In the Time of Dragon Moon

by Janet Lee Carey

  I should mix the queen’s night remedy. Instead, I crossed the room, pulled woundwort from my woven basket, and undid my bandage. The red teeth marks were slowly healing. I applied the salve along the back of my hand, then on my palm.

  Jackrun had dipped his calloused finger in this same jar, rubbed it gently on my puncture wounds. I didn’t know if I was weeping now from the cooling relief or from the place in my heart Jackrun had unknowingly opened when he’d salved my hand. I remembered the trusting look he’d given me before I’d stitched his wounds. As a healer, I had known just what to do. But as a woman, I was lost. He was leading me into a new country, a mysterious place where I did not walk alone, but beside him.

  I’d left him on the cliff just this morning. Already it seemed too long ago.

  • • •

  OVER THE NEXT week I potioned Queen Adela and tried to keep her happy as she went from tearful to vindictive to forgetful. She was approaching the fertile time of her cycle again. I had to balance her as quickly as possible, or the king could not visit her bed.

  Afraid to leave her overnight, I took to sleeping in the trundle bed Lady Olivia sometimes used. At first my remedies didn’t seem to make a difference to her wild moods. But after seven long days of lacing her fertility tonic with ever increasing doses of bapeeta, I saw the angry lines around her mouth smooth out, the strange mad look went out of her face. I waited one more day to be sure she was in balance. Hopeful my cure was finally working; I sent a message to King Arden. The queen was well enough to join her husband at the feast table, and, with any luck, he’d come to her room for the night.

  I watched the queen dine from a place in the shadows in the crowded Great Hall. I still preferred to take my meals privately away from the noisy feast tables, or in the kitchen with the staff, but when a server offered me wine, I took it and sipped it gratefully. Queen Adela’s eyes were bright as she spoke with her husband at the high table. Her cheeks were rosy with health. King Arden caught my eye and shot me a positive glance halfway through the meal.

  Stars winked through the high windows. The waxing Dragon Moon grew more powerful every night. Father taught me this animal moon had great healing powers, ruling earth, wind, and fire; it needed only the element of water for complete balance. I decided I would order Her Majesty a restorative bath tomorrow. No bath could match the one I’d had in Dragonswood warmed by Filalda’s fire, but I would sprinkle the water with scented herbs and give the queen the best bath available here at the king’s court.

  An hour later the sentry put out his hand and stopped me at the base of the queen’s stairs. “The king is with his wife, queen’s physician.”

  “Oh.” I backed up. “Yes. I see. I’ll return in the morning, then.” He winked at me before I left.

  A smile leaped to my face as I hurried through the torchlit halls, greedy for a night alone in my own chamber, a full night of uninterrupted sleep. The Crow’s Nest smelled faintly of huzana leaves. I lit the fire in the hearth, a luxury I rarely allowed myself, and sat cross-legged on the floor. The king and queen could be creating a new life even now. A child. An heir. Thank the Holy Ones I’d prepared a jar full of virility powder before my medicines were stolen, and given it to King Arden. I’d mixed the remedy all at once partly to avoid the work of grinding more leaves, partly to skip the embarrassment to both of us each time he had to renew his request. I slipped off my shoes and warmed my toes before the fire. Tonight, at least, I would let myself hope. I was too tired to do much else.

  I draped the woolly Euit blanket over my shoulders, pressing my cheek against the owl woven in the corner. The blanket was barely big enough for two. Jackrun and I had had to lie very close together to soak in its warmth the night he confessed what he’d done to his sister, the night I admitted how I’d sabotaged Urette, the night he called me Adan for the first time.

  “Jackrun,” I whispered into the woolly owl’s ear. “When will you come home?”

  My fingers found a hardened spot. I looked closer. Dried blood. I did not know it was a sign of things to come. I folded it over, hiding the red stain.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Pendragon Castle

  Dragon Moon

  October 1210

  THE NEXT MORNING, I set the queen’s elixir on the side table a moment, tossed a handful of breadcrumbs to her songbirds, and watched them flutter down in a riot of bright colors. “There is plenty for you all,” I said through the cage, but they did not think so. I left them squabbling amongst themselves.

