The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  “Memsab! Are you harmed?” Mita’s raw voice cut through darkness.

  “I—crushed, only. Can you—can you help move him?”

  With a whisper of cloth, Mita bent close and together they shoved at the inert figure. In the darkness the job was difficult, but finally Barrett managed to work free and push to her elbow.

  Suddenly the massive shape tensed, his entire weight shifted onto Barrett’s chest and thighs.

  “Help me, Mita. Must—must get him to one side.”

  Outside the tent the fighting seemed to thin. Once again the flap was jerked roughly aside, this time by Nihal. A hastily made reed torch cut through the darkness, revealing an inert bronze body.

  “The Tiger -sahib!” Mita and the headman gasped simultaneously, before the flame hissed out.

  Barrett felt a cold wave of horror wash over her. What had she done? “He isn’t—he cannot be—”

  The phantom atop her twisted slightly and coughed. “Are you trying to finish the Vedda’s handiwork, Angrezi?”

  “Pagan!” Barrett was swept with a crazy sense of disbelief. “Sweet heaven, what—”

  Suddenly he shuddered and went deadly still atop her.

  Mita dropped beside her, her fingers on Pagan’s neck. Quickly she searched Pagan’s inert body, trying to find his wound. “Another lantern, Nihal!”

  Crushed beneath Pagan’s weight, Barrett struggled to ease free, her thoughts a storm of confusion. “M-Mita?”

  “I can find nothing, miss!”

  Barrett was frozen in guilt and did not feel the first, faint tremor that skittered through Pagan’s body. And then the lump shuddered and issued a hoarse groan. One hard thigh shifted, digging into Barrett’s abdomen.

  “He’s alive, Mita! Help me move him.” Almost immediately his powerful thigh moved, this time straddling her waist.

  Barrett froze. She could have sworn she heard a chuckle. But of course that was impossible. “Pagan! What are you—”

  “Soft, by Shiva.” He coughed harshly. “Soft in all—the right—places.”

  This time there was no doubt of his words, nor of the low chuckle that followed. Hard muscle drove against her belly, the rigid blade of Pagan’s aroused manhood.

  Barrett stiffened, fear giving way to fury. The arrogant fool! While she was busy excoriating herself in the belief that she’d killed him, he used the opportunity to exercise his depraved urges.

  Barrett shoved blindly at his chest. “Get off me, you black-hearted sod!” An instant later she winced, wondering where that raw epithet had come from.

  But Pagan’s body did not move by so much as an inch.

  “Now, you debauched, depraved beast!”

  Nothing.

  Barrett managed to ease her body from beneath his shoulders. His great weight seemed to bunch. He rose slightly.

  “Help—” He broke off, seized with a spasm of coughing.

  Instantly Barrett’s struggles ceased. In raw silence she waited, while his coughing shook them both.

  With a hiss of tinder, the lantern flared once more, casting Pagan’s gaunt face into high relief. His lips, she saw, were tense, his eyes glazed with pain.

  A shudder rocked him. Barrett feared he must have passed into unconsciousness.

  And then his fingers moved, sliding into the warm hair at her temple.

  “May heaven help … the poor man who tries … to f-fight you, Angrezi.” His grip tightened. “Truly, it’s a bloodthirsty wench you are…”

  Abruptly his fingers went slack against her neck, his breath hissing out in a rush.

  This time he did not move again.

  “Carefully, Nihal!”

  Her face tense with worry, Barrett watched Nihal and two bearers struggle to heave Pagan’s tall form onto his cot. Lanterns danced in the wind, casting long shadows through the tent, while outside a crowd of anxious faces fought to peer inside.

  Every few seconds Mita stamped her foot and gestured them away, with absolutely no effect.

  At least Barrett’s guilt had turned out to be short-lived. When the lamps were lit they had discovered a small dagger of hammered silver driven deep into Pagan’s shoulder. It was that which had felled him, not Barrett’s bullet, which had veered sharply and ripped a hole through the far wall of the tent. It seemed that Pagan had neglected to tell her that his revolver pulled markedly to the right.

