A Falcon Flies Part 31

It was like homecoming, and the first thing she saw after her eyes had adjusted to the harsh beam of sunlight through the skylight were the chests of her medical instruments, her remaining medicines and her few personar possessions.

She remembered the unspoken command that Mungo had given to the mate the previous evening. Tippoo must have gone back ash.o.r.e during the night, and she wondered what price he had paid or what threat he had made to get them back for her.

She rose swiftly from her bunk, ashamed of her sloth; whoever had left the chests, had also filled the enamel jug with fresh water. With relief she washed away the mud and filth and combed the tangles of her hair before finding worn. but clean clothing in her chest. Then she hurried from her cabin down to the master's quarters. If Tippoo had been able to find her chests, then he might be able to find and free her people, the Hottentots and porters who had gone upon the auction block in the firelight.

Mungo's bunk was empty, the vest and bloodstained s.h.i.+rt bundled and thrown into a corner of the cabin, and the bedclothes in disarray. She turned swiftly for the deck, and as she came out into the sunlight she saw that it would be only a temporary respite from the monsoon, for already the thunderclouds were boiling up over the horizon.

She looked about her quickly. Huron lay in the centre of a broad estuary, with mangroves on each bank, and the bar and the open sea was not in sight, though the tide was ebbing, rustling down the s.h.i.+p's hull and leaving the mud flats half exposed.

There were other vessels in the roadstead, mostly big dhow-rigged buggaloos typical of the Arab coastal traders, but there was another fully rigged s.h.i.+p at anchor half a mile further downstream, flying the flag of Brazil at her peak. Even as Robyn paused to watch her, there came the clank of her capstan, and men ran up the ratlines and spread out along her yards. She was getting under way. Then Robyn realized that there was unusual activity all about her. Small boats were plying from the sh.o.r.e to the anch.o.r.ed dhows, and even on Huron's deck there was a huddle of men on the quarter-deck.

Robyn turned towards them, and realized that the tallest of them was Mungo, St. John. His arm was in a sling and he looked drawn and pale, but his expression was forbidding, the dark curved brows drawn together in a frown, and the mouth a thin cruel line as he listened attentively to one of his seamen. So absorbed was he that he did not notice Robyn until she was only a few paces away. Then he swung towards her, and all the questions and demands stayed behind her lips for his voice was harsh. Your coming was an act of G.o.d, Doctor Ballantyne, he said. Why do you say that? "There is a plague in the barrac.o.o.ns, he said. "Most of the other buyers are cutting their losses, and leaving."

He glanced downstream to where the Brazilian schooner had set reefed main and jib and was running down towards the bar and the open sea, and there was activity aboard most of the other vessels. But I have over a thousand prime blacks afattening ash.o.r.e, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll run now. At least, not until I know what it is."

Robyn stared at him. Her mind was a whirl of doubts and fears. "Plague" was a layman's word, it covered everything from the Black Death to syphilis, the grand pox, as it was called. I will go ash.o.r.e immediately, she said, and Mungo St. John nodded. I thought you would say that, he said, "I will go with you. "No. " Her tone brooked no argument. "You will aggravate that wound, and in your weakened conditionyou will be easy prey to this plague, whatever it is. " She glanced at Tippoo, and his face split laterally into that broad toadlike grin and he stepped up beside her. By G.o.d, ma'am, I've had them all, said Nathaniel, the little pockmarked bosun. "And none of them killed me yet And he stepped up to her other hand.

Robyn sat in the stern while Tippoo and Nathaniel handled the oars, and as they pulled across the ebb towards the sh.o.r.e the bosun explained what they would find ash.o.r.e. Each of the traders has his own barrac.o.o.n built and guarded by his own men, he told Robyn. "He buys from the Portos as the blackbirds are brought in."

As Robyn listened to Nathaniel, she realized the answers to questions that had worried her and Zouga.

This was the reason why Pereira had tried so desperately to persuade them not to bring the expedition south of the Zambezi river, and why, when all else had failed, he had attacked it with his armed brigands and the to destroy it. He had been protecting his brother's trade routes and selling area. It was not mere avarice and l.u.s.t, but a logical attempt to preserve this lucrative enterprise from discovery.

