The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur (читаем бесплатно книги полностью .txt) 📗

She saw for a moment in her mind's eye, the little heartshaped, wrinkled, amber-coloured faces, and suppressed her nagging guilt at having deserted them so cruelly.

I don't even want to think about that. Kindly never address the subject again, sir. Her tone was stingingly severe.

Of course, Mrs Courtney."He picked up the two sealed letters. If you will excuse me, I will give these to Vark Jan now. He can leave before dawn tomorrow. He was stiff-faced and resentful of the rebuff.

She watched him cross to the servants fire and heard the murmur of voices as he gave Vark Jan his orders.

When he returned to the shelter, she made a pretence of being engrossed with her book, hoping that he would interrupt her, but he seated himself at the bureau and opened his journal. It was his nightly ritual, his entry in the leather-bound journal. She listened to his pen scratching on the paper, and she resented his attention being focused anywhere but on herself.

There is so little time left to us, she thought, and he squanders it so. She closed her book loudly but he did not look up.

What are you writing? she demanded.

You know what I am writing, since we have discussed it before, Mrs Courtney Do you write everything in your journal? Almost everything. Do you write about me?

He laid down the pen and stared at her, and she was flustered by the direct gaze of those serene yellow eyes, but could not bring herself to apologize.

You were prying into things that did not concern you, she told him.

Yes, he agreed with her, and to cover her discomfort, she demanded, What have you written about me in your famous journal I And now, madam, it is you who are inquisitive, he told her as be closed his diary, placed it in the drawer of the bureau and stood up. If you will excuse me, I must make my rounds of the camp.

So she learned that she could not treat him the way she had treated her father, or even the way she had treated Michael Courtney. Lothar was a proud man and would not allow her to trespass on his dignity, a man who had fought his whole life for the right to be his own master.

He would not permit her to take advantage of his strong sense of chivalry to her and to little Shasa. She learned that she could not bully him.

The next morning she found herself dismayed by his formal aloof bearing, but as the day wore on she became angry. Such a small tiff, and he sulks like a spoiled child, she told herself. Well, we'll see who sulks longest and hardest. By the second day her anger had given way to loneliness and unhappiness. She found herself longing for his smile, for the pleasure of one of their long convoluted discussions for the sound of his laughter and his voice when he sang to her.

She watched Shasa tottering around the camp, hanging on to one of Lothar's hands and engaging him in loquacious conversation that only the two of them could understand, and was appalled to find that she was jealous of her own child.

I will give Shasa his food, she told him coldly. It is time I resumed my duties. You need no longer discommode yourself, sir.

Of course, Mrs Courtney. And she wanted to cry, Please, I am truly sorry, But their pride was a mountain range between them.

She listened all that afternoon for the sound of his horse returning. She heard only the sound of distant rifle fire, but it was after dark when Lothar rode in, and she and Shasa were already in their cots. She lay in the darkness and listened to the voices and the sounds as the carcasses of the springbok that Lothar had shot were offloaded from his hunting horse and hung upon the butchering rack.

Lothar sat late at the fire with his men, and bursts of their laughter carried to her as she tried to compose herself to sleep.

At last she heard him come to the shelter beside hers, and she listened to the splash of water as he washed in the bucket at the entrance, the rustle of his clothing and finally the creak of the lacings of his cot as he settled upon it.

Shasa's cries awoke her, and she knew instantly that he was in pain, and she swung her legs off the cot and still half-asleep groped for him. A match flared and lantern light bloomed in Lothar's shelter.

Shh! Quiet, my little one. She cradled Shasa against her chest, and his hot little body alarmed her.

May I enter? Lothar asked from the entrance.

Oh, yes. He stooped into the tent and set down the lantern.

Shasa, he's sick, Lothar took the child from her. He wore only a pair of breeches, his chest and feet were bare. His hair was tangled from the pillow.

He touched Shasa's flushed cheek and then slipped a finger into his squalling mouth. Shasa choked off his next howl and bit down on the finger like a shark.

Another tooth, Lothar smiled, I felt it this morning. He handed Shasa back to her and he let out a howl of rejection.

I'll be back, soldier, and she heard him rummaging in the medicine chest he kept bolted to the floor of his wagon.

He had a small bottle in his hand when he returned, and she wrinkled her nose at the pungent odour of oil of cloves as he pulled the cork.

We'll fix that bad old tooth, won't we just. Lothar massaged the child's gums as Shasa sucked on his finger. That's a brave soldier. He laid Shasa back in his cot and within minutes he had fallen asleep again.

Lothar picked up the lantern. Good night, Mrs Courtney, he said quietly, and went to the entrance.

Lothar! His name on her lips startled her as it did him.

Please, she whispered, I've been alone for so long.

Please, don't be cruel to me any more. She held out both arms towards him and he crossed to her and sank down on to the edge of the cot beside her.

Oh, Lothar- Her voice was choked and gusty, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Love me, she pleaded, oh, please love me, and his mouth was hot as fever on hers, his arms about her so fierce that she gasped as the breath was driven from her lungs.

Yes, I was cruel to you, he told her softly, his voice trembling in his throat, but only because I wanted so desperately to hold you, because I ached and burned with my love for you- Oh, Lothar, hold me and love me, and never ever let me go.

The days that followed were full recompense for all the hardships and loneliness of the months and years. It was as though the fates had conspired to heap upon Centaine all the delights that she had been denied for so long.

She woke each dawn in the narrow cot and before her eyes were open, she was groping for him with a tantalizing terror that he might no longer be there, but he always was. Sometimes he was feigning sleep and she had to try and open one of his eyelids with her fingertips, and when she succeeded, he rolled his eyeball upwards until only the white showed, and she giggled and thrust her tongue deeply into his ear, having discovered that that was the one torture he could not endure, and the gooseflesh sprang up on his bare arms and he came awake like a lion and seized her and turned her giggles to gasps and then to moans.

In the cool of the morning they rode out together with Shasa on the saddle in front of Lothar. For the first few days they kept the horses to a walk and stayed close by the camp. However, as Centaine's strength returned, they ventured further and on the return they covered the last mile at a mad flying gallop, racing each other, and Shasa, secure in Lothar's arms, shrieked with excitement as they tore into the camp, all of them flushed and ravenous for their breakfasts.

The long sultry desert noondays they spent under the thatched shelter, sitting apart, touching only fleetingly when he handed her a book or when passing Shasa between them, but caressing each other with their eyes and their voices until the suspense was a kind of exquisite torment.

As the heat passed and the sun mellowed, Lothar again called for the horses and they rode to the foot of the scree slope below the mountain. They hobbled the horses and with Shasa riding on Lothar's shoulder climbed up into one of the narrow sheer-sided valleys. Here, below a fresco of ancient Bushman paintings, screened by dense foliage, Lothar had discovered another of the thermal springs. It spurted from out of the cliff face and drained into a small circular rock pool.