The Taming (9 page)

“Find out what you can about this place,” Liana said as an afterthought. “Where is Lord Severn? Perhaps he could…help us.” There was little strength in Liana's voice.

“Yes, my lady,” Joice said meekly and left the room.

Slowly, Liana made her way up the circular staircase to the solar. The hawks moved on their perches at the sound of her, then settled again. If the whole castle were not littered with the remains of people's living, she might have thought the place deserted. It was so unlike her father's house, with people moving in and out of rooms, people laughing and teasing. Here there were only men, hard-faced, unsmiling men with scars on their bodies and weapons in their hands. There were no children, and no women except for the two bitches who'd laughed at her and refused to obey her.

She looked below at the moat and in the fading light saw the head of a cow bob in the black, thick ooze. This place was to be her home. Here she was to bear children and raise them. And what love she was to have was to come from a husband who didn't seem to recognize her from one hour to the next.

How
was she to make him love her? Perhaps if she and her maids cleaned the place, perhaps if she made this castle a fit place to live, he would be glad he married her. He would think of her as more than just the person who came attached to the dowry.

And food, she thought. Perhaps if she hired some good cooks and covered his table with delicious, delectable food. Surely the man who ate well, slept between clean sheets, wore clean clothes, would be pleased with the woman who made this possible.

And then there was the bed. Liana had heard her maids say a woman who pleased a man in bed could control him out of it. She'd get one bedroom clean by tonight and he'd seek her out, for now that they had privacy, he'd want his wife. She smiled for the first time since seeing Moray Castle. She just had to be patient and what she wanted would eventually come to her.

Moments later all seven of her maids came to the solar, their arms loaded with food, pillows, and blankets, and chattering all at once.

It took Liana a while to understand what the women were saying. Lord Severn was with someone called the Lady and wasn't likely to be seen for three or four days. Other than the Lady and her maids, there were only eight women in the whole castle.

“They do no work,” Bess said, “and no one would tell me what they do.”

“And they're named for the days of the week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and so forth, except one is called Waiting. They didn't seem to have any other names,” Alice said.

“And the food is awful. The flour is full of weevils and sand. The baker just bakes it into the bread.”

Bess leaned forward. “They used to buy bread from a baker in town, but he filed an order of a feud against the Peregrines for nonpayment and…”

“And what?” Liana demanded, trying to eat a piece of meat that could have been used for saddle leather.

“The Peregrine men tore the door off the baker's house and…and used his flour bins for a toilet.”

Liana put her inedible meat down. The women had cleaned off a seat under one window and now sat there together. Below them they could hear the sounds of steel on steel, of men yelling, of food being eaten with open mouths. It seemed that her husband and his men were eating in the room below, but no one had thought to ask the wife of their lord to join them.

“Did you perhaps hear which bedchamber is Lord Rogan's?” she asked, trying to keep her dignity.

The women looked at each other, pity in their eyes.

“No,” Joice murmured. “But surely that one there, the large one, is his room.”

Liana nodded. She hadn't yet felt strong enough to mount the wooden stairs of the solar and see what rooms were above—or, more likely, what manner of filth was there. If birds were kept in the solar, were pigs kept in the upper bedrooms?

It took two hours of hard work to shovel out two bedrooms. Liana wanted to help, but Joice refused to allow it and Liana understood. At the moment her maids were almost her equals, as they all felt lost and alone in this strange, foul-smelling place, but Joice did not want her mistress to lose her power over these women. So Liana sat on the window seat in the solar and held a clove-studded orange to her nose to block out the smell of the moat.

When at last her room was ready—not clean, but at least she could walk in it without tripping over bones—a maid persuaded a farrier to bring up two mattresses, and Liana, with Joice's help, undressed and went to bed. She lay awake for a while, waiting for her husband to come to her. But he didn't.

In the morning she awoke to loud noises and hideous smells. What she had thought was a bad dream was reality.

 

In the morning Rogan walked into the Lord's Chamber to see Severn sitting at the table, his head resting tiredly on his hand, and eating bread and cheese. “I didn't expect to see you for a while. Want to go hunting with me?”

“Yes,” Severn answered. “I need the rest after last night with Io. You look well rested. Your wife didn't bother you too much last night?”

“Last night was Saturday,” Rogan gave for an answer.

“And you didn't spend it with your wife?”

“Not on Saturday.”

Severn scratched his arm. “You'll never get any sons like that.”

“Are you ready to go or not? I'll get around to her. Maybe next…I don't know when. She's not something to stir a man's blood.”

“Where is she now?”

Rogan shrugged. “Upstairs, maybe. Who knows?”

Severn washed the rest of the bread down with sour wine and spit sand onto the floor. What his brother did was none of his business.

 

For three days Liana and her maids worked at cleaning the solar. And for three days she was afraid to go belowstairs. She couldn't bear to show her face to the people of Moray Castle. They all knew that she had been rejected by her husband, that he not only refused to sleep with her but that he refused to give her power over his servants.

So Liana stayed alone, never seeing her husband, never having any contact with the people of the castle. So far, she thought, not only wasn't she winning her husband's love with her meekness, but he wasn't even noticing her, meek or otherwise.

It was on the afternoon of the fourth day that she dared to venture up the wooden stairs. The upper floor was as dirty as the solar had been, except there were no signs that anyone had been here for years. She wondered where the people of the castle slept and instantly pictured them altogether in a heap.

