Cilean turned startled eyes toward him and color rose to her cheeks.
“I mean, if we are to be married, I thought—”
He broke off because Cilean put her hand to the back of his head and pressed her lips to his. It was a pleasant kiss but it didn’t make Rowan forget who he was or where he was, nor did it tempt him to sign a pact with the devil.
Gently, he broke away and smiled at her. He was sure now. Jura was the one God had chosen for him. Companionably, they walked together to the stream, Rowan with his thoughts on Jura and unaware of Cilean’s happiness. She thought she had been kissed by the man she was to marry, and she was more than satisfied with the coming marriage.
It was a five-hour ride northwest to Escalon. The roads were practically nonexistent and Rowan vowed to set up a road maintenance system right away. The Lanconians cursed the fourteen baggage wagons that Rowan and Lora had brought with them from England that carried their furniture and household goods. The Irials’ one concession to comfort was their walled city, and when they traveled, they took only what could be carried on their horses. Rowan had an idea they stole their food from the peasants as they traveled.
Escalon lay on the banks of the Ciar River, naturally protected by a curve of the river on two sides and a steep hillside on another. A twelve-foot-high wall surrounded the two square miles of the city. Inside, Rowan could see another wall, another rise of land, and on that the sprawling stone castle that must be his father’s house.
“We are almost home,” Lora said from her horse beside Rowan. Young Phillip sat in front of her, his little face showing his weariness from weeks of travel. Lora sighed. “Hot food, a hot bath, a soft bed, and someone to talk to besides these warmongers. Do you think the court musicians will know any English songs? What dances do these Lanconians perform?”
Rowan didn’t have an answer for his sister as Feilan had not thought it important to talk of the pleasures of Lanconians. Besides, there was only one pleasure in Lanconia that interested Rowan and that was the beautiful, delicious Jura, the most perfect of women, the most…He daydreamed all the way into the city.
Their procession into the city of Escalon caused very little interest. It was a dirty place, filled with animals and men, and the sounds were deafening as iron hammers banged on steel, as horses were shod, as men yelled at each other. Lora held a pomander to her nose against the smell.
“Where are the women?” she shouted to Xante over the noise.
“Not in the city. The city is for men.”
“Do you have the women locked away somewhere?” she shot back at him. “Do you not allow them out into the fresh air and sunshine?”
Daire turned to look at her with interest and mild surprise on his face.
“We dig pits in the side of the mountains and keep them there,” Xante said. “Once a week we throw them a wolf. If they can kill it, they can eat it.”
Lora glared at him, not knowing how much of the truth he was telling.
At the northwest corner of the walled city, in the most protected spot, rose the sprawling stone fortress of Thal’s house. It was not a castle as Rowan knew a castle, but lower, longer, and more impenetrable. The stones were as dark as the Lanconians.
Before the fortress was another stone wall, eight feet thick and twenty feet high. There was a rusty iron double gate, covered with vines, in the center of the wall, and to the left was a smaller gate, wide enough only to allow the passage of one horse at a time.
Xante shouted an order and the Lanconian troops began to form themselves into a single line and move toward this narrow gate.
“Wait,” Rowan called, “we’ll have to use the wide gate to get the wagons through.”
Xante reined his horse to stand in front of Rowan. His face showed that his patience was at an end. He looked like a man who had been forced to care for a spoiled, stupid, annoying child. “The wagons cannot go through. They will have to be unloaded and what furniture that will not fit through the gate will have to be taken apart.”
Rowan ground his back teeth together. He was reaching his breaking point. Had these people no respect for a man who was to be their king? “You will order your men to open the double gate.”
“This gate does not open,” Xante said contemptuously. “It has not been opened in a hundred years.”
“Then it is time it was opened,” Rowan bellowed at the insolent man. He turned in his saddle and saw four men carrying a twelve-foot-long log toward a carpenter’s shop. “Montgomery!”
“Yes sir!” Montgomery answered happily. He loved disobeying the Lanconians.
