In the Time of Dragon Moon

by Janet Lee Carey

  He turned his bloody blade on Father. “Pack all your medicines, old man. The queen of Wilde Island commands your presence.”

  Father loaded his trunk. I watched the dagger’s point as if my eyes alone could keep Father alive.

  The second soldier let me go. “Help him pack, boy. Stinks in here.” I did as I was told, wrapping the tincture jars, the fertility herbs we’d gone so far across the mountain to find. Father packed his herbal book and locked the trunk. He was whispering, praying to the Holy Ones. I was too sick with fear to pray.

  The army encircled our village. Our warriors and the red dragons were away hunting. We were defenseless. Ashune hid in the trees with Melo. People ducked behind boulders, bushes, huts. The soldiers chained Father’s wrists and prodded him up the steps into the jail cart.

  I raced up and jumped in the cart with him. Father pushed my shoulders. “No, Uma. Stay here with your mother.”

  I gripped the iron bars so he couldn’t throw me outside.

  A soldier jabbed me with his sword, slitting my pant leg where I crouched, clinging to the bars. “What are you doing, boy?”

  “I am the Adan’s apprentice. He needs me.”

  They looped a cold chain tight around my wrists, chained Father’s ankles and mine, and shut the metal door with a clank. Then the army set out, their lead chargers stirring up choking dust.

  Through a brown cloud I saw Mother run out from our hut, her red hair streaming behind her as she raced after us calling my father’s name, calling mine. “Uma, no!”

  I gripped the bars, afraid, as two soldiers grabbed her arms, stopping her. But they did not put the sword to her throat.

  For once I was glad she was not like the other women in our village.

  For once I was glad she was English.

  Chapter Two

  Journey to Pendragon Castle

  Falcon Moon to Fox Moon

  April to May 1210

  IT WAS A grueling three-week journey. Half the army followed the king’s son, Prince Desmond Pendragon, north out of Devil’s Boot. The other half had stayed behind, surrounding our village. The queen wanted Father alive, but what would happen to Mother and everyone we left behind? What would the army do to them? My anxious thoughts churned in rhythm with the cart’s relentless wheels.

  On the third day, I felt a rush of warm wind. “Father, look.” Large red wings cut through the thin clouds above. His dragon, Vazan, had found us! Her muscled body spanned the length of seven horses; twice that again if you measured her snout to tail. She skimmed down on wings as large as mainsails. Men shouted, straining to control their frightened horses. I gripped the bars, hoping she’d roar fire, kill our captors, even as I knew she wouldn’t do such a thing. Reds abided by the dragon treaty. They no longer killed humans. Or ate them. But at least she frightened the king’s men. Father winked at me as the cavalcade fell apart, horses galloping this way and that ahead of us.

  Mother had told me stories about the royal Pendragons whose blood was mixed with dragons. But on our journey north, I never once saw Prince Desmond Pendragon behave like a man with noble dragons’ blood. One night he staggered drunk to our cage. “You’re looking at your next Pendragon king,” he said. “Call me Your Royal Highness.”

  “Your Royal Highness,” we said, dry-tongued with thirst. We’d learned to obey. We were whipped when we did not.

  “I’d order you to bow, but you’re chained up, so.” He shrugged and laughed. “By God, you Euit dogs stink! As soon as Mother sees you and your boy here, she’ll realize you’re a fraud. Healing infertile women. Ha. That’s a joke. I bet you used your own prick, old man.”

  He staggered off. Devil! His words dug a pit of shame so deep in me I could not show my face to my father.

  We were rarely fed, but one soldier with a crooked nose secretly shared his rations with us. “Here, eat,” he said pushing bread through the bars one night, dried meat another. We learned his name was Sir Geoffrey.

  • • •

  FOX MOON WAS a silver bracelet in the sky the week we reached the northeast coast and saw Pendragon Castle rising tall and dark on the edge of a cliff.

  The closer our rattling jail cart got to the castle, the more my chest tightened. I could hardly breathe by the time we crossed the drawbridge. Father saw my face and wrapped his large hands around mine. He had never done that before. I looked down at our hands in astonished wonder.

