Bewitched (Bantam Series No. 16) (10 page)

“Yes, but many years ago,” Saviya replied, “before I was born, or when I was only a baby. I do not remember it.”

They talked for some time and then Saviya said:

“I think I must go. My father will wonder what has happened to me, since the rest of the tribe will have long returned to the camp.” As she spoke the door opened and a footman came into the Salon. He carried something in his hand and went up to stand at the side of the Marquis waiting for him to finish speaking.

“What is it?” the Marquis asked.

“This has just been left at the front door, M’Lord. A man gave it to me saying I was to present it to Your Lordship in your bed-room, but seeing that you had not retired, I thought I should bring it here.”

“A man?” the Marquis questioned.

“I think he must have been a Gypsy, M’Lord. He said, ‘Tell His Lordship this is a gift from the Gypsies’.”

The Marquis glanced at Saviya.

“It sounds as if your father is being unexpectedly generous.”

The footman put the parcel into his hands and Saviya saw it was a round wicker basket, not very large, the lid fastened down at each side with a small wooden peg slipped into a cane loop.

“Do you know anything about this?” the Marquis enquired.

She shook her head.

“I cannot imagine what it is. I do not think it can be from my father. It is not the sort of thing he would do without telling me.”

“A gift from the Gypsies...” the Marquis repeated. “Well, I shall expect something unusual, Saviya.”

He pulled out the two small wooden pegs as he spoke.

Then, just as he was about to raise the lid, Saviya suddenly seized it from his hands, and with a swiftness that took him by surprise, ran down the room, put the basket on the floor and pushed it away from her.

It slid across the polished parquet floor, where there were no rugs, to come to rest almost in front of the door.

“Whatever are you doing?” the Marquis asked in astonishment. As he spoke, the lid of the basket slipped to one side, and through the aperture came first a long, forked tongue, then the head and finally the body of a snake!

It moved so quickly there was hardly time for anyone to ejaculate before on reaching the floor it raised itself and its hood expanded to reveal that it was a cobra.

“Good God!”

The Marquis could hardly say the words, while Charles Collington exclaimed:

“A pistol! Where do you keep a pistol, Fabius?”

The cobra darted its head first right and then left. It was hissing, its long tongue licking in and out of its mouth, obviously angry and annoyed at being moved about.

Charles Collington started to walk cautiously along the side of the room in an attempt to reach the door behind the snake. With a little gesture of her hand, Saviya stopped him.

“Keep still!” she said in a very low voice. “Do not move or speak.”

There was an authority in her tone that was unmistakable, and while the Marquis would have expostulated, he bit back the words even as he started to say them.

Moving a little nearer to the hissing, angry reptile, Saviya started to make a strange sound.

It was not exactly singing, it was like the notes of the reed-pipe used by the snake-charmers in India. Yet it came from between her lips and was at first so faint that the three men listening could hardly hear it.

But the cobra heard and now its tongue no longer flicked out, and it turned its head curiously, first this way, then that, regarding Saviya with its yellow eyes.

He was still poised for the attack, his head with its inflated hood high in the air.

Slowly, making that strange music which seemed to consist of just three notes repeated over and over again, Saviya drew a little nearer.

Firstly, she sank down on her knees just a short distance from the cobra, her eyes on his, her body very still.

There was complete silence in the room except for her voice, and the three men watching hardly seemed to breathe. They stood as if turned to stone.

Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, in time to the notes, Saviya began to move her shoulders a little to the left and then to the right, swaying rhythmically, her eyes all the time on the cobra.

Now he too began to move, swaying as she did, turning his yellowish head with the black and white spectacle-shaped markings on its wide hood to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left.

Still she intensified her tune and her movements until, its hood subsiding, the cobra sank little by little, lower and lower until finally his head was flat on the ground and he appeared to make an obeisance to her.

Then her tune altered and, almost as if she gave a note of command, the sound was abrupt yet still melodious.

Unbelievably, as it seemed to the men watching, the cobra obeyed, and turning he slithered slowly, moving in a very different manner to the quickness with which he had left the basket, back into it.

He slipped over the edge of the basket and, as they watched, his long dark body slithered after his head until finally the tip of his tail disappeared.

Still singing, Saviya very gently moved forward. She pressed the lid back into place and slipped the wooden pegs into the cane loops, which held it firm.

As soon as the basket was secure she ceased her song, and it seemed for a moment as if she would collapse.

The Marquis was at her side and put his arms around her to lift her to her feet.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I ... I am ... all right.”

But he saw that her face was very pale and was afraid that she might faint.

He helped her across the room to settle her down into a chair.

“Do not talk!” he commanded and poured her out a drink.

She took two or three sips, then gave him back the glass.

“I do not need it,” she said.

“How could you charm that snake?” Sir Algernon enquired. “I have heard of it being done, but would never have believed it was possible for anyone without an enormous amount of training, and certainly not for a woman!”

“I have seen it done many times,” Saviya replied. “But it is the first time I have actually tried it myself.”

“Then it was even more miraculous,” the Marquis said. “We can only thank you very gratefully, Saviya. I do not need to tell you that you saved my life!”

Saviya gave a deep sigh.

