Lord of the Beasts

by Susan Krinard

  Something struck the side of Cordelia’s head, knocking the words from her throat. She felt wetness trickling into her eyes. But there was no fear, even when she realized that her life might be in danger. She turned to face one of the men who held the chained terriers, knowing that the very animals she had come to save were entirely capable of tearing out her throat.

  “Give them to me,” she commanded, holding out her hand.

  The handler stared at her with disbelieving eyes. “Get out,” he hissed. “Get out while you still can.” His gaze flickered over her shoulder, and Cordelia almost had time to prepare herself before the blood-matted blanket descended over her head in a choking shroud.

  The next few minutes were a chaos of rough, groping hands and muffled arguments as the men debated what to do with her.

  “I tell you, I know her. If you hurt her, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “That’s yer problem, laddie. You should’ve put up a better watch.”

  “She saw some of us.”

  “Well, then, she can’t testify against you if she ain’t here, can she?”

  Cordelia tried to speak, but the fetid cloth filled her mouth. Just as the men’s sinister debate reached its crescendo, the dogs began to howl. The noise rose to a deafening pitch, provoking more curses from the men, and then stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  “Release her.”

  Donal’s voice was a miracle, strong and firm and commanding, and even the harsh sawing of the men’s breathing stilled. One of them lost his grip on Cordelia, and she slipped to the ground.

  She had no clear sense of what happened then. As she untangled the cloth from about her head, a new sound rose in the byre, eerie and harrowing. Men began to scream. They screamed as if they were drowning in boiling oil, as if they were being flayed alive…as if they had fallen into the very pits of hell in which they so richly belonged.

  For a single, nauseating instant Cordelia felt a sensation unlike any she had ever endured: debilitating pain; the nightmarish illusion of jaws closing about her neck, her face, tearing flesh and muscle; a dread and rage so indescribable that she could do nothing but lie frozen in shock. Then it was over, and she could move again.

  Cordelia pushed to her feet, searching blindly for Donal. He stood in the center of the ring, his hands fisted at his sides, his head thrown back in strange and terrible exultation. The fighting patrons had fallen in various contorted positions about the ring, writhing, clawing at their faces and clothing, whimpering and shrieking all the while.

  “Donal!” Cordelia cried.

  A shudder racked his body, and he released his breath in one long sigh. He lowered his head and opened his eyes. The horrible cries began to subside, the men collapsing into exhausted, shivering lumps wherever they came to rest.

  Donal met Cordelia’s gaze, his own still veiled and distant. “Are you all right?” he asked in a rough whisper.

  She touched the cut on her forehead, knowing that she could never properly describe what she had just experienced. “Yes. I am unhurt.” With a grimace of loathing she stepped around the men sprawled at her feet and cautiously approached him. “What happened?”

  He passed his hand over his eyes. “I…don’t know. Perhaps they ate something that didn’t agree with them.”

  His theory was preposterous, though he clearly did not intend it as a joke. Something uncanny had struck these men down, and Cordelia suspected she had felt some small part of what they had suffered. But her own thoughts were far too muddled to propose a more logical explanation for the men’s singular behavior and their present state of prostration—or why Donal’s arrival had seemed to precipitate it.

  As for Donal himself…she would have sworn that he, too, had undergone some bizarre transformation and was only just emerging from it. Cordelia took a firm grip on her reason and clutched Donal’s rigid arm. “Whatever the cause of their illness,” she said, “it cannot last forever. Help me gather the dogs. I have a wagon hidden in the wood across the pasture. We’ll take them back to the house…”

  He tossed brown hair out of his eyes with a shake of his head. “You’ve done enough, Cordelia. Go to the wagon, and wait. I’ll bring the animals.”

  “No. This is my battle as much as it is yours.” With a final swift glance at the men, none of whom seemed inclined to stop her, she hurried to the cluster of cages.

