In the Time of Dragon Moon (16 page)

“I . . . The stables are—”

“Don't worry.” He reached up and brushed his thumb slowly across my lower lip in one smooth movement like a golden pour of honey. I held very still, hoping that if I did not move, said nothing, he would trace his thumb along my lip again. He gave me an intense look that said
Take care,
and other things I hoped to read but could not because it was not English or Euit or any language I yet knew.

He stepped through the leaf pile he'd made with his fey wind, and passed the moss-winged angel as he headed down the hill.

Pendragon Castle, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

I
DIDN
'
T
SLEEP
well that night, picturing Desmond's fall again and again. The word
murder
whispered across my flesh, making the hairs along my arms stand up.

Part of me wanted to argue with Jackrun further. Another part had remembered something else in the dark, wakeful night.

I dressed quickly, mixed the queen's medicines so her brew was already cooling before she returned from morning mass. But my hurry made no difference at all. Jackrun had ridden out at dawn to visit a friend of his father's on his lands down south, and would not be back until the morrow.

Annoyed at his disappearance, I left the queen in Lady Olivia's care once my morning duties were done, and went again to Father's grave. A crisp clear day. Perhaps Vazan would come? She hadn't promised to meet me on the hill with the bapeeta leaves. She'd not even agreed to look for them before she'd winged off in a huff the other day; still, I paced the frosty ground below Father's grave, grumbling to myself, raw with lack of sleep.

After a few hours, I left the graveyard, hands empty, stomach empty.

The smell of fresh-baked bread drew me to the kitchen. Cook was pulling loaves from the brick oven on long paddles and setting them on the table. I'd not tasted bread before I'd come north, but I knew how much my mother loved it. She'd lived alone in town with her father the ironmonger. As a girl she'd cradled fresh loaves in her arms, racing home from the baker's shop to present them to her father warm. I thought of her as I sat on the long bench to take a meal with the kitchen staff, and buttered a steaming slice. My mother had had nowhere to go when her father died until the midwife took her in and trained her.

I ate here in the kitchen when I wasn't too rushed and had to take the meal to my room. The hardworking staff was friendly in a rough way that I admired. Today I longed to warm myself with soup, fill my emptiness with Cook's good bread, lose my worries a moment listening to stories. The raucous tales exchanged in Cook's kitchen were nothing like the ones I'd heard back home when the people encircled the fire. Still, they brought to mind the happy hours when Mother, Father, and I joined the tribe, listening to stories of Father Sun or Sister Sea, or the lighter animal tales.

Cook cleared his throat.

“'Nother wolf attack last night,” he said. “I heard it was a beggar woman this time. Tore out her throat.”

“You sure it wasn't cutthroats with knives?” asked the server.

Cook eyed his row of knives hanging on the far wall. “Knives do a clean-cut job. I heard she was teeth-torn. Besides, she was poor with no coins for thieves ta steal.”

“Not safe to go anywhere,” said a scullery maid.

Cook said, “I wouldna step beyond the wolfsbane seal Uma Quarteney here spread to protect us.” For a moment all eyes were on me. I wanted to say the wolf attacks would lessen after the death of Wolf Moon, but these folk wouldn't know what I was talking about.

“They won't cross the drawbridge,” I said.

• • •

B
ACK
UP
STAIRS
,
I
buried my head in Father's Herbal, studying the pages.

Vazan hadn't promised to gather the bapeeta, so I might have to seek a vision, like Father did, ask the Holy Ones to show me where it grew and journey there myself. It couldn't be too far away. Father had gone after it with Vazan and returned the very next morning with a basketful of bright green hand-shaped leaves.

I felt a small flutter of hope as I set the four elements on the floor, a feather for wind in the north, a candle for fire in the south, a bowl for water in the east, a pouch for earth in the west. I wrapped the beautiful Euit blanket Lady Tess had given me around my shoulders. The Holy Ones visited Adans. I would sit very still as Father used to do, pray, and wait for a vision.

