My Lord Savage

“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—”

“That’s quite enough lecturing!” Sir Christopher snapped. “I am your father, after all, and entitled to some degree of respect.”

“Of course you are!” Rowena bit back a sob of frustration. “But, by heaven, this creature’s not one of your apes or foreign birds! You can’t just stuff him into a cage and—”

A sharp moan from the savage cut into her words. Glancing swiftly down, she saw that his eyes were closed, but his head was rolling back and forth on the pillow. His body jerked, straining at the linen strips that bound him to the cot.

“There…” She sponged his burning face with the damp cloth. “There, now, it’s all right. Rest…”

Little by little the savage’s body relaxed beneath her touch. His breath eased out in a long, powerful exhalation as he slipped back into his dark void.

Silence hung heavy in the small chamber, broken only by the cry of a storm petrel and the sound of the sea beyond the high window. At last Sir Christopher sighed, a tired and broken sound. “I’ve been a selfish old man,” he said. “And I’ve done you no good service, child, keeping you here in this lonely old house with no friends your own age.”

Rowena glanced up at him, caught off balance by this sudden turn of conversation.

“You’ve given your poor, tender heart to every wounded bird and fox and hare that’s found its way onto the grounds,” he continued gravely. “But as you pointed out yourself, this creature who lies before us is no mere beast of the field. He is capable of doing you more harm, my dear, than a veritable menagerie of wild animals.”

“Father—”

“No, let me finish. You’ve defied me at every turn in this matter, Rowena. But for your own safety and my own peace of mind, I insist on your obedience this time. You’re to keep away from this chamber and leave the tending of the savage strictly to me.”

Rowena sprang to her feet, a flood of impassioned protests surging in her mind. The savage trusted her—more so, at least, than anyone else in this place. He needed her.

But wisdom and experience constrained her to hold her tongue. She recognized the finality in her father’s tone. There were times when Sir Christopher could not be defied, and this was one of them.

“Your concern is for naught, Father,” she argued, still hoping to persuade him. “The savage is too weak to do me harm, and with Thomas here to guard me—”

“My dear child.” Sir Christopher laid a gentle hand on her arm—a rare gesture of affection on his part. “’Tis not so much the safety of your body that troubles me as the safety of your heart.”

“With all due respect, Father, you presume too much!”

“Do I?” The sadness in his voice struck her harder than any blow. “Even the appearance of evil is dangerous. A mere whisper of scandal could mark you for life, ruin any future prospects—”

“You mean the chance of my marrying respectably, let alone well?” Rowena managed a bitter chuckle. “At my age, Father, that’s hardly a consideration!”