The Taming (Peregrine 1)

“That was the way it was before I came,” Liana said

patiently. “Lord Rogan has not as much need for money as he once did. Go and kill the animals. I will take the lord’s wrath on my head.” She swallowed at that, but she couldn’t allow the peasants to see her fear. “Now, where is the baker’s shop? The one who has the feud against my husband?”

It took Liana hours to set in motion what she meant to do. Two weeks was so little time. The six knights with her, at first silently standing by and watching with that special expression of amusement that men affect when a woman does something that they can not, she put to work.

She ordered a wheat field cut, the grain given to the baker, the sheaves to be used to thatch the decayed roofs of the peasants’ houses. She ordered a knight to supervise a mass cleaning of the streets, which ran with human and animal excrement. Another knight supervised a washing of the peasants, who were as dirty as the streets. At first she was appalled at the refusal of the merchants to take her word that they would be paid, but remembering the story of what her husband’s men had done to the baker, she forgave the merchants and gave them silver coins from the bag she carried on her horse.

It was sundown when she returned to Moray Castle, and she smiled as she saw two knights nodding sleepily in their saddles. Her plan was to make the peasants comfortable enough so that their loyalty would be to the master and not to a few thieves who were probably sharing their booty with the hungry farmers. It was not going to be easy to clean up a village within two weeks, but she was going to try.

The stench of the moat greeted her nostrils as she neared the castle, and she knew she’d have to get Rogan’s permission to drain the thing before the men would proceed. But inside the walls, she could see the difference. There was less filth on the ground, less piled up in the stables and around the shallow buildings built along the walls. When she rode up, the workers looked up at her and some men tugged at their forelocks in respect of her. Liana smiled to herself. They were beginning to notice her now.

She mounted the stairs to the Lord’s Chamber. Here the women had concentrated their efforts. It wasn’t clean yet, not by Liana’s standards—the walls would have to be whitewashed anew—but she could walk across the tile floor without tripping over bones.

Inside the room, at the clean table and chairs, sat Severn and Zared, their heads down on the table. Stretched along the length of the table was a long, three-deep pile of the fattest dead rats Liana had ever seen. They looked as if they were meant to be trophies of war.

“What is this?” she asked sharply, startling Severn and Zared awake.

Zared smiled at her and Liana thought again what a pretty, beardless boy he was.

“We killed them all,” Zared announced proudly. “You wouldn’t by chance know how to count, would you? Rogan does, but not as high as this many.”

Liana didn’t want to get near the rats, but Zared was so proud she felt she had to. She pointed and began counting. Each one she counted, Zared threw out the window into the moat below. Liana meant to protest, but a few rats weren’t going to make the moat worse than it already was. One of the rats was still alive and Liana jumped back while Zared brought a fist down on the rodent’s head. Severn grinned proudly.

Liana counted fifty-eight rats, and when they were gone from the table, she tiredly sat down next to Severn and looked about the room.

“Fifty-eight!” Zared was saying. “Wait until I tell Rogan.”

“Someone forgot to throw those bones out,” Liana said wearily, looking at the wall over the double fireplace. There were six horses’ skulls hanging there. She hadn’t noticed them before since they were probably covered with cobwebs, she thought.

She became aware of Severn and Zared gaping at her, looking as if she’d suddenly grown horns. She glanced down at the front of her gown, which was dirty but not hideously so. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Those are the Peregrine horses,” Zared said in a strained whisper.

Liana had no idea what the boy meant, so she looked to Severn. His handsome face was changing in expression from astonishment to a kind of cold, deep rage that, until now, Liana had thought only Rogan capable of.

Severn’s voice was quiet when he spoke. “The Howards laid siege to Bevan Castle and starved our family. My father, Zared’s mother, and my brother William died there. My father went to the walls and asked the Howards to allow the woman freedom, but they would not.” Severn lowered his voice. “Before they died, they ate the horses.” He turned to the skulls hanging on the walls. “Those horses.” He looked back at her, his eyes burning. “We do not forget, and the skulls will not be removed.”

Liana looked at the skulls with horror. To be so hungry that one was reduced to eating horses. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that the Peregrine peasants were condemned to a lifelong siege and would probably be glad of horses to eat, but she refrained.

“Where is my husband?” she asked after a while.

“In his brooding room,” Zared said cheerfully, while Severn cast the youngster a warning look.

Liana didn’t pursue Zared’s words because she understood more than she had at first. Perhaps there were reasons for her husband’s anger, for his obsession with money. She stood. “If you will excuse me, I must bathe. Tell my husband I—”

“Bathe?” Zared said, sounding as if Liana had said she planned to jump from the parapets.

“It’s a pleasant occupation. You should try it,” Liana said, especially since Severn and Zared were now the dirtiest objects in the room.

Zared leaned back in the chair. “I think I’ll pass. Did you really tell the Days to go home at night?”

Liana smiled. “Yes, I did. Good night, Severn, Zared.” She started up the stairs, then paused when she heard their voices.

“The woman has courage,” she heard Zared say.

“Or else she’s an utter fool,” Severn answered.

Liana continued up the stairs, and an hour later she was in her bedroom, soaking in a wooden tub full of scented hot water and watching the play of flames on the logs.