Heart of Light (30 page)

“What did you think you were doing?” the copperyskinned
woman asked Nigel. She was busily cutting the ears and tail off the fallen animal.

He knew who she was, of course. The cook from the encampment, the woman he'd hired, just because he'd wanted the group of carriers who spoke the most English.

She'd looked unremarkable, he remembered, a dark woman in a dark maid's uniform. Nothing to arrest the eye. Now she looked . . . different. She wore a bright-colored fabric, a bloodred and dark green checkered wrap, tied and cinched around her body in such a way that revealed high breasts, a narrow waist and long legs. Her hair, devoid of the maid's cap, was so short that the contours of her finely shaped, oval head were easily visible and emphasized her large, expressive eyes, her high cheekbones, her sensuous lips.

She'd killed a lion, almost with her bare hands. He looked from her striking fast-breathing beauty to the tawny carcass at least four times her size. She'd killed a lion. His mind could not grasp it.

She stood up and stepped back, away from the lion's carcass, panting from her recent exertions and staring at Nigel as if
he
were strange and exotic.

“You came seeking death,” she said, her strangely musical accent making the words sound merry.

And she looked at him, as if quite unaware of a gentleman's honor and what it might lead him to do. She belonged to some tribe, but Nigel couldn't remember the name. He searched for words, for an excuse, but his tongue could not move. Tribes in Africa were so strange when it came to marital relations. There were those that believed a woman could take several men, a man could take several women.

How could Nigel explain to this woman, raised with who knew what morals, his suspicions and the dark torment of his soul? And if he did, and if she understood him, did he want to malign Emily in such a way? Because he wasn't sure of anything. Still, he couldn't bear to live with it. He couldn't bear knowing that his own wife was in love with Peter Farewell.

He supposed that as the native woman said, he'd sought death. Not so brave as to take his own magic stick and discharge it into his head, not so sanguine as to take his knife and plunge it into his aching heart, but he'd braved the darkness of the night and the unknowns of the jungle alone. Because someone or something would surely kill him there. And then he would be at peace and not have to wonder about who loved him and who hated him, and what he'd done to bring it all about.

The woman was still staring at him. “Why would you do that?” she asked. “Why would you want to die?” She surged up close, looking as if she'd slap an answer from him.

Nigel blinked, as though this would allow him to see the scene more clearly and to better understand what was happening. But it didn't. The woman still stood there, a spatter of lion's blood tracing her cheek on the left side, like barbaric jewels, her demanding gaze turned to him.

“I am . . . not as I should be,” Nigel said. Inadequate words to cross the culture barrier, the personality chasm. “I am not capable of doing the things that are expected of me. I am not the man who should be leading this expedition. I am not the right man to be a good husband to my wife. I am not as brave or as strong or as . . . knowledgeable as Peter Farewell. I shouldn't be here. I should never have come to Africa.”

The woman's eyes widened farther and something like recognition fled through them. It was as though she'd known Nigel long ago, but on meeting him again had forgotten the exact shape of his features and could not identify him for a while. Now such a look of recognition flooded her gaze that Nigel was sure she knew him and he must know her. Even if he couldn't imagine from where.

Then the girl looked away from him, her expression suddenly guarded. “You are wrong,” she said. “Even the most ineffective of men would be missed. Have you no family? No parents?”

Nigel lowered his head, feeling the weight of shame. He'd forgotten his mother, waiting in England for Nigel to bring Carew back to her. What would she feel if, instead, Nigel was also found dead? Or disappeared and never returned, as Carew had done? She might not prize Nigel much, but doubtless she cared for the children he could provide to the Oldhall line. Without him, with Carew gone, his parents would be the last of the Oldhalls, rattling around their spacious manor, growing older and older, till at last death overtook them and the line they were so proud of died with them.

He felt himself flush a dark color, and could feel the woman still staring at him intently. “I have parents,” he said at last, looking up. “But I'd forgotten all about them for a moment.”

He expected her to look disdainful or upset. She did neither, and instead handed Nigel his shoe. “Come with me,” she said.

“Where?” he asked, as he pulled some long thorns from his ruined boot, then flinched as he pushed his injured foot into the constricting leather. He felt as if his foot were being wrung within the shoe, leaking warm blood into the toe of the boot. He wondered that he'd not felt the pain before, when he'd left the shoe caught in the thornbush. But he'd been so intent on dying that he'd not thought of pain. His body had been like clothes—like something that belonged to him but didn't have any nerve endings to hurt him.

Now the shock of still being alive made him feel everything with special acuteness—the smell of blood in the air, mixed with the smell of his own sweat and the scent of the woman next to him. His heartbeat seemed too fast, too hurried, dragging air too suddenly out of his chest. He felt his clothes rough against his skin, and the excruciating pain in his confined foot.

The girl looked at Nigel's foot, then up at his face. “Can you walk?” she asked.

Nigel nodded. He would be damned if he was going to have this girl, who'd just rescued him from a lion and certain death, also support him on the way back to camp.

“Good,” the girl said, “because we must go.” She nodded her head toward the lion. “The smell will attract predators. Come.”

She turned her back and set off over the hilly terrain, surefooted and certain, as though she had walked all her life on such land. As perhaps she had.

Watching the way she moved, Nigel's breath caught in his throat. He felt a thrill at her lithe walk, the well-balanced certainty of her body, as graceful, as poised and as attractive as the body of any English lady in a ballroom back home. Then he paused and shook his head. What kind of an idiot was he? He'd always thought that men who went abroad and brought home native wives or acquired strange harems of multicolored concubines were less than honorable. After all, it was not their business to impose themselves on people who, by their circumstances, were unable or unlikely to refuse them. Yet here he was, admiring this native girl.