  The removal of the dagger was a fearful process, and Barrett was ashen-faced and nauseated by the time it was over. The bandaging and cleaning she left to Mita, whose experience in such matters was far greater than hers.

  It was just as well that Pagan had lapsed into unconsciousness, she found herself thinking, for the whole process would have been an agony. Even as it was, he twisted and groaned hoarsely in his sleep, so that she and Mita could barely hold him.

  “Finished.” Mita stood up slowly and surveyed her handiwork. “It is the best I can do. Now we must be praying to Shiva that they have not added some Vedda poison to the blade.”

  Barrett froze, her eyes wide. “Surely they would not—”

  “With certainty they would, memsab, as long as they could find the red-petaled flower with the purple seeds, or the roots of the night-blooming lily, which are equally lethal. But we must hope that the wanderers had neither time nor patience to go searching about for such things.”

  Slowly Barrett turned, gazing down at the pale features of the man in the cot. His face was gaunt, creased with deep lines at mouth and forehead as he fought pain even in sleep. She shivered suddenly, feeling the breath of evil creep down her spine.

  “What do we do now, Mita?” she asked softly.

  “We wait, memsab,” the other woman answered. “And we pray to all our gods that they watch over the Tiger-sahib tonight.”

  Something told Barrett that she had not prayed for a very long time, but a moment later, as Mita began to intone a low chant, Barrett found her fingers slipping together and her head dropping.

  In the hours that followed Barrett and Mita took turns at Pagan’s side, feeding him broth, toweling the sweat from his body when fever racked him.

  Fortunately the night’s defense had been successful and their attackers had not returned. Outside Nihal and the other men took turns at watch, anxiously awaiting the first moment that Pagan could be moved.

  But his fevers only grew worse. Though the knife had not met vital tissue, it had plunged deep enough.

  He required two days’ rest at the very least, Mita said firmly.

  Nihal scowled and countered harshly in Tamil. Suddenly conscious of Barrett’s presence, Mita gestured outside. “Go, miss. Eat something. Nihal has seen to rice and fruit. After that I will eat.” Seeing Barrett’s reluctance, Mita shook her head firmly. “If you do not eat, you will be of no use, to me or to him. Now go.”

  Without waiting for an answer, the servant turned back to Nihal and their argument resumed with vigor.

  They were still arguing when Barrett slipped wearily from the tent a few minutes later.

  “Mita?” Quietly Barrett swept aside the canvas flap and crept into the shadows.

  “Here, memsab.”

  “Is he—changed?”

  Barrett heard Mita’s low sigh. “No, it is as before. The fever drives him so that he cannot rest, and each movement is making the wound to reopen, I fear. Aiyo, I am most terribly worried, miss.”

  In the half-shadows Pagan’s face was gaunt, darkened by stubble at his jaw. As Barrett slid to take Mita’s place beside the cot, he groaned and shifted restlessly, tossing one arm into the air over his head.

  Gently Barrett caught his tensed fingers and lowered them back to his chest. Even when his fingers finally unclenched, she did not release him.

  “I fear he dreams of the past,” Mita said softly. “Of his old estates in the northwest, before the Mutiny. He never speaks of those days, not to anyone. Especially he does not speak about Cawnpore.”

  At that last word, Pagan’s arms stiffened beneath Barrett’
s fingers. Frowning, Barrett traced slow, rhythmic circles until he relaxed again. “That—that place you spoke of, Mita. Cawn—” She broke off, her eyes on Pagan. “Tell me about it.”

  Mita’s face darkened. “An evil place. A place of pain and treachery,” she whispered. Her voice came closer to Barrett’s ear. “The Nana -sahib, who ruled when the mutineers rose, was a jackal who promised the English safe passage downriver. But instead—” Abruptly her voice fell away.

  “Tell me, Mita. I must know if I am to understand—to help him when the dreams come.”

  The servant seemed to shiver, recovering herself with an effort. “Very well. In spite of his promises, the boats were fired upon as the Angrezi left their moorings. In a matter of minutes it was over. All but one boat in forty were destroyed at the ghat. Then the river ran red, red with the blood of men, women, and children.”