I lit the candle and closed my eyes.
Please, Holy Ones, show me where bapeeta grows,
I prayed.
If I am an Adan, bless me with a vision today. You know my need. You know my people are in trouble and why I have to please this queen so she will let them go.
An hour passed. My back ached. I did not move. Two hours passed. My legs cramped. I did not move. Three hours passed. Silence. Darkness. Emptiness.

Someone pounded on my door. “Mistress physician,” a young voice called.

“Yes,” I answered hoarsely. My feet had gone to sleep.

I hobbled to the door, slid back the iron bolt, opened it a crack.

“The king summons you.” It was a page. “You're to come right away.”

“Is he ill? Should I bring my medicines?”

The boy shrugged. “He didn't say, mistress physician. Come on.” I pulled the blanket from my shoulders and folded it, deeply disappointed in myself. I'd had no vision. No proof I was an Adan. I might never be more than a well-trained girl who followed her father's teachings, who used his medicines until his trunk was empty and I had no more to give.

My feet were no longer putty; they were two pincushions pricked with needles from all sides. I gripped the iron banister, barely able to make my way downstairs behind the pageboy. It didn't help that he was bolting down two at a time.
As sprightly as a fey child,
I thought, which made me look at him again and wonder where he was truly taking me.
Trust no one,
Jackrun had said.

I sighed, relieved when the boy swept off his hat, bowed, and vanished at the king's door.
Jackrun has me suspecting everyone.
The sentries uncrossed their pikes to let me inside King Arden's privy chamber. He was alone. I curtsied. “Your Majesty, you wanted to see me?” How English I sounded now. How much of my Euit past, of me, had slowly leeched out of my bones in these past months?

King Arden poked a log in the fire. Flames sent his wavering shadow along the high-backed chairs behind him as if there were two kings in the room, one who faced the flames, and one who backed away from them. “My wife wants me to come to her chamber tonight.” He jabbed the log again, sending up a spray of sparks. “You must know how . . . difficult it is with her.”

I chose my words carefully. “Sire, she has been greatly troubled since we returned from Dragon's Keep, she—”

The king held up his hand to silence me. “How is she doing with your fertility cure?”

My heart thumped. “She has been taking it each day, Your Majesty. She continues to hope.” They'd come together more than once on Dragon's Keep before their son died. She was a few days late, but women her age could be irregular. I didn't dare mention the lateness to His Majesty until I was more certain of what it meant.

“You have to help me.” He kept his eyes on the fire. “My own physician is an imbecile in these matters. I am forced to turn to you.”

“Sire, are you ill?”

“Not ill!” he barked, the veins swelling on his neck. “But you cannot expect me to . . .” He swung around with the poker. “No one could expect me to get a son on her the way she is now. Her condition makes it impossible to . . . I know my duty. I must have an heir. But the thought of going to her . . . You will have to mix me some kind of potion.”

I understood him. They were both still in mourning for their son. Even if it weren't for that, how could he lay with a woman who was sweet one moment and snarling the next?

“Well?” he said. “Can you do it?”

I'd heard the Adan speaking of a virility cure. I had never seen him make it, but I thought I'd passed a page about it in his book. “I think I can prepare a remedy for you, sire.”

“You think you can? Or you know you can!”

“I have to check my stores, but I am fairly sure I—”

“Do it. Make yourself useful.” Still gripping the poker, he crossed to the barred window. “She wasn't always the way you see her now,” he said with his back to me. “We had a good marriage. She was the brightest, most beautiful woman in all of Wilde Island once, a fine horsewoman, a brilliant strategist, a regal queen. You understand?”

“I do, Your Majesty.” He was telling me he once loved her.

He turned. Dull autumn light fell across his features. “Is there something in your store to help my wife . . . return?” His face was a map of pain. I saw how hard it was for him to speak of Queen Adela's madness.