L She went on listening to Nathaniel. -1 "Each trader fattens his wares ash.o.r.e, like pigs for the market. That way they are stronger for the crossing, and he makes sure that they are healthy and not going to bring sickness aboard with them. There are twenty-three barrac.o.o.ns here, some small ones with twenty blacks or so, belonging to the small traders, right on up to the big ones like Huron's, with a thousand and more prime blackbirds in the cage. We have the slave-decks set up in Huron's hold, and we would have begun taking them aboard any day, but now-Nathaniel shrugged, and spat on the h.o.r.n.y calloused palms of each hand in turn, and then plied himself to the oars once more.

Are you a Christian, Nathaniel? " Robyn asked softly. That I am, ma'am, " he said proudly. "As good a Christian as ever sailed out of Martha's Vineyard. "Do you think G.o.d approves of what you are doing here to these poor people? "Hewers of wood, ma'am, and drawers of water, like the Bible says, the weather-beaten sailor told her, so glibly that she knew that the reply had been put in his mouth, and she guessed by whom.

Once they were ash.o.r.e, Tippoo led the small party with Robyn in the centre and Nathaniel carrying her chest in the rear.

Captain Mungo St. John had chosen the best site available for his barrac.o.o.n, on a rise of ground at a distance from the river. The sheds were well built, with floors of sawn timber raised above the mud and good roofs thatched with palmetto leaves.

Huron's guards had not deserted, proof of the discipline which Mungo St. John maintained and the slaves in the barracks had evidently been carefully chosen.

They were all well set up men and women, and the copper cookers were filled with boiling farina so that their bellies bulged and their skins were glossy.

At Robyn's direction they were lined up and she pa.s.sed swiftly down the ranks. There were some mild ailments, which she singled out for later treatment, but she found none of the symptoms which she so dreaded. There is no plague here, " she decided. "Not yet."

Come! " said Tippoo.

He led her through the palm groves, and the next barrac.o.o.n had been deserted by the traders who had built it and stocked it. Already the slaves were hungry and confused by their sudden liberation. You are free to go, " Robyn told them. "Go back to your own land."

She was not certain that they understood her. They squatted in the mud and stared at her blankly. It was as though they had lost all power of independent thought or action, and she knew that they would never be able to make their way back along the Hyena Road, even if they survived the coming epidemic.

With a flash of horror Robyn realized that without their slave-masters these poor creatures were doomed to a lingering death by starvation and disease. Their masters had cleared out the store rooms before they left, there was not a cupful of farina or corn meal left in any of the barrac.o.o.ns they visited that morning.

We will have to feed them, " Robyn said. We have food for our own, that is all, Tippoo told her impa.s.sively. He is right, ma'am, Nathaniel confirmed. rWe feed them, then we'll starve our own blackbirds, besides, most of them are poor goods, not worth the price of a cup of farina."

In the second barrac.o.o.n Robyn thought that she had at last discovered the first plague victims, for the low thatched sheds were crammed with rows of prostrate naked figures, and their low moaning and whimpering was a heart-breaking sound, while the smell of corruption was thick and oily on the palate.

It was Tippoo who corrected her. "China birds, he grunted, and for a moment Robyn did not understand, and she stooped over the nearest body, then straightened immediately. Despite her training cold blisters of sweat formed on her forehead.

By Imperial Decree from Peking, no black African slave could be landed on the sh.o.r.es of China unless he had been rendered incapable of reproducing his own kind. The Emperor was concerned that future generations would not be plagued by the growth of an alien population in their midst. The traders found it expedient to castrate their purchases in the barrac.o.o.ns, so that losses caused by the operation could be absorbed before the expense of the long voyage was incurred.

It was crudely done, a tourniquet applied to the root of the s.c.r.o.t.u.m and then the entire scrotal sack removed at a single knife stroke and the wound cauterized immediately with a heated iron or a daub of hot pitch.

About sixty percent would survive the shock and subsequent mortification, but their price per capita was so enhanced that the trader could face forty percent losses with equanimity.

There was nothing that Robyn could do for so many, she felt overwhelmed by the suffering and misery all around her, and she stumbled out on to the muddy pathway, blinded by her own tears. In the next barrac.o.o.n, the one nearest to the central auction block, she found the first plague victims.

Once again the sheds had been deserted by the slavemasters, and the dimly lit thatched sheds were filled with naked figures, some squatting motionlessly, others lying on the damp earthen floor, knees drawn up, shaking with the cold of fever, and powerless to lift themselves out of their own bodily wastes. The sound of delirium and suffering was murmurous as of insects in an English orchard on a hot summer's day.