  The sentry in the presence chamber on the second floor leaned on his pike at the base of Queen Adela’s private stair.

  “Is Her Majesty alone?”

  He nodded. I climbed the stairs to the bedchamber, stepped inside, and shut the door. Her Majesty sat with her back to me in her rumpled sleeping gown. The room was in shambles. Gowns and small clothes hung half across the chairs or lay on the floor by the smoking fire. The queen’s four-poster canopy bed was mounded with covers; tangled sheets lay in the corner on the floor.

  Her Majesty mumbled something and I stepped a little closer.

  “Witches,” she hissed, holding her glass eyeball in her open hand. “I had to be a virgin, you see. Satan’s sacrifice.” She looked up at me. The empty eye socket on the left side of her face was wrinkled as a wasps’ nest.

  Her voice changed to a growl. “See the curse?” She aimed the glass eye at the corner, showing it the tangled sheets. “My husband abandons me.”

  The news struck me dumb. What happened last night? Did the king do his duty? Or did they only fight, ravage the room between them? I had to know, but how could I ask her when she was raving?

  She moved her hand, aiming her glass eye at me. “Who is the witch?” she asked, tipping her head, her voice seesawing from harsh to musical as if she were speaking to a young child. “We know she joins her coven in secret places. We know she tortures innocents.”

  She’d never called me a witch before, but then, I wasn’t sure she was even speaking to me. I blinked back disappointed tears. Only last night I thought the bapeeta was healing her madness at last.

  Sick inside, I picked up the dirty sheets as she chattered on. “See the witch?” she asked the eyeball in her palm. “She’s a woman with a devil’s heart.”

  I called to the sentry down below. When the chambermaid ran up, I met her on the landing. “Take these sheets away. Bring me clean linen and get a breakfast tray up here for Her Majesty, now!”

  Green-faced, she darted back downstairs. I bolted the door, took up the golden ewer, and filled the washbasin. The queen had placed her eyeball on her vanity and was pulling the gray strands from her brown hair. “An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Silver hair, where is your youth? Gone, gone,” she sighed, pulling more gray.

  “I will clean this for you, Your Majesty, shall I?” I dipped the eye in the basin. Queen Adela owes us for her glass eye. If we had left her marred, she would have never wed King Arden. Remind her of it.

  King Onadon expected me to speak to someone in her right mind, not this queen. Not as she was now. She hummed her strange tune behind me.

  When the fey eye was rinsed clean, I approached her vanity table. “Here, Your Majesty, if you tip back your head a little.” Opening the upper and lower lid, I gently slipped the glass eyeball back inside the socket. She blinked a little. Stood unsteadily, then sat again. I grabbed a brush and ran it gently through her hair. A few gray strands still silvered the long, dark tresses. She peered at her reflection; her eyes in the glass were blue as hyacinths. Both seemed lost as desert oases within her vacant face.

  There was a furtive tapping at the door. I took the clean sheets and breakfast tray from the chambermaid on the landing, bolted the door again, and encouraged the queen to eat while I made the bed. Once again I’d have to keep vigil. No one could be allowed in her room until my treatments dispelled her delusions.
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br />   She had eaten some of her pudding and drank her elixir. She’d need a stronger dose of bapeeta. I hated to leave her even for a moment when she was this way, but I’d have to run to the Crow’s Nest for it. “I will be right back, Your Highness.”

  The sentry watched as I came down the stairs. “The queen is unwell today,” I said. “She must have complete rest. I will attend to all her needs. Do not let anyone other than me inside.”

  In the tower, I shut the herbarium door and leaned against it. The Adan should be slow to prepare medicines, paying close attention to each detail. But in the past week I’d felt the queen’s lunacy seeping into my work. My breath was unsteady, my hands damp with sweat as I scraped bapeeta powder from the undersides of the leaves. Father had used bapeeta on the old people back home so long ago, I could not remember the traditional Euit chant for the herb. Was that why its powers had failed? Or was it the poor decisions I’d made regarding how much I should use?