  “You did not have to come with me, Uma,” he whispered.

  “I did. I couldn’t let you go alone.”

  Soldiers hauled us through the wide castle door, down a chilly torchlit hall, our ankle chains clanking, and forced us up spiraling tower stairs to a room on the second floor. The minstrel’s music dulled to a wary halt as they dragged us inside. Girls and women put down their stitchery and stared.

  Queen Adela sat on an ornately carved high-backed chair, wearing a velvet gown as purple as fresh bruises. The color set against her pale skin brought out the sheen of her hair, dark brown with a few silver strands thin as spider’s silk. She was beautiful and severe.

  Mother told me witches had attacked her when she was younger, putting out her eye with a poker. The fey folk fashioned her a glass eye to replace it. When she’d regained her strength, she’d sought revenge as a witch hunter. That was before she’d become the queen, but I saw ferocity in her still, or was that just my fear looking back at me?

  “Leave us!” she commanded. A dozen ladies-in-waiting dropped their sewing on the benches and scurried out behind the musicians. Only one woman remained at the queen’s side.

  She was even paler than the queen, if that was possible. A single blond strand poked out from under her shoulder-length veil. I was used to warm, brown skin. These two made me think of snow and shiver.

  Four blue eyes appraised us as if we were strange animals the guards had just deposited on the floor. I knew we stank. I wanted to say, We do not bite, but knew better.

  Father cleared his throat.

  “Remain silent until Her Majesty addresses you,” said the woman. “You are filthy,” she added, flicking out a colorful lacquered fan and fanning the queen.

  Queen Adela asked, “Is it true you helped infertile women, Adan?” Her blue glass eye glinted in the afternoon light. “Is it true that they bore children after taking your cure?”

  “It is true,” Father said.

  “Call me Your Majesty!” she growled. “Who had you whipped?” she added, eyeing the long ragged tears in Father’s shirt.

  “Your son, Prince Desmond, Your Majesty.”

  The queen stared down at her lap. “My son, my son, my one and only son,” she whispered in a singsong voice, pinching her velvet skirts and pulling them apart as if she’d lost her son somewhere in the folds.

  “What’s that?” she said, glancing toward the empty alcove to her right where the musicians played when we’d first come in. “Take it away,” she said to the empty space. “The pudding causes upheaval to my stomach.” Then she went back to pinching her skirts.

  I heard Father’s slow intake of breath. No one had warned us that this queen, who’d abducted us, whose army held our people captive, this fey-eyed, former witch hunter, was mad.

  • • •

  THE WOMAN WHO entered our tower room the next morning was the same elegant English one who’d stood by Queen Adela. “I am the queen’s companion, Lady Olivia,” she said. “I have come to welcome you on your first official day here at Pendragon Castle. You bathed?” she asked, sniffing the air, her delicate nostrils flaring. We had scrubbed as best we could and changed into the new, strange English clothing. (They’d stolen our clothes and burned them.) A stale odor still haunted the armpits of my used scribe’s outfit, but I liked the ink-stained sleeves. Father looked his part in his dark physician’s robes. At least we both still wore our dragon belts.

  “Yes, we ba
thed, thank you,” Father replied, looking up from his worktable. They’d housed us in a tower chamber called the Crow’s Nest where the queen’s physicians had lived. The windows faced all four directions. I’d unlatched the iron grid work and opened them first thing to air out the room.

  “That’s ‘thank you, my lady,’” Lady Olivia said, still hovering near the open door as if she might make a quick escape. “You must learn castle etiquette if you want to keep your life. You are called upon to help Her Majesty. She is desperate for another child. She gave a son to the king sixteen years ago now. It’s a queen’s duty to mother the king’s children. Many children,” she added, her sharp blue eyes on Father. “Her Majesty feels she’s failed her husband. Do you understand the importance of your mission?”

  Father gave a single, stern nod.

