Darling Beast

Montgomery placed a long forefinger under Indio’s chin and tilted his face up, staring at his curious eyes for several heartbeats.

“Fascinating,” the duke drawled softly at last, “the dissimilar colors of his eyes. I believe I’ve only seen the like once before.”

And he turned and smiled his beautiful snake smile at Lily.

THE BOY WAS watching him again.

It was late afternoon a day later and the sun was giving up the struggle behind a barrier of gray clouds as Apollo examined the ornamental pond. He and the other gardeners had spent the last three days dredging the stream that fed the pond, clearing it of debris so the pond might once again be filled with freshwater. It had been filthy, muddy work, but the result was already apparent: the water level in the pond was rising. An old stone bridge arched to a little island in the middle and Apollo raised both hands, palms out, fingers together and pointed up, thumbs at right angles, making a frame for the view between.

Nearby the bushes rattled as the boy shifted—and then froze like a hare hiding from a fox.

Apollo was careful to show no sign that he’d noticed the child.

He considered the picture within his frame. Originally he’d thought to tear the bridge down—it was much the worse for wear from the fire—but looking at it now, he thought it might become a rustic ruin with the right plantings around it. Perhaps an oak at the near shore and a grouping of reeds or a single flowering tree on the island.

He sighed and dropped his hands. Trees were his most pressing problem. Most hadn’t survived the fire, and of course for one to mature took many years. He’d read about transplanting fully grown trees—the French were said to be able to do so—but he’d never tried it himself.

Time enough to worry about that. For today he still had to pull yet another dead tree from the ground. He pivoted—and exhaled hard as his right foot slid on the slippery pond bank. Apollo caught himself and grimaced down at his boot, covered with the stinking green slime that still lined the bank where the pond had retreated from the original shoreline.

From the bushes came a gasp, presumably at his near fall. What the child found so fascinating about him, Apollo had no idea. His work was the same as the other gardeners’—tedious and wearying—yet the boy seemed to spy only on him. In fact, Apollo had noticed that Indio’s hiding place became closer every day, until today the boy was only feet away. He was beginning to wonder if the boy wanted to be noticed.

Apollo bent to pick up his long-handled adze. He swung it over his head and then down into the soft ground at the root of a stump. The heavy adze hit with a satisfying thump and he could feel that he’d struck one of the main roots.

He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and heaved the adze free from the stump. Then he swung again.

“Daff,” came a hiss from the bushes.

Apollo’s lips twitched. Indio hadn’t chosen a particularly adept spy-mate. The greyhound obviously didn’t understand his young master’s need for stealth. Even now she was wandering out of their hiding place, nose to the ground, more interested in some scent than Indio’s frantic call. “Daff. Daffodil.”

Apollo sighed. Was he really expected not to notice the dog? He was mute, not blind—or deaf.

Daffodil ambled right up to his feet. She’d apparently lost her fear of him in the last week of spying—or perhaps she was simply bored of sitting still. In any case she sniffed the tree stump and the adze, and then abruptly sat to scratch one ear vigorously.

Apollo extended a hand for the little dog to sniff, but the silly thing jumped back at his movement. She was quite near the pond bank and her sudden leap caused her back legs to slip in the mud. She tumbled down the bank and into the water, disappearing beneath the surface.

“Daff!” The boy ran from his hiding place, his eyes huge with fear.

Apollo put out his hand, blocking him.

The boy tried to dart around his outstretched arm. “She’ll drown!”

Apollo seized him and swung the boy off his feet and then set him down firmly, placing his hands on his shoulders and bending to stare into his eyes. He narrowed his eyes and growled, never so frustrated by his loss of speech as now. He couldn’t argue with the child—tell him what he meant to do and instruct him to obey, and thus he was reduced to animal grunting. Better the boy should fear him, though, than drown trying to rescue his pet.

Indio gulped.

Apollo stepped back, keeping his eye on the boy, and pulled off his shoes, waistcoat, and shirt. He hesitated a moment, staring suspiciously at the boy.

Indio nodded. “Yes. Please. Please, help her.”

Without waiting further, Apollo turned and waded swiftly into the water. The little dog had reemerged at the surface, but she was thrashing in panic instead of trying to swim.

Apollo grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and lifted her clear from the pond. She hung pathetically, water streaming from her rat-thin tail and drooping ears. He turned and waded back to the shore.

The boy hadn’t moved from where Apollo had stopped him. Indio watched him intently.

Apollo picked up his shirt and wrapped the shivering greyhound in it before handing the little dog to the boy.

Indio clutched her to his chest, his eyes swimming in tears as the dog whimpered and began to lick his chin. He looked from the pet in his arms up at Apollo. “Thank you.”

Daffodil coughed, choked, opened wide her narrow mouth, and vomited up a thin trail of pond water all over the shirt.

Apollo winced.

He turned and found the worn cloth bag he’d brought his lunch in. Fortunately, he’d placed his notebook in it earlier, so that at least wasn’t wet. Apollo repressed a shuddering shiver as he crouched and rummaged in the sack. Earlier he’d eaten his luncheon—a pork pie—and wrapped a leftover piece in a cloth. Apollo rose with the bundle and the little dog immediately leaned from her master’s arms, sniffing eagerly at the cloth. Apollo unwrapped the morsel and broke off a piece, holding it out. Daffodil snatched it from his fingers and gulped it down.