  Father hadn’t had time to teach me more about bapeeta before he died. What secrets had died with him? I leaned against the table and cursed the thief who’d stolen my remedies, and worst of all, the book Father had put his life’s knowledge into.

  I had nothing and no one to guide me here.

  I was alone.

  I found Queen Adela conversing with her reflection when I returned. “Why did he shout at me?” she said. “What have I done? Why won’t he love me?” She wept into her hands.

  “Your Majesty?” Did he sleep with you before you argued? Did you come together as man and wife last night? Questions fought to climb out of my mouth.

  She raised her head as I approached with the silver platter. I’d made a decision to follow my own way, mixing the bapeeta powder in the sweetmeats as I’d done in the past, two for now, two for later—the last two hidden in my waist pouch. This way I could give her what she needed without running off to the herbarium to mix another dose. The queen ate one. By the time she consumed the second and licked her fingers, her mood began to soften. She called me Uma again, put out her hand for me to kiss her ring, and did not call me witch.

  I ordered a bath set up next door in her changing room. When it was ready, I sent the woman out, and brought the queen in myself. Helping her out of her robes and into the copper tub, I sprinkled the water with the sweet herbs, and gently washed her body and her long, dark hair. She hummed as I poured the water through her tresses. I dried her off and took her in her robe back to the larger bedchamber, where I built up a blazing fire so I could brush out her damp hair by the hearth.

  As the day passed I fed her when she was willing to eat. Her mind seemed far away, like a ship adrift in some dark sea. I cared for her body as her mind lost its mooring, hoping I could do something to bring her back. She looked at me and took my hand.

  “I’m afraid,” she whispered, part of her knowing how lost she was.

  I put my arms around her. “I won’t leave you. I’ll stay with you.”

  I rocked her as she cried. Her tears melted me. What could I do for her? How could I help her? She needed so much more than Father’s rules, so much more than herbs. But there was nothing in his treatment store for this.

  Mother had been a midwife, a healer. Women bathe the sick, rub sore muscles, offer food, and sing pleasant songs. My father would never do such things. I had to walk far beyond what my father the Adan would have done to ease the queen’s suffering. In the passing hours, I mined stores I’d buried deep inside myself, a woman’s knowledge I did not even know I had. I sang to her, rubbed her back, fed her, moved her from place to place to make her more comfortable.

  Slowly the raging winds within her calmed.

  At dusk a storm battered the windows with hail, as if Adela sent her tempest through the window to the greater world outside. We were both exhausted from the long day. At last she lay down on her bed in her clean gown, her hair neatly plaited.

  Putting the rushlight by Adela’s bed, I sang her an English lullaby my mother used to sing, half remembering the words. Poppies and roses in her hair. She is queen of the May. Oh sing to her gladly and never sing sadly, she is the light of our day. . . . I could not remember the rest, though I knew it named more flowers; there was lavender and mallow in one part. I sang the same verse over and over until I grew tired of it and made up a new verse with songbirds in it. Adela smiled with her eyes closed, her head on the silk pillow. She loved birds.

  • • •

  WHEN IT WAS very late and she fell asleep at last, I stayed by her bed, listening to her breath go in and out. My fingers smelled of potions and the scent of all my father’s dreams and mine gone to ruin.

  I would sleep in the trundle bed again tonight. I would keep treating her, keep trying to help her find her mind and have the child she needed, but would it be enough? Even now high above the storm clouds, Dragon Moon waxed toward fullness.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Pendragon Castle

  Dragon Moon

  October 1210

  I HURRIED DOWN the halls to the aviary on the first floor of the queen’s tower, her morning elixir sloshing in its chalice. The birds flew wildly about as I rushed in, disturbed as if I were hurling gravel at them.

  “What’s all the fuss? It’s only me. You know me well.” I would have turned for the stairs then if I hadn’t seen movement through the ground-floor window. A man had just ridden into the muddy foreyard on a black charger. I pressed my face to the lattice, squinting through the glass. Jackrun. He turned his horse for the stables. My breath went out of me.

