19, 1573
Black Otter lay in the stinking darkness of the hold where the white men had flung him. Slimed with blood, his wrists and ankles twisted against the iron manacles that held him prisoner. Although he had been viciously beaten, his ribs cracked and purpled, his eyes swollen shut, he felt no pain. He was beyond pain, beyond fear, even beyond grief. The only emotion left to him now was white-hot rage.
A whisper of reason told him that he’d been taken prisoner in the attack on the village, that he’d been knocked unconscious by a blow to the head and carried onto the great, winged canoe where the white men lived.
Reason, darkened by despair, reminded him also that Morning Cloud, the wife of his heart, was dead. His arms had caught her as she fell, her chest shattered by a blast from the mouth of a white man’s firestick. In the space of a single breath her life had slipped away. Too stunned to react, he had been cradling her limp body when the sharp blow had struck his head from behind. He had awakened in shackles.
Morning Cloud, at least, was beyond danger. But what of his children? Black Otter writhed in his bonds, yanking at his chains in impotent fury as he thought of his son Swift Arrow, a stalwart lad of nine winters, and his shy young daughter, Singing Bird, budding with the promise of womanhood. They had been in the village that morning, but he had not seen either of them since the beginning of the attack. Had they escaped into the forest or were they lying dead somewhere, the boy’s skull shattered, the beautiful girl-child spread-eagled and bloodstained where the white men had slaked their lust?
Black Otter clenched his teeth to keep from screaming out loud. He could not let the white men hear his torment. He could not let them know how close they had come to driving him mad.
Willing himself to be calm, he filled his lungs with the foul, dark air and forced his rage-numbed mind to think. There was nothing he could do for his wife. But if his children were alive, he had to get free and find them. He had to get them to a safe place before it was too late.
A rat scurried across his outstretched leg, triggering a jerk of revulsion. The great boat’s belly was overrun with the filthy creatures. The smell of their droppings mingled with the rank odors of seawater, rotting fish, urine and mold.
Black Otter could hear the rats squealing and rustling in the darkness around him. He could hear the creak of the massive timbers, the steady lap of waves against the hull, and, faintly, through the closed wooden door overhead, the strange, metallic babble of white men’s voices.
Sooner or later, he calculated, they would come down for him. This time he would be ready.
Black Otter moved more cautiously now, testing the limits of his manacled arms and legs. He could not maneuver far, but yes, it would be possible to fight. The men who had captured him did not look like seasoned warriors. If there were not too many, he would have a fair chance against them. The chains themselves could be used as weapons, to club, to slash, to strangle. He would strike to kill, leaving only one of them alive to unfasten the iron bands. Then he would be gone with the speed of a panther in the night.
The great boat was anchored in an inlet, not far from shore. If he could gain the open air it would be an easy matter to leap over the rail and—
Black Otter’s thoughts fled as a new sound penetrated his awareness—the slow, labored groan of wood and the even tread of moving feet. He heard a thud and felt a shudder pass through the body of the great hull as if something heavy had been lifted into place. Voices were bawling out orders—or signals, perhaps, in their alien tongue. Black Otter raged against his shackles, bewildered, fighting a fear so terrible that it had no shape or name.
Motion rocked the hull as the lap of waves became a murmur like the current of a fast-flowing river. Only then did he understand what was happening. Only then did desolation crush him with a weight so overpowering that he screamed.
The great boat had pulled up its anchor and spread its huge wings to catch the wind.
It was moving out to sea.
Chapter One
Cornwall
June 10, 1573
Mistress Rowena Thornhill pressed anxiously against the tower window, her skirt of plain russet billowing behind her to fill the confined space of the landing. For a moment her tawny eyes strained to see the world beyond the leaded diamond panes. Then, impatient with the narrow view, she unlatched the sash from its dark wooden frame and flung it open to the sea wind.
The salty air stung her face and loosened tendrils of her tightly bound chestnut hair as she leaned over the stone sill. Beyond the courtyard, the hilly moor, abloom with clumps of gorse and flowering sedge, swept off in every visible direction, ending to the south with rocky cliffs where seabirds cried and circled above the surging waves.
Threading across the land between the cliffs and the rambling old manor house was a narrow road, rutted almost hub-deep by generations of passing carts and wagons. It was on this road that Rowena fixed her worried gaze, stretching beyond the sill to see the place where it disappeared over the eastern horizon.
No horse. No rider. Nothing. And the sun would be setting in less than an hour’s time.
Her father often made the journey to Falmouth. As a scientist, he liked to wander the docks, buying “curiosities,” as he called them, from the sailors—a monkey or parrot, perhaps; maybe an unusual shell or some odd sea creature plucked from the depths and pickled in salt brine. Any and all of these things he would bring home to his laboratory where he would spend days, even weeks, prodding and observing his new prize and taking copious notes in his leather-bound journals.
In more vigorous years these writings had earned Sir Christopher Thornhill a reputation as one of England’s foremost scholars. But he was getting old now, too old to be riding the long, dangerous road alone. Next time, Rowena resolved, she would insist on his taking one of the stable grooms with him or go along herself, despite his protests that the teeming waterfront was no place for a lady.
She lingered at the window, her fingers toying with the heavy ring of keys that hung from a cord at her narrow waist. How would she face life when her father passed on? she found herself wondering. In the seventeen years since her mother’s death she had filled her days with managing the house and servants and assisting him in his laboratory. This crumbling old manor house and her father’s work had consumed her whole life. But he was nearing seventy, and she could sense the looming frailty in the stoop of his shoulders, the slight unsteadiness of his hands. What would she do when the halls no longer echoed with his ponderous footsteps? What would she do when the laboratory lay still and empty?
Marriage? An ironic little smile tugged at a corner of her too wide mouth. Who but an old sot would want her? A spinster two years past thirty, shy and mannishly tall, with a long, narrow face that had always reminded her of a horse? Even with the enticements of house and land, the prospect of finding a worthy husband was hardly worth considering.
She would, of course, carry on her father’s scientific work. But who would take her research seriously? Who would read the scribblings of a mere woman, let alone give them weight and value?
Rowena’s gaze drifted toward the sea where petrels and kittiwakes wheeled above the cliffs. High above them a single soaring albatross rode the wind, its outstretched wings as still as if they had been carved from white marble.
As she watched the bird’s flight, Rowena was seized by a yearning so powerful
