“Be quick, my friend,” she said aloud, and closed her eyes as the muscles in the great legs bunched and he launched himself through the air in her direction.
Chapter Six
Beastmistress
Bhavesh had never seen such dignity. Even as the crowd around him jeered like baboons, the woman stood her ground. Sukumar, posturing and posing for the excited crowd, looked like a court jester next to a queen, with his glittering finery and crude chanting. Bhavesh could see no trace of fear in her eyes as she scanned the crowd.
Look at me, he breathed. Look at me—see my face. I am not like these others. Please, see me!
When her eyes finally locked with his, he almost lost his breath. Such fierceness! What had this woman ever seen to make her so brave, so fearless?
Had they stared at one another for a second? A minute? Had she understood what he was trying to tell her? The tiger roared and she pulled her eyes away. When she turned back to the crowd, Bhavesh knew she was searching for him—felt it with a certainty that defied explanation—but the increasingly agitated crowd blocked her face from his view and then Sukumar put his hands on her back and shoved her into the waiting maw of the cage door.
Along with all the others, Bhavesh held his breath as the tiger crouched and prepared to spring upon her. When the beast launched himself through the air, he thought his heart had stopped as the crowd around him screamed in combined horror and delight.
Then Bhavesh joined the collective gasp as together they realized what had happened.
Akhilesh had not leapt upon the woman. He had thrown himself against the bars of the cage where the guard was attempting to re-secure the lock, landing only inches from where the woman stood with her back to the door, her eyes closed. A claw must have made it through the grillwork and snagged the guard’s sleeve, for he screamed and jumped away from the cage, the sound of tearing fabric clearly audible. The crowd broke into nervous laughter.
Bhavesh saw the woman’s eyes fly open as she gaped openmouthed at the cat. Ignoring her, Akhilesh ran past her to another section of the cage where he again flung himself against the iron, snarling and snapping at the other guard and, if Bhavesh wasn’t mistaken, Sukumar. The rajah jumped back, nearly stumbling before recovering his footing. He made a small bow to the crowd as if it was all just part of the show, but swiftly moved across the room to the dais.
The tiger’s enormous head finally swung toward the woman. He stalked toward her with the sensuous rhythm that punctuated most of his movements. She stood very still, but her eyes did not close this time. Akhilesh stopped only inches from her and lifted his chin to sniff her hand delicately. He walked to her other side and sniffed the length of her leg. Showing his huge pink tongue, he licked her sandaled foot.
“Do you find her tasty?” shouted Sukumar, but the crowd’s responding laughter sounded more nervous than appreciative. The cat’s head swung toward the noise as if in annoyance, and they quieted. As he turned back toward Leandre, he sniffed her again, then leaned forward and butted his big head against her stomach.
The woman’s eyes opened very wide and her hands rose ever-so slowly from her side. You could have heard a leaf fall in the hall as she placed them, one by one, on the back of Akhilesh’s neck and, very cautiously, curled her fingers and began to move them in a scratching motion. An unusual rumbling sound filled the room and Bhavesh laughed aloud when he realized what it was.
The tiger was purring!
His laughter was contagious and soon the court was ringing with guffaws. The same voices raised only moments before in bloodthirsty calls for death now took on a hysterical edge. Was it relief?
One person was obviously not amused. Sukumar’s face darkened and he leapt from the dais, running across the floor and onto the viewing platform in front of the tiger enclosure. “Akhilesh! What are you doing? Kill her! Hiranmayi!” He slammed his hands noisily against the iron grillwork, his frustration tangible.
Instead of obeying, the great beast turned from the woman and charged toward Sukumar, clawing and roaring at the cage. The rajah nearly fell off the platform and the closest onlookers screamed in surprise and delight. With a parting snarl, Akhilesh returned to the woman, making a turn so that he leaned against her while still facing the platform, a warning growl rumbling as he faced his ostensible master.
