Wild Hearts

by Virginia Henley

  Tabrizia raised her eyes to Shannon's. "You must be able to read my thoughts. I have been planning to meet him all day. Will he take me to Edinburgh?"

  Shannon nodded. "He'll take you. Your ransom was paid, it seems only fair."

  Tabrizia stood on a little knoll outside the castle walls, wrapped in the dark green velvet cloak she had lent so often to Shannon. Even though it wasn't as cold as it had been the previous evening, as the mist swirled about her, she shivered with anticipation of the unknown. She could hear a horse in the darkness coming at a fast gallop, but though she peered hard into the fog, she could make out no rider. Suddenly, the horse was upon her, but before she could throw herself back, two strong arms plucked her up, and she found herself in the arms of Johnny Raven.

  He was as startled as she. "What game is this? Where is Shannon?" he demanded. At close range, the gypsy had jet black eyes with long lashes. His hair curled down onto his shoulders in wild disarray. The moon, moving mysteriously through the mist, reflected upon the golden coin that dangled from his left ear.

  "She's in misery with a tooth abscess. She thought you would take me to Edinburgh."

  "What reward do you offer?"

  "I can pay you nothing; I have nothing," she admitted honestly.

  He laughed. "To leave empty-handed a castle bursting at the seams with riches is folly indeed. Are you so innocent in the ways of the world?"

  "I came with very little; I am leaving with even less," she told him.

  "Do you intend to offer me your body?" he asked boldly, appraising her openly.

  She gasped. "No, no. Won't you help me for charity's sake?"

  He looked at her with contempt. "I would die before I would ask charity of anyone. Where is your pride? It stiffens your resolve and prevents you from becoming the world's poor little victim."

  She saw that she was still wearing the emerald ring on her thumb. "Here, take this," she decided, thrusting the now repugnant symbol from her.

  "Wait for me," he ordered, and slid from the horse quietly. In an impossibly short time he was back with a small sheep's carcass. It had been skinned and trussed, ready for roasting on the spit at tomorrow's festivities. He fastened it behind the cantle of his saddle and remounted.

  She did not protest his theft. After all; the Cockburns lived by the same tenets, didn't they? The gypsy very obviously had such a low opinion of her, so she tried to explain, "I had no control over the things that happened to me!'

  "Horseshit! Fortune favors the bold. You have to seize the moment and make it happen! For instance, what you should have done was hide the emerald from me, then, the moment I left, take off for Edinburgh and steal my horse into the bargain," he instructed, digging in his heels as the animal leaped forward. He knew the country intimately. She had no need to fear the treacherous bog that lay in wait.

  "So, you take whatever you want in life. Aren't-you afraid that the price you will have to pay someday may be too high?"

  "I shall pay without flinching," he assured her with arrogance.

  Tabrizia wished she had thought of this means of escape long ago, but to tell the truth, something had always half held her back. Now the tie was severed forever, and she would put the past behind her and go forward to meet her new life. She would show those damned Cockburns, her father included, that she didn't need them.

  They entered the walled city by the South Bridge. The fog from the mountains did not reach into the city tonight, though smoke from a thousand chimneys made the air thick and sooty. She thrilled to be back in Edinburgh for all its dirt and smells. It was built on the crest of a ridge, and the wind always whipped along its streets. Edinburgh Castle perched blackly atop Castle Rock, dominating the whole town.

  She looked up at the tollbooth and noticed the spikes atop the turrets. She shivered at the dungeons below and said a quick prayer for the poor souls incarcerated there. She nearly retched at the stink from the Grassmarket where cattle hung bloody, and piles of innards gave off such a rank odor, it could be smelled two miles away. They passed through Tanner's Close, where the houses stood rotting in the shadows of Edinburgh Castle.

  "Let me off at the Royal Mile. I'll have to walk the rest of the way to avoid suspicion."

  He lowered her to the street but kept a hold on her arm. "I feel pity for you, little red hen."

  "Why do you call me that?" she asked.