“Get that log and open the gate.”
Rowan’s three knights were off their horses at once. They were eager to do anything the Lanconians said shouldn’t be done. They grabbed, by the scruff of their dirty necks, six of the brawniest workers and set them to using the log as a battering ram.
Rowan sat stiff and straight on his horse and watched as the men rammed the rusty old gate again and again. It didn’t budge. He didn’t dare look at the smirking faces of the Lanconians.
“The gate was welded shut and it does not open,” Xante said, and Rowan could hear the smile of superiority in the man’s voice.
Rowan knew there was some superstition attached to the gate but he thought he would die before he asked what it was. Right now necessity outweighed any primitive superstition of these arrogant people. “I will open the gate,” he said as he dismounted, not looking into the face of a single Lanconian.
He had with him his war horse and those of his three knights. They were huge, heavy animals, capable of pulling tons of weight. Since the battering ram did not work, perhaps he could throw chains about the gate and the horses could pull it down.
Crowds were gathering now as workers ceased their tasks and came to watch this English prince make a fool of himself. On the walls above them were more guardsmen looking down on the scene with great amusement. So this was Thal’s weakling brat who thought he could open St. Helen’s Gate.
“Xante,” someone bellowed down, “is this our new king?”
The laughter was uproarious and it rang in Rowan’s ears as he walked toward the gate. Lora was right. He should have challenged a couple of men to a fight the first day and established who was in charge.
He stood before the gate and looked at it. It looked to be ancient, covered with rust and thorny vines. He pulled away a vine, thorns tearing his hands and making his palms bleed, and studied the old lock. It was a solid piece of iron with no sign of a weak joint. As far as he could tell, the battering ram hadn’t moved the lock.
“This blond Englishman thinks he can open the gate?” a man taunted.
“Didn’t someone tell him that only a Lanconian could open it?”
The crowd laughed derisively.
“I am Lanconian,” Rowan whispered, his eyes on the gate. “I am more Lanconian than they will ever know. God, help me. I beg You. Help me.”
He put his hands on the gate, both bloody palms touching the rusty surface, and leaned forward to get a closer look at the thick piece of iron holding the gate shut.
Beneath his palms, he felt the gates tremble.
“Open!” he whispered. “Open for your Lanconian king.”
Rust trickled down from the top, sprinkling his face and hair. “Yes!” he said, his eyes closed as he directed all of his energy into his palms. “I am your king. I command you to open.”
“Look!” screamed someone behind him. “The gate moves!”
The crowd and the guards on the wall quietened as the ancient gate began to creak. It seemed to shudder like something alive.
There was complete silence, even the animals were still, as the old iron lock fell at Rowan’s feet. He pushed the left gate back a couple of feet and the ancient hinges cried out in protest.
Rowan turned to his own men. “Now bring the baggage wagons through,” he said, and suddenly felt very, very tired.
But no one moved. The English were looking at th
e Lanconians and the Lanconians, hundreds of them, both peasants and guardsmen, were staring at Rowan with eyes filled with wonder.
“What’s wrong now?” Rowan bellowed up at Xante. “I opened the gate for you, now use it.”
Still no one moved. Montgomery whispered, “What’s wrong with them?”
Xante, as if he were walking in his sleep, very slowly dismounted his horse. His movements amid the absolute stillness seemed dramatic and of great significance. Rowan watched him, wondering what this man planned now to make his contempt known.
To Rowan’s utter astonishment, Xante moved to stand in front of him, dropped to his knees, bowed his head, and said, “Long live Prince Rowan.”
Rowan looked over his head to Lora, who still sat on her horse. Lora looked as bewildered as Rowan felt.
“Long live Prince Rowan,” someone else said, then another, and soon the chant became a shout.
Watelin, Rowan’s knight, a most sensible man, came forward. “Shall we get the wagons through, sire, before the fools decide you’re a demon instead of a god?”