Apollo almost laughed.

“She likes piecrust,” the boy said shyly.

Apollo merely nodded and fed Daffodil another bit.

“ ’Course she likes bread and sausage and chicken and green beans and apples and cheese as well,” Indio continued. Not so shy after all, then. “I gived her a raisin once. She didn’t like that. Is that your dinner?”

Apollo didn’t answer, simply offering the last of the pie to Daffodil. She gobbled it and then began nosing his hand, looking for crumbs. She seemed to have forgotten her unexpected swim already.

“It’s kind of you to give it her,” Indio said, stroking Daffodil’s head. “D’you… do you like dogs?”

Apollo glanced at him. The boy was staring up at him hopefully and for the first time Apollo noticed that his eyes were of different colors: the right blue, the left green. He turned away to stuff the bit of cloth back into his bag.

“Uncle Edwin gived me Daffodil. He won her in a game of cards. Mama says a puppy is a silly thing to wager for. Daff’s an Italian greyhound, but she didn’t come from Italy. Mama says Italians like skinny little dogs. I named her Daffodil because that’s my favorite flower and the prettiest. She doesn’t know to mind,” Indio said sadly as Apollo rose.

Daffodil wriggled and the boy set her cautiously on the ground. The greyhound struggled from the folds of the shirt, shook herself, and then squatted, watering the ground—and a corner of the shirt.

Apollo sighed. He really was going to have to wash that shirt.

Indio sighed as well. “Mama says I ought to train her to sit and beg and most ’portantly come when we call her, but”—he took a deep breath—“I don’t know how to.”

Apollo bit his lip to keep down a smile. It was too bad that he’d already fed all the scraps to the dog. He glanced at the boy.

Indio was staring at him frankly. “My name’s Indio. I live in the old theater.” He pointed in the direction of the theater with a straight arm. “My mama lives there and Maude, too. She’s a famous actress, my mama, that is. Maude’s our maidservant.” He chewed on one lip. “Can you speak?”

Apollo shook his head slowly.

“I thought not.” Indio dug into the mud with the toe of one boot, frowning down. “What’s your name?”

Well, he couldn’t answer that, could he? Time he was back at work, anyway. Apollo reached for his adze, half expecting the boy to run away at his movement.

But Indio simply stepped back out of his way, watching with interest. Daffodil had wandered several feet away and was now digging energetically in the mud.

He was wet and chilled from the air, but work would soon fix that. Apollo took another swing at the tree stump, hitting it with a thwock!

“I’ll call you Caliban,” Indio said as Apollo lifted the adze again.

Apollo turned and stared.

Indio smiled tentatively. “It’s from a play. There’s a wizard who lives on a island and it’s all over wild. Caliban lives there, though he can speak. But he’s big like you, so I thought… Caliban.”

Apollo was still staring helplessly at the boy through this explanation. Daffodil had paused to sneeze and glance at them. Her nose was adorned with a clot of mud.

There were dozens of reasons to refuse the boy. Apollo was in hiding, a price on his head, wanted for the most awful of crimes. The boy’s mother had already made plain that she wanted him nowhere near her son. And what did he have to offer the boy after all, mute and overworked and on the run?

But Indio smiled up at him with mismatched eyes and cheeks made red from the wind, and an air of sweet hope that was simply impossible to refuse. Somehow, against his better judgment, Apollo found himself nodding.

Caliban. The illiterate knave from The Tempest. Well, he supposed he could’ve done worse.

Indio might’ve chosen A Midsummer Night’s Dream—and named him Bottom.

Chapter Three

The black bull was without mark, both beautiful and terrible, and it opened its jaws and spoke in the language of men: “You have overthrown my island, but I will have my price.”

When the king awoke he marveled on the oddity of his dream, but thought no more of it…

—From The Minotaur

“Indio!”

Lily paused and glanced around the blackened garden an hour later. She hated to keep Indio locked inside the old theater, but she was going to have to if he insisted on disappearing like this. The sun would soon be setting. The garden held all manner of dangers for a little boy—and that was without the interest the duke had shown her son yesterday afternoon. Lily hadn’t liked that comment Montgomery had made about Indio’s eyes.

Not at all.

A sense of urgency made her cup her hands around her mouth to shout again. “Indio!”

Oh, let Indio be safe. Let him return to her, happy and laughing and covered in mud.

Lily trudged onward toward the pond. Funny how she’d learned to pray again when she’d become a mother so suddenly. For years she’d never thought of Providence. And then she’d found herself whispering beneath her breath at different, frightening points in Indio’s short life:

Let the fever break.

Don’t let the fall be fatal.

Thank you, thank you, for making the horse swerve aside.

Not the pox. Anything but the pox.

Oh, dear God, don’t let him be lost.

Not lost. Not my brave little man. My Indio.

Lily’s steps quickened until she found herself almost running through the charred brambles, the clutching branches. She’d never let him out again when she found him. She’d fall to her knees and hug him when she found him. She’d spank him and send him to bed without his supper when she found him.

She was panting as the path widened and she came to the clearing by the pond. She opened her mouth to call yet again.