  Barrett’s breath caught. So this was the specter that Pagan lived with? Had he loved ones who perished there? A wife even? “All died?”

  “No, over a hundred survived, and them the Nana-sahib marched into the city.” Mita’s eyes fixed on the distant line of the jungle. “There the men were shot or run through. The women and children were driven together into a bungalow at the city’s edge. But when an Angrezi rescue force drew close two weeks later, the Nana -sahib grew afraid of the tales his English prisoners might tell.” Mita’s slim hands twisted. “He—he ordered them shot down as they huddled in their miserable jail. When even his own troops refused to obey such a foul order, the Nana-sahib sent for butchers from the bazaar to do his bidding. Over a hundred women and children died that morning, my own lady among them, for I was ayah to one of the officer’s wives then. It is said that those sad ghosts haunt Cawnpore still, in spite of all the efforts of Brahman, saddhu, and priest to give them peace. And after the Angrezi troops arrived, there was yet more horror.” She passed a trembling hand over her brow. “The mutineers were cut down and some were shot from cannons. I and a score of other women were forced into a boat and taken to Calcutta. On board we were made to—to submit to our English captors. At Calcutta we were taken aboard a ship for London, where we were sold into a brothel. It was there that the Tiger-sahib found me … bought me … gave me back my life and hope. By then I’d heard the stories of the wild-eyed Angrezi who had appeared from the jungle after the massacre, herding a sickly band of women and children to safety. Afterward he had almost died, had lain for days in delirium at Lucknow. But ever after, he would not talk of those dark weeks, nor of the things he had seen and endured during that terrible trek.”

  Silently Barrett clasped Mita’s cold fingers, feeling her pain ebb out in waves. She offered no condolences, no words of sympathy, however.

  In the face of such horror, what sympathy could be given? All she could offer was life and the comforting pressure of living skin.

  The servant blinked and roused herself from her reverie. “Your Angrezi holy book has a phrase, does it not? ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ I have learned to bury my ghosts from Cawnpore, but the Tiger has not. And one day I fear his ghosts will most surely claw him to pieces and devour him.”

  It was said so flatly, so reasonably, that the servant might have been discussing a problem with the tea crop or the changeable weather.

  Barrett watched Pagan shift restlessly on his cot, driven even now by dark visions. Suddenly she felt helpless and clumsy. “But what can we do for him, Mita? There must be something!”

  “Very little, I fear. What is to be done must be done by him and him alone. In that dark place where the sahib drifts now the demons will either conquer or be conquered. I cannot tell which.” With a low sigh, Mita rose to her feet, lines of weariness marring her usually tranquil features. “But I do know this. It is your name that he whispers in the night, Angrezi, your touch whose comfort he craves. Not mine.” The servant’s voice hardened. “Were it otherwise, I would bar your presence here and tend him alone. By the holy breath of Shiva I have prayed often enough that it would be so.”

  And then her thin body sagged. “But my gods do not hear me, and so he is yours now, Angrezi.”

  She looked down at Pagan’s face longingly. “Jo hoga; so hoga, as the Tiger-sahib is liking to say. Perhaps this is my cursed fate—to want and be always denied.” Mita flashed Barrett a last, piercing glance. “We can stay here only a few more hours. Nihal says there is too great a risk of another attack. So the sahib must be made to rest now, to gather his strength for the journey to come, and you must reach him, for he does not hear me. But know that if you fail, you will lose two friends this day, since I will join him. And then you will have two deaths hanging on your conscience instead of one.”

  After a last, lingering look at Pagan, Mita moved slowly to the door of the tent and disappeared.

  Mita did not return. In her place Nihal came with one of the other Tamil workers, bringing clean cloths and warm broth for Pagan.

  Their grim silence made Barrett uneasy, as though they already counted Pagan among the dead.

  But he would not die! She would not let him. He had too many things to repay her for, damn the man!

  With renewed vigor she swept the sweat from his broad shoulders and chest, willing him to stop shifting, stop fighting the healing process.

  When she heard a rustle by her foot a moment later, she paid no notice until she felt a tug at her sleeve.

