Jura smiled at Rowan. “If you cannot control a child, how do you expect to control Brita and Yaine, who rule the other tribes? And greasy old Marek?”
Rowan grabbed for Phillip’s arm but the boy slid behind Jura and she put her body between Rowan and the boy.
Suddenly Rowan straightened. “You have power over me,” he said softly. “You make me act younger than my squire. I’ll not fight you for the boy; no doubt you have bewitched him also. But remember, he is not my heir. There would be no benefit to you to harm him.”
“Harm a child?” Jura asked in horror. “Even an English child? You go too far. I have no need to harm any Englishman as you will do yourselves the most harm. We Lanconians will tire of your self-satisfied superiority and someone besides me will remove a few heads.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that Neile of yours will go first.”
“Neile?” Rowan asked. “Has he tried for your favors?”
“Get your mind out of your breeches. The man hates us and he lets it be known. Now, I am hungry and I smell food. Am I allowed to eat or have you vowed that I may not?”
Rowan’s nostrils flared in anger but he said nothing. “Come. Eat. Who am I to have a say in your life?” He turned and started down the hall.
Jura meant to follow him but Phillip tried to take her hand. “Lanconian warriors do not hold hands,” she said, “and straighten your shoulders. How can you be a Lanconian if you slump?”
“Yes sir,” Phillip answered, and Jura did not correct him as the boy stood straight.
She smiled down at him. “Perhaps we can find you some proper clothes more befitting an Irial warrior.”
“And a knife?” he asked, eyes gleaming.
“By all means a knife.”
Long trestle tables had been set up in the main hall and servants were bringing in platters of meat and vegetables. Jura started to take her place toward the end of the table but Rowan, frowning, motioned to the place on the bench beside him. Phillip followed her like a shadow.
“Phillip.” Lora called her son from the other side of Rowan, motioning for him to come sit by her.
“Jura will let me sit by her,” the boy said, his little spine rigid.
Lora started to rise but Rowan stopped her.
A priest blessed the meal and the fifty or so diners fell to as if they were starving. They were loud as they argued about weapons and horses and who was the greatest fighter.
A quarter way into the meal two men made for each other’s throats, each trying to strangle the other.
Rowan, for all he had seen of Lanconian tempers, was still unprepared for these outbursts. He was talking to Lora and did not react immediately.
Not so Jura. She jumped onto the table, took two steps across it, and launched herself onto the men, knocking them off balance so that the three of them fell to the floor amid the debris and the barking dogs.
She drew her knife even as she fell. “I’ll have the heart of the next man who interrupts my meal,” she yelled.
The men calmed themselves and got up off the floor. The other Lanconians had barely interrupted their eating at the sight of this very ordinary event, but it was not ordinary to the Englishmen. Jura stood, dusting herself off, and met the eyes of Rowan and his three knights. The Englishwoman stood to one side, her eyes frightened as she clutched her little boy to her.
Jura had no idea what she had done to cause such looks on the faces of these men. Rowan’s face was as red as a sunset, the veins standing out in his neck, his jaw muscles working, while his three knights merely looked on in horror.
Jura sheathed her knife. “The food grows cold.”
Phillip broke away from his mother and ran to fling his arms around Jura’s thighs.
She put her hand on the boy’s soft hair, smiled, then bent down, took his shoulders, and held him at arm’s length so she could look at him. “What’s this?” she asked softly. “Fear from a Lanconian?”
“Girls cannot fight men,” the boy whispered.
“True, but this was only Raban and Sexan. They always fight. Now straighten your shoulders and stand tall and—” Jura broke off because Lora, recovering from her shock, grabbed her son away.
“How dare you,” Lora said. “How dare you touch my son and teach him your violent ways? You aren’t a woman. You aren’t fit to be near children.”
Jura stood and took a step toward Lora, her eyes cool and hard. Rowan put himself between the two women. “Come with me,” he said, looking at Jura with an expression she’d never seen before.
By now the Lanconians had stopped eating to watch this drama. A fight and Jura leaping across the tables caused no comment, but they wondered what these odd English were doing. Anger because a guard had stopped a fight? That was their duty.
“Come with me,” Rowan repeated, his jaws clamped shut.
“I am hungry,” Jura said, looking toward the tables and the rapidly disappearing food.
Rowan’s fingers clamped down on her upper arm as he began to pull her out of the room. Jura tried to jerk away from him but he held her fast, and she cursed him for embarrassing her before her people.
He pulled her into the first open doorway, a small chamber for the storage of barrels of ale and mead.
“Never,” he said into her face as soon as the door was closed, “never will my wife behave like that again.” He could hardly speak for his anger. “As if you were a common doxy, leaping on the tables and…and…”—he nearly choked—“throwing your body on those men.”
Was this man crazy? “That is my duty,” she said patiently. “The guardswomen are trained to settle disputes, and as Thal’s representative it was my duty. Had Geralt been at dinner, he would have handled the men.”
Rowan’s face was turning purple. “Thal is dead,” he said. “I am king. I will settle disputes between my own men. My wife will not.”