The first sufferer that Robyn touched was a young girl, just beyond p.u.b.erty, and her skin was burning hot. She rolled her head from side to side, endlessly and senselessly, mouthing s.n.a.t.c.hes of gibberish. Swiftly Robyn ran her fingertips down the girl's naked bulging stomach and immediately she felt the tiny lumps under the hot skin, like pellets of buckshot. There could be no doubt.

Smallpox, she said simply, and Tippoo drew back fearfully. Wait outside, she told him, and he went swiftly and with obvious relief. She turned to Nathaniel. She had noticed the little pitted scars in his folded sun-toughened skin, and now there was no fear in his expression.

When? " she asked. When I was a boy, " he said. "It killed my old ma -and my brothers."

We have work to do, she told him.

In the gloomy stinking shed the dead were piled with the living, and on some of the wracked and furnaceheated black bodies the plague had already burst into full flower. They found it in all its stages. Papules beneath the skin had erupted into vesicles, bubbles of clear thin fluid that thickened into pustules, which in turn burst and released a custard-thick trickle of matter. These will live, " Robyn told Nathaniel. "The plague is purging from their blood. " She found a man whose open pocks had already crusted over.

While Nathaniel held the man from moving, Robyn sc.r.a.ped away the crusty scabs with a spatula and gathered them in a wide-mouthed gla.s.s bottle that had once held quinine powder.

, This strain of the disease has been attenuated, Robyn exp lamed impatiently, and for the first time she saw fear in the flecked eyes of Mungo St. John. "The Turks first used this method two hundred years ago. "I would prefer to sail away from it, Mungo St. John said quietly, staring at the stoppered bottle which was half filled with damp yellow matter in which were s mall flecks of blood. It would be no use. The infection is already aboard-."

Robyn shook her head firmly. "In a week or less Huron would be turned into a stinking plague-s.h.i.+p filled with dying men."

Mungo turned away from her and went to the s.h.i.+p's rail. he's stood there one hand clasped -into a fist behind his back, the other still in its sling staring at the sh.o.r.e where the thatched roofs of the barrac.o.o.ns just showed above the mangroves.

You cannot leave those poor wretches, " Robyn said. They will starve.

I alone could never find food to feed that mult.i.tude. You are responsible for them."

He did not answer her for a moment, then he turned back to study her curiously. if Huron sailed, with her holds empty, would you stay here on this fever and smallpox-ridden coast to tend this mult.i.tude of doomed savages? " he asked. Of course. " She was still impatient, and he inclined his head. His eyes no longer mocked, but were sober, perhaps even filled with respect. If you will not stay for common humanity, then stay for self-interest. " She scorned him with her tone. "A million dollars" worth of human cattle, and I will save them for you."

. "You would save them to be sold into captivity? " he insisted.

Even slavery is better than death, she replied.

Again, he turned away from her, taking a slow turn of the quarterdeck, frowning thoughtfully, puffing on the long black cheroot so that wreathes of tobacco smoke drifted behind him, and Robyn and half Huron's crew watched him, some fearfully, others with resignation. You say that you have yourself undergone this, this thing. " His eyes were drawn back, with loathing fascination, to the little bottle that stood in the centre of his chart table.

For answer Robyn lifted the sleeve of her s.h.i.+rt and showed him the distinctive deeply pocked scar on her forearm.

A minute longer he hesitated, and she went on persuasively, "I will give you a strain of the disease that is "pa.s.sant" that has been weakened and attenuated by pa.s.sage through another man's body, rather than the virulent form of the plague which you will breathe on the very air and which will kill most of you. There is no risk? " She hesitated and then replied firmly, "There is always risk, but one hundred, nay a thousand times, less risk, than if you take the disease from the air With an abrupt gesture Mungo St. John ripped open the sleeve on his left arm with his teeth and offered it to her. Do it, he said. "But in G.o.d's name do it quickly, before my courage fails."

She drew the point of her scalpel across the smooth deeply tanned skin of his forearm and the tiny crimson droplets rose behind it. He did not flinch, but when she dipped the scalpel into the bottle and sc.r.a.ped up a speck of the noisome yellow stuff, he blanched and made as if to jerk his arm away, then with an obvious effort controlled himself.

She smeared the pus over the tiny wound, and he stepped back and turned from her. All of you. " His voice was rough with his horror and disgust. "Every last one of you, he told the gaping terrified seamen.

With Nathaniel, the bosun, there were three others who had survived the disease, and were speckled by the small dimpled scars which were its stigma.