  Black-eyed and pensive, Magic stared up at her, her intelligent face dark with pain.

  Without a word Barrett took the monkey up into her lap, strangely comforted by her warmth. The little creature made a low, churring noise, her eyes fixed on Pagan’s restless form.

  “Don’t worry, Magic. He will live,” Barrett said resolutely, stroking the creature’s soft gray fur. “I do not intend to let the arrogant creature die. I’m far from finished with him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  He was there again, in that place of darkness where the air shimmered with hatred and the waters ran blood red.

  Bile rose in Pagan’s throat, for the memories were as fresh now as they had been eight years ago.

  First the waiting, enforced silence beneath the sullen, pounding heat of a July sun. Then the slow horror as the Nana-sahib’s troops lined the road to the ghat, rifles, pistols, and swords glittering in the sunlight.

  “No,” he wanted to shout as the English swarmed toward the river. “Come no farther!”

  Instead he ground his teeth together, and forced down the raw cry, knowing that six women and a child huddled in the underbrush behind him, and that his warning shout would be the death warrant for them all.

  So he waited in gut-wrenching silence, watching the macabre scene unfold, helpless to prevent it in any way.

  First the women and children stumbled down to the waiting boats, weak and pale from dysentery and three weeks of constant bombardment by the mutineers’ guns.

  Then the slow, wrenching horror as the rebel troops began to fire and one by one the English fell. As Pagan watched, gagging, the mutineers rode into the water and hacked up any who resisted.

  Cawnpore. As fresh as it ever had been. Relived in all its chill reality on a regular basis for eight years.

  When it was finally over Pagan had twisted to his side and retched up the contents of his stomach, what little there were, for he and his band of stragglers had already passed a fortnight hidden in the jungle.

  And when the slaughter at the ghat was done, he was dead too. Dead from the things he had done, and even more from the things left undone.

  “No. Turn back!”

  Barrett’s eyes flashed open as a hoarse shout burst from the darkness. She lurched upright, realizing she had dozed off. Startled, she reached out for Pagan, and found him sitting bolt upright in his cot, his breath coming fast and jerky.

  He was burning with fever, his body racked by shivering, as it had been for hours.

  “R-run, damn it! No, not to the boats! Not there! They’re hidden, can’t you see them? No,
not to the boats—” His voice broke in a low, grating moan.

  “Pagan!” Barrett grasped his face, determined to reach him. “It’s—it’s over now. You are safe here, safe; the horrors are past!”

  Grim-faced, he stared into the past, locked fingers digging into his rigid thighs. “Please let them see…”

  “It has stopped. You are safe now.” Desperately Barrett searched for a way to rouse him. “You—you are at Windhaven,” she finished breathlessly.

  His jaws clenched. “Windhaven?”

  “Windhaven. Green fields thick with tea. Blue mist curling over the mountains. Can’t you see it, Pagan?”

  “Windhaven,” he repeated slowly. A question and a prayer. And then a benediction. His fingers loosened slightly. “Nihal?”

  “Waits nearby.”

  Slowly the breath hissed from lungs. Eyes closed, he sank back wearily onto his cot. “An—grezi?”

  Barrett’s throat was suddenly raw. She barely managed a low croak in answer.

  His fingers shifted, searching. When they found Barrett’s hand they tightened, their grip so fierce that she nearly cried out with pain.

  And then, his fingers still locked around hers, Pagan drifted off at last to a place where there was neither past nor future, only the deep, soundless corridors of sleep.

  “I am just managing the loan of two elephants from a hill country village, memsab. The beasts are being packed now and I am most frightfully sorry, but I can allow you only two more hours here.” Pagan’s small, leathery headman shrugged unhappily. “Indeed, that is two hours more than is safe, considering…” His dark eyes hardened. “You will understand that the Tiger gave me strict orders in the event of his—his illness. He was very determined for us to arrive safely back at Windhaven. With him—or without him.”

  An angry protest rushed to Barrett’s lips, but she knew that Nihal spoke the truth. How like Pagan to give such a high-handed but selfless order. Infuriating, impossible, wonderful man!