Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Read online

  ALSO BY LYNNE REID BANKS

  The Adventures of King Midas

  Broken Bridge

  The Fairy Rebel

  The Farthest-Away Mountain

  I, Houdini

  Melusine

  One More River

  Angela and Diabola

  Maura's Angel

  Alice-by-Accident

  Moses in Egypt

  The Indian in the Cupboard

  The Return of the Indian

  The Secret of the Indian

  The Mystery of the Cupboard

  The Key to the Indian

  Harry the Poisonous Centipede:

  A Story to Make You Squirm

  Harry the Poisonous Centipede's Big Adventure:

  Another Story to Make You Squirm

  For my son, Gillon Stephenson

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. In the Hold

  2. Caesar's Daughter

  3. The Naming

  4. Visits

  5. Marcus

  6. Aurelia to the Circus

  7. “The Greatest Treat”

  8. The Trick

  9. The Catastrophe

  10. Freedom

  11. Julius in Chains

  12. Aurelia's Secret

  13. Aurelia's Sacrifice

  14. The Ides of July

  15. In the Arena

  16. A Triumph of Will

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  THE TWO TIGER CUBS, romping in the jungle undergrowth near their den, prick up their ears.

  While they play by themselves, they always half listen for their mother's return. But these sounds are not what they want to hear. They are strange and alarming. Loud, staccato beats, clattering and banging—hacking and chopping—a trampling of green stems. And voices. Not animal voices, all familiar to them. These are voices alien to the jungle. And when they begin, other sounds, the sounds that make a constant, reassuring background to the cubs’ lives, fall silent.

  They look around, anxiously. Something is coming. Where is their mother?

  As the barrage of noise gets nearer, there is a sudden wild whirring over their heads. They look up, and see a blur of color and affrighted movement as a flock of birds takes flight, disturbing the leaves.

  Next, bands of monkeys go fleeing hand over hand through the canopy above, chattering and screaming in terror.

  It is a signal. Beasts that have been hiding spring up. The cubs see a buck stumbling clumsily among the trees, not far from them. At a greater distance, they hear an elephant trumpet a warning. Smaller creatures flee invisibly but audibly through the undergrowth. Every sound they hear seems to urge them to run. But they do not. The flight instinct conflicts with their mother's training—they must stay by the den, where she can find them.

  They crouch together, keeping low. There is a brief pause. Then suddenly the line of hunters breaks through the jungle thickets into the small clearing in front of the den.

  The bigger cub tries to run now, but it is too late.

  He is pounced on, seized by the scruff of the neck, and thrust into a sack. He squirms and squeals and tries to bite his captor, but it is useless. The smaller cub doesn't even manage to struggle—he is enclosed in a dark, noisome place, and swung upward. They can see nothing now, but they hear trampling underneath them, and the ear-hurting other sounds fade. They are bumped up and down, their bodies distressed, their minds blank with bewilderment.

  • • •

  The two hunters who carry the sacks reach the edge of the forest, where their horses wait. They hand their burdens to others while they mount, then take the sacks again and loop them over the pommels of their saddles.

  The horses can smell the tiger scent and begin neighing and curvetting, trying to get away from it. Their skilled riders use this fear to urge them forward. The tigress, they know, cannot be far away.

  Behind them, in the jungle, the noise of the beaters continues. More beasts are being hunted and trapped.

  The moment their heads are freed, the horses rear up, then gallop for the riverbank, where the boats wait.

  With their goal in sight, the riders’ hair stands suddenly on end as they hear behind them the ferocious roar of a charging tiger. The horses bolt. Reaching the ramp that connects the bank with the first boat, the leading horse bounds up it. The one behind utters a scream as it feels the tigress's claws tear its haunch—then, wild-eyed, it plunges up onto the deck.

  The hunters disengage the sacks and fling them expertly to the waiting sailors. Then they jump from their horses, and turn at the rail to watch as others repel their pursuer.

  As the cubs are carried down to where cages wait in the grim bowels of the ship, they cannot know that their last chance of rescue lies at the foot of the gangway with a spear through her heart.

  In the Hold

  THE TWO CUBS huddled together, their front paws inter-twined, their heads and flanks pressed to each other.

  Darkness crushed them, and bad smells, and motion. And fear.

  The darkness was total. It was not what they were used to. In the jungle there is always light for a tiger's eyes. It filters down through the thickest leaves from a generous sky that is never completely dark. It reflects off pools and glossy leaves and the eyes of other creatures. Darkness in the jungle is a reassurance. It says it's time to come out of the lair, to play, to eat, to learn the night. It's a safe darkness, a familiar, right darkness. This darkness was all wrong.

  The smells were bad because there was no way to bury their scat. And there was the smell of other animals, and their fear. And there was a strange smell they didn't recognize, a salt smell like blood. But it wasn't blood.

  It was bad being enclosed. All the smells that should have dissipated on the wind were held in, close. Cloying the sensitive nostrils. Choking the breath. Confusing and deceiving, so that the real smells, the smells that mattered, couldn't be found, however often the cubs put up their heads and reached for them, sniffing in the foul darkness.

