The keys were still in the door between the lazaretto and saloon where she had left them. She pushed the door open quickly and paused in the opening an instant, feeling the quick flare of alarm overtake her feeling of elation.
She had only an instant of time to realize that somebody had trimmed the saloon lamp, and then fingers seized her wrist from behind and swung her off balance, bearing her down heavily to the deck and holding her there with one arm twisted up between her shoulderblades. Keep still, damn you, or I'll twist your head off your shoulders. ' Mungo St. John's voice was low and fierce in her ear.
Her arm holding the chain was trapped under her, and now her captor shifted his weight over her, placing his knee in the small of her back and bearing down so painfully that she wanted to Cry Out with the agony that flared up her curved spine. Tippoo flushed you out quickly enough, ' St. John murmured with grim satisfaction. 'Now let's have a look at you, before we stretch you out on the grating.'
He reached forward and pulled off the cloth cap that covered her head, and she heard his little grunt of surprise as her hair tumbled loose in a slippery shining mass in the lamplight. His grasp slackened and the pressure of his knee into the base of her spine eased. Roughly he grasped her shoulder to turn her on to her back so he could see her face.
She rolled easily towards him and then as her trapped arm came free, she hurled the chain at his face. He threw up both hands to catch the blow. As slippery as an eel she wormed out from under him and flew at the door to the saloon.
He was quick, quicker than she was, and his fingers were steely, they caught in the thin worn flannel of her shirt and it ripped from collar to hem. She turned and lashed at him with the chain again, but now he was ready for her, and he caught her wrist, trapping it.
She kicked wildly at his shins, and succeeded in hooking an ankle behind his heel and they went down together in a tangle on to the wooden deck, and Robyn found herself carried along by a fierce uncaring madness.
She was hissing and snarling like a cat as she raked at his eyes with her nails, raising a bloody line down his neck. The tatters of her shirt flapped around her waist and the coarse dark hair of his chest rasped against the tender points of her naked breasts so that dimly in her madness she realized that he wore only breeches, and the man smell of his body filled her nostrils as he tried to smother her wild struggles with his body.
She reached up towards him with her open mouth, trying to sink her teeth into that flushed handsome face, but he caught a handful of her hair at the back'of her head and twisted it. The pain seemed to flow down through her body and explode at the base of her belly in a warm soft spasm that took her breath and crammed it down into her lungs.
He held her helplessly and she felt the strength going out of her, to be replaced by spreading languor, and she stared up into his face with a kind of wonder as though she had never seen it before. She saw his teeth were very white, his lips drawn back into a rictus of emotion, and fierce yellow eyes unfocused and smoky with a kind of madness that matched her own.
She made one last feeble effort to repel him, driving her knee upwards, aimed at the fork of his lower body, but he trapped it between his thighs and then holding her thus he reared up over her and looked down at her bared bosom. Sweet Mother of GOD! he croaked, and she saw the cords strain tight in his throat, saw the hot yellow fire in his eyes and she could not move, not even when he freed his hooked fingers from the twisted tresses of her hair and ran them slowly down her body, cupping first one tight small breast and then the other in the palm of his hand.
She felt his touch had gone, though the memory lingered on her skin like butterflies' wings. Then his fingers were back, tugging demandingly at the fastenings of her breeches. She closed her eyes and refused to let her mind consider what was about to happen. She knew that there was nothing she could do to escape, and cried out softly with the strange elation of the martyr.
But her cry seemed to touch something deep in him, the smoky yellow eyes focused for a moment, the predatory expression of the face became uncertain and then tinged with horror as he looked down at her spread white body. Swiftly he rolled away from her.
Cover yourself! ' he said harshly, and she was overwhelmed with a cold avalanche of loss, followed immediately by as great a rush of shame and of guilt.
She scrambled to her knees, clutching her clothing around her, suddenly shivering, but not with cold. You should not have struggled, he said and though he was obviously fighting to control it his voice shook as hers did. I hate you, she whispered foolishly, and then it became true. She hated him for what he had aroused in her, for the sickness and the guilt that followed it, and for the sense of loss and bereavement with which he had left her. I should kill you, he muttered, not looking at her. 'I should have Tippoo do it.'
She felt no fear at the threat. She had rearranged her clothing as best she could, but still she knelt opposite him. Go! he almost shouted at her. 'Get back to your cabin.'
She rose slowly, hesitated a moment and then turned to the companionway. Doctor Ballantyne! ' he stopped her, and she turned back. He had risen and now he stood beside the door to the lazaretto, the keys in his one hand, the slave cuff and chain in the other. 'It would be best not to tell your brother of what you discovered tonight. ' His voice was controlled now, cold and low. 'I would not have the same scruples with him. We will be at Cape Town in four days, he went on. 'After that you may do as you will.
Until then you will not provoke me again. One chance is already too many.
She stared at him mutely, feeling small and helpless. Goodnight, Doctor Ballantyne.'
She hardly had time to pack her breeches and torn shirt away in the bottom of her chest, inspect and rub a salve on her bruises, pull on her nightdress and climb into her narrow bunk before someone pounded on the cabin door. Who is it? ' she called huskily and breathless, not yet fully recovered from the night's stresses. Sissy, it's me. ' Zouga's voice. 'Someone has beaten Tippoo's skull in. He's bleeding all over the deck, can you come? ' Robyn glowed with a fierce spark of pagan glee, which she tried immediately to suppress with less than complete success. I'm coming.'
There were three men in the saloon, Zouga, the second mate and Tippoo. Mungo St. John was not there. Tippoo sat stolidly on a stool under the oil lamp, naked except for his cotton loin cloth, and his neck and shoulders ran with sheets of dark slick blood.
The second mate held a wad of grubby cotton to his skull and when Robyn lifted it away the wounds began spurting merrily. Brandy, she demanded, and rinsed her hands and her instruments in the spirit, she was an admirer and believer in the teachings of Jenner and Lister, before she probed the points of her forceps into the open wound. She gripped the vessels and twisted them closed.