  “Her last physician displeased Her Majesty. He’s in the dungeon awaiting judgment. She’s executed physicians for their foul treatments that promised everything and did nothing.” Lady Olivia paused a moment. “I tell you this as a warning. She is not getting any younger.”

  “I am the Adan,” Father said, head high. “I have the medicine she needs.”

  “News of your miracle cure has spread far and wide. That’s why Her Majesty sent for you.”

  You mean stole him.

  “I hope for your sake there’s more to it than market gossip.”

  I flinched. “My father is the best—”

  “Hush, Uma.” He brushed his sleeve, removing her comment with a slow downward swipe of his hand. Father could do that. I couldn’t. Her insult entered my blood like venom.

  Father turned. “Am I to treat the other condition?”

  “The . . . other?” Lady Olivia looked behind her suddenly, checking to see we were still alone.

  “We saw her refuse the pudding, my lady. How often does she speak to people who are not there?”

  Lady Olivia crossed the room, her heels clicking with purposeful steps. “Listen, Adan. That is your name, isn’t it?”

  “It is my title.”

  “No one speaks of the queen’s . . . episodes. She is unwell, and gossip-mongering—”

  “I am no gossipmonger, my lady. I plan to treat both maladies.”

  She moved to the worktable, whispering, “If you have something to balance her mind, give it to her. But I warn you.” She looked around again. “Never talk about her moods with anyone but me. You understand, Adan?”

  She left us, shutting the door behind her. Father took out his scale and weighed the huzana leaves he used for his fertility cure, his hands flying swift and sure as birds. Mine were shaking as I struck the flints and lit the brazier to seethe the queen’s potion. “What do you think Queen Adela will do with the physician in the dungeon, Adan? Will she execute him like she did the others?” I was thinking about us, about our future here.

  “Be present with what you are doing, Uma.”

  “How will you treat her . . .” What did she call them? “. . . her episodes, Adan?”

  This made him stop and look up. “The English do not understand about balancing the four sacred elements of earth, wind, water, and fire in the body. What imbalance did you see in this queen, mi tupelli?”

  “She is not balanced by earth, she has some fire.” I was guessing.

  “The queen is ruled by wind,” he said. “Her scattered thoughts and phantom visions are caused by wind mind.”

  I felt the barb of failure in my gut. “You will use earth element plants to ground her?” I said, still wanting to appear knowledgeable. He ignored my attempt.

  “I need the water seething, Uma.”

  I watched him work as I heated the water, steam ghosting between us.

  “You are too anxious for what you want, Uma. Begin by wanting what you have.”

  Father chanted the Euit plant names as he dropped kea stems and huzana leaves in the simmering pot. I decided to be present with what I was doing, and chanted with him.

  Every plant has a name, and the name holds the secrets of its origin—the dreams the earth fed its roots, down in the dark underneath. The name awakens the plant’s healing powers. I knew the powers these plants held, the power to bring new life.

  • • •

  IN THE QUEEN’S aviary, the Adan gave Queen Adela the curative. After questioning my father about its name and its efficacy, she drank it down, watching Father over the chalice rim.

  When she finished, Her Majesty dabbed her lips with her kerchief, then tossed birdseed to her songbirds, causing a small winged riot in the cage as they fluttered down. I felt sorry for the birds. Mother loved birds, especially small, bright finches. She would never hold them hostage the way this queen did.

  “I am a generous queen. I plan to free your village if your cure works, Adan. Give me a child and my husband’s soldiers will break camp and march north again.”

  She held out her hand. Lady Olivia mouthed to Father, Kneel and kiss her ring.

  I took a breath. My revered father knelt to the Holy Ones in prayer and he bowed to his red dragon, never to another person. I felt a small landslide somewhere behind my ribs as he stepped closer, bent his neck, and put his lips to the queen’s ruby ring. The stone was as red as a wound. It flashed when she withdrew her hand and held it out again, this time to me.

  I fell to my knees. The landslide had already occurred, though it did not make falling to the floor any easier. The ruby was frigid, a smooth dead thing, only slightly colder than Queen Adela’s hand.

