With each day Rogan's eyes sank farther into his head. As Liana well knew, he slept little, for fear kept him constantly on edge. He was afraid that at any moment his family was going to be attacked. One night she did no more than turn over in bed, and Rogan jumped out of the bed, his sword in his hand, before Liana could even get her eyes open.
But it was Zared who was the most troubled. With each day she seemed to grow thinner and grayer before Liana's very eyes.
It was at the beginning of the second week that Liana looked up at her little sister-in-law, saw the haggard look on her face, and understood a great deal. "You love him, don't you?" Liana said softly.
Zared tried to act as though the words meant nothing. "What does love matter? He is the enemy."
"But he's not your enemy, is he?"
"I am one person. I must think of my family." Liana had no answer for her except to say that sometimes one must trust in one's own judgment and not the opinions of others. She spoke from experience, for years earlier she had trusted her instinct when she had agreed to marry Rogan. People had said that she was a fool and that he was a man incapable of love, but she had proved them wrong, for she had found the heart that he had managed to hide for years.
The birth of her child took three long, hard days, and afterward she could do little but lie in bed, but she watched what was going on within her family as closely as she could.
"Zared," Tearle said, "look at me."
They were in bed together, and she was as far to one side of the bed as she could get. She didn't want to touch him, didn't know if she should touch him. Yet she wanted to.
"I am tired," she said.
"You seem to always be tired," he said, his voice heavy. He was silent for a long while, then he spoke again. "I cannot do this alone."
She knew what he meant, but she had no answer for him. Every day was hell for her. Whenever her brothers caught her alone they pointed out the horses' skulls on the walls. Years before the Howards had laid siege to a Peregrine castle, and the inhabitants, who included Zared's mother, had starved to death. Before they had died they had been reduced to eating the horses. The skulls of those horses hung on the wall as a constant reminder of the treachery of the Howards.
"It was you who wanted to come here," she said at last.
"No," he said softly. "I did not want to come to this house of hatred. What I wanted and have always wanted is for the woman I love to love me in return."
"I thought your desire was to stop the hatred," she said with some bitterness in her voice. Every day she watched what her brothers did to her husband, driving him hard enough to break a lesser man, but Tearle did not break. He did not so much as show anger.
She rolled over to face him. "What kind of man are you?" she half shouted. "Do you not know that all the men laugh at you? You take whatever Rogan gives you, and you do not fight back. The men are wagering on whether he will ask you to empty the slops next and whether you will do it."
He faced her, and his face showed some anger. "Were I to show what I felt to your brother he would strike me, and I would retaliate. Knowing your brother's anger, one of us would die. Is that what you want? A trial by combat? Shall we square off and fight each other for you like a couple of rutting bucks? Would you like to see one of us dead? Would that make you believe that I am as much a man as your brother is?"
He rose up on one elbow. "Tell me, Zared, is that what you want? Is that what I have to do to prove myself to you?"
He sat up. "It does not seem to be enough that I am willing to risk my inheritance by marrying you. My courtship of you seems to mean nothing. The fact that I, a Howard, walk into your brother's home, if one can call this den of hatred a home, alone and willing to face your two brothers, means naught to you. Whatever I do is not enough for you. You always want more from me. You said that I was not man enough to take what your brother could give to me, but I have taken it and more. I am tired and sore. And I am sick unto death of being hated. I am sick of the looks people give me."
He got out of bed and stood looking down at her. "But it would be worth it if I could change but one person's mind. If I could make you look at me with the trust I deserve, then all would be worth it."
He stopped and rubbed his eyes. "I will not fight your brothers. I will not see more bloodshed between these two families, and"—he looked up—"and you can tell your sister-in-law that I do not harm children."
He pulled on his clothes quickly and left the room.
Zared would have said something to him, but she did not know what to say. Could she tell him the truth? That every day she had to force herself to remember that he was a Howard? She saw him with Rogan or Severn, and she wanted to run to him and protect him, to keep their lances from coming at his back, to keep the men from laughing at him.
But she didn't interfere in what her brothers made him do. She was still a Peregrine, and he was still the enemy.
He did not return that night, and she did not sleep much.
It was three days later that Tearle and Rogan's three-year-old son disappeared together.
Chapter Fifteen
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It was Liana who discovered that the boy was missing. For all that she had tried to raise the boy in a civilized manner, he was a Peregrine. His father had given him a wooden sword on his first birthday, and his uncle had given him a molded leather helmet. Rogan had set his son on a horse when the child was two. He was a child who had been raised amid horses' hooves and clashing swords. At two he was often out with his father on the training field, already imitating his father and uncle in the way they handled weapons. By three years of age he was fearless. Liana had pleaded with Rogan to watch out for the boy and not allow him to run so freely about the courtyard where the men, who were usually half drunk or exhausted from Rogan's training, might easily step on the child. But Rogan had said that she was an old woman and that that was the way all the Peregrines had been raised, that he meant for his son to grow up to be a man and not a half-woman.