Anger began to rise in Jura. “I begin to understand. It is that I am a woman. Do you think that Lanconian women are as cowardly and as useless as that sister of yours?”
He advanced on her. “Leave my sister out of this. I am telling you that you will not act as if you were my sergeant-at-arms. You are a woman and you will act as one.”
The man was absurd. “I must sit and sew in order to prove to you that I am a woman? Do I look like a man?”
Involuntarily, Rowan looked down at her body with her high firm breasts, long round thighs, and that short tunic of hers clinging to her curving backside. For the thousandth time he cursed his quick temper that had made him swear he would keep his hands off of her.
“You will obey me or you will regret it,” he said.
“What will you do? Order me kept prisoner? And who will obey your commands? Do you think my Lanconians will? You will never be allowed to leave the gates of Escalon alive if you harm me. And that will be the end of your childish plans to unite the tribes.”
Rowan clenched his fists at his side. Never had anyone been able to get to him the way she did. He had dealt with his uncle William’s stupid sons without once losing his temper. And never had a woman made him angry. Women were sweet, kind things who gave comfort to a man and listened to what he had to say with wide, adoring eyes. If a man went hunting, he was to return to tell his wife of the dangers of the hunt and she was to sigh and exclaim at his bravery. But Jura might bring down a stag bigger than his.
“Have you no women’s clothes?” he asked. “Must you wear such a garment as that?” He indicated her loose trousers with her high, cross-gartered boots.
“You are no older than the child,” she snapped. “What does it matter what I wear? It helps me perform my duties and—” She stopped because Rowan had pulled her into his arms.
“Your duties are to me,” he said huskily. “You do not press your body against other men.”
“Do you mean when I stopped the fight?” Her voice was slower and lower. She couldn’t think clearly when he touched her.
“Jura, you have done something to me. I do not recognize myself
.”
“Then I will tell you who you are: you are an Englishman in a country where you do not belong. You should return to England and give the kingship to my brother.”
He thrust her from him. “Leave me. Go and fill your belly and do not interfere between me and my men again.”
“They are Lanconians, they are not your men,” she said as she left the room quickly and hurried back to the main hall. She would be lucky to get any food. The tables were being cleared but she managed to grab a venison pie that was only half gone from a servant’s tray and began to eat it as she left the castle walls to go outside where she could breathe.
She was walking toward the men’s barracks when Geralt came toward her. “You were not at dinner,” she said.
“Sit with my enemy?” he asked sneeringly. “I hear you are to live with him now.”
“And to travel with him. The fool thinks to unite the tribes,” she said, taking the last bite of the pie.
Geralt gave a derisive laugh. “He will be killed by the first tribe’s territory he enters.”
She could feel her brother watching her. “I have told him so but he does not listen. He will be killed soon and maybe it is better to get it over with. Some of the men like him. Xante stays too close to him.”
Geralt moved closer to her and his voice lowered. “You are in a position to hasten his death.”
She spat out a piece of gristle between his feet. “I am no murderer. He will kill himself soon enough.”
“So it is true that you have gone to his side. Cilean said that you wanted him for yourself and that is why you knocked her down in the Honorium. Tell me, does your blood boil hotter for this pale foreigner than it does for your own people?”
Her nostrils flared at him. “Do you think that your sly insults will goad me into murdering him? Then you do not know me. I tell you that he is a fool, and he will do himself in with no one’s help. You will be made king and you won’t have the blood of your English brother on your hands.”
“Unless he breeds a child with you,” Geralt said.
“There is no chance of that,” Jura answered.
“He is not a man?” Geralt asked in wonder.
“I do not know. He says he has made a vow to God that—” She broke off. “There will be no children during the short life of the man. Wait and be patient, you will be king.” She turned away from him and walked through the inner gates into the city. It was quiet now, with both man and animals settling down to sleep.
Unite the tribes, she thought. Impossible idea, of course. The tribes hated each other too much to ever get along, and that stupid Englishman would never be able to understand that. One had to be Lanconian to understand the Lanconian mind.
Oh well, she thought, shrugging, it didn’t really matter anyway since the fool was going to get himself killed before long. She paused for a moment. It would be a shame for him to die before she spent some time in bed with him. After all, they were married.
With a yawn, she turned back toward Thal’s old castle. Tonight she would be secreted in a room with him and perhaps tomorrow she would no longer be a maiden. She smiled and hastened her step.
Chapter Eight
JURA CORRECTLY ASSUMED that her husband was using Thal’s old room as his own, but when she pushed open the door, he looked up from a table with a startled expression.
“Why are you here?” he snapped.
“You ordered me here,” she said patiently. “You had your insolent Englishmen take me from the women’s quarters, with my belongings, and bring me here. I assumed I was to take on the duties of being queen—for as long as I am such,” she added under her breath.
He looked at her for a long moment. “I guess I must keep you,” he said with resignation. “Go and sit over there and be quiet.” He turned back to the table, which was littered with books and rolled papers.
Jura wondered if he had brought the books with him or if they had been taken from Thal’s meager and mostly unused library. She had no intention of obeying him, so she went to look over his shoulder.
