The Taming Read online

  Rogan’s eyes were now fixed on the stage. He clamped a hand down on Liana’s shoulder and held her in place. She had no choice but to watch.

  Onstage, Lord Buzzard, with his coat held open, went across the stage after the ugly woman until they were out of sight. Instantly, one of Rogan’s red-haired sons came onto the stage and took a bow. He was obviously the product of Lord Buzzard’s union with the woman.

  From stage left came an old woman carrying a dark bundle, which she put in the middle of the stage, not far from where the father still lay in the straw fire.

  “Now, daughter, we will at last be warm,” she said, and from the right came another very ugly man dressed as a woman. Only this man stuck out behind instead of in front. He had padded buttocks that could have been used as a shelf and an absolutely flat chest.

  While the audience was watching this, another of Rogan’s red-haired sons ran across the stage, sending the audience into new gales.

  Liana didn’t dare look at Rogan. Tomorrow he’d probably order the whole village drawn and quartered.

  Onstage, as the mother and her jut-butted daughter were warming their hands over the pile of black, Lord Buzzard strutted onstage, his paper hawk beak looking even larger.

  “You are stealing my fuel,” Lord Buzzard shouted.

  “But it is only cow dung,” the old woman wailed. “We were freezing to death.”

  “You want fire, I will give you fire,” Lord Buzzard said. “Take her and burn her.”

  From the left came two men, big, fierce-looking brutes with scars painted on their faces so that they looked like monsters more than men. They took the old woman’s arms, as she wailed and screamed, and pulled her to the back of the stage, where they tied her to one of the barren trees and placed red-dyed straw bundles about her feet.

  Meanwhile, Lord Buzzard looked at the daughter. “Ah, come to me, my beauty,” he said.

  The ugly man playing the daughter turned to the audience and made a face so ugly—he pushed his lower lip up over the tip of his nose—that even Liana gave a bit of a laugh. Once again Lord Buzzard pulled his cloak back to reveal the grotesque genitals and chased the “girl” off the stage, while behind them the mother screamed. Two red-haired boys came running from opposite sides of the stage and crashed into each other.

  “There’s more where we came from,” one boy announced gleefully to the audience.

  Liana was about to insist to Rogan that they leave when she got an even greater shock. From the left came a young girl, very pretty, wearing a long white gown and a blonde wool wig that reached all the way to her feet. Liana knew this actress was supposed to be her. And how would these cruel people portray her?

  From the right came Lord Buzzard and a man dressed as a priest; the priest began to read a marriage ceremony. Lord Buzzard, obviously bored, didn’t look at the pretty girl in white. Instead, he played to the audience, making kissing faces at the girls, winking, flipping his cloak open now and then to show what he had. The girl in white kept her head down, her hands clasped.

  When the priest pronounced them married, Lord Buzzard grabbed the girl’s shoulders then picked her up and began shaking her. Coins fell out of her clothes, and Lord Buzzard’s men ran onto the stage and scurried to pick them up. When there was no more money falling from the lady in white, he set her down, turned his back on her, and strutted offstage, still flirting with the audience and flipping his cloak. The lady walked to the back of the stage, her head bowed.

  Immediately, onstage came a man leading a cow. Lord Buzzard met him center stage.

  “What is this?” Lord Buzzard demanded.

  “My lord,” the man said, “this cow ate your vegetables.”

  Lord Buzzard patted the cow’s head. “Cows need to eat.” He started to walk away, but then turned back to glare at the man. “Did you eat any of my vegetables?”

  “I had one bite of turnip that fell from the cow’s mouth,” the man said.

  “Hang him!” Lord Buzzard ordered, and his scarred knights hurried onstage.

  The man fell to his knees. “But, my lord, I have six children to feed. Please have mercy.”

  Lord Buzzard looked at his men. “Hang the whole family. There’ll be fewer to feed.”

  The knights dragged the man to the back of the stage and put a rope around his neck. He stood beside the man in the fire, the old woman at the stake, and the lady in white.

  The lady looked at these people and shook her head sadly.

  Onstage sauntered two pretty, plump young women who Liana recognized as two of the Days. The audience, especially the men, cheered and whistled and the Days stretched and bent over and did what they could to show off their voluptuous bodies. Liana stole a look at Rogan. He was sitting as immobile as a statue, his eyes and attention totally on the stage.

  On instinct, she reached across him and took his hand in hers, and to her surprise, he clung to her hand.

  She looked back at the stage. Lord Buzzard came back onstage, halted at the sight of the Days, then leaped at them, his cloak flying open. The three of them went tumbling to the floorboards.

  It was at this sight that the lady in white came alive. She hadn’t minded when her husband had ignored her at their wedding or shaken coins from her or when he’d hanged a man for eating a bit of turnip a cow had spit out—but she minded about the other women.

  She ripped off her white dress to reveal a red one underneath. From behind a pot containing a bare tree, she took a red headdress with tall paper flames attached to it and jammed it on her head over the blonde wig.

  “The Fire Lady!” the audience yelled in delight.

  The red-dressed Fire Lady took bundles of red-painted straw from the feet of the old woman tied to the tree and began throwing them at the three people tumbling about in the center of the stage. The Days jumped up, screaming and acting as if they were putting out fires from their clothes and hair, and ran offstage.

  The Fire Lady looked down at Lord Buzzard and from her pocket she withdrew a big collar such as used to tie up a mean dog. She fastened it onto Lord Buzzard’s neck, took a leash, and led him offstage.

  The audience yelled and cheered and jumped on the benches and danced, while onstage all the dead people came to life again. Six of Rogan’s sons came out and threw flower-covered nets over the dead trees so that it looked as if even the trees were coming back to life. The people onstage began to sing and all the actors came onstage, the Fire Lady leading Lord Buzzard on all fours. He tried to flip his cloak aside to show the audience, but the Fire Lady smacked him across the head and he was quiet again.

  At long last, the curtain was pulled closed, and when the audience stopped cheering and laughing, they began to file out of the benches.

  Rogan and Liana sat still, neither of them moving, hands clasped in Rogan’s lap.

  “I don’t guess the peasants are so simple, after all,” Liana managed to say at last.

  Rogan turned to look at her, his eyes telling her what an understatement her words were.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  The audience filed out of the benches, laughing, slapping one another’s backs, and recalling one scene of the play after another. “Did you see—?” “I liked the part where—”

  Liana and Rogan sat where they were, hands clasped, until the last person had left the audience.

  Gradually, as her shock left her, Liana felt her body filling with anger. In the last weeks she had dared her husband’s rage for these people. She had exhausted herself seeing that they were fed and clothed, and they repaid her with this…this ridiculing farce.

  She clutched Rogan’s hand. “We’ll go back and get your men,” she said, anger pounding in her temples. “We shall see if these people will be so ungrateful after your men get through with them. They think they have seen the Peregrine wrath, but they have seen nothing.”

  Rogan didn’t say anything, but when she looked at him, he didn’t appear to be angry as much as thoughtful.

&n