Rowan laughed, but before he could answer, Xante was on his feet, glaring at Watelin.
“He is our prince,” Xante said, “our Lanconian prince. We will take his wagons through.” Xante turned and started bellowing orders to the guardsmen and peasants alike.
Rowan shrugged and mounted his horse as he smiled at Lora. “It seems that opening a rusty old gate was the right thing to do. Shall we enter our kingdom, dear sister?”
“Princess sister, if you don’t mind,” Lora said, laughing.
Inside the walls, men and women of the guard stood quietly with their heads bowed as Rowan and Lora passed them. Rowan searched each face, hoping for a sight of Jura, but she was nowhere to be seen.
At the front of the old stone fortress, Rowan helped Lora dismount. “Shall we go to meet our father?” he asked, and Lora nodded.
Chapter Four
JURA WAS THE only person on the long training field. There were targets for lance and bow practice at either end, bare patches for wrestling practice, a foot-race course, obstacles for jumping. Now, with one lone woman on the field, it looked enormous. The other guardswomen had rushed back to the city when a runner had come to say the new prince was approaching.
“Prince, ha!” Jura muttered, and heaved her javelin at the target and hit it square in the middle. He was English and he wanted to take her brother’s rightful place on the throne. At least she was comforted by the knowledge that all Lanconia agreed with her. For once, all the tribes were united in something: this Englishman was no more their king than the English Edward was.
At a sound behind her, she whirled, her javelin aloft. The point stood ready at Daire’s throat.
“Too late,” he said, smiling. “I could have used a bow from the edge of the field. You should not be here alone with no one standing guard.”
“Daire, oh Daire,” she cried, and flung her arms about his neck. “I have missed you very, very, very much.” She wanted to touch him, hold him, kiss him—and rid herself of the memory of the man by the river. Last night she had awakened with her body drenched in sweat and all she could think of was that stranger, a man she had never seen before, a peasant for all she knew, some muscular woodcutter on his way home to his wife and brats. “Kiss me,” she pleaded.
Daire kissed her, but it wasn’t the same as the kiss of the man in the forest. She felt no burning desire, no uncontrollable lust. She opened her mouth under his and put her tongue in his mouth.
Daire drew back, a frown on his face. He was a handsome man with his dark eyes and high cheekbones, but he wasn’t as handsome as the man in the woods, Jura thought involuntarily.
“What is wrong?” Daire asked huskily.
Jura dropped her arms and turned away to hide her red face, afraid he might read her thoughts. “I have missed you, that is all. Can’t a woman greet her intended with enthusiasm?” Daire was silent for so long that she turned to look at him. They had been reared together. Daire was of the Vatell tribe, and on a raid led by Thal, Daire’s father had killed Jura’s father. Thal had killed Daire’s father, then the twelve-year-old boy had attacked Thal with a rock and a broken lance. Thal had slung the boy over his saddle and taken him back to Escalon. Since Jura’s mother had died two weeks before, Thal took in Jura and Thal’s son Geralt and supervised the education and training of all three children. Jura, only five at the time, and feeling lost and lonely at the loss of both her parents in so short a time, had clung to the tall, silent Daire. As they grew up she never stopped clinging to him. But just because she had spent most of her life near him didn’t mean she could tell what he was thinking.
“Has he come?” she asked, wanting to make him stop looking at her as he had when she was six and had eaten some dried fruit of his then lied when he asked her if she knew who had stolen it.
“He has come,” Daire said softly, still watching her.
“And did the people hiss at him? Did they let this English usurper know what they thought of him? Did they—”
“He opened St. Helen’s Gate.”
Jura let out a guffaw. “With how many horses? Thal will not be pleased when he hears how his cowardly son—”
“He opened it with his palms.”
Jura stared at Daire.
“He wanted the gate open so he could get his wagons through, so he ordered his men to use a battering ram. It had no effect, so Prince Rowan put his palms against the gate and prayed for God to help him. The gate swung open.”