Four men were not enough to help Robyn care for a thousand slaves, and her losses were much higher than she had expected. Perhaps this strain of the disease was more virulent, or perhaps the black men from the interior did not have the same resistance as the Europeans whose forbears had for generations been exposed to smallpox.

She introduced the crusted pus into the scratches on their limbs, working in the noon sunlight on into the gloom of dusk and then by the lantern's gleam, and they submitted with dumb resignation of the slave which she found pitiful and repugnant, but which none the less made her work much easier.

The reaction began within hours, the swelling and fever and the vomiting, and she went out into the other deserted barrac.o.o.ns to gather more of the loathsome pus from the bodies of those who had survived the smallpox and were now dying of starvation and neglect, resigning herself to the fact that she had only the strength and time to care for those in Huron's barrac.o.o.ns, resigning herself to the fact that there was farina to feed them only, and closing her mind to the cries and entreaty, to the silent dying stare from wizened faces that streamed pus from open pocks.

Even in her own barrac.o.o.n the four of them working hour after hour, night and day, could give only perfunctory attention to each of the slaves, a handful of the cold pasty farina and a mugful of water once a day during the period of the most violent reaction to the inoculation.

Those who survived this were left to care for themselves, to crawl to the water bucket when they could or to wolf a lump of farina from the spadeful that Nathaniel left on a wooden platter at intervals between the rows of supine figures.

Then when they were strong enough to stand they were put to work at piling the rotting bodies of their less fortunate peers upon a gun carriage and dragging them out of the barrac.o.o.n. There was not the remotest chance of either burying or burning the bodies, and there were too many for the bloated vultures. They piled the corpses in heaps in the coconut grove, well downwind of the barrac.o.o.n and went back for more.

Twice a day Robyn went down to the edge of the creek and hailed the anchor watch on Huron's deck and had the whaler row her out to the s.h.i.+p, and she spent an hour in the stern cabin.

Mungo St. John's reaction had been frighteningly severe, perhaps he had been weakened by the knife wound. His arm had swollen to almost twice normal size, and the scratch Robyn had inflicted turned into a hideous canker with a thick black crusty scab. His fever was intense, his skin almost painfully hot to the touch, and the flesh seemed to melt off his big-boned frame like candle wax under the flame.

Tippoo, himself suffering from a raging fever, his own arm swollen grotesquely, could not be made to leave the side of Mungo's bunk.

Robyn felt easier knowing that Tippoo was there, strangely gentle, almost like a mother with a child, to care for Mungo while she must go back ash.o.r.e to the suffering mult.i.tude that choked the barrac.o.o.ns.

on the twelfth day when she went aboard Huron, Tippoo met her at the companionway with that wide toadlike grin which she had not seen for so long, and when she hurried into the cabin she saw why.

Mungo was propped up on the bolsters, thin and pale, his lips dry and dark purple bruises under his eyes, as though he had been beaten with a heavy club, but he was lucid and his skin cool. G.o.d's breath, he croaked. "You look awful! " And she felt like weeping with relief and chagrin.

When she had bathed and bandaged the shrinking canker on his forearm and was ready to leave, he took her wrist. You are killing yourself, he whispered. "When did you last sleep, and for how long? " only when he spoke did she realize the depth of her exhaustion, it had been two days previously and then only for a few hours that she had slept, and she felt Huron's deck swing and lurch under her feet as though she rode a high sea and was not lying quietly at anchor in a placid creek.

Mungo drew her down gently beside him on to the bunk, and she did not have either the strength or will to resist. He made a cradle for her head on his shoulder, and almost immediately she was asleep, her last memory was the feel of his fingers smoothing back the dank ringlets from her temples.

She awoke with a guilty start, not sure how long she had slept, and still fuzzy with sleep struggled out of Mungo St. John's arms brus.h.i.+ng the hair out of her eyes Z with her fingers, trying ineffectually to straighten her rumpled and sweat-dampened clothing. I must go! she blurted groggily, still exhausted and half asleep. How many had died while she slept, she wondered. Before he could prevent it, she was stumbling up the companionway to the deck calling for Nathaniel to row her ash.o.r.e.