  The motion was the worst. The ground under them was not safe and solid. It pitched and rocked. Sometimes it leaned so far that they slid helplessly until they came up against something like hard, cold, thin trees. These were too close together to let the cubs squeeze between them. Next moment the ground tipped the other way. The cubs slid though the stinking straw till they fell against the cold trees on the other side. When the unnatural motion grew really strong, the whole enclosure they were in slid and crashed against other hard things, frightening the cubs so that they snarled and panted and clawed at the hard non-earth under their pads, trying in vain to steady themselves.

  They would put back their heads and howl, and try to bite the cold thin things that stopped them being free. Then their slaver sometimes had blood in it.

  When the awful pitching and rolling stopped and they could once again huddle up close, their hearts stopped racing, and they could lick each other's faces for reassurance.

  They were missing their mother—their Big One. They waited for her return—she had always come back before. But she was gone forever. No more warm coat, no rough, comforting, cleansing tongue. No more good food, no big body to clamber on, no tail to chase, pretending it was prey. No more lessons. No more love and safety.

  All their natural behavior was held in abeyance. They no longer romped and played. There was no space and they had no spirit for it. Mostly they lay together and smelled each other's good smell through all the bad smells.

  As days and nights passed in this terrifying, sickening fashion, they forgot their mother, because only Now mattered for them. Now's bewilderment, fear, helplessness, and disgust.

  There was only one good ti
me in all the long hours. They came to look forward to it, to know when it was coming.

  They began to recognize when the undifferentiated thudding overhead, where the sky ought to be, presaged the opening of a piece of that dead sky, and the descent from this hole of the two-legged male animals that brought them food. Then they would jump to their feet and mewl and snarl with excitement and eagerness. They would stretch their big paws through the narrow space between the cold trees and, when the food came near, try to hook it with their claws and draw it close more quickly. The food, raw meat on a long, flat piece of wood, would be shoved through a slot down near the ground, the meat—never quite enough to fill their stomachs—scraped off, and the wood withdrawn. Water came in a bowl through the same slot. They often fought over it and spilled it. They were nearly always thirsty.

  The male two-legs made indecipherable noises: “Eat up, boys! Eat and grow and get strong. You're going to need it, where you're going!”

  And then there would be a sound like a jackal's yelping and the two-legs would move off and feed the other creatures imprisoned in different parts of the darkness.

  Brown bears. Jackals. A group of monkeys, squabbling and chattering hysterically. There were wild dogs, barking incessantly and giving off a terrible stench of anger and fear. There were peacocks with huge rustling tails, that spoke in screeches. And somewhere quite far away, a she-elephant, with something fastened to her legs that made an unnatural clanking sound as she moved her great body from foot to foot in the creaking, shifting, never-ending dark.

  One night the dogs began to bite and tear at each other amid an outburst of snarling and shrieking sounds. The cubs were afraid and huddled down in the farthest corner of their prison. But they could hear the wild battles as one dog after another succumbed and was torn to pieces. The next time the sky opened, the two-legged animals found a scene of carnage, with only two dogs left alive.

  “There'll be trouble now,” one muttered, as he dragged the remains out from a half-opening while others held the survivors off with pointed sticks.

  “I said they should have put 'em all in separate cages. They'll say we didn't feed 'em enough.”

  “Better cut the corpses up and give the meat to the tigers. Dogs is one thing, but if we lose one of them cubs, we'll be dog meat ourselves.”

  After that there was no shortage of food and the cubs spent most of the time when they weren't eating, sleeping off their huge meals. But their sleep was not peaceful.

  The cubs had no desire to fight or kill each other. They didn't know they were brothers, but each knew that the other was all he had. One was the firstborn and the larger. He was the leader. In the jungle, he had been fed first and most, and had led their games and pretend hunts. He was also the more intelligent of the two. He came to understand that it was no use howling and scratching at the ground and rubbing backward and forward with cheek and sides against the cold, close-together barriers, or trying to chew them to pieces. When his brother did these things, he would knock him down with his paw and lie on him to stop him.

  The younger one would submit. It was better, he found. His paws, throat, and teeth stopped being sore. He learned to save his energies. But the misery was still there. It only stopped while he ate, and when he curled up with his brother and they licked each other's faces, and slept.

  • • •

  At last it ended.

  The sky-hole opened and stayed open and a new smell came through. They smelled earth and vegetation—not what they'd been used to, but bearing some comforting relation to it.

  They stood together side by side, alert and waiting for what would happen next. The two-legged animals were running about over their heads and making loud noises with their mouths. The sky-hole grew bigger, and at last they could see the blue of the real sky over their heads. Something came down from above, grasped their prison, and swung it upward! It rocked and swayed and the cubs fell on their sides and couldn't get up without falling down again. After a short journey, there was a hard jolt. Then two-legged ones gathered around them, peering at them, their loud mouth-noises coming from all directions.

  One of them put its long-toed hairless paw in between the thin trees. The bigger cub snarled and snapped at it furiously. It was snatched away and there was an outcry.

  “It tried to bite me!”

  “Stupid! What do you expect? It's wild, it's not used to being petted.”