  "Hens give their eggs all their lives and, as a reward for good behavior, end up between someone's knees, being plucked. Don't let them do it to you, sweeting!" He laughed sarcastically and sped off.

  She walked until she found her husband's house. How strange it seemed to her. She had used all her energies getting here; now she wished she had given some thought to a plausible story she could give the man who had married her. She knew it was sometime between midnight and dawn. The household would be asleep at this hour, but sure of her welcome, she did not hesitate to knock loudly.

  The doorman roused the butler, who informed the houseman, who brought the majordomo, who in turn informed the master's body servant, who awakened Maxwell Abrahams himself. Flanked by this male bastion of servants, he entered the library where she had been told to wait. When she saw him; she opened her mouth to speak and was immediately silenced by his imperious, cold look. His eyes narrowed to slits as he contemplated her. Finally, after an interminable scrutiny, he uttered, "Who?" One word.

  She was prepared to tell him everything save the identity of her kidnapper. "I don't know," she faintly stammered.

  He picked up a long pole used for reaching books from high shelves and slashed it across the table beside her. The crack rent the air and nausea gripped her.

  "Liar!" he hissed: "It was Rogue Cockburn. That's who you are protecting. What I want to know, and will know, is why."

  Tabrizia was terrified. Now that she had lied and said she did not know the identity of her abductor, she must keep up the pretense. "I... I only know I was taken to a castle far away and held prisoner. I kept on trying to escape until I was successful. I regret from the bottom of my heart that you were forced to pay ransom for me," she cried passionately.

  "Trash! Sweepings-up of the gutter!" His voice was like a whiplash. "I was forced to pay twenty thousand in gold for a little drab out of-an orphanage! Gold I had no intentions of handing over, let me inform you. We were tricked! The gold stolen from under my guards' noses. Make no mistake, the gold will be retrieved. The man will be arrested and hanged by the neck until dead. You are the witness who will put the noose about his neck," his voice rasped, his nostrils pinched with fury.

  She sat numbed from the shock. The kindly gentleman who had seemed so fatherly and generous was as cold and calculating as a reptile. My God, were all men created evil? Victim! Victim! a voice screamed inside her head, and unaccountably she began to laugh. Abrahams's hand shot out and slapped her across the mouth so hard, her head snapped back. She felt a trickle of blood ooze from her lip where his ring had pierced the skin. She did not cry out but sat mute as her heart within her breast turned to stone.

  Abrahams went over to the desk and withdrew some papers from the drawer. He waved them in her face. "I have here signed affidavits from a respected man at law that Mrs. Hall has chaperoned you every moment and that you are still virgin. Mrs. Hall is a dead woman for her complicity in this, make no mistake. Are these affidavits factual?"

  She sat mute.

  He summoned his body servant. "Donald, be so good as to ascertain if this female is still a virgin."

  Tabrizia gasped her disbelief at what they were about to do to her. Donald, a large young man, stepped forward and forced her arms behind her back. Without hesitation, in front of the men assembled, he reached under her skirt and tore her underdrawers from her body. Tabrizia struggled and spat in his face, but he hardly noticed her frenzied movements to avoid his hands. She screamed as he forced his finger partway inside her body. He withdrew it almost immediately. "She is very tight and small. I'd say she has never known a man."r />
  A ghastly smile spread across Abrahams's sharp face. It sent a chill of horror through Tabrizia, which made her knees tremble.

  "Then it isn't a total loss. Prepare her for bed," he told Donald. She was relieved when Donald led her from the room. She felt if she had stayed in that chamber one more minute, she would have died of shame. Yet the shame was theirs, she told herself fiercely, and vowed if she ever got free from her predicament, she would make all men pay, starting with the great earl who had been responsible for her mother's downfall, and ending with Rogue Cockburn, who had been responsible for her own.