Jura could do nothing but gape. The legend was that when the true king of Lanconia arrived the gate would open for him.
She recovered herself. “No one has tried to open that gate in years; it must be rusted through. No doubt the battering ram knocked it loose, then when this Englishman pushed on it, it opened. Surely everyone knew that.”
“Xante went on his knees before the prince.”
“Xante?” Jura asked, eyes wide. “Xante? The one who laughs whenever the Englishman is mentioned? The same Xante who sent back messages saying what a fool the man was?”
“He bowed his head and called him Prince. All the guard and all the people who were there bowed before him.”
Jura looked away. “This will make it harder. The peasants are a superstitious lot, although I had hoped better of the guard. We will have to make them see that they were just a pair of rusty gates. Has Thal been told?”
“Yes,” Daire answered. “They are with him now.”
“They?”
“Prince Rowan, his sister, and her son.”
Jura toyed with her javelin and began to feel overwhelmed. It felt as if she were the only sane person left. Was all Lanconia willing to throw away what it knew to be true merely because some rusty gate opened after being hit with a battering ram? Surely at least Daire did not believe in this usurper. “We must convince Thal that Geralt should be king. Tell me, are they very English? Do they look and act foreign?”
Suddenly, as quick as a snake, Daire’s arm shot out and grabbed the thick braid of Jura’s hair and wrapped it about his wrist and forced her face close to his.
“Daire!” she gasped. She had not been prepared for his movement. When she was with him, her guard was down; he had her complete trust.
“You are mine,” he said throatily. “You have been mine since you were five years old. I’ll share you with no one.”
The light in his eyes frightened her. “What has happened?” she whispered. “What has this Rowan done?”
“Perhaps you can answer that better than I.”
She recovered from her fear. She still held her javelin in her left hand and now she pushed the point against his ribs. “Release me or I’ll put a hole in you.”
As abruptly as he had grabbed her, he released her hair then smiled.
Jura did not return his smile. “You will explain yourself.”
Daire shrugged. “Cannot a lover be jealous?”
“Jealous of whom?” Ju
ra asked angrily.
He didn’t answer her and she didn’t like the way his lips were smiling but his eyes were not. They had been together too many years, for he was able to read her thoughts. Somehow he had been able to see through that first kiss of hers, and her talk of the Englishman had not led him from the scent. She had betrayed herself in that kiss and let him know that something was wrong.
She smiled at him. “You have no reason to be jealous. Perhaps it is my anger that makes me—” she hesitated—“seek you out.” She looked at him and silently pleaded with him to not press her further.
At last he, too, smiled. “Come,” he said, “don’t you want to meet your new prince?”
She breathed a sigh of relief that the tense moment was over and lifted her javelin again. “I’d as soon walk into the Ultens’ camp alone.” That odd look returned to Daire’s face, but this time she was not going to ask its cause. “Go on, go back to him,” she said. “Thal will want you. Everyone will be needed to bring this soft white Englishman his sweetmeats.”
Daire stayed where he was. “I’m sure there will be feasting later.”
Jura threw her javelin hard and hit the target in the red center. “I don’t think I’ll be in the least hungry tonight. Go on, get out of here. I need to train.”
Daire was frowning at her as if something puzzled him, and without another word he turned back toward the walled city.
Angrily, Jura jerked her javelin from the straw-filled target. So much for a lover’s return, she thought. She threw her arms about him and he pushed her away, yet a moment later he pulled her hair and told her he was jealous. Why didn’t he show his jealousy with a few kisses? Why hadn’t he done something to erase the memory of the man by the river?
She threw her javelin again and again. She planned to spend the day in hard exercise so that tonight she would be too tired to remember that man’s hands on her legs, or his lips on hers or—She uttered a curse and heaved the javelin and missed the target completely. “Men!” she said in anger. Daire stared at her, pulled her hair, and another man caressed her thighs, while an Englishman threatened all of Lanconia. She threw her javelin again and this time hit the center perfectly.