He whirled on her. “What are you doing?” he snapped.
“Looking,” she answered, then nodded toward the map he was holding. “That is wrong. The Vatells’ border is farther north. Thal seized a good bit of the land when I was a child. My father was killed in the battle.” She turned away to sit on the edge of the bed and began unwrapping the garters on her legs.
Rowan turned toward her. “What do you know of the borders?”
“More than you do, it seems.”
He stood, picked up the map, and put it on the bed behind her. “Show me how things have changed. This map was made by Feilan over twenty years ago. Who else has my father slaughtered in order to take their land?”
Jura pushed off her boots and wiggled her bare toes. “Thal did what he had to do. Half of the Vatells’ land is in the mountains where nothing grows, and they were raiding the Irials to steal our grain.”
“So my father put an end to their raiding,” Rowan said thoughtfully. “How did the Vatells fare through that winter?”
“Not well,” Jura said. “Do you plan to hate everything about us?”
Rowan looked surprised. “How can I hate my own people? Here, show me the new borders.”
She leaned closer to him and, with her finger, showed him the smaller Vatell territory. “They are reasonable people, at least fairly so,” she said, “not like the Zernas or the Ultens. The Vatells—”
“Yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “Now show me where the Irials’ grain fields are.”
“If you know so much, why don’t you know that?”
He pointed to a place on the map. “If they have not moved, the fields are here. Protected by three rivers and guarded at regular intervals by Irial guards. The crops are barley, wheat, and rye. Sheep are raised here on this plain. The horses they have are descendants of those stolen from the Fearens, and still the young Irial men raid the Fearen camps at night. They cross Vatell country here in the dense forest then go along a goat path here until—”
“How do you know this?” Jura asked.
“When other boys were chasing a ball in the courtyard, I was hidden away with old Feilan learning the Ulten language.”
“Ulten?” Jura asked. “No one speaks that guttural mess of theirs. It is not a language but merely grunts and moans.”
Rowan leaned back on the bed, his hand under his head. “It may sound so but it is actually a form of Lanconian. For instance, your word for woman is telna while theirs is te’na. It is just a quicker way of saying the same thing.”
Jura drew her feet up under her. “A lazier way. They are lazy, slimy people. All the tribes hate the Ultens.”
“Then all the better to interbreed the tribes. The Ultens stay up in the mountains and they interbreed with each other until their brains are mush.”
“Another reason your plan of uniting the tribes will not work,” Jura said. “Who would want to marry an Ulten woman?”
Rowan looked at her with merriment in his eyes. “A Zerna man,” he said.
Jura laughed and stretched out on the bed. The map was between them as they both lay on the bed.
“During the Honorium I had nightmares about Mealla winning,” Rowan said. “The problem I have with intermarrying the tribes is wondering who will marry the Zerna women. Are they all like Mealla and the other women who entered the Honorium?”
Jura lifted her head onto her elbow. “The Fearen men might like the Zerna women. Fearen men are small, short, thin little men, and Thal always said they were angry about their size. Zerna women might appeal to the Fearens. Their children would be larger.”
Rowan grinned at her as he also lifted onto his elbow. “And the Poilens? Who shall we marry to them?”
“That’s not easy,” Jura said thoughtfully. “The Poilens believe thought is more important than food or pleasure.”
“Then we should give them some of those feisty little Fearen women. They would turn a
man’s thoughts from books to more earthly delights.”
Jura was watching him. He was very good-looking and the candlelit room made that golden hair of his glow. She had an urge to touch it and even lifted her hand.
Rowan abruptly got off the bed. “You may sleep there,” he said, pointing to a seat formed in the thick stone walls. It would be barely long enough for her.
Jura started to protest the absurdity of their sleeping apart, but then she thought that this arrangement might be better. When he was killed—as he surely would be—it would be better for her not to have become attached to him. And it would be better for the succession if there was no child of his who might want to be king. And Jura didn’t know if she could deny her child a throne that would rightfully be his. No, this was better. She would stay a maiden with this man until she was widowed, then Geralt would become king and she would marry Daire and have many children.
She rose from the bed. “You say that we travel tomorrow?”
He had his back to her. “Yes, we start for the Vatells’ land, but first we stop at the Irial villages and get men and women.”
“For what?” she asked as she untied her loose trousers and slipped them off.
He turned back to her. “For marriages to—” he began but broke off at the sight of her half-nude body. He turned away again. “Go to bed,” he said in a deep voice. “Cover yourself.”
Jura smiled at his back and climbed beneath the sheepskins that were thrown across the window seat. She watched him as he undressed, his face turned away from her. He removed the tall boots and exposed his big, blond-haired calves. His embroidered tunic, which reached to just above his knees, came off next, and as he slid it over his head, Jura saw again that big, muscular body that had made her forget her senses, her present and her past, on that day at the river when she had first seen him.
The muscles in her legs began to feel as if she had just exerted them to their limit, and her breathing was deeper and slower.
Without looking at her, he blew out the candle by the bed and plunged the room into darkness.
“Rowan,” she whispered into the darkness, using his name for the first time.