The woman placed a hand on the tiger’s head and smiled. “It appears that your pets,” the sarcasm was clear in her tone, “do not care for your choice of meals this evening.” Then she spoke to the animal in words that Bhavesh alone among the listeners could understand—unless one considered Akhilesh himself.
“Thank you, Akhilesh. Now, let us get out of sight of these people. I am tired of having them stare at me, and I wager you are too.”
With a final snarl in Sukumar’s direction, Akhilesh turned and stalked toward the unlit regions of the enclosure that reached out toward the gardens beyond. The woman followed, and as she reached the marble steps, Hiranmayi stood up and walked beside her. Two small shapes coalesced from the shadows and followed—the cubs. The woman and the tigers disappeared into the darkness like smoke.
Sukumar turned to face the room. Bhavesh expected to see fury, but the rajah’s face was still and very pale. “The company is commanded to go to their rooms,” he announced just loud enough to be heard, but clearly. “There will be no further…entertainments tonight.” He turned and practically fled the platform, leaping across the dais and out the rear door without a look behind him, leaving a trail of astonished murmurs.
After a moment’s indecision the guards began shouting. “You heard the rajah! Return to your rooms! Clear the hall!” The crowd, obviously disgruntled, began to reluctantly follow these orders, crowding into the exits and moving slowly to the corridors that led to the inner courtyards and chambers of the guest quarters. Bhavesh tried to hold his ground—he wanted to keep staring at the point in the darkness where he had seen the last flash of white robes as the woman of Eriu vanished with the tigers. But it was like trying to stand against the tide, and he found himself being pulled into the stream of retreating revelers.
He managed to step into an alcove that allowed him to at least move no farther from the chamber, and tried to clear his head. What had he just seen? What did it mean? He felt as if he should be doing something, taking some action, but he didn’t know what it should be.
“My young friend!” Gupta slid into the alcove next to him, panting. “These people do not move slowly enough for an old man. I need to get out of the way and let them pass.” He mopped his brow then peered up at Bhavesh in the semidarkness. “Why are you hiding here?”
“I am not hiding,” Bhavesh protested. “I am just not ready to go back to my rooms.”
Gupta nodded. “None of us are. After today’s events, I doubt many of these people are planning to go to their own beds! They will gather in small groups and discuss it until dawn. No need for you to sit alone if you do not wish it—join me. The man in the next chamber is from the same village as Sukumar’s uncle and his wife—”
Bhavesh cut him off. “No, Gupta, I do not wish to stay up and gossip. I must go back to the tiger enclosure.” He regretted his words immediately. The old man would tell the next person he spoke with about his intentions.
To Bhavesh’s surprise, Gupta remained silent. A servant passed by amid the now-thinning throng, and the torch he was carrying shed a sudden flash of light across the wizened features. He was eyeing Bhavesh with a seriousness he had not previously shown.
“I see.” He paused for a long time then spoke again. “I know you think I am a garrulous old fool who cannot be trusted.” His words shocked and embarrassed Bhavesh with their accuracy, and he started to protest, but Gupta interrupted. “No, no, my friend, do not apologize. For garrulous I am. What else do I have to amuse me in my old age, childless and widower that I am? But I was not always as you see.” He straightened and for a moment Bhavesh could see a younger, more vital man in his silhouette. “I have b
een a soldier, a husband and, if you can believe it, a lover. I am not blind. I saw how you looked at the foreign woman, even before she did that extraordinary thing with the tigers. Is there something between you?”
“Yes. I mean, no, I have never even spoken to her. But there is something. I do not know…” Bhavesh trailed off, at a loss for an explanation.
Surprisingly, Gupta nodded. “I understand. It is sometimes that way between a man and a woman.” He was quiet for a moment, then grasped Bhavesh’s arm. “How far are we from your rooms? Mine are on the opposite side of the courtyard with the fountain, despite the fact I have told them it is too far for my old legs. We need to figure out how you can reach your purpose.”