  Now that she no longer needed to hide, Cordelia had a much clearer view of the animals she had set out to help. While some were on their feet, alert and even wagging their tails, a number lay unmoving, soaked in their own blood. Donal joined her, crouching with his palm pressed hard against the nearest crate.

  “Murderers,” he snarled. “Savages.”

  Cordelia covered his hand with hers, and discovered that both were shaking. Somehow she understood that she must be the one to keep them focused on their purpose.

  “Help me get them out,” she said. “Quickly, Donal.”

  He roused himself and began to open the cages at one end while she started at the other. It was soon evident that some of the dogs would attack each other if given the opportunity; Donal seemed to know which ones required special handling and spent a few extra moments with them, speaking in soothing tones that promised peace and rest. A few dogs he left in their cages and carried the crates outside the barn.

  When they had collected and secured a dozen dogs who were capable of walking on their own, they went back for the sick ones. Five animals Donal eased from their cages, holding their limp bodies against his chest as if they were his beloved children. A spotted terrier, ravaged by countless deep lacerations, feebly raised its head and licked his chin. Another snapped at Donal’s hands until his touch calmed it into submission.

  “Will they recover?” Cordelia asked, sick with anger.

  “I’ll do what I can as soon as we’re back at Edgecott,” he said. He glanced at the nearest men with something very like hatred in his eyes. Had any of them moved even a little, Cordelia had no doubt that Donal would have pummeled them to within an inch of their lives.

  One by one he carried the wounded animals out to the wagon and laid them on a pile of blankets in the bed. Sir Reginald and Boreas were waiting, tied to a nearby tree. Donal gave the spaniel to Cordelia and placed the dogs in the wagon, with the caged dogs at the rear. He ministered to the anxious animals while Cordelia drove home, Boreas trotting along behind. If any of the dogfighters had recovered from their ordeal, none made any attempt at pursuit.

  Once at the house, Donal drove on to the kennels and Cordelia stopped to look in on Theodora and Ivy, who had remained awake and greeted her in the drawing room with a dozen worried questions. She left Sir Reginald with Ivy, changed into an old dress, and promised to give both women a complete report the next morning. She ran all the way to the kennels.

  She found Donal with the most seriously hurt animals in a run carpeted with straw and blankets, his shoulders hunched as he worked with his instruments and bandages. Cordelia hung back, not wishing to interfere, until Donal hoarsely asked for her help.

  Together they tended the animals through the night, their clothing smeared with mingled blood and perspiration as they struggled to save their patients. The spotted terrier fought gamely, but as dawn broke Donal met Cordelia’s eyes with a look she could not misinterpret.

  “No,” she whispered. She bent over the dog and tried to lift it in her arms, feeling its life seeping away even as she willed it to fight a little longer. “No. There must be something more you can do…”

  “He has lost too much blood,” Donal said, his voice cracking. “He is ready to go, Cordelia.”

  “Oh, no.” She pressed her face to the matted coat. The terrier whined deep in its chest, begging for release. Her tears dropped onto his muzzle, and she gently stroked them away with her fingertips.

  Donal reached out and laid his palm on the terrier’s heaving side. “Go, now,” he said. “Sleep, my friend. You have earned your rest.”

  Cord
elia could have sworn that the dog looked directly at Donal with gratitude and acceptance. She seemed to feel an odd sense of relief in her own heart, fading memories of pain and fear that lost all their power with the sweet threnody of Donal’s voice.

  The terrier let his head fall to the blankets, gave a final deep sigh, and lay still.

  The heaviness of death descended on Cordelia like a choking cloud, filling her chest with unendurable grief. She rocked the terrier in her arms, swallowing her sobs.

  “Don’t grieve for him,” Donal said. “He is free of a terrible existence. He is at peace.”

  “Peace? Peace for one out of thousands?”

  He touched her cheek with such tenderness that she could feel the ramparts of her control—the walls she had built so high and so well—begin to crumble. She laid the terrier down on his bed and turned her face away.

  “I wanted to save them.”

  Donal dropped his hand. “You have, Cordelia.”

  “A handful. A drop in the ocean.”