“My father, the Adan, saw Her Majesty needed something to . . . balance her mind, sire. He began treating her”—
don't say madness
—“
condition
soon after we arrived.” I swallowed. The bapeeta he'd picked was gone.

“Increase the dose, for God's sake,” he said.

“Sire—”

“My wife still believes in you. If she did not, I wouldn't waste more men and supplies on her cause.”

“Waste more men, Your Majesty?”

“We got a report of an uprising down in Devil's Boot. Nothing my soldiers couldn't handle, but I had to send more men and weapons down. The enterprise will be worth it if your father's miracle cure does what it's supposed to do, a waste of good men and supplies if you fail. Go,” he added, waving me away with his poker.

My head reeled as I backed toward the door.
An uprising?
I'd already lost Father. I couldn't bear it if my mother died now.
Please Holy Ones, keep her safe!

“One more thing, Uma, this potion you're going to give me. Does it cause any ill effects? Is there any limit to how often it can be used?”

“I believe it can make a man queasy at first.”

He gave a dismissive laugh. “I am king, I can put up with a little queasiness, young physician. Go now and come back within the hour with your answer.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

I barely made it to my room before I broke down.

A waste of good men!
By all that was sacred. I swiped tears from my eyes, gulping breath. What about the good men in my village, trying their best to protect their families or the elders who were too frail to fight? Had the reds joined in the uprising? I unlocked Father's Herbal. Tears blurred the pages. I cupped my wet eyes in my palms, pressing hard enough to feel the bony outline of my eye sockets.
No,
I thought,
not the reds
. The king would have said something if the dragons broke the treaty.

So my people fought alone. Who fell? Who died? How many more had to die before Queen Adela got what she wanted? It was all in my hands. It was too much.

I gulped against the pain, swiped my eyes again, and read the Herbal through a mist, my gut churning. I wanted to run back to the king's room, bash his face for his arrogance, feel his blood on my knuckles. I'd nearly smacked a guard the day we treated the spit boy's wounds. It was Father who stopped me, dragged me back up the stairs and pressed me into a dark alcove.
If you attacked one of the guards, they'd throw you in a cell,
he'd said in a harsh whisper.
Do you want that?

He was right. If I did what I wanted to do now, they'd imprison me, hang me. There'd be no one left to free my people.

The candle had burned low. I thumbed through more pages until I found what I was looking for. I smiled a sad smile. Father knew I studied his Herbal. He'd worded it cleverly to protect me from understanding the effect of these herbs on men, but I was old enough to understand his code. I found the proper measurements needed for the curative's preparation, the list of herbs to crush to a fine powder before you mixed it with honey. And the indicated dose a man required. Each herb was not potent taken alone, but strong enough to increase a man's virility when combined.

I dried my eyes. The plants my father listed were in my trunk. The king had his army, but I had the remedy King Arden needed—plants that wielded the power of life. I could use this power as a bargaining tool to free my people if I was as wily as Vazan, as brave as my father.

Pendragon Castle, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

I
T
SEEMED
THAT
a night with her husband had eased the queen. She looked calm, even contented when I brought in her morning potion. If she wasn't already with child, last night's visit gave her another chance. A flicker of hope brushed light as a butterfly wing against my chest.

Bringing the king's cure hadn't been easy. “Mix a single spoonful of this powder with an equal amount of honey against the bitter taste, Your Majesty, and make sure to take the dose just before you . . .” I'd paused then, sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I was seventeen and had never even kissed a man, yet here I was instructing the sovereign king of Wilde Island, a man old enough to be my father. I'd fixed my eyes firmly on the semi-precious gems decorating his gaudy shoes as I spoke, and excused myself as quickly as I could.

The queen was gazing out the window. “Look, there he is.” Jackrun rode into the courtyard below. She tipped her head, looking down with her glass eye as he jumped from his mount. Horse and rider were both mud-spattered.