Bhavesh’s rooms were farther down the corridor than he would have liked, but they were closer than Gupta’s so he led him there. A lamp was burning and tea and sweetmeats were arranged on a small table, which meant the servant assigned to this corridor had already been here and the two would not be disturbed unless they rang for service.
After settling himself and selecting some sweetmeats, Gupta surprised Bhavesh by asking for writing materials. “I have been here longer than you, and no one pays attention to an old man. I can draw you a diagram of the tigers’ quarters.”
“You know that much about them?”
He smiled. “You will not believe it, but I was once in charge of the fortifications at Rajasthan. They were very challenging, due to the terrain, and I had to work with architects and engineers to make sure they could be defended on all sides.” Noticing Bhavesh’s astonished expression, he shrugged. “So last year, when Sukumar decided to enlarge the enclosure, I had many talks with his builders. The man in charge did not speak Sanskrit very well, and in the evenings he preferred to relax with someone who spoke his dialect. So he walked me around the site and showed me everything.”
He began making surprisingly graceful strokes on the dried palm leaves Bhavesh had provided. “The enclosure has several sections, each of which can be closed off so the landscapers and cleaners can come in safely. There are entrances here, here and here.” He made three marks then pointed to one of them. “This is the gate that lies within the court hall. The one we saw opened tonight.” He drew a line across one end of the drawing. “This is where the roof ends, so as you can see, the majority of the enclosure is in the gardens. The back part is against the outer wall, and there they have not cut down the vegetation—it is as thick as a jungle. This is where they usually enclose the tigers when they need to get in to make repairs on the rest of the quarters.”
“How do they get them in there?”
“They lure them with food, which they bring in through this door.” He indicated another of the marks and grinned. “No one likes that job, because the bushes are so thick no one can be sure tigers are not lying in wait. Oh, they try to do it right after Akhilesh and Hiranmayi have been seen in another part of the enclosure, but once she became pregnant, she often kept herself hidden all day and they could not always be sure where she was.”
“Do you think that section of the cage is where the woman of Eriu went?”
“What did you call her?” Gupta’s eyes were bright.
“Oh, I…I just call her that. I do not really know where she is from.”
“I see.” He obviously did not. “Bhavesh, I cannot pretend to know whether the tigers would take the woman to this section of the enclosure. For all I know, they have come out of their strange trance and eaten her.”
This had not occurred to Bhavesh, and he felt a wave of nausea at the thought. His horror must have shown on his face, for Gupta quickly reassured him, “Peace, my friend, I was just trying to illustrate that since the tigers have not been behaving in a fashion that could be called normal, there is no way to predict where they are. The reason I was pointing out this door is because it is near the servants’ entrance to the corridor where my room lies. And I doubt it is guarded. If you wanted to get near the enclosure, you could start here and work your way back toward the main hall.”
“Will there be guards?” Bhavesh did not think Sukumar would be too happy about someone prowling around the edge of the tigers’ domain, after his orders that all members of the court return to their rooms.
Gupta shrugged. “Yes, there are always some guards. But after tonight’s uproar, they will probably be gossiping too. You said you had to return to the enclosure. This seems the most discreet way of doing so.”
“Yes, of course.” Bhavesh grasped his shoulder. “I thank you, my friend. For helping me and for…for understanding that I must do this thing.”
Gupta’s lips stretched in a broad smile. “I will expect payment, of course. A full accounting of your adventure.” Bhavesh must have looked dubious, because he hastened to add, “Not so I can tell it to others! But so that I can savor the details and remember what it was like to be young and caught up in passion for a woman.”
Bhavesh smiled back. Perhaps Gupta did understand.
They went to Gupta’s room so that he could show Bhavesh the door he had mentioned. He was prepared to tell any guards they encountered he was helping an elderly gentleman, slightly the worse for drink, back to his quarters. They did not, however, encounter anyone in the halls but a few servants—apparently the palace guards were not taking Sukumar’s edict so seriously that they felt the need to patrol the corridors.