She walked along the hall and looked into one empty bedroom after another, scaring rats as she went along, creating little dust storms behind her. When she was about to leave to go downstairs again, she thought she heard a spinning wheel. Lifting her skirts, she ran to the far bedroom and pushed open the heavy door.

Sitting in a stream of sunlight was a very pretty older woman with dark hair and brows, working at a flax wheel. The room was clean, there was cushioned furniture here, and the windows had glass in them. This had to be the Lady who Lord Severn visited. Perhaps she was an aunt or some other relative.

“Come in, dear, and close the door before we both choke on the dust.”

Liana did as she was bid and smiled. “I didn't know anyone was here. What with the state of everything, that is.” She felt very comfortable with this lovely woman, and when she nodded at a chair, Liana took it.

“It is awful, isn't it?” the lady said. “Rogan wouldn't notice the dirt even if it were so deep he had to swim through it.”

Liana quit smiling. “He wouldn't notice me if I were drowning in it,” she said under her breath to herself, not meaning for the lady to hear.

But she did hear. “Of course he wouldn't notice you. Men never notice the good women who see that their clothes are clean, that their food is well cooked, and who bear their children in silence.”

Liana's head came up at this. “What women
do
they notice?”

“Women like Iolanthe.” She smiled at Liana. “You haven't met her. She's Severn's greensleeves. Well, not an actual greensleeves. Actually, Io is the wife of a very wealthy, very old, very stupid man. Io spends his money and lives here with Severn, who is neither old nor wealthy and not at all stupid.”

“She lives
here?
She chooses to live in this…this…”

“She has her own apartments over the kitchen, quite the best apartments in the castle. Io would demand the best.”

“I demanded help from the servants,” Liana said bitterly, “but got nothing.”

“There are demands and there are demands,” the lady said, spinning her flax into a fine, smooth strand. “Do you love Rogan very much?”

Liana looked away and didn't even question her intimacy with this woman. She was so tired of having only maids to talk to. “I think I could have loved him once. I agreed to marry him because he was the only man who was honest with me. He didn't praise my beauty then look at my father's gold.”

“Rogan is always honest. He never pretends to be what he is not, to care about what does not matter to him.”

“True, and he does not care about me,” Liana said sadly.

“But then you do lie, don't you, dear? The Liana who hides from the laughter of maids is not the Liana who ran her father's estates, the Liana who once faced a mob of angry peasants.”

Liana didn't ask how the woman knew these things about her, but she felt tears welling in her eyes. “I don't think a man could love that Liana. Joice says men like—”

“And who is Joice?”

“My maid. Actually, she is somewhat like a mother to me. She says—”

“And she knows all about men, does she? Raised by one, married to one, mother to many?”

“Well, no, actually, she grew up with me. She was an orphan before that and lived in the women's quarters. She is married, though, no children, but then she only sees her husband three times a year so…Oh, I see what you mean. Joice has not had a great deal of experience with men.”

“No, I thought not. Remember, dear, it isn't the woman who cleans a man's house who has battles fought for her, it is the woman who sometimes wields a whip.”

That made Liana laugh. “I can't imagine taking a whip to Lord Rogan.”

“Only a muddy shirt,” the woman said, eyes smiling, then her head came up. “Someone comes up the stairs. Go, please. I don't want to be disturbed.”

“Yes, of course,” Liana said and left the room, closing the door behind her. She almost went back into the room to ask how she'd known about the muddy shirt, but Joice came to the head of the stairs and said Liana was needed.

The rest of that day Liana spent in isolation in the solar, only her maids for company, and Liana kept hearing the woman's words. She was so confused about what to do. She thought of going to Rogan and demanding that he make the servants obey her, but the idea was ridiculous to her. He'd merely turn away. She couldn't imagine he would listen to her merely because she shouted at him. Of course she could always draw a sword on him. That idea almost made her giggle. So all she could do was wait. Perhaps someday he'd come to the solar, perhaps to get one of his hawks, and he'd see how clean the place was and he'd want to remain, then he'd turn to her with love in his eyes and—

“My lady?” Joice said. “The hour grows late.”

“Yes,” Liana said heavily. She'd go to her empty, cold bed once again.

It was hours later that she awoke to an odd sound and a light. “Rogan!” she gasped, and turned over to see not her husband but a tall boy, a very pretty boy, with dirty shoulder-length dark hair and a ragged velvet tunic over baggy knit hose. He was standing by the wall, one leg on a stool, elbow on knee, eating an apple and staring at her in the light of a fat, bright candle.

Liana sat up. “Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”

“Come to have a look at you,” he said.

He must be younger than his height indicated because his voice hadn't changed yet, she thought. “You've seen me, now get out of here.” She did not have to put up with insolence in the room she'd chosen for her own.

He loudly munched on his apple and made no move to leave. “I guess you've been waiting for my brother for a while now.”

“Your brother?” Liana remembered Helen's saying she didn't know how many Peregrine sons were left.

“I'm Zared,” the boy said, putting his foot on the floor and throwing the apple core out the window. “I've seen you now. You're just like they said, and Rogan won't be coming tonight.” He started out the door.

“Wait just a minute!” Liana said in a voice that made the boy halt and turn back. “What do you mean I'm like they said, and where is my husband that he won't be here tonight?” Liana hoped the boy would say Rogan was on some secret mission for the king, or perhaps had taken a temporary vow of chastity.