“He is looking very fit,” she said. Her Majesty gave a little frown as Jackrun tossed the reins to a groomsman to lead his horse away. “Where has he been?” she said. “I've been missing him. And what is Desmond wearing?”

“Your . . . Majesty,” I said. “Desmond—”

“Yes, Desmond.” She turned. “What about him?”

By the Holy Ones, if she was mad enough to mistake Jackrun for her son, what would happen now? All my bapeeta was gone. There was none in her morning brew to treat this lunacy; still, I held it out to her.

“Your secret fertility herbs?” she asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good. The king and I must have another child. Another—” She stopped before taking the chalice. Her left hand shook. She held it in her right like a caught bird whose wings she could not still. “My . . . my . . . son.” Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mind had cleared enough to remember it was not her son in the foreyard below, that he was dead.

She snatched the goblet, drank it all, and shoved the empty cup in my hands. “Go now,” she shouted. “Leave me alone!”

I stood partway down the stairwell, swearing under my breath at my father's stubborn dragon who would not stoop to herbing when I needed her so much, when I was out of the one thing that seemed to balance the queen.

Lute music drifted up from the queen's presence chamber below.

Lady Olivia came halfway up and stopped. We were alone; still, she greeted me in whispers. “How is the queen, Uma?”

“Not . . . well, my lady.”

“I left her well and happy earlier this morning. What has happened since?”

I couldn't bear to repeat what the queen had just said about Jackrun. The delusion had passed. She had remembered her son was buried now in the family tomb. Maybe it would not come up again?

“She is thinking of Prince Desmond,” I whispered.

“A mother never gets over the loss of a child,” Lady Olivia said. She leaned closer. “Her courses are late,” she whispered. “Do you think she carries another? Hope of that would cheer her.” I tried to breathe. Her sweet perfume had overpowered the air in the stairwell.

“It is too early to tell, my lady.”

“Maybe we will have good news to share with the king soon,” she said.

“I hope so. Better not to mention it to Queen Adela or to His Majesty until we are sure,” I added.

“She must suspect a possible pregnancy if she is late,” said Lady Olivia in a hushed voice.

“She will when her mind is clear, but when she suffers with delusions—”

“Has the herb you use to treat her episodes become ineffectual?” she asked pointedly.

“No, my lady.”
Do not tell her you've run out
. “It is not safe to give her too much too often.”

“Yet she must be in her right mind to carry a child, Uma.”

“I agree,” I quipped. “My lady,” I added.

“I know you are doing your best,” she said as she lifted her velvet skirts and headed the rest of the way up the stairs.

• • •

I
HAD
TO
pass through the queen's presence chamber below to access these private stairs to her bedroom. I heard the lute player as I entered through the well-guarded door. The ladies-in-waiting crowded in the window seats, veiled heads bent over their elaborate lace-making in the sunlight. The younger maids-in-waiting had left their sewing on the benches and were peering out the tower window. They drew back with guilty looks when I stepped in. Seeing it was only me, and not Lady Olivia, who presided over this room with strict rules of etiquette, they went back to their entertainment, chattering like treed squirrels as they watched the men in the weapons yard below.

The musician was playing “Fey Maiden,” the fairy tune I thought of now as Jackrun's song. Still haunted by the queen's confusion of Jackrun for Desmond, I stood a moment, listening.

In the enchanted woodland wild,

The Prince shall wed a Fairy child.

Dragon, Human, and Fairy,

Their union will be bound by three.

And when these lovers intertwine,

Three races in one child combine.

Dragon, Fey, and Humankind,

Bound in one bloodline.

O Bring this day unto us soon,

And forfeit weapons forged in strife.

Sheath sword, and talon, angry spell,

And brethren be for life.

The last verse that spoke of sheathing swords did not sound like Jackrun, who relished sword fights, and sought matches in the weapons yard with the kind of intensity and passion he had for dragon riding. Bianca and Pricilla had squeezed up in front of the other pretty maids to get the best view of the men below.

