In the Time of Dragon Moon (19 page)

Pendragon Castle, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

T
HE
SOUNDS
OF
the queen's ragged weeping echoed down the stairwell the next morning. Halfway up, I paused to listen, steeling my nerves before continuing up the spiral stairs with Her Majesty's potion. Lady Olivia was on the landing above, wagging her finger and hissing orders at a cowering laundress. Spotting me, she gave the laundress a little shove. “Show her,” she said.

The girl hurried down, half tripping with her linen load. On the step above mine she stopped and parted the wadded sheets, nodding down at the bloodstains. Not the small droplets that might only mean spotting in early pregnancy, but enough red to show the queen's monthly courses had come in force.

Her lateness was only that. There wasn't any child.

The laundress folded the linen again, hiding the stain before she hurried down. My body went heavier than clay. Lady Olivia gave me a terse look as she reached for the door handle. “The queen won't see you this morning, Uma.”

“She has to, my lady.” I held out the steaming brew, the familiar scent filling the air in the landing. It was once the smell of hope, but now . . .

“She won't drink that today. She told me she is sick of your potion. She might not agree to take it ever again.”

I gripped her arm. “But I have another month to help her conceive. She promised me I would have until the end of Dragon . . . the end of October.”

Lady Olivia looked down at my hand and I removed it. “Please,” I added. “What can I do?”

We listened to the sobs. “I have to go back inside. But Her Majesty needs whatever it is you give her to calm her nerves.” She paused. “Can you guise it? Put the herb into some sweetmeats?”

I was afraid to admit I was out of bapeeta. “I can try, my lady.”

“Go then, do it. I will bring her downstairs to her aviary. Her birds usually lighten her mood.” There was a crashing sound beyond the door. “It might take some time to get her cleaned up. I'll send a messenger when she's ready,” she added before letting herself back inside.

Damn you, Vazan,
I thought, heading downstairs and through the long hallways to the kitchen.
If only you'd harvested the bapeeta when I first asked you to!
Cook had some sweetmeats in the larder. Back upstairs, I unlocked Father's Herbal and flipped through the pages searching for something, anything I could mix with the gooey paste in the center of the sweetmeats. None of the herbs or tinctures had the calming power of bapeeta. I slammed the Herbal shut, cut a sweetmeat open, killed a curious fly that showed too much interest in what I was doing.

At last I resorted to crushing the purple gyocana seeds I had used before to help Her Majesty sleep. A small amount would make her drowsy. I wasn't sure it would calm her tempest, but it was all I had.

It was another hour before Lady Olivia sent a message for me to bring the sweetmeats. I took only two with me, leaving the rest for later. Lady Olivia met me at the end of the long hallway outside the open aviary door. She eyed the queen inside as she quickly placed the sweetmeats on the enamel tray. There was a scratch on her cheek. The queen had long nails.

“I am afraid it's bad news,” she whispered. Her face was a reservoir of worry. “Prepare yourself,” she added. “I'm sorry. I did what I could to—”

“Come here, Uma,” Queen Adela called in a chilled voice. I noted Her Majesty's puffy eyes and clammy-looking skin as I hurried into the room filled with chattering, tweeting, and singing. The birds didn't seem to know they were trapped. Had they ever been free? I glanced at the goldfinch, Mother's favorite bird, and called out to her in my mind, wanting her strong arm around me. Holding me up.

The queen put out her hand. I fell on my knees, kissing her ring.

“Your Majesty, I am sorry.” I meant it for both my failure and her sore disappointment.

“Sorry?” She wrenched her hand back so speedily, her ruby scraped the tip of my nose.

She plucked a sweetmeat from Lady Olivia's tray, ate half, then broke the rest in tiny bits and tossed them to the birds in the large floor-to-ceiling cage. I jumped to my feet and exchanged a nervous look with Lady Olivia. Neither of us could say a thing as the bluebirds, goldfinches, and larks all fluttered down, taking the crumbs in their tiny beaks. Their bodies were so small. Would the sleeping powder kill them?
Please no,
I thought, watching them dance about on their tiny clawed feet as they ate every crumb.

