In the Time of Dragon Moon (20 page)

Crow's Nest, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

Late September 1210

I
HATE
HER
. I hate her. I hate her.” I'd been crouched against this wall in the Crow's Nest, choking out the words with my head bent, my hands over the back of my sweaty neck since they'd hauled me up the stairs and shut me in.

“I hate her. Hate her. Hate her.” She hadn't changed since her witch-hunting days when she'd burned women up and down the countryside. She was a ruthless monarch who executed people when they did not give her what she wanted. I'd believed her when she'd threatened to burn me after three months, but believing it was one thing, witnessing it another. The cruelty of Ridolfi's burning, the sight and sound and smell of it shook me to my core. I knew now what it meant to burn.

Someone was knocking at the door. I raised my head, blinking in the shadowy room lit only by the dusky light from the open window. I hadn't lit a candle, revolted at the look and feel of fire, wanting nothing to do with it ever again.

“Uma?” Jackrun called.

Stiff from crouching, I went, slid the bolt aside, and opened the door to him. He flew in with a flurry of sudden storm, set a tray of food on the table, swept me in his arms, held me tight. “Uma, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

His body was too warm after Ridolfi's burning. I wanted cold. I hated him and his fire. He'd sat on the stage with Her. I pushed him away. “How could you do it?” I choked.

“It was all I could do to convince her to let you live,” he said, drawing me close and holding me again. I was stiff in his arms, still not sure if I could trust him.

“I found out what was happening when the men left the weapons yard to build the pyre.” He rocked me in his arms. “I went straight to my aunt. She was determined to tie two physicians to the stake. I had to use all the negotiation skills I've learned over the years to talk her out of burning you. She was fixed, mad. I talked ceaselessly yesterday and again with her last night, Uma.” He passed his hand down my hair, my back. “I moved you step by step from the fire. She finally agreed not to burn you today on two conditions: that you must be staked down perilously close to the fire, and that I sit on the royal viewing stage to show my support of the Pendragon family, say nothing, not even give you a look.”

He put his hands to my head, lifting it, kissing the tears from my cheeks, kissing my ears, my neck, all the places the smuts still blackened. Through the open window I heard the sea crashing against the distant cliffs as he kissed me. He was the night and the sea and I melted, kissing him back, pulling him closer, wanting him closer still. The fire had nearly ended me. Now I wanted life, wanted him, admitted to myself how much I had wanted him and for how long. I wanted his flesh pressed against mine, no clothes between us.

I tugged his leather surcoat. He removed it and peeled off his shirt. I ran my hands along his warm chest and back, feeling the muscles underneath.

“Come away with me,” he said, tugging the lacings on my gown and kissing my neck, my shoulder. “You have to come away with me tonight.”

I slid my hand down the scale patch on his forearm, my breath catching. The overlapping scales were softer and cooler than I expected. “I can't run.”

“I won't let her hurt you. She'll burn you if you stay.” He kissed the tip of my ear, my throat. “Why didn't you tell me before that she'd threatened to burn you by October's end?”

“Quiet now.” I didn't want to talk about that. I didn't want to talk at all, only hold him and kiss him, but he drew back a little, putting his hands on my waist.

“You
will
come away with me, Uma. We'll use the escape passage. I left two horses tied up near my family tomb so we could ride out tonight. That's what I was doing just before I came up here.” He held out his hand. I didn't take it.

“I'll hide you in Dragonswood where she can't find you. Later we can board a ship and sail anywhere in the world, away from her, away from the fairies' plans for me. Away from all of this.”

“I have to stay.”

“Why?” he asked, frowning, shaking me a little as if to shake sense into me.

“She has my village surrounded, Jackrun. If I run away now, they will never be free. If I stay and she conceives a child, she has promised to bring the army home, so I can't run. I won't.”

“What chance is there when the fey folk have her hexed?”

“You're only guessing that's so. My father's medicines are powerful. I still might give her a child, an heir. I have another month, Jackrun. I have until the end of Dragon Moon.”