So when Joice had gone to see about the child and he was not in his room, she did not think anything of it. She had her weakened mistress and the new child to see to. She did not even mention to her mistress that the child was not where he usually was.
And Liana did not miss her older son because she had her husband's rage to deal with, for the Howard man had disappeared.
"Where is he?" Rogan had bellowed at his sister.
Zared had sat there in stony silence, for she had already answered her brother a hundred times. She did not know. He had spent the night with her, and he had risen very early and left the room. She had not followed him.
Zared did not tell her furious brother that they had had another fight, or actually a repeat of the same fight. Tearle had once again raged at her that she did not trust him and that he deserved her trust. But she had tried to tell him that even though she could not trust him, she was torn apart, that half of her sided with her brothers and half with him. Instead of appeasing him this had only seemed to make him more angry.
"Just as your brother will not accept only half of what belongs to the Howards, I will not accept half of what is my due." He had stormed out of the room, and she had not seen him since.
Severn said that the Howard man had not been able to take life with the Peregrines, but Rogan said that the man was probably going to his brother to tell him of the vulnerable defenses of the Peregrines.
"Stop it, all of you!" Zared had screamed. "He took whatever you gave him," she yelled at her oldest brother. "He did all that you asked of him, and he never so much as bent under the burden. He can take it all and more."
"Then where is he?"
Zared did not have an answer for them. Had he had enough of the Peregrine hatred and just ridden off? Would he have left her and not said a word? Had he gone back to his brother? Was war imminent? Would her family die because of what she had done?
She thought that she could bear no more agony, but it was nearly noon when
Liana realized that her son was missing. Liana, already ill from the second birth, could not stand the misery of finding her son gone.
"The Howard man has taken my son," Rogan had whispered.
Zared wasn't sure that she was hearing correctly. "No," she said softly, then louder, "No! He would not do that."
Rogan gave her a look that said that he had no more use for her, that she was as much an enemy as the Howards.
Zared sat by and waited while her brothers and their men went out to search for the boy. Liana said that he might have walked into the village with one of the workers. But the village was scoured, and there was no sign of the boy or of the Howard man. Both had disappeared from the face of the earth.
By sundown Rogan was ready to wage war on the Howards, but both Liana and Zared pleaded for time. It was possible there was no connection between the disappearances of the boy and Zared's husband.
The moat was dragged with weighted nets, but there was no small body found, and Liana cried in relief.
Zared sat by a window in the solar, her eyes unblinking as she looked toward the north, hoping to see her husband come riding up. She hoped he had merely taken a day to get away from the Peregrines, a day to lie in the sun and look at the flowers. She could not tell her brothers that that was something that he might do, for they would not understand a man wanting to look at flowers.
At sundown the men took torches, went into the surrounding forest, and began to look for the child.
And it was in the forest that they found the poacher. At first the terrified man thought that Rogan and his men had come for him. His terror was so great that he could not speak coherently. When at last he realized that for once the Peregrine men were not concerned with who was stealing game from their lands he told them of having seen a large, dark man riding with a red-haired child in the saddle before him.
Rogan and Severn questioned the man for a long while until they were convinced that the child was Rogan's son and that the man who held him was Tearle Howard.
A grim Rogan and Severn went back to the castle and began to plan to go to war.
"Something is wrong," Zared said. "He did not take the child. He would not."
Rogan turned the full force of his fury on her, bellowing at her that all of this had been caused by her lust for a man, that because of her the Peregrine line was going to end. "If you carry his child now, I will kill it when it is born," he said to her.
Zared could not stand up against his rage or, she had to admit, against his logic. They had brought the poacher back to Moray Castle with them, and the man had repeated his story for the women. He had described Tearle to the color of the clothes he was wearing and the Howard emblem on his sword hilt. And he had described Rogan's son with his bright red hair and his father's looks. There was no doubt that it was Tearle who had held the child. And with him rode three Howard men, all wearing the trappings of the Howards.
Zared wanted to believe in her husband, wanted to explain away what the poacher said he had seen, but she could find no explanation. Tearle had been seen with Rogan's son riding in the company of three Howard knights in the direction of the Howard estates.
The morning after his son disappeared Rogan rode out with Severn with nearly three hundred men behind them, all the men they could find. It wasn't enough men to wage a war on the Howards, but it was all the men the Peregrines could afford.
Zared had at one point suggested that she ride with her brothers, but Rogan had merely looked at her, his eyes blazing with rage. She knew that he considered her almost as much of an enemy as he considered her husband.
"Women wait while men go to die," Liana had said when the men rode off.
Zared was not very good at waiting, and she paced the parapets for days, paced until she wore the bottoms of her shoes out. She threw the shoes over the side of the castle into the moat, then walked barefoot, her eyes never leaving the horizon.