The few hours of rest had refreshed her so that she looked about the estuary with a new and lively interest again. It was the first time that she became aware that one other vessel, besides Huron, was still lying at anchor in the river. It was one of the small dhow-rigged buggaloos, the coastal slavers similar to the one from which she had rescued Juba. On impulse, she had Nathaniel row her alongside, and when n.o.body answered her hail, she went aboard. The vessel had clearly been overwhelmed by the plague before she could flee, perhaps she was the vessel from which the original infection had been carried ash.o.r.e.

Robyn found the same conditions prevailing aboard as there were ash.o.r.e, the dead, the dying, and those who would recover. Although they were slavers she was still a physician, and she had taken the Hippocratic oath.

What she could do was very little, but she did it and the Arab captain, stricken and weakened, thanked her from his sleeping-mat on the open deck. May Allah walk beside you, he whispered, "and may he give me the opportunity to return this kindness one day. , And may Allah show you the error of your ways, Robyn told him tartly. "I will send some fresh water, before nightfall, but now there are others more deserving."

In the days that followed, the plague ran its inexorable course, the weaklings died, some of them consumed by the terrible thirsts of fever crawled from the abandoned barrac.o.o.ns on to the mud flats of the estuary to fill their bellies with the salt water. Their bodies were twisted into grotesque contortions by the cramps of the salt in their blood, and their insane rantings were like the cries of seabirds across the water, extinguished at last by the incoming tide. The surface of the river was troubled by the swirl and splash of the crocodile and the big sharks that had come upstream to gather this grisly harvest.

Others had crawled away into the forest and groves; they lay under every bush and even before they died they were covered with a red mantle of the fierce safari ants that overnight picked the skeleton to gleaming whiteness.

Some of those that survived, encouraged by Robyn, crept weakly away towards the west. Perhaps a few would complete the long hazardous journey back to their razed villages and devastated countryside, she hoped.

However, most of the survivors of the plague were too weak and confused and demoralized to move. They stayed on in the squalid stinking barrac.o.o.ns, pathetically dependent upon Robyn and her tiny band of helpers for every mouthful of water and farina, watching her with the eyes of dumb and suffering animals.

All this time the piles of corpses in the palm groves grew taller, and the stench more penetrating. Robyn knew too well what would happen next. The battlefield plagues, she explained to Mungo St. John. "They always follow when the dead are left unburied, when the rivers and wells are choked with bodies. If they strike now, then none will survive. All of us are weakened, we would be unable to resist the typhoid and enteric plagues. Now is the time to leave, for we have saved all those who are for saving. We must fly before the new onslaught, for unlike the smallpox, there is no defence against them."

IrMost of my crew are still sick and weakThey will recover swiftly out on the open ocean."

Mungo St. John turned to Nathaniel to ask, "How many slaves have survived? IMore than eight hundred, thanks to the missus here."

We will begin to take them aboard at dawn tomorrow, he decided.

That night Robyn came back to his cabin after dark. She could not stay away, and he was waiting for her, she could tell by his expression and the quickness of his smile. I was beginning to fear that you preferred the company of eight hundred plague-ridden slaves, " he greeted her. Captain St. John, I wish to make one more appeal to you. As a Christian gentleman, will you not release these poor creatures and have them escorted and fed on the Tourney back to where they cameHe interrupted her, his tone light and that smile hovering on his lips. And will you not call me Mungo, rather than Captain St. John?

She ignored the interruption, and went on. "After all they have suffered, that terrible march down from the highlands, the error and humiliation of slavery and now this plague. If you would consent to release them, I would lead them back to their homes."

He rose from the canvas chair and came to stand over her. His leanness and pallor made him seem even taller.

Mungo! " he insisted. G.o.d would forgive you, I am sure of that, he would forgive you the sins that you have already committed against humanity-, Mungo! " he whispered, and placed his hands upon her shoulders. She felt herself begin to tremble uncontrollably.

He drew her to his chest. She could feel his ribs, he was so thin, and her voice choked up in her throat when she tried to continue her appeal. Slowly he stooped over her, and she closed her eyes tightly, her arms stiff at her sides, her fists clenched. Say Mungo! he commanded quietly, and his lips were cool and soft on hers. Her trembling became uncontrolled shaking.

Her lips opened under his, and her arms went up around his neck. Mungo, " she sobbed. "Oh, Mungo, Mungo."

She had been taught that her naked body was shameful, but it was the one lesson that she had learned imperfectly, and much of her shame had been mitigated, firstly in the lecture rooms and dissection rooms of St. Matthew's, and secondly in the company of Juba, the little Matabele dove, whose unaffected delight in her nudity she had transmitted to Robyn. Those childlike I romps together in the cool green pools of an African river had served to blow away most of the cobwebs of shame.