“For God's sake, Uma, she'll burn you! She would have done it today if I hadn't stopped her. She's mad. She doesn't care at all for you. She'll kill you and move on to the next physician who promises her what she wants. You have to get out now.” He pushed his arm through his sleeve, fighting into his clothes.

“Would you go if you were me? If your people were counting on you? My mother's down there, surrounded by soldiers!”

Jackrun put his fist against his forehead and turned his back to me. “This is the only way. You have to come.”

“I won't.”

His whole body shook. Then he swung around, smoke pouring from his nose.

“Are you going to roar fire now?” I said. “After what I just went through outside?”

He slid a knife from his belt. I leaped back. He gripped the blade and slapped the handle into my hand. My skin stung. He walked out, slamming the door behind him. When I looked down I saw my own herbing knife, the one the guard had taken.

My body hurt all over. Every joint ached with anger and passion and horror and need. It felt like I'd been thrown down the stairs.

• • •

I
HAD
TO
stop crying, but I couldn't for a long while. I curled up and wept until my throat was raw. At last I struck the flints, lit a candle, and stared down at the food Jackrun had brought me. I hadn't eaten since yestereve. I was too sickened to touch it, too starving not to. I drank the small ale, tore at the bread, stuffing handfuls in my mouth, chewing with bloated cheeks.

The cut of beef sat untouched on the pewter tray, the smell of the roasted meat too much like the pyre. I pinched the revolting thing and threw it out the window.

Knocking again. My heart did a little flip in my chest. Jackrun? I ran to the door.

“Message for you, mistress physician!” said a boyish voice from the other side. I sighed, opening the door to the page, who handed me a note. I was used to a verbal summons. This was my first note. He rocked back on his feet as I opened the wax seal, glad Mother had taught me how to read English from her small prayer book. It was from Lady Olivia. I saw at once why she'd chosen to write the private message.

Uma, the queen's flow is strong. She bleeds and groans with pain. Bring her a medicine to ease her cramps and something to help her sleep. Come immediately.

Signed,

Lady Olivia, Companion to Queen Adela, ruler of Wilde Island and the sister isle of Dragon's Keep

“Tell Lady Olivia I will come.”

I shut the door and leaned against it. Queen Adela was giving me another chance to serve as her royal physician. How could I treat her tonight after she'd so ruthlessly burned Master Ridolphi?

I did not wish her well.

I wanted her dead.

I opened Father's Herbal to the
Adan-duxma
—physician's creed—and read the warning halfway down.
If you mix a remedy with hate in your heart, it will act like poison
. Mix her remedies now and I would poison her.

I read the other lines farther down.
All people suffer. All people feel pain. Adans do not take sides in battle. Adans heal the wicked and the righteous alike.

All people suffer.
I saw how Queen Adela suffered, driven by child lust, by raw unanswered need. I saw the love she wanted from her husband and didn't have, the madness that ruled her mind and isolated her from everyone. I saw how her wind mind scattered her thoughts and drove her into darkness. I'd listened when she'd grieved and raged, calling her God cruel for taking her only son from her, for giving her a stillborn daughter with a clawed foot, for not giving her another healthy child after years and years of trying. I stood a moment, hoping to feel my heart soften toward her, if just a little.

Nothing.

I took up the herbing knife, my palm remembering the sting of Jackrun's anger when he'd slapped it into my hand.

Light hurried footsteps came up the stairs. “Uma?” Bianca cried, tapping on the door.

“Not now. I cannot see you now.”

“You have to, please. You must!”

When I slid the bolt aside, she flew straight into my arms, sobbing. “How could she do that to him? Every time I close my eyes I see him burning. I will never be able to sleep again.”

We held each other. I cried with her, surprised I had any tears left when I'd already wrung my heart dry these past few hours.

“My head hurts so much,” she said. “Please give me some evicta, Uma. I know I shouldn't ask again. You told me not to.”

Her wet tears cooled my neck. “I'm sorry Her Majesty made you stand so close. I'm sorry that you had to come at all.” I wiped my eyes, an idea forming. “I'm about to crush some evicta for the queen,” I said, “but I think I can spare some for you.”