“I suddenly realised that the basket was not of the type used by Gypsies, but by the Circus people. For a moment I could not think where I had seen one before, then I remembered the snake-charmers that we have encountered on our travels.”

She paused for a moment before looking up at the Marquis and said:

“Their snakes usually have the bags of venom in their fangs removed, but this was a young cobra and had not been treated. If he had bitten you, it would have been fatal. The venom acts quickly on the nervous system.”

“But who can want to murder you, Ruckley?” Sir Algernon enquired.

“The answer to that is quite easy—” Charles Collington began, only to be silenced as the Marquis interposed:

“There is no point in discussing it, Charles. Again we have no proof.”

“What is going on? You must tell me about it,” Sir Algernon asked curiously.

“I think it is time that Saviya went to bed,” the Marquis suggested.

“Yes, I must go,” she agreed obediently.

She curtsied to Sir Algernon and to Charles Collington. The Marquis walked with her across the Hall and out through the main door.

She turned to say good-night but he shook his head.

“I will come with you to the wood,” he said. “I do not like to think of your going alone.”

“I will be quite safe,” she replied. “It is you I worry about. Who is the man who wishes to kill you? If you do not tell me I shall lie awake all night trying to see his name as I have seen his face.”

“You told me when we were in the Picture Gallery that his name began with the same letter as mine,” the Marquis replied. “You were right, Saviya, he is my cousin, Jethro Ruck. If I am dead he will inherit the title and the Estate.”

“This is not the first time he has tried?” Saviya enquired, as they walked across the Court-Yard side by side.

“He attempted to destroy me in London, by dislodging a piece of masonry from the top of my house in Berkeley Square,” the Marquis answered. “It missed me by a hairs breadth, and tonight if I had, as he thought, retired to bed I would have opened the basket when I was alone.”

Saviya shivered.

“He is dangerous! Very dangerous!” she said. “I beg you to be careful.”

The Marquis smiled.

“You sound very like Charles. You tell me to be careful, but I should require to be as clairvoyant as you are to anticipate the strange and unusual ways in which Jethro is attempting to exterminate me.”

The Marquis was silent for a moment and then he said:

“It was clever of him to pretend it was a present from the Gypsies. He must have learnt about you when he was making enquiries in the village, and he knew, I dare say, without being told that if I did in fact receive a present from you I would open it personally.”

“I will never send you anything that you do not anticipate,” Saviya promised.

“I doubt if Jethro will repeat the same trick twice. What shall I do with the snake—kill it?”

“No!” Saviya said. “I think it is wrong to take life unless it is absolutely necessary. But the Kalderash celebrate the Feast of the Serpent on March fifteenth. On that day, if anyone kills a snake, he will be fortunate throughout the year.”

She paused before she continued:

“I have heard there is a Circus at St. Albans. That was where your cousin must have obtained the snake. Send them back the cobra with your compliments. I think they will understand and not make the mistake another time of selling their stock to an outsider.”

“I will do that,” the Marquis said. “At the same time I think it is being very magnanimous. If I had any sense I would send it back to Jethro himself.”

He gave a short laugh.

“The trouble is, if it killed him, I should have a lot of explaining to do, and there is no proof that it was his idea in the first place.”

“You must be on your guard.”

“I have a feeling I shall be safe as long as you are here with me,” the Marquis answered.

By this time they had reached the edge of the wood and Saviya stopped.

“There is no reason for you to come any further.”

“There is every reason I should protect you,” the Marquis replied, “but if you would rather go alone, I will respect your wishes.”

“Thank you!” she said softly.

“I have so much to thank you for. First for the moments of unbelievable beauty you showed me tonight—and secondly for saving my life!”

He put out his right hand as he spoke and she laid her left hand in it.

Their palms touched. Then a sudden streak of ecstasy, a thrill such as he had never known in his whole life, swept through the Marquis and he knew as he looked down into Saviya’s eyes that she felt the same.

For a moment neither of them could move, and yet it was almost as if they lay close against each other and were one.

“Saviya! You know what I feel about you?” the Marquis said hoarsely.

She did not answer and he saw her eyes were searching his.

“I want you!” he said. “I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. Come with me, Saviya! I will give you everything you can ever desire and we will be very happy together.”

She did not answer until at last she said in a low voice he could hardly hear:

“Are you asking me to be your
Piramni
?”

The Marquis had no need of a translation of her meaning.

“Must we have words for something that is so wonderful, so beautiful?” he asked. “We were made for each other, Saviya. I have known these past few days that you were aware of me. I could feel it whenever we were near each other. I could see it in your eyes.” She turned her head a little away from him and he said:

“It is too late, my darling, to pretend. I think you love me a little, and I can make you love me with all the wild wonder that lies within your exquisite body, and your entrancing brain. Come to me, Saviya! We shall find a happiness which is granted to few people.”

She raised her head.

“I ... cannot! You know I ... cannot!”

“Why?”

“Because it would be ... wrong.”

“Who is to decide that?” the Marquis asked roughly. “You may have tribal laws, Saviya, but they are not the laws either of this country or of the Church. Forget them! Remember only that you are a woman and I am a man. We belong to each other!”

His fingers tightened as he went on:

“I will look after you and you shall never want for the whole of your life. That I swear! But do not let us throw away this wonderful, this perfect happiness which we feel when we are together.”