  “You are but one person. You cannot save the world.”

  She slammed her fist against the wall. It had been years since she had felt such rage, such black despair. “If I had had a weapon,” she said, “I believe I could have killed those men. I would have seen them all dead, even the ones who—” She gasped at the power of her fury, the liberating joy of setting it free with images of violence and destruction. It lifted her to her feet like a hot, fierce wind.

  “Even now,” she said, “even now I could hunt them down. Just like Othello.” She laughed. “What does that make me? As bad as those men. As savage as any wild beast.”

  Donal got up and clasped her arms in an unbreakable grip. “It makes you what we all are,” he said, his green eyes blazing. “Human and animal. A creature of this earth.”

  She began to tremble. “Of this earth,” she repeated. “Is that truly what you are, Donal?”

  His muscles tensed, though he did not release her. “I don’t understand you.”

  “That day at the menagerie…again with the foxes, feeling what they felt…I thought it was only a form of mental suggestion. But then, tonight…” She paused, knowing that her supposition was as mad as her bestial emotions. “Tonight I knew what it was to be one of those dogs, to fight and die and live in terror. And I think the same thing happened to the men.”

  Donal dropped his gaze. “How could that be possible?”

  “Because you made it happen.” She bared her teeth in a smile. “You punished those murderers, just as they deserved.”

  He opened his mouth for a denial, but his face had never learned how to lie. “Cordelia—”

  “It’s more than a doctor’s skill, isn’t it? You know what the animals think, what they feel.” She snatched at the front of his half-open, bloodstained shirt, her nails catching in the fine, curling hairs that dusted his broad chest. “Can you do the same with people?” She leaned into him. “Do you know what we think, Donal? Have you seen everything…everything we try to hide? Is it so easy for you, to sit in judgment….”

  “No.” He grasped her wrists, holding her as if he feared she might fly into a madwoman’s frenzy. “Please, Cordelia. You have endured too much. Let me take you to the house.”

  “Oh, yes. By all means, make certain that the delicate female is protected from herself.” She wrenched free. “Who sent you to my rescue tonight? Was it Theodora? She always looks at me as if I am about to…about to—” Her voice tripped in midsentence, stumbling over emotions that seethed like a South Atlantic storm, like lava spilling from a volcano believed long extinct.

  Carefully, so carefully, she stepped back until she could retreat no further. She knew that if she moved from that spot, even to leave the kennels, her body would shatter and the fragile edifice she called her strength, her courage…her soul…would crumble into dust and nothingness.

  “Please, go,” she whispered.

  He searched her face with eyes that gave no quarter. “I will not leave you here alone.”

  “Damn you.” She closed her eyes. “Go away, go away, go away. I don’t want you to see. I don’t want…” A current of dizziness swept over her, and she could not remember what she had been about to say. She slid her foot to the side, desperate to keep her balance. Her skirts dragged her down, down and down into a swirling vortex of darkness.

  DONAL MOVED an instant before she fell, scooping her into his arms and letting her weight lie against his chest. For all her fitness and vitality, her bones seemed as light as a bird’s, her flesh no more substantial than the wings of a butterfly.

  “Cordelia,” he said, caressing her pale, drawn face. His fingers came away wet with her tears. The fine skin of her throat quivered, but she did not waken.

  Donal carried her into a clean, unused run and laid her on a bed of straw, leaving her just long enough to see that the rescued dogs were resting and needed no further care. Then he gathered her up again and started for his cottage. It was much closer than the house, and he knew that Cordelia would rather face questions later than allow members of her household to see her as she was now. No mortal doctor could cure her of this illness.

  And that, he reflected grimly, was his doing.

  He reached the cottage as the sun broke over the horizon and set her down on his bed, drawing the coverlet up to her chin. Though the evening had been warm, he shoveled fresh coals into the grate and started a fire. Cordelia would need tea when she recovered, and he intended to provide her with every comfort.