Now Mungo St. John's delight in and admiration for her body gave her joy and, far from shame, brought her pride that she had never known before. Their lovemaking was no longer accompanied by pain, there were - so locked together I no longer barriers between them they could ride the dips and swings of emotion from Himalayan heights where the great winds blew, down to the sweet languorous depths where they seemed to be drowning in honey, each movement slowed, every breath drawn out as though it would last forever, their bodies damp and hot, pressed together and without form, like clay in the hands of a child.

The night was too short, while the wick of the lantern guttered and smoked, neglected and untrimmed. In the dawn, their loving seemed to have filled them with new strength, to have driven away the weakness of fever and the exhaustion of the past weeks.

It was only the sound of the first slaves coming aboard that roused Robyn and brought her back from that far frontier to the hot and cramped little cabin on a slave s.h.i.+p in a fever creek on a wild and brutal continent.

She heard the whisper of bare feet and the clank and drag of slave chains, the sound of men's voices raised, hectoring and impatient, on the deck above.

Hurry them, or we load for a week. " Tippoo's voice.

Robyn raised herself on her elbow and looked down at Mungo. His eyes were closed but he was not asleep, she knew. Now, she whispered. "Now you cannot but release them. After last night, I know that something has changed in you."

She felt a strange joy, the zeal of the prophet looking down upon a convert for whose soul she had wrestled with the devil and won. Call Tippoo, " she insisted, "and give him the order to free the slaves."

Mungo opened his eyes, even after the long night in which neither of them had slept, his eyes were clear.

There was the shadow of new beard, dense and dark, carpeting his bony jawline. He was magnificent and she knew then that she loved him. Call Tippoo, she repeated, and he shook his head, a little gesture of perplexity. You still do not understand, " he answered her. "This is my life. I cannot alter that, not for you nor for anybody. "Eight hundred souls, she pleaded, "and you have their salvation in your handsNo. " He shook his head again. "You are wrong, not eight hundred souls but eight hundred thousand dollars that is what I have in my hands."

Mungo! His name still felt awkward on her lips.

Jesus has said that it is easier for a camel to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle than that a rich man should enter the kingdom of Heaven. Let them go, you cannot judge human lives in gold."

He laughed and sat up, With eight hundred thousand bucks, I can bribe my way into Heaven, if I want to, but between us, my dear, it sounds an awfully dull place. I think the devil and I might have more to talk about."

The mocking gleam was back in his eye again, and he swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk, and naked crossed to where his breeches hung on a wooden peg from the bulkhead. We have lain too long abed, he said briskly. "I must see to the loading, and you had best begin your own preparations for the voyage. " He belted his breeches and stuffed his s.h.i.+rt into them. "it will take us three days to load, I would be obliged if you would test the water barrels. " He came to sit on the edge of the bunk and began dragging on his boots, talking the while in crisp businesslike fas.h.i.+on, detailing the preparations that she should make for the welfare of the slaves during the voyage. We will have less than a full cargo, which will make it easier to exercise them on deck and keep the holds clean. " He stood up and looked down at her.

With a rush like a roused fawn she threw off the blanket that covered her and knelt on the edge of the bunk, seizing him about the waist with both arms.

IMungo, she whispered urgently, "you cannot torture us so. " She pressed the side of her face to his chest, feeting the harsh springing curls of his body hair even through the linen of his s.h.i.+rt. "I cannot offend further against my G.o.d and my conscience, unless you free these poor d.a.m.ned souls, then I can never marry you."

His expression changed swiftly, becoming tender and concerned. He lifted his hand to stroke the dense russet locks of her hair, still damp and tangled from the loving of the night. My poor darling, his lips formed the words, soundlessly, but her face was still pressed to his chest and she could not see his lips. He drew a deep breath, and though his eyes were still marked with regret and his expression sober, his tone was light and casual. Then it is just as well that I have no intention of freeing a single one of them, for what would my wife say otherwise? " The words took many seconds to make sense to Robyn, and then her whole body spasmed, her grip around his waist tightened and then slowly relaxed. She released him. Slowly she sat back on her heels, naked in the midst of his disordered bunk, and she stared at him with an expression of desolation and disbelief. You are married? " Robyn's voice echoed strangely in her own ears, as though from the end of a long bare corridor, and Mungo nodded. These ten years past, he answered quietly.