The Taming

by Jude Deveraux

  Rogan’s eyes were now fixed on the stage. He clamped a hand down on Liana’s shoulder and held her in place. She had no choice but to watch.

  Onstage, Lord Buzzard, with his coat held open, went across the stage after the ugly woman until they were out of sight. Instantly, one of Rogan’s red-haired sons came onto the stage and took a bow. He was obviously the product of Lord Buzzard’s union with the woman.

  From stage left came an old woman carrying a dark bundle, which she put in the middle of the stage, not far from where the father still lay in the straw fire.

  “Now, daughter, we will at last be warm,” she said, and from the right came another very ugly man dressed as a woman. Only this man stuck out behind instead of in front. He had padded buttocks that could have been used as a shelf and an absolutely flat chest.

  While the audience was watching this, another of Rogan’s red-haired sons ran across the stage, sending the audience into new gales.

  Liana didn’t dare look at Rogan. Tomorrow he’d probably order the whole village drawn and quartered.

  Onstage, as the mother and her jut-butted daughter were warming their hands over the pile of black, Lord Buzzard strutted onstage, his paper hawk beak looking even larger.

  “You are stealing my fuel,” Lord Buzzard shouted.

  “But it is only cow dung,” the old woman wailed. “We were freezing to death.”

  “You want fire, I will give you fire,” Lord Buzzard said. “Take her and burn her.”

  From the left came two men, big, fierce-looking brutes with scars painted on their faces so that they looked like monsters more than men. They took the old woman’s arms, as she wailed and screamed, and pulled her to the back of the stage, where they tied her to one of the barren trees and placed red-dyed straw bundles about her feet.

  Meanwhile, Lord Buzzard looked at the daughter. “Ah, come to me, my beauty,” he said.

  The ugly man playing the daughter turned to the audience and made a face so ugly—he pushed his lower lip up over the tip of his nose—that even Liana gave a bit of a laugh. Once again Lord Buzzard pulled his cloak back to reveal the grotesque genitals and chased the “girl” off the stage, while behind them the mother screamed. Two red-haired boys came running from opposite sides of the stage and crashed into each other.

  “There’s more where we came from,” one boy announced gleefully to the audience.

  Liana was about to insist to Rogan that they leave when she got an even greater shock. From the left came a young girl, very pretty, wearing a long white gown and a blonde wool wig that reached all the way to her feet. Liana knew this actress was supposed to be her. And how would these cruel people portray her?

  From the right came Lord Buzzard and a man dressed as a priest; the priest began to read a marriage ceremony. Lord Buzzard, obviously bored, didn’t look at the pretty girl in white. Instead, he played to the audience, making kissing faces at the girls, winking, flipping his cloak open now and then to show what he had. The girl in white kept her head down, her hands clasped.

  When the priest pronounced them married, Lord Buzzard grabbed the girl’s shoulders then picked her up and began shaking her. Coins fell out of her clothes, and Lord Buzzard’s men ran onto the stage and scurried to pick them up. When there was no more money falling from the lady in white, he set her down, turned his back on her, and strutted offstage, still flirting with the audience and flipping his cloak. The lady walked to the back of the stage, her head bowed.

  Immediately, onstage came a man leading a cow. Lord Buzzard met him center stage.

  “What is this?” Lord Buzzard demanded.

  “My lord,” the man said, “this cow ate your vegetables.”

  Lord Buzzard patted the cow’s head. “Cows need to eat.” He started to walk away, but then turned back to glare at the man. “Did you eat any of my vegetables?”

  “I had one bite of turnip that fell from the cow’s mouth,” the man said.

  “Hang him!” Lord Buzzard ordered, and his scarred knights hurried onstage.

  The man fell to his knees. “But, my lord, I have six children to feed. Please have mercy.”

  Lord Buzzard looked at his men. “Hang the whole family. There’ll be fewer to feed.”

  The knights dragged the man to the back of the stage and put a rope around his neck. He stood beside the man in the fire, the old woman at the stake, and the lady in white.