  “My son told me the soldiers had to kill some Euit men to bring you here,” she said to Father when I stood and backed away again. “If your healing tonic works, I will be content and so will the king. The men will have died in a good cause.”

  Sickness washed up my throat. A good cause?

  We turned to go.

  “Face Her Majesty as you leave her presence,” instructed Lady Olivia. “Head lowered, back out.” Yesterday the guards had hauled us out in chains; today we walked out backward.

  Later in the Crow’s Nest, I attacked the rushes with a broom to sweep the fury out of myself over the butchery back in Devil’s Boot, over my uncle and the rest of the men these English were content to kill in their good cause.

  Chapter Three

  Pendragon Castle, Wilde Island

  Snake Moon to Whale Moon

  June to July 1210

  ON THE LAST night of Snake Moon, someone pounded on our door. “Let us in. Now!” I slid the bolt aside and was brutally flung back as six armed palace guards with leashed hounds flooded in. Two dogs rammed into the worktable and set the measuring scale swinging.

  “What is this?” Father asked, steadying the scale with one hand.

  The pock-faced guard yelled, “Search!” He bounded to the wardrobe and threw our cloaks on the floor. The dog at the end of his leash jammed his head inside and sniffed around. I stood back alarmed as the king’s men unleashed the other dogs. Three raced over and sniffed Father’s bed on one side of the room, others pressed their noses under my mattress behind the screen. The palace guards slit both mattresses, and felt around in the straw. The dogs sniffed both before they lost interest and bounded over to Father.

  “Arms out!” said Pock Face.

  How dare he shout at the Adan. “What is this about?” I demanded.

  “You too, boy!” he barked.

  The palace guards patted down Father and me. The bald, stout man patted under my arms, ran his hands down my ribs, then across my chest, where he paused a moment. I recoiled inside, terrified he’d detected my true shape under my bound breasts. But he passed his hands over my hips and slid them down my breeches. I looked away when he was done. Four dogs were sniffing Father’s trunk, barking and growling.

  “Open it!” Pock Face shouted.

  Father pulled out his trunk key and paused, curling his weathered fingers arou
nd it.

  I pushed through the men, wedging myself between growling hounds and trunk. The dogs snarled, their sharp teeth inches from my thighs, but I fixed my eyes on them, standing guard beside my father. “Why should he open it?” I said over the menacing growls. “The Adan’s medicines are in there. The dogs should not spoil the queen’s—”

  “Stand back, boy!” Pock Face shoved me aside, throwing me hard against the wall, the thud as I hit it shaking my bones.

  He drew his knife on Father. “Open it, Euit savage, or feel my point!”

  Father knelt and slid the key in the lock. I clenched my teeth as the hounds jammed their wet noses in, sniffing the Adan’s valuable herbs. If any of them drooled on our precious curatives! Pock Face squatted and swiped his hand around inside, feeling herb bundles and tincture bottles, then stood, his eyes narrowed on the small leather sack he held out. “What’s this?”

  “No!” I made a grab for it. Too late. He slit the sack down the middle. Precious earth from Devil’s Boot spilled on the floor. I dove for it, and the dogs beared their fangs. One leaped closer and snapped my sleeve. I reared back in terror, pressing myself against the wall as men and dogs trampled the small pile of sacred earth, all we had from home.

  “What is this?” Sir Geoffrey Crooked Nose hurried into the tower room. He grabbed the two threatening dogs who had me up against the wall and pulled them back by their collars.

  Pock Face looked up at Sir Geoffrey with a grin. “Following orders, sir.”

  Sir Geoffrey leashed the hounds, tossed the leads to the men, and glared at the slit leather sack. “And you destroyed this man’s property because?”

  “Thought it might be the missing coin purse, sir.”

  So that’s what this was about? The English thought us thieves?

  Sir Geoffrey surveyed the room. “Any coin purse found?”

  “None we could turn up, sir. But these being foreign devils, thought we’d look here first, if you know what I mean.”