For two days she believed in her husband. For two days she told herself that he had not betrayed her and her family. She told herself that he could not have taken the child. She tried to remember all the sweet times they had shared and all the many times he had told her that he wanted to settle the feud between the two families.
In the middle of the third day Rogan sent a messenger back to his family. With the messenger came a man who told them that he had seen four Howard men who carried a red-haired boy with them, and they were heading toward the Howard estates. The man lived near enough to the Howard estates that he knew Tearle by sight.
It was then that Zared stopped believing in her husband. She was quiet, saying nothing after hearing the messenger, but she did not fool Liana.
Liana turned and saw that her sister-in-law had left the room, and she ran to find her. She found Zared putting on the armor that her brothers had had made for her.
"You are not going after him," Liana said.
"I brought him here, and I shall take him away. I shall find him and kill him. He will allow me to get close to him, and when he does I will kill him."
Liana knew better than to try to argue with a Peregrine. When it came to their hatred of the Howards, there was no reasoning with them. Liana left the room, called three men, all of them either crippled or too old to fight so they could not go with Rogan, and had the men hold Zared. She was not going to allow the young woman to leave the castle.
Zared was held under guard for two more days before the Peregrine army returned and Liana went to release her sister-in-law.
Zared's rage had not calmed under confinement, and she was so angry at Liana that she could not bear to look her in the eyes. When Liana started to touch her arm Zared moved away.
"They are returning," Liana said softly.
Zared pushed past Liana and ran up the stairs to the parapets. It was a long distance away, but she could see that her husband was with them. He rode beside Rogan, his head down, and she could tell that his hands were tied behind his back.
She waited and watched as they rode closer, and as they neared she could see that Tearle had been beaten. For a moment, for just a tiny moment, she felt his pain, remembered his hands on her body, remembered his smile. But then she made herself remember his treachery and the way he had betrayed her family.
She went down the stairs and was waiting in the courtyard when they arrived. Liana stood behind her, and she gasped when she saw Tearle's face, his handsome face that was now black and blue and swollen.
Zared felt tears forming at the back of her eyes, but she would not shed them. She wondered why Rogan had not killed the man on sight, but then she knew that he had brought Tearle back for a public execution, an execution that Zared would have to watch.
She watched as they half pushed him from his horse and he fell, but he caught himself, having difficulty righting himself with his tied hands. When a man reached out a hand to help him up Tearle moved his shoulder away, accepting no help from the man.
Zared stood not three feet away and watched as her husband painfully struggled to stand up, and when he did, he saw her. His face was almost unrecognizable, and Zared winced, but she stood firm as she looked at him. She was not going to let her woman's softness betray her again. She straightened her shoulders and gave him a look that told him that he could expect nothing from her, that once she might have loved him but that she did not do so any longer.
He looked at her a long while, then he turned away and started up the stairs into the castle. Zared had almost gone after him then, for never had anyone looked at her as he did. Since she had met him he had looked at her in amusement, in exasperation and, lately, with love in his eyes. But never had he looked at her with hatred. She had not thought him capable of hatred. Perhaps she had thought that hatred was a prerogative of the Peregrines, an emotion that they had perfected and were especially good at.
But the look she had seen in Tearle's eyes put Rogan's hatred to shame. His hatred of her was not the impersonal hatred of one unknown family member for another, but of one person
for another person. His look could only have been given by one who has loved but whose love has turned to the other side.
Zared looked away from him, could not watch him as he stumbled up the stone stairs into the lord's chamber.
"Go," Severn said from behind her. "You must hear his sentence."
Zared recovered her senses enough to look at her surroundings. Behind Tearle were several of Rogan's men, then came Liana, clasping her son to her. Behind her was Rogan, then more of his men.
"W-where was he?" Zared asked.
"We found him before he could reach the land the Howards stole from us. He was alone with the child." Severn turned from her and went up the stairs behind the others.
Glumly Zared followed him.
The sight that greeted her was worse than she had imagined. Tearle, barely able to stand, his clothes torn and bloodstained, was surrounded by Rogan's men. Liana, clutching her child, who was sleeping on her shoulder, was sitting near her husband, her eyes showing her relief at having her child back with her.
"What do you have to say for yourself, Howard?" Rogan said in a voice full of rage.
Tearle lifted his head and glared at his brother-in-law. "I have told you all," he managed to whisper through a swollen mouth. "You will hear nothing more."
"Take him and kill him," Rogan said.
It was Liana who protested, not out of any desire to protect Tearle, but out of fear of Howard retaliation. "You cannot do this. His brother is a duke." Her son woke at her outburst and immediately wanted to be put down. Liana, still too weak to hold a sturdy three-year-old against his will, set the boy on the floor. She stood up and went to her husband. "You will have to take him to London to the king."
Rogan gave Tearle a look of contempt. "The king will not see to justice. The man says that he did not take the boy. He says that he was saving him. The king will believe a Howard, for a Howard has enough money to buy even a king."
The Conquest Page 23