  The lady looked at these people and shook her head sadly.

  Onstage sauntered two pretty, plump young women who Liana recognized as two of the Days. The audience, especially the men, cheered and whistled and the Days stretched and bent over and did what they could to show off their voluptuous bodies. Liana stole a look at Rogan. He was sitting as immobile as a statue, his eyes and attention totally on the stage.

  On instinct, she reached across him and took his hand in hers, and to her surprise, he clung to her hand.

  She looked back at the stage. Lord Buzzard came back onstage, halted at the sight of the Days, then leaped at them, his cloak flying open. The three of them went tumbling to the floorboards.

  It was at this sight that the lady in white came alive. She hadn’t minded when her husband had ignored her at their wedding or shaken coins from her or when he’d hanged a man for eating a bit of turnip a cow had spit out—but she minded about the other women.

  She ripped off her white dress to reveal a red one underneath. From behind a pot containing a bare tree, she took a red headdress with tall paper flames attached to it and jammed it on her head over the blonde wig.

  “The Fire Lady!” the audience yelled in delight.

  The red-dressed Fire Lady took bundles of red-painted straw from the feet of the old woman tied to the tree and began throwing them at the three people tumbling about in the center of the stage. The Days jumped up, screaming and acting as if they were putting out fires from their clothes and hair, and ran offstage.

  The Fire Lady looked down at Lord Buzzard and from her pocket she withdrew a big collar such as used to tie up a mean dog. She fastened it onto Lord Buzzard’s neck, took a leash, and led him offstage.

  The audience yelled and cheered and jumped on the benches and danced, while onstage all the dead people came to life again. Six of Rogan’s sons came out and threw flower-covered nets over the dead trees so that it looked as if even the trees were coming back to life. The people onstage began to sing and all the actors came onstage, the Fire Lady leading Lord Buzzard on all fours. He tried to flip his cloak aside to show the audience, but the Fire Lady smacked him across the head and he was quiet again.

  At long last, the curtain was pulled closed, and when the audience stopped cheering and laughing, they began to file out of the benches.

  Rogan and Liana sat still, neither of them moving, hands clasped in Rogan’s lap.

  “I don’t guess the peasants are so simple, after all,” Liana managed to say at last.

  Rogan turned to look at her, his eyes telling her what an understatement her words were.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  The audience filed out of the benches, laughing, slapping one another’s backs, and recalling one scene of the play after another. “Did you see—?” “I liked the part where—”

  Liana and Rogan sat where they were, hands clasped, until the last person had left the audience.

  Gradually, as her shock left her, Liana felt her body filling with anger. In the last weeks she had dared her husband’s rage for these people. She had exhausted herself seeing that they were fed and clothed, and they repaid her with this…this ridiculing farce.

  She clutched Rogan’s hand. “We’ll go back and get your men,” she said, anger pounding in her temples. “We shall see if these people will be so ungrateful after your men get through with them. They think they have seen the Peregrine wrath, but they have seen nothing.”

  Rogan didn’t say anything, but when she looked at him, he didn’t appear to be angry as much as thoughtful.

&n
bsp; “Well?” she said. “You didn’t want to come, and you were right. We’ll return and—”

  “Who played Lord Buzzard?” Rogan asked, interrupting her.

  “He looked like one of your father’s by-blows,” Liana snapped. “Shall I return alone?” She stood and started to move past him, but he still held her hand and wouldn’t let her pass.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Do you think they sell food here?”

  Liana gaped at him. A moment ago he’d refused to part with the few pennies needed to buy them food. “The play didn’t make you angry?”

  He shrugged as if he didn’t care, but there was something deeper in his eyes—something that Liana meant to discover. “I never killed anybody for eating my rats,” he said somewhat defiantly. “They can have all the rats they want.”

  “What about using your cow dung for fuel?” she asked softly. She was standing between his big legs and he was still holding her hand. Somehow, this hand-holding was more intimate than their few couplings. He said the play didn’t bother him, but the way he was holding on to her told another story.