  I had to grip the ironwork to keep my feet in place. I’d left the queen sleeping in her bed to make her brew and I’d already been gone too long. I didn’t want her to wake up alone. Soon, I promised myself. When Her Majesty’s had her elixir and eaten a little breakfast.

  The moment I entered the second-floor presence chamber, I knew something was wrong. The sentry had deserted his post. I’d told him to guard her when I left, to let no one but me upstairs. Where was he? A deep moan drifted down the dark stairwell. Not the queen’s voice, a man’s. My heart dropped to my feet. Leaving the curative on the table, I crept upstairs and pressed myself against the landing, well out of sight.

  I could not look directly into the room from my hiding place. But I saw the image of the small crowd reflected in the queen’s vanity mirror. The king was kneeling at his wife’s bed. Weeping. Two guards flanked His Majesty. The woman praying at his side tucked a dark strand of hair under her veil. One of the guards stepped to the right. What I saw in the glass sent a pike through me. Queen Adela’s face was a ghastly shade of green. Her head was thrown back from the convulsions she’d had as she died, her swollen purple tongue protruded from her mouth. Vomit ran down the side of her cheek. I made no sound on the landing as the bile washed up my throat. Adela. I’d only just left her. I’d only just . . . The floor swayed underfoot. I leaned against the wall, trying not to faint.

  “Looks like someone poisoned her sweetmeat,” said one of the guards.

  “Why weren’t you with her?” King Arden demanded to the lady kneeling at his side.

  “I have had a fever, Your Majesty. Uma warned me to stay away from the queen.” Her back was to the mirror, but I knew Lady Olivia’s voice.

  “Who else was . . . up here?” the king asked with a shudder.

  “Just the queen’s physician,” said the guard. “She said not to let anyone see her. I let no one else up the stairs but her, sire, I swear it. I only came up myself when I heard a strangled sound after Uma left, and I found the queen like . . . this.”

  “Queen’s physician must have done it, then,” said the second man.

  No! I screamed in my head. I ran down the stairs. Before I reached the bottom, I heard the king shouting, “Find her. Arrest her!”

  I was out the door, racing through the long passage, the guards’ distant footfall sounding loud as a cavalc
ade behind me. I skidded around a corner, running straight into a courtier, who took me by the shoulders and peered at my face.

  “Queen’s physician, what’s your hurry?” he demanded.

  I pulled away from him, ran again. My head pounded. If I could slow down, calm myself a moment, use the havuela chant to blend in, but I was too terrified. I couldn’t think, couldn’t stop running. My feet took me outside.

  The guards shouted “Stop her!” as I raced for the stable.

  “Jackrun!”

  He came out, blinking in the morning sunlight, saw the men chasing me and drew his weapon.

  “Get behind me, Uma.” He raised his sword at the king’s men. “Stay back!”

  The blacksmith came out of the forge with the weapons master; others emerged from the kennels. The yard was filling up with those who were suddenly my enemies.

  “Out of the way, Jackrun, the woman’s wanted for murder!”

  “Don’t come near her or you’ll feel the point of my sword.” Jackrun backed us toward the stable. I drew my knife and moved in unison with him, guessing we were going for his horse.

  “We don’t want to fight the king’s nephew,” one man said. We were nearly to the stable door.

  “Turn her over, Jackrun. We’re to take her by King Arden’s order.”

  “Who accuses the queen’s physician of murder?” Jackrun said, waving his sword as one man got too close. “Who died?”

  “The queen is dead.”

  I heard Jackrun’s quick intake of breath. Men reeled with the news.

  “God have mercy,” cried the blacksmith.

  “Heaven help us!”

  “Grab her!” called the weapons master, marching toward us.

  “I didn’t kill her,” I called to them from behind Jackrun. “I would never harm Her Majesty.”

  “I believe her,” Jackrun said, inching us under the lintel. “This woman is the queen’s physician. She was appointed by the queen herself. No man among you will touch her while I’m alive.”