“Oh, thank you.” She hugged me again before she let me go, came and leaned against the table as I got out my mortar and pestle.

I crushed the purple gyocana seeds in the mortar, the tiny black evicta, softly chanting the Euit names under my breath. I focused on curing Bianca's pain and not the queen's, hoping if I kept my mind on Bianca, whose presence warmed me, whose watchful eyes made me feel less alone, I could prepare the remedies without turning them to poison.

Bianca licked the evicta-speckled honey as a kitten washes its paw, curtsied in gratitude, and kissed my hand as if I were a queen. When she left, I finished my preparations, filling the gooey centers of the sweetmeats with the black and purple powders, one for pain, one for sleep.

On my way to the queen, I paused partway down the stairs, hearing voices on the second story, and peeked around the doorframe. Dim as it was, I could see King Arden holding Bianca in his arms. She moaned, resting her head on his chest.

“I'm sorry you were made to watch, my dear,” King Arden said, stroking her hair. It shocked me to hear him repeating almost word for word the very thing I'd said to her upstairs.

She wept softly, her satin gown crushed up against him. By all that was holy, what was she getting herself into? What would her mother, who was grooming her so carefully to marry someone of a high position, say if she knew?

I breathed a little silent sigh when Bianca pulled away at last, thinking she had seen sense.
She will curtsy to His Majesty now and they will part
. It did not go that way. Instead King Arden offered her his arm. They walked together, heads bent close to each other, strolling not toward his bedchamber where his private guards would be waiting, but in the opposite direction.

I had to follow. Taking a slow breath and whispering
havuela
—become—I stepped into the hall following them on silent feet as they rounded the next corner, hoping they wouldn't stop at Bianca's private room. They did.

He whispered in her ear and kissed her softly on the mouth before he opened her door and drew her inside.

• • •

T
HE
QUEEN
WAS
in her bed propped up against the pillows, a lambskin draped over her middle. The embroidered drapery surrounding her canopy bed showed a summer's day outing with king and queen, knights and courtiers riding through wildflowers, feasting by a lake while minstrels played. Some long-ago time of ease and joy, or a time that never existed except in cloth and thread.

Lady Olivia read, “That I might watch the splendid birds over the well watered sea—” She paused and lowered the poetry book as I stepped farther in.

The queen glared at me when I curtsied. “What took you so long?”

“Her Majesty is in great pain,” Lady Olivia added. She appeared proper as always, as if the pyre had never been lit.

“Cramps,” the queen whispered as I brought the sweetmeats closer. “Ghosts. Get out,” she snarled suddenly, not at me but at Lady Olivia, who dropped the little book, curtsied as she retrieved it, and backed quickly from the room.

We were alone. I held out the tray.

“Where is my tonic?” asked Queen Adela.

“I have added medicine to these sweetmeats for your cramp pain, Your Majesty.”

She ate them both, moaning as she chewed. “Why are we made to suffer every month this way? God's wrath is on all women.” She wiped the crumbs from her mouth and crossed herself almost as a second thought having spoken ill of her god. “I cannot sleep, Uma. Too many ghosts.”

Ghosts of all the people you've killed.
Hate flooded me again, thinking of Master Ridolfi. “The medicine will also help you sleep, Your Grace.”

“Medicine,” she said, drawing the sound out slowly as if it were a foreign word. “You saw what will happen to you if you fail me.”

I hate her.
“I will not fail you, Your Majesty.”

“You seem very sure of yourself.”

I looked away. If the fey had hexed her, I had no chance at all. I would die. She moaned. I adjusted the lambskin across her middle. Women heated them near the fire and placed them skin side down to ease cramps: an old cure and a good one. It was one thing women in our tribe were allowed to do without an Adan. Such a small thing.

Queen Adela petted the tiny curls in the wool. I thought of King Arden running his fingers through Bianca's hair, of what they might be doing in her room even now, and swallowed.