  She was taken upstairs to the chamber she had occupied before when she came to this house as a happy bride-to-be. Donald set her skin crawling. He was plump with full lips and thick, pudgy hands. She observed as he prepared her bath for her that he seemed neither man nor woman but some abnormal creature in between. She had no choice but to undress and step into the bath. He left no detail of the toilet incomplete. He selected a diaphanous robe for her and began to brush her hair. Tabrizia felt his touch was loathsome but knew if she fought him, she would end up bruised and broken and still have to face what lay ahead of her. He touched a musky perfume to her breasts, and she knew she would hate that smell for the rest of her life. She could hardly breathe. It was like facing a death sentence. She knew she would hate and fear all men after today. Once this ordeal was behind her, and if she survived it, she promised herself she would get hold of a weapon and never be without it again as long as she lived. If she only had one at this moment, she knew she would have been capable of killing this servant and then enjoy ridding the world of his master. "Why must I do this thing?" she managed to whisper.

  "He has no time to lose. He suffers from the bad disorder."

  This puzzled her. Did he mean her husband was dying? All her time had run out like the sand in an hourglass. She was led, barefoot, down a flight of steps to the second story of the mansion. The long hallway contained naked, marble figures in disgusting poses. She averted her eyes instinctively, until she reached Abrahams's chamber. Donald opened the door and waited for her to enter. When she did not, he gave her a push from behind, and she found herself in Abrahams's presence.

  The bed dominated the room. It was set high on a dais with tall candles burning on either side as if it were a sacred altar. A thought flashed through her brain, something. Shannon had once said: "The coward dies a thousand deaths; the hero dies but once." She stepped forward, determined to get it over with as quickly as possible. The old man in the bed beckoned to her. She approached warily, wondering if she would suddenly awaken from this nightmare. As she knelt upon the bed, he suddenly threw back the covers to reveal his naked body. Remembrance swept over her as she recalled kneeling on that other bed facing Paris. The comparison was so ludicrous, a bubble of laughter escaped her. A sharp slap in the face brought her to her senses, and she focused her eyes on the male before her. He was cadaverous. The skin yellow and wrinkled. His body was devoid of hair, save for the back of his hands.

  "Why did Donald put you in a garment that reveals your breasts? He knows female flesh repulses me," he complained loudly.

  She was mesmerized as if she faced a cobra. Curiosity overcame her. She leaned forward to see where his male genitals could possibly be. Her ignorance was fast disappearing as she realized all men were not alike. She came out of her hypnotic state as he savagely reached for her hand and forced her to hold his limp member. With his hand still gripping hers, he forced her to manipulate his foreskin up and down. It grew about an inch. "Faster," he ordered. "I must attain an erection sufficient to take your maidenhead. Your blood is the only thing that will cure my disease."

  Suddenly, she knew why she had been purchased from the orphanage. All was clear in a burst of blinding comprehension. She gasped and said with deliberate glee, "Too late, too late! All my virgin's blood was spilled in Rogue Cockburn's sheets!"

  Horrified, he pulled away from her as if he had been scalded. In that instant another idea crystallized in her brain. She snatched up the candles and threw them into the bed, setting ablaze the altar she had almost been sacrificed upon.

  He screamed for help, his piercing shrieks carrying through the house. She was nearly knocked over by the rush of servants into the room, but the panic and confusion served her well. She lifted the night rail from about her ankles and ran like one demented down the main staircase that led to the ground floor. She flung open the front door and ran out into the night. The cold air hit her almost naked body, and she knew she must find shelter fast. She ran behind the huge house, glancing up as she ran to see flames licking at the upper bedchamber window. The stables seemed the closest haven, but she didn't dare run the risk of recapture. As she made her way behind the next few houses, she entered some stables, where a warm miasma of horses, hay and manure filled her nostrils, and one horse whickered low in its throat. She hoped one would not set the others off in their restlessness and alert someone to her presence. Because it was dim inside, she could barely make things out. She was searching for something to keep her warm; perhaps a horse blanket.