“You are no better than the other physicians who have forced their sickening potions on me, Uma,” Queen Adela snapped. “How many gallons of the Kuyawhat have I drunk these past two months?”

Kuyawan, not Kuyawhat.
“It's hard to say, Your Majesty.”

“Enough to sink a ship!” She took a second sweetmeat and ate it all. “Should we throw her to the dogs, Lady Olivia? Drop her in a bear pit? Behead her?”

“Your Majesty,” Lady Olivia said with alarm, “please—”

“No, wait, I remember now,” the queen said, raising her hand. “I have already chosen burning. This physician stinks like spoiled meat. We should cook her and start with a fresh physician.”

I fell on my knees again. “Your Majesty, you promised to try my father's cure three more months. It has been only two. Give me one more month. Remember—”

“Remember? I remember everything. It's you who have forgotten your promise to me, mistress physician. Guards!”

“Wait, Your Majesty, please. Let me keep trying.”

Four men marched in. Two yanked me to my feet.

“Take the blade she hides under her sleeve,” said Queen Adela.

“It's an herbing knife, Your Majesty, not a weapon. I need it for my work.” Too late; one of the men already pulled it from its sheath. He held it up, admiring the blade in the latticed window light.

“Another month, Your Majesty, please!”

“Throw her in a cell.”

Dungeon, Pendragon Castle

Wolf Moon

Late September 1210

T
HEY
LOCKED
ME
in a cell not much bigger than a rowboat. The single barred window high above me on the wall disgorged a pale gray light. I kicked the stinking rushes and crouched against the wall, clutching my stomach, the smell of rat piss in my nose.

The next day a guard wrapped a chain around my middle and tied my hands behind my back with a rope. Two men led me from my cell, one holding the end of the chain as if I were a leashed dog. Outside, a great mob filled the castle green from one side to the other. Common folk shoved past the well-dressed courtiers to jeer and hurl dirt clumps at me as I was led along.

Clods smacked me from all sides, but that was nothing to the dreadful sight of the great wood stack up ahead prepared for a burning. On the viewing stage, Lady Olivia and Bianca stood next to the queen. And on the left, seated between the bishop and King Arden, was Jackrun.

What in the name of the Holy Ones was he doing up there?

My heart cinched. I had let myself trust him . . . There must be a reason he sat with the king, but why wouldn't he face me?

The king's men positioned me below the stage, an arm's length from a filthy, middle-aged man dressed in brown sacking.

The queen ordered, “Bring Master Ridolfi up.” It was the queen's previous physician.

Two guards brought the poor man up the stage steps and put him front and center, where he knelt on one knee to Her Majesty, head bowed.

Queen Adela said, “Master Ridolfi, you pricked me, leeched me, and lied to me. You sickened me with potions. You knowingly harmed your sovereign queen. For these crimes you will burn.”

The crowd raised a cheer. Queen Adela held up her hand to silence them. “Do you have any last words to say before this crowd of witnesses and before God?” she asked.

“Your Majesty, have mercy,” he begged. “As God is my witness, I used my cures to help you and heal you. I swear I meant you no harm. Reduce me to ruin. Exile me if Your Majesty sees fit. I will leave Wilde Island shunned and bereft and never return. But please have pity. Don't burn me.”

The crowd booed. They'd come here to see a burning.

“Bishop, give him his rightful service,” Queen Adela said flatly. The bishop was in full regalia, the golden stitching adorning his creamy robes matching the glittering threads in his tall hat. He stepped to the kneeling, trembling man, said a prayer in Latin, and crossed the man's filthy forehead with holy oil.

“Bring Mistress Uma up,” Queen Adela called. My legs lost their bones. The guards hoisted me up the stairs. My head buzzed with screaming whispers like an aroused beehive.
I have another month. A month. I have until October's end. She promised me. She promised!
My tongue felt thick as a slug. Jackrun still wouldn't lift his eyes. He studied the stage as if it were a book.

Queen Adela's fey eye glinted as she appraised me. “You have disappointed me, Uma Quarteney. For that you will watch this condemned physician burn. Remember, this is your future, and your burning day will come upon you fast if you fail me again.