  “But they look so sweet, like big kittens—”

  “Do you need to lose half your hand to find out that they're not? They're for the arena, they have to be fierce.”

  The cubs watched warily as the other captives were lowered to the ground near them, and soon the crowd had moved away to inspect the bears, the peacocks, the monkeys. When the she-elephant was carefully lowered from above, there were gasps and shouts.

  “Great gods! What a size! Keep clear of it!”

  “Will the Emperor show it at the Colosseum? Will they bait it, like the bears, with dogs?”

  “Perhaps. I hope so! What a fabulous show that would be!”

  “How many dogs will it take to kill a thing that size?”

  “No, Caesar won't have it baited or killed. They never kill the elephants. Perhaps he'll ride on it. Think of that! Our great Emperor on the tallest beast in the world, riding along the Appian Way! What a triumph!”

  Thick vines were joined to the cubs’ prison, and it was dragged onto the back of some unalive thing that nonetheless moved. It was pulled by animals whose feet made a hard, clattering sound against the ground. The cubs looked about them. There was sunlight, but not filtered through greenery. It flooded unhindered over green and yellow stretches of ground. The tigers had never left the jungle, never seen fields and crops, and these puzzled them, but at least they were natural earth and growing things—the cubs could smell them, and longed to be free to bound away and seek safety and a hiding place. Freedom was something they had not forgotten.

  Behind them came the other captives, dragged along like them. The bears, on their hind legs, held the prison-trees and roared at the crowd. The jackals pawed and whined. The monkeys leaped about, twisting their heads and gazing here and there with their little bright eyes. The two surviving dogs lay licking their wounds. The elephant stood swaying on her huge feet.

  The motion went on for a long time. After a while, the cubs grew tired and lay down and slept.

  When they woke up, the natural scenes had gone. Now they could understand nothing of what they saw. They were moving among many two-legs, and behind these were big cliffs of stone that had caves in them where two-legs were passing in and out, or standing in the higher ones, looking out. Their interesting but nose-wrinkling smell and the noise of their mouths were everywhere.

  The cubs dangled their tongues and let the scent of warm edible flesh enter their noses.

  Caesar's Daughter

  THE LADY AURELIA was reclining on a couch on the balcony of her bedroom. She was twelve years old but already so beautiful and womanly that her father, the Emperor, had issued a protective edict that no man might be alone in her presence without his express permission. The balcony over-looked the palace gardens, and beyond them, three of Rome's fabled Seven Hills could be seen, covered with a mixture of sun-bleached stone buildings and cypress trees, their stately dark fingers wagging at the sky as if admonishing the gods for not giving Aurelia enough to do.

  Her mother had hinted again, only that morning, that Aurelia was indulging in too much idleness and daydreaming. As a Roman emperor's daughter she already had some duties, but they were not of a kind to alleviate the boredom she felt in doing them or in looking ahead to doing them again tomorrow. She had her regular lessons, of course, but only the music ones actually engaged her, and that was as much because of the charms of her music teacher, a young Assyrian with coal black curly hair and nervous but excited eyes, as for any fascination with the lute. Her other tutors were old and deadly dull, and didn't seem to realize that she was quicker-witted t
han they were, and usually grasped what they were mumbling at her long before they'd got to the end of their meandering sentences.

  Aurelia had all the intelligence that her clever parents could bequeath her. But it seemed it wasn't going to do her much good.

  Of course, her looks would do her good, if being helped to a rich husband was considered good. The son of a senator, perhaps, or an officer in the Praetorian Guard. She was aware that her mother was already on the lookout for a suitable match, though Aurelia would not be expected to marry until she was thirteen, or even fourteen if she was lucky.

  She sighed from her very depths. Other young girls—the few her parents considered suitable for her to associate with—seemed to talk and think of little but beautiful young men and marriage, but to Aurelia the idea of following in her mother's footsteps—marriage at thirteen, motherhood a year later, a life of matronly duties and domesticity— appealed to Aurelia about as strongly as being tied up in the arena and fed to the wild beasts, like those strange, death-inviting Christians.

  No, no. Of course not, not that. Aurelia stopped sighing and shuddered. She turned her mind away, accompanying the mental trick with a swift quarter-turn of her head. She had learned early how to swamp ugly imaginings with pleasant ones.

  “I am so lucky, not to be a Christian,” she said aloud. This was part of the ritual of drowning fearful or unpleasant thoughts.

  She was lucky. She had grown up knowing that she was. This was part of her cleverness, because others in her fortunate situation might have taken it entirely for granted, and not bothered comparing themselves with others. But from her earliest childhood Aurelia had observed the difference between the way she lived and the way the common people of Rome lived, in their several social layers, right to the bottom where there were slaves and the poor. It was a very great difference, and she pondered it every time she left the palace.

  Even inside the palace, servants, though relatively comfortable, led lives of terrifying insecurity. Once, five years ago, she had seen one of her own handmaids cruelly flogged. It had happened as a direct result of Aurelia's complaining about her for some trifle. When a young child witnesses such a thing and knows herself to be the cause, she learns some lessons. The simplest would be to harden her heart. That's what others did. But Aurelia learned something better—to control her temper and to deal with her servants herself.