making a pet of him, Rowena, a folly to be sure! The creature’s as dangerous as a wild boar, and if you allow him so much as a modicum of liberty, there’ll be the very devil to pay!”

Rowena brushed an exploring hand along the line of one jutting cheekbone. Her heart contracted with dread as she felt the searing heat of his skin.

“I fear our savage may be too ill to be dangerous,” she said. “If the festering’s gotten into his bloodstream, ’twill be all we can do to save his life!” She twisted toward the light at the top of the stairs, straining upward in sudden agitation. “By heaven, where are Thomas and Dickon? If they’ve fallen into some kind of mischief—”

As if her words had conjured them, the two Cornishmen appeared that very moment at the top of the stairs, Dickon carrying the camphorwood chest that held Rowena’s collection of salves and ointments. “Hurry!” she whispered, the sound echoing up the stairwell. “Put that chest down, Dickon! I need you to help carry him upstairs!”

Dickon did as she’d ordered but his face was gray with terror as he stumbled down the stone steps. “Don’t be afraid,” Rowena coaxed him, frantic beneath her own calm demeanor. “Just hurry—for the love of heaven, hurry!”

Rowena slumped on a low stool beside the cot, her legs too weary to hold her. Afternoon sunlight slanted through the high, barred window of the tiny room, falling on the savage’s bloodless face. All day she had watched as he drifted on his red tide of fever, sleeping like an exhausted child one moment, muttering incoherently the next. Now and again his eyes would shoot open, but there was nothing but confusion in their black depths. He seemed unaware of her presence, lost in the nightmare visions of his own heat-seared mind.

From the hallway Rowena could hear the rhythmic, nasal wheeze of Thomas’s snoring. Sir Christopher had posted him as guard outside the sickroom. A needless precaution, as were the linen lashings that bound the captive’s body to the bed. The savage was too ill to get up and walk—and if he were otherwise, Rowena knew, all the bonds and guards under heaven would not suffice to hold him.

Pouring cool water into a pewter basin, she wrung out a cloth and sponged his burning face. What compelling features he had, she mused. They were as fierce as the mask of an eagle, the bones jutting sharply beneath smooth olive skin, the eyes set so deeply as to be lost in pits of shadow, the mouth, thin-lipped but oddly sensual in the long, squared frame of his jaw. Her hand lingered as she passed the cloth over the flying birds on his forehead. What sort of man had he been in that faraway world from which he had been so cruelly torn? A warrior? A leader of his tribe? Aye, a lord in his own right. She could scarcely imagine less.

“No change in the creature?” Her father had entered the room so quietly that Rowena was startled by the sound of his voice. She glanced up to meet the worry in his eyes, then shook her head.

“Strange how swiftly the fever came upon him,” she said. “It was almost as if the shackles were holding it in check—but that’s hardly possible, is it? If it were, he’d have likely lost his hands and feet.”

“No success with your salves and potions, I take it?” Sir Christopher was skeptical, Rowena knew, of the herbs she gathered on the moor, ground with a pestle and blended with tallow or bitters. The concoctions had proven their merit on sick and wounded animals, but she had never tried any of them on a human being before.

“I made poultices of boiled comfrey for his wrists and ankles and bound them with linen—oh, and I managed to get a half cup of mint tea down him before he began fighting me.”

“As would any man with a tongue in his mouth,” Sir Christopher scoffed. “Mint tea, indeed! A cup of stout ale would do him more good!”

Rowena glanced sharply up at her father. “Well, at least you’re calling him a man now! That’s a bit of progress! Mayhap we should have a doctor in to look at his wounds.”

“A doctor?” Sir Christopher made a small choking sound. “And have the whole county and beyond learn what we’re harboring here? My dear, the witch hunt ensuing from such a discovery would be the ruin of us all!”

“You should have thought of that before you paid those brigands to kidnap a man from his own home!” Rowena snapped.

“You don’t understand!” The urgency in her father’s voice chilled Rowan’s blood. “Once the savage is able to speak for himself, perhaps even accept Christian baptism for the sake of appearances, ’twill be a different matter entirely. But for now, his presence must be kept secret!”

“And if one of the servants, say, Thomas or Dickon, can’t keep still? You know as well as I do what too much drink can do to a man’s tongue!”

“They’ll keep their silence or lose their positions. I’ve already made that quite clear. And after all, how much can they reveal? Only you and I know where the savage came from. As far as the servants are concerned, we’re sheltering some poor raving Gypsy lunatic I brought home from Falmouth.”

“Father, this whole venture will come to no earthly good!” Rowena picked up the cloth from the basin and wrung it out with a vehement twist. “Look at the poor wretch! You had no idea what you were planning, did you? No notion of how you were going to care for him, how you were going to communicate with him, how—”