  Feeling angry and helpless, he drew a stool up beside the bed and took one of her limp hands in his, chafing it gently.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Pitiful words, aren’t they?” He laughed. “It’s just as well you can’t hear them, or you would fix me with your most scornful gaze and tell me I have nothing to be sorry for. You would hide behind your pride, Cordelia, because you would be ashamed. Ashamed that I have seen what you would call weakness.”

  Cordelia didn’t stir, and Donal knew he was the true coward for speaking to her when she couldn’t hear him.

  “I should have known that you would guess the truth, sooner or later. Perhaps I wanted you to know.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, first her fingers and then her palm, stroking his thumb along the lines that the Gypsies claimed could foretell a man or woman’s future. “When you wake, you’ll blame yourself for having fallen beneath your own exacting standards. For maudlin sentimentality and pointless anger. For being merely human. But it was I who drove you to it, a stór. I opened your mind to the part of yourself you did not wish to see. And then…”

  He swallowed and set her hand back down on the bed, tucking it under the coverlet. “I lost myself as well, Delia. I wanted you. I have from the beginning. I wanted you, but I also wanted my freedom. So I took just a little of you, and that little was enough to upset all the rules by which you live your life.”

  The coals shifted in the grate, and he rose to jab at them with a poker. The hapless coals tumbled this way and that, and the nascent flame nearly went out.

  He turned to her again, his throat tight with longing. “I’ve lived my life outside those rules, Cordelia. Neither human nor Fane…trying…trying to set myself apart from both. I believed myself above the cruelty of mankind. But last night I became what I most despised. I made those men feel what the dogs felt, every last drop of agony and fear. And I enjoyed it.”

  Cordelia’s head moved on the pillow, rolling toward him, but her eyes remained closed, her breathing soft and steady. Donal resumed his seat beside the bed and touched the brown hair so severely drawn back from her face.

  “I did not mean for you to suffer, for you to know…You were not ready. It was more than you could bear.”

  He gazed down at her face—fair and vulnerable, stripped of the unyielding mask she showed the world, finally at peace. He went to the washstand, poured fresh water from the pitcher and dampened a cloth to bathe the dirt from her skin. Half-afraid of waking her, he wi
elded the cloth with utmost care, his arm trembling from the effects of her nearness and the misery of his confession.

  He trudged back to the washstand and stared at his shadowed face in the mirror. The ache of loneliness weighed on his heart like a casing of lead, loneliness he hadn’t felt since Susannah Stainthorpe had dashed his youthful dreams of romance. Tod, it seemed, had abandoned him. Ivy didn’t need him, in spite of her youthful belief that she was in love with him. He had come to enjoy Cordelia’s company, her uncompromising nature, her courage; he had become almost dependent upon it.

  “Can it be that you have not acknowledged your true feelings?” Inglesham had mocked him. Now he looked into his own eyes and accepted the truth. He had come as close to loving Cordelia as he ever could. If things had been different—if their needs and ambitions were not so thoroughly incompatible—he might even have found a way to stay.

  “I have never known how to ask forgiveness, Cordelia,” he said. “I have always avoided the necessity. But I must learn, for soon my work here will be done, and I cannot leave you if I—”

  “Donal.”

  Her voice was hardly a whisper, but it shattered his soliloquy like a bellow. He spun about and knocked the stool aside in his haste to reach her…in his fear that she had heard too much.

  But her half-lidded eyes held no accusation, no judgment. She moved her hand beneath the coverlet and he took it, resisting the urge to raise it to his lips.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  She smiled in a way that left him breathless. “Much better.”

  “No dizziness? No discomfort?”

  She curled her fingers about his. “I am still…grieved. But I am no longer out of my senses.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for that, Cordelia. You were—”

  “I know how I must have sounded. Wishing to kill those men. Accusing you of…such ridiculous things that you must have thought me quite mad.”

  Tell her the truth, Donal thought. That is the very least you owe her.

  But the moments passed, and he could not bring himself to overturn the accommodations she had made to rationalize the past few hours’ events.