“There's Jackrun,” Bianca said breathlessly. I heard soft oohs and aahs. She was not the only one who'd noticed the athletic duke's son since he'd arrived.

“He's going to fight Sir Kenneth,” Pricilla said. “Look, he's choosing broadswords from the rack.”

I remembered Sir Kenneth from our trip to Dragon's Keep; a stout fighter years older than Jackrun.
She must be mistaken,
I thought, pushing
my way through the little crowd to take a closer look. She was right. The two had broadswords, weapons so hefty you had to use both arms to swing them. I swallowed, wondering at Jackrun's pride going against a soldier whose muscled arms were as thick as Jackrun's legs. Did he enjoy getting injured? Knights gathered around the two below, some whistling, others shouting to cheer them on as the two men circled facing each other.

The minstrel played another song. I barely heard it as the girls made wagers on how many rounds Jackrun would last with Sir Kenneth. Pricilla pulled a ribbon from her hair; Bianca plucked a lovely tortoiseshell comb from hers. Her bright blond hair cascaded down her back as she held out her comb. “I say he lasts four rounds. Uma, do you want to wager with us?”

Her face powder did not hide the dark rings below her eyes. I knew her headaches kept her awake at night. They'd worsened since we'd come home with the dead prince, but she seemed well enough today.

I shook my head. What did I have to wager with that she might want anyway? My clothes had once belonged to Bianca. I didn't think she would want them back now I'd worn them. And I'd rather break out in boils than give away my dragon belt.

The sound of clanking metal made us all peer down again. The men were swinging their heavy weapons, the seasoned knight coming at Jackrun like a large bear, pushing him back as they both struck high and low, swords bashing. I caught my breath as Sir Kenneth landed a blow hitting Jackrun's upper arm, tearing his shirt as he drew it back. My hand went to my mouth as Jackrun stumbled, blood running down his arm. The same arm Prince Desmond slashed when Jackrun fought for me.

“Your Majesty,” the ladies-in-waiting all said in unison with strained voices. They were rising to their feet to curtsy to the queen, who had just entered with Lady Olivia.
Don't let Her Majesty see Jackrun. She only just called him Desmond.

I curtsied along with the maidens clustered by the window. The queen went to one of her ladies-in-waiting to inspect her embroidery work. The lute player sang as Her Majesty moved farther down the line, viewing each lady's workmanship. She would reach the maidens by the window soon. They'd thumped down on their bench squeezed together like a row of ducklings, some stitching vestments, others hemming plain-looking shirts. They appeared silent and demure now; only their blushed faces gave them away. My ears pricked to the sounds below; more clanking, a shout went up. For Jackrun or Sir Kenneth? I could not look.

I darted to the minstrel. “Come, sir,” I whispered. “Stand here in the sunlight to entertain Her Majesty.”

Lady Olivia shot me a questioning look as I tugged the man's sleeve, leading him in front of the window overlooking the weapons yard. He plucked a new tune. Lady Olivia drew me aside as the queen approached the maiden's window seats.

“Why move the minstrel there?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“We cannot let Her Majesty look out that window,” I whispered back. “Jackrun is down there fighting in the weapons yard. She saw him earlier through her tower window and called him Desmond.”

Lady Olivia looked at me wide-eyed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Why didn't you tell me before when we spoke in the stairwell?”

“I hoped it was a passing thing.” We both turned. Her Majesty was speaking with Bianca, who held out her sewing, head bowed as if she expected a scolding.

“Chin up, daughter,” Lady Olivia whispered under her breath. “Show the queen your courage.” She crossed the room and enlivened the conversation between Her Majesty and Bianca. Bianca smiled as her mother pointed out the finer qualities of her daughter's stitchery. I hurried out, knowing the queen's clever companion would use her skills to block Queen Adela's view of the yard below. Some battles are fought with broadswords, others with cunning and words. I was only beginning to learn English ways. When it came to courtly battle, Lady Olivia was a skilled fighter.