  “I have never killed anyone for that,” he said, looking off into the distance, “but the dung does fertilize the fields.”

  “I see,” Liana said. “Flogging?”

  Rogan didn’t answer, but his dark skin seemed to flush. She felt very motherly toward him at that moment. He wasn’t a vicious man, a man who enjoyed killing or got pleasure from seeing others suffer. He had been trying to protect his family and provide for them the best way he could.

  “I am starving,” she said, smiling at him, “and I saw a stall heaped with cream cakes. Perhaps a few cakes and some buttermilk will cheer both of us.”

  He allowed her to lead him away, and she wanted very much to know what he was thinking. When he reached inside his coarse woolen peasant garb and withdrew a little leather bag and gave the cream-cakes vendor some pennies, she felt elated. She couldn’t be sure, of course, but she doubted if he’d ever spent money on a woman before.

  He bought them a mug of buttermilk and they shared the mug while the vendor waited for the return of the wooden cup.

  With food in her belly, Liana began to be able to think of the play with less anger. In fact, looking back on it, it was almost humorous. She would never have guessed that the peasants could be so daring—or so honest.

  She looked into the mug and tried to keep from smiling. “They may have been wrong about the rats, but they were right about certain physical attributes of the lord,” she said.

  Rogan heard her, but at first he didn’t understand her meaning. Then, remembering the outrageously exaggerated straw genitals of Lord Buzzard, he began to feel the blood creep to his face. “You have a sharp tongue on you,” he said, meaning to chastise the wench.

  “If I remember correctly, you liked my tongue.”

  “Women shouldn’t talk of such things,” he said sternly, but his eyes betrayed him.

  Liana knew by the way he was looking at her that she had sparked his interest. “Did you really bed ugly women? Ugly but sticking out in front or back?”

  He looked as if he were about to reprimand her again, but instead his eyes softened. “Your father should have beat some manners into you. Here,” he said, taking the empty mug away from her. “If you are through eating me into poverty, let’s go see the games over there.”

  Her teasing had pleased him and pleasing him made her feel joyous. As they walked, she slipped her hand into his and he did not push her away.

  “Will it change back?” he asked, looking ahead as they walked.

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Your hair,” he said.

  Liana squeezed his hand and laughed in delight. Joice had dyed her blonde hair and eyebrows black so that the peasants wouldn’t recognize Liana’s distinctive hair. There wasn’t much of it visible beneath the coarse linen covering pinned over her braided hair. “It will wash out,” she said, then looked up at him. “Perhaps you’ll help me wash it.”

  He looked down at her, desire in his eyes. “Perhaps.”

  They walked on together, saying nothing, holding hands, and Liana felt jubilant.

  Rogan paused on the outskirts of a crowd of people. He could see over their heads, but Liana couldn’t. She stood on tiptoe, then squatted down, but she couldn’t see through the people. She tugged on Rogan’s sleeve. “I can’t see,” she said when he looked at her. She had a romantic vision of his lifting her to his shoulders and holding her, but instead, acting as if he owned the place—which he did—he pushed his way through the crowd to the front. “Don’t call attention to us,” she hissed, but he paid no attention to her. She gave weak smiles of apology to the people around them as she was pulled along by Rogan.

  The people were looking with curiosity at Rogan, especially at his hair curling along his neck beneath his woolen hood. Liana began to stiffen in fear. If these people, hating the Peregrines as they did, should find out the master was alone and unprotected among them, they would no doubt murder him.

  “Another of the old lord’s bastards,” she heard a man near them whisper. “Never seen this one before.”

  She began to relax and for once thanked God for the fertility of the Peregrines. Still clutching Rogan’s hand, she looked at what he did. On a flat grassy place, in the middle of a large circle, were two men, both naked from the waist up, fighting each other with long wooden poles held in both hands. One man, short, muscular, with short arms, looked to be a forester or a woodcutter. He was very ordinary-looking.