  Her hands touched some rough material, which she discovered were clothes that must belong to the stableboy. She quickly pulled the pants up over her nightgown and put on the old jacket. She shuddered as the stench of sweat assailed her nose. The clothes were filthy, but they were all that was at hand at the moment. She lay down on some straw to rest. She was in total panic. Where would she go; what would she do? She had only rags, no shoes, no money, no refuge even, for she would have to leave this place as soon as she had rested, or she risked being discovered. Gradually, a calm settled over her. She was through running. It was time for her to take control of her life. She was an earl's daughter, and by God she was going to start acting like one!

  She had a town house full of servants; all she had to do was find it. Dawn was turning the sky pink as she slipped from the stables and walked down the back street. As she walked on, she noticed how decrepit the buildings were becoming. She had walked for a half hour now, and everything was windowless and black with the grime of centuries The downstairs level of every hovel was some sort of a business. Gin shops beckoned alongside pawnbrokers and old clothes shops. Peddlers were beginning to fill the streets, offering everything from herrings to dead men's boots. She noticed boys running around almost naked. She was barefoot and saw with amazement that everyone else was, too. There weren't many women about, just a few drabs reeling home, still drunk from the whisky cellars they'd slept the night away in, with God knows what paying customers. This was what had killed her mother the slow death of poverty. Then and there she swore it would not happen to her.

  Alexandria had told her where the town house was. She walked down the Royal Mile, past St.. Giles Church and into the Cannongate. The houses were very grand in this section. They were narrow but rose up many stories high. On the wall of each house was the crest and coat of arms of its owner. She stopped to examine a swan with two necks. No, that was not the right one. There it was! A lion rising from a coronet. It was the Cockburn crest, and above it was the Earl of Ormistan's coat of arms, showing Castle Tantallon.

  She ran up the steps and banged heavily upon the front door. The housekeeper, who had only just arisen from bed, answered the summons slowly. She was a good woman, but at the moment her plain features showed her annoyance to have a caller at this ungodly hour. She opened the door, saw the young girl in the boy's shabby clothes and said, "Get away, we want no beggars here."

  "Beggar? Beggar?" flared Tabrizia, throwing up her head as if she were a queen. "My good woman, I happen to be the daughter of the Earl of Ormistan. Stand aside instantly."

  The woman looked doubtful. She looked down at the bare feet and said, "The earl hasna got a daughter."

  Tabrizia pushed past her lightly. "I certainly don't intend to stand on the doorstep and argue with a servant. You must be blind, woman, if you can't see that I'm a Cockburn." She waved her hand as if to dismiss the open-mouthed
woman.

  "Oh, before you go, I'll need a message sent to Tantallon to tell my father I'm at the town house, and in the meantime you can send a maid up with hot water for my bath, and you can tell the cook I'll have warm scones and honey for breakfast. Be a dear and bring it up for. me."

  The house was very unfamiliar to her, but common sense told her that staircases led to bedchambers. The very first door she opened turned out to be a bedroom. She slipped inside and sagged against the door in relief. She had pulled it off, and it had been quite simple, really. It was all in the attitude. Rogue Cockburn had been right. If you acted like a doormat, the world would wipe its feet on you! After she had bathed and eaten, she locked the door from the inside and climbed into bed naked. She was asleep in minutes.

  Paris Cockburn was up at dawn. This was an important day for all the people of the castle, as well as the villagers who lived on Cockburn land; all were shown appreciation for their loyalty and hard work during the year past. He also had to take the Oath of Allegiance from everyone in the clan, in which they knelt before him and swore, "So may God help me as I shall support thee. I swear and hold up my hand to obey, defend and serve thee as long as my life lasts and if needs be, die for thee."

  The castle yard and the grassy slope outside it were beginning to fill with merrymakers. Oxen and sheep were being roasted on huge spits over open fires, and stacked barrels of homemade ale were ready to be tapped. Fiddlers and pipers were tuning up for the dancing, and the children ran around, their hands filled with apples and butterscotch toffee.

  Paris was looking forward to the festivities in hopes that he would be able to coax Tabrizia into a warmer mood toward him. He would beg her forgiveness for what happened at Tantallon and tell her how much he loved her.