This woman could very easily refuse him, and probably would. What woman could crave a man whose life she'd had to save? And why would he want this woman to desire him? He was a married man. He loved Emily. He shook his head to clear it of the images that would run through unbidden. The woman stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Are you sure you'll be able to walk?”

“Yes, yes,” Nigel said, and biting back the pain, he limped toward her.

She waited till he caught up with her, then set off at her brisk walk again. Nigel looked away from her, at the terrain around them. He refused to turn and catch a glimpse of her walk, her graceful body, her high breasts. Emily was his wife. He wasn't sure she still loved him, and he wasn't sure that she was faithful. Had she been unfaithful, he had driven her to it with his seeming indifference to her charms. So it fell to him to forgive her, to ignore her transgression, which was born of his own error. It was his duty to take her back and be a loving husband to her.

It was
not
his duty to lust after native girls. What would his mother think? The thought of Lady Oldhall faced with such an unlikely daughter-in-law made laughter bubble up in Nigel's throat and he coughed to hide the strange sound.

The girl turned to look at him, her eyes huge and wondering.

“Er,” Nigel said, “what do I call you?”

She gave him a long, considering look. “You may call me Nassira,” she said at last. She pressed her lips together and glared at him, full of disapproving dignity. “Nassira, daughter of Nedera of the Masai.”

“The Masai,” Nigel said. “Aren't we in their territory?” “Yes.”

And on that note, like bad actors showing up right on cue, people—at least Nigel assumed they were people, though in the dark of night it was hard to tell—jumped in front of them. They called something unintelligible but definitely not friendly, in a sort of hoarse croak, and stood, shoulder to shoulder, barring their way.

In the darkness, Nigel could tell that there were three of them—big and bulky and broad-shouldered, by the look of the silhouettes, and as tall as Nigel himself—with what looked like unlikely high coiffures and some sort of lances.

Natives. He thought of the woman with him. Nassira had been strong enough to kill a lion by herself. But there were snares on the paths walked by men at night that no woman could conquer. That much was true the world over: woman in her peculiar frailty must be prey to man's predatory instincts. And Nigel was the man with her. It fell to him to defend her from these rough strangers.

She'd saved Nigel and now Nigel must save her.

He stepped in front of her, swiftly and—because he reasoned that such a trick might impress these savages—he made a pass with his hand and muttered under his breath the required word. A magelight, tremulous and shadowy—as it would be when he'd spent so many years without ever raising it, but only using the prepackaged ones—glowed in his open hand.

Before him stood three young black men. At least their features revealed that they belonged to the Negro race, but they seemed to have plastered some sort of reddish ocher all over their exposed skin, which extended even to their hair. Their features, the race considered, were almost Roman in their cast and had a nobility of aspect to them that made them the most unlikely rogues ever to walk the roadside at night ambushing strangers. Yet they held vicious-looking sticks—or spears—in their hands, and they stared at Nigel and Nassira with less than benevolent expressions.

They sneered at Nigel's hand and the vacillating light upon it. The taller one, who stood in the middle, opened his own hand. Immediately, without the seeming need for any visible passes or any audible words, a light formed upon his palm and glowed stronger and brighter than Nigel's.

Nigel tried to look impassive, but his surprise must have shown in his face.

The three men laughed, roaring and hooting their amusement. Nigel closed his hand and tried to think of a way to gain safe passage for them both.

His father—and Carew, back when he had been alive and traveling—had often told Nigel that all you needed to command the inferior races was a strong voice of command and the certainty that you should be in charge. Natives were like dogs, they'd said. If you acted as the master and didn't let them see your fear, they could do nothing but obey and go in awe of your greater intelligence and civilization.

Nigel doubted it. Even in London, he'd met enough people of other races to think that they would automatically bow to Englishmen as the Englishman's given right. And if they were so willing to obey anyone with a loud voice—or even a working powerstick—then what were all those endless native rebellions that the royal army was forever putting down?

However . . . here, in the middle of the night, he wished to believe his father and brother. Pushing his doubts out of his mind, he thought of gallant young Nassira, who'd saved him and who deserved better than to be at the mercy of these creatures. Squaring his shoulders, he yelled, “What are you doing here? What do you want? Go back to your village and let us through.”

The men looked surprised. For a moment it seemed to Nigel as though his father had been right all along, and he had been foolish to doubt parental wisdom. And then the men smiled and elbowed each other. The center one, the tallest man, the one holding the magelight, advanced toward Nigel. He touched Nigel on the chest. “Is this how you command, Water Man? Does your rule depend on bluster?”

Nigel took a step back, startled.

“I see,” the native said, “that without your armies, you Water People are not so fearsome. You cannot light a proper magelight, you cannot fight, you cannot even defend yourself.” He pushed Nigel on the chest again.

Nigel stepped back again and his injured foot gave under him. A shameful gasp of pain escaped his lips and he felt himself grow paler. By an effort of will, he remained standing, but his weakness had been noted.

“Interesting,” the native said. He spoke with an accent resembling Nassira's but stronger. He looked over his shoulder and said something—a long string of incomprehensible syllables—to his companions, who chuckled. He then turned back to Nigel, an unpleasant smile curling his lips. “I tell them Englishmen are like hyenas. Fearsome in a pack, scared when caught alone. We should catch Englishmen one by one, and get rid of them forever.”

Nigel stood and clenched his fists. “We're just passing through,” he said. “Let us go back to our camp. We have a big camp. Many men, many power-sticks. Our friends will avenge us terribly.”