  Liana’s eyes went to the other man—as did the eyes of every other woman in the crowd outside the circle. This was the man who’d played Lord Buzzard. He’d looked good onstage, but now, half-nude, skin glistening with sweat, he was magnificent.

  Not as magnificent as Rogan, Liana reminded herself and stepped closer to her husband.

  Rogan was intent on the fight, interested in the way this half-brother of his handled himself. He was crude and untrained, of course, but there was speed in his movements. The little woodcutter was no match for him.

  Rogan’s attention was taken from the fight when his wife stepped closer to him. He glanced down at her. She was watching his half-brother with wide-eyed interest, and Rogan began to frown. It was almost as if she found this half-Peregrine desirable.

  Rogan had never felt jealousy before. He’d shared the Days or any of his women with his brothers, with his men. As long as he wasn’t inconvenienced, he didn’t care what the women did. But right now he didn’t like the way his wife was looking at his scrawny, weak, bumbling, incompetent, red-haired—

  “Think you could beat ’im?” said a toothless old man standing next to Rogan.

  Rogan looked down his nose at the old man.

  The man cackled, his bad breath filling the air. “Just like them Peregrines,” he said loudly. “The old master bred arrogance in his sons.”

  The Peregrine half-brother in the ring glanced at the old man, then at Rogan, and in his surprise, he looked away from his opponent. The woodcutter clipped the young man on the side of the head. The man stepped back, put his hand to his temple, and looked at the blood on his fingertips. Then, with a look of disgust on his face, he sent the woodcutter sprawling in three hard blows.

  Immediately, he went to stand before Rogan on the sidelines.

  Liana saw that the two men were about the same age, but Rogan was heavier and, to her eyes, much, much more handsome. Beside her, a young woman gave a sigh of lust. Liana clutched Rogan’s hand hard with her own and plastered herself to the side of him.

  “So, I have another brother,” the young man said.

  His eyes were as piercing as Rogan’s, Liana thought, and something in them made her sure that he knew who Rogan was. “Don’t—” Liana began.

  “Shall we give the people a fight or not?” the man challenged. “Or are you ruled by a woman?” He lowered his voice. “As Lord Rogan is?”

  Liana felt her heart sin
k, for she knew Rogan would never resist the challenge. The two of them had politely ignored the last scene of the play, when the Fire Lady had collared Lord Buzzard, but she knew Rogan was aware of it. He wouldn’t allow himself to be insulted twice in one day.

  Rogan released her hand and stepped into the circle. Liana knew she could do or say nothing without putting both their lives in jeopardy. Her breath held, she watched the two men walk together into the ring, facing each other. They were so much alike: same hair, same eyes, same square, determined jaw.

  Rogan looked down at the pole on the ground, then to Liana’s horror, he removed his concealing hood, then pulled his shirt off over his head. There was a moment’s pleasure as he tossed his garments to her and she caught them, but then Liana’s fear returned. Surely someone would recognize him now. She didn’t like to think who would recognize him, since it could be one or all of the women he’d bedded. “Half the village,” she muttered to herself.

  She scanned the crowd and saw two of the Days standing on the opposite side of the circle. Now their faces showed puzzlement, but Liana had no doubt that soon the women would realize who Rogan was.

  Swiftly, she began to make her way toward the women.

  “You say one word and you will regret it,” she said when she reached the women. One of the Days cowered, her face showing her fear, but the other woman was bolder and smarter. She saw the danger Liana and Rogan were in.

  “I want my son to be raised as a knight,” the woman said.

  Liana opened her mouth to refuse this outrageous and bold request, but she closed it. “You will see that no one else knows,” she countered.

  The woman looked Liana in the eyes. “I will tell people he comes from a village to the south and that I have met him before. My son?”

  Liana couldn’t help admiring this woman who risked so much for her child. “Your sons will be educated and trained. Send them to me tomorrow.” She moved away from the women and made her way back to where she had been.

  Rogan and his half-brother were circling each other, long poles held horizontally in their hands. They were imposing men, both young and strong, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, muscles well defined.