“Bring my physician down as close as you dare to the pyre,” she told the guards. “And stake her in place so she feels the heat. Lady Olivia, you have been in charge of her. You may go and stand with her and keep her company. Bianca, accompany your mother,” she added with a sly smile.

The guards dragged me ten paces from the base of the pyre, drove a stake in the grassy ground, and chained me to it, smashing my bound wrists against the post so I could not move or run. Looking over my shoulder for Jackrun, neck straining to find him, to read his face again, to understand, I was crushed to find I could only see the far corner of the viewing stage, the king's ornate shoes and colorful hose, the base of his carved chair. The crowd surged on my left as people jostled closer to the pyre. The sweet scent of hyacinth perfume filled the air as Lady Olivia joined me with Bianca. A guard shoved them closer, but did not tie them to my post.

Bianca clutched her mother's sleeve, driving her fingers into the folds. “I don't want to watch,” she said in a small voice. The large droplets of sweat on the edge of her upper lip quavered as she spoke.

Lady Olivia patted her hand. “I know, my darling. Be strong.”

I could not think why Queen Adela ordered Bianca to stand this close to the pyre unless she somehow learned about the sapphire bracelet King Arden gave her and was punishing her for it.

Master Ridolfi gripped the ladder with his bony hands and was creeping spiderlike rung to rung. The guard prodded his backside with a pike until he reached the platform. He tied the man firmly to the stake with a long chain before climbing down and removing the ladder.

“There must be something you can do,” Bianca pleaded. “Ask Queen Adela to call us back to the stage, she—”

“Hush, Bianca. It will all be over soon.”

But it wasn't over soon. The king's men surrounded the pyre, jamming torches under the base where the wood had been blackened with pitch to assure a hotter blaze. The acrid odor of burning pitch filled my nose as the wood caught. Bright flames leaped up. The crowd roared their approval, hungry for the burning as if it were a fine bit of entertainment after a day's work.

Thick smoke tumbled toward me. I swallowed and coughed, praying in my own language, asking for mercy, for the man to die quickly, for his soul to go where Christian souls went, a heaven I'd heard the priest describe that was as peaceful as Nushtuen, the place my father journeyed to after he left his body. The flames at the base of the stacked wood were the color of new-mown hay. They turned the darker yellow of wild iris as they rose higher, licking the wood, the platform, swarming in to the man's bare feet.

“God have mercy!” he wailed. The crowd cheered.

Lady Olivia gripped my arm. “Oh God,” she cried as the fire rose up the screaming man's legs. “No one should have to die this way!” She hunched over, groaning. Bianca clung to her, sputtered and cried.

A sob wrenched up my throat. The searing heat coming off the pyre tightened the skin on my face, dried the tears that ran down my cheeks. Flames swept up and caught the man's sacking.
Save him. Someone save him.
I thought of the dragon who'd flown in to save Tanya, but this was no half-fey girl. No dragon would rescue him.

Bianca fainted in the heat and misery. Her mother bent over her, too weak to help her up, and I could do nothing to help either one of them with my hands tied behind my back. Bianca lay a long while at our feet like a cut flower as the inferno heated my body. I baked in my clothes. The pattern of my stitched bodice pressed against my skin like the hot wires Father used to burn the fox mark on my chest.

Master Ridolfi let out his last pitiful shriek and died.

The crowd roared with triumph. Lady Olivia leaned her head against my shoulder. The smoky smell of cooking flesh brought bile up my throat.
His pain is over. It's over.
But there were more insults to come. Small bits of burned sacking sent by a hot wind floated down over us where we stood close to the blaze. Lady Olivia weakly tried to brush off the falling smuts. Every wipe left a trail of black smears on her face, her sleeves, the gown she always kept so impeccably clean. I could do nothing to brush away the smuts landing on me. The soot settled like black snow on Bianca's pale blue gown, her face and outspread hair.

The inferno still raged. I sucked in ashes, choked. “Please unchain me,” I begged. “It's over now. The man is dead.”

Three men came out to aid Lady Olivia and Bianca, carrying the girl away. But they left me in place by the blazing pyre, letting me bake in hellfire until the queen allowed them to release me, and drag me seared and broken back up to the Crow's Nest.