He bid Gupta good night and slipped out into the warm evening. In the dim light of moon and stars Bhavesh could make out the latticework of the iron enclosure, heavily interspersed with the leaves of the thicker foliage at this end of the gardens. A thrill of anticipation filled his belly. After waiting a few moments in the shadows of the building to make sure no guards were near, he stepped quickly to the bars of the cage.
Chapter Seven
Fate
The humid darkness swirled with heady scents. Tropical flowers, the names of which Leandre did not know, wet grass and the tigers themselves. The cats smelled wild and rich but not unpleasant. It added to the dreamlike quality of moving through the elaborately manicured gardens with its fountains and sculptures into the wilder, thicker foliage of the regions farthest from the torchlight of Sukumar’s great hall. Even among the jungle-like growth they encountered marble seats and roofed enclosures, all apparently designed for the comfort of Sukumar’s prized pets.
Akhilesh nosed through an especially thick stand of large-leafed trees from which hung a heavy bunch of the yellow fruit called kadalii.Leandre followed, lifting the branches aside to step through. On the other side was another of the “rooms” that dotted the enclosure. Columns supported a low roof with graceful arches, and the marble floor had been built in two levels. Cushions were scattered on the floor but from the look of them, it had been months since anyone had pushed through the denser foliage to clean or replace them.
Akhilesh stalked to the upper level and lay down, his golden eyes staring. He made a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a growl, but held no menace. Leandre smiled.
“Yes, here we are,” she replied. “This must be home.” As if to confirm her statement, Hiranmayi dropped heavily against one of the cushions and the cubs scuttled to her side and began pushing against her teats. Dinnertime.
Leandre selected a cushion that leaned against the two stairs separating the levels and sat down. She pulled her knees up to her chest and encircled them with her arms, so that she could put her chin on her knees and watch the cubs feed. Hiranmayi watched her placidly.
“Your children are very beautiful,” Leandre told her. “It makes me feel peaceful to look at them.” Hiranmayi blinked her eyes but remained silent. With a sureness that defied reason, Leandre knew the tiger understood her.
She turned to Akhilesh. “So, you have chosen to protect me. Do you know why, I wonder?”
Again, he made a noise as if answering her. I do as I choose, he seemed to say.
“And yet here you are, in a cage. Like me.” He grunted, assenting, and laid his big head on his paws.
She sighed and returned her gaze to the kittens. The full moon peeked over the tops of the kadalii trees and below the roof of the pergola, and Hiranmayi and her cubs were bathed in a swath of its light.
Just a very few hours ago, Leandre had thought being the half-nude gift to a rajah the most unusual position in which an Irish noblewoman could ever hope to find herself. Now she was the houseguest of a family of man-eating wild beasts. She tried to imagine telling the tale to her father and almost laughed aloud.
One of the cubs, done with his meal, nosed against Hiranmayi’s chin and made one of those babyish grunting sounds. She began to bathe him, her tongue wider than Leandre’s hand. He bleated and backed away.
She did laugh aloud this time. To the question she was sure she could see in Hiranmayi’s eyes, she said, “All children are the same, I suppose. He is not ready for his bath, as he knows well it will only lead to bedtime.”
At the sound of Leandre’s voice, the cub turned and looked at her. He ducked his head and made a small noise, as if he had just noticed this strange creature in his house and did not know whether it was something he should fear or not. She held out her hand, fingers dangling.
“Fear nothing, little one. I would never hurt you, and your parents would never let me.” Leandre looked at Hiranmayi, feeling she should ask the mother’s permission before summoning her child. “May I touch him? I want so very much to feel his fur.”
Hiranmayi gave a little growl that held no hostility and the cub seemed to take it as consent. He took a few tentative steps toward Leandre then crouched again, uncertain.
“Yes, my darling. It is quite safe. Come to me.” She made her voice low and coaxing, and he crawled on his belly to a distance that just allowed him to stretch his neck forward and sniff her fingers. She wiggled them, and he made a squeak of fear and scrambled